Achieving peace in the new multipolar age
https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2024/08/26/achieving-peace-in-the-new-multipolar-age/
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Achieving peace in the new multipolar age
(https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2024/08/26/achieving-peace-in-the-new-multipolar-age/)
Jeffrey D. Sachs | August 9, 2024 |
With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US assumed that it would dominate the world as the unrivaled hegemon. Yet the US “unipolar” moment proved to be short-lived. US geopolitical dominance ended with the rise of China, the recovery of Russia from the period of Soviet collapse, and the rapid development of India. We have arrived at a new multipolar age.
The US still fights to remain world hegemon, but this is delusional and doomed to fail. The US is in no position to lead the world, even if the rest of the world were to want it, which is not the case. The US share of world output (at international prices) is 16% and declining, down from around 27% in 1950, and 21% in 1980. China’s share is 19%. China’s manufacturing output is roughly twice that of the US, and China rivals the US in cutting-edge technologies.
The US is also militarily overextended, with some 750 overseas military bases in 80 countries. The US is engaged in protracted wars in Yemen, Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. The US wars and quest for hegemony are financed through debt, including debt owed to rival powers such as China.
Moreover, America’s budget politics is paralyzed. The rich, who fund the political campaigns, want lower taxes, while the poor want more social outlays. The result is a standoff, with chronic budget deficits (now above 5% of GDP). The public debt has swelled from around 35% of GDP in 2000 to 100% of GDP today.
The US sustains technological dynamism in areas such as artificial intelligence and microchip design, yet US breakthroughs are quickly matched in China through the spread of knowhow and advances pioneered by China. Most of the world’s green and digital hardware — including advanced solar modules, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, batteries, chips, electric vehicles, 5G systems, and long-distance power transmission – is manufactured in Asia, with a large share in China or Chinese-dominated supply chains.
In view of its budget deficits, the US shirks the financial burdens of global leadership. The US demands that NATO allies pay their own way for military defense, while the US is increasingly stingy in its contributions to UN system for climate and development finance.
In short, while US deludes itself that it remains the world’s hegemon, we are already in a multipolar world. This raises the question of what the new multipolarity should mean. There are three possibilities.
The first, our current trajectory, is a continued struggle for dominance among the major powers, pitting the US against China, Russia, and others. The leading US foreign policy scholar, Professor John Mearsheimer, has put forward the theory of “offensive realism,” according to which the great powers inevitably struggle for dominance, yet the consequences can be tragic, in the form of devastating wars. Surely our task is to avoid such tragic outcomes, not accept them as a matter of fate.
The second possibility is a precarious peace through a balance of power among the great powers, sometimes called “defensive realism.” Since the US cannot defeat China or Russia, and vice versa, the great powers should keep the peace by avoiding direct conflicts amongst themselves. The US should not try to push NATO into Ukraine, against Russia’s strenuous objections, nor should the US arm Taiwan over China’s vociferous opposition.
In short, the great powers should act with prudence, avoiding each other’s red lines. This is surely good advice, but not enough. Balances of power turn into imbalances, threatening the peace. The Concert of Europe, the balance of power among the major European powers in the 19th century, eventually succumbed to shifts in the power balance at the end of the 19th century, which led onward to World War I.
The third possibility, scorned in the past 30 years by US leaders, but our greatest hope, is true peace among the major powers. This peace would be based on the shared recognition that there can be no global hegemon and that the common good requires active cooperation among the major powers. There are several bases of this approach, including idealism (a world based on ethics), and institutionalism (a world based on international law and multilateral institutions).
Sustained peace is possible. We can learn much from the long peace that prevailed in East Asia before the arrival of Western powers in the 19th century. In her book Chinese Cosmopolitanism, philosopher Shuchen Xiang cites historian David Kang, who noted that “from the founding of the Ming dynasty to the opium wars – that is, from 1368 to 1841 – there were only two wars between China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These were the China’s invasion of Vietnam (1407-1428) and Japan’s invasion of Korea (1592-1598).” East Asia’s long peace was shattered by Britain’s attack on China in the First Opium War, 1839-1842, and the East-West (and later Sino-Japanese) conflicts that followed.
Prof. Xiang attributes the half-millennium of East Asian peace to Confucian norms of harmony that underpinned the statecraft among China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, in contrast to the struggle for hegemony that characterized Europe’s statecraft. China, during this long period, was the region’s uncontested hegemon, but did not use its predominant power to threaten or harm Korea, Vietnam, or Japan.
Dr. Jean Dong, an expert in China’s foreign policymaking, makes similar points about the differences between Chinese and European statecraft in her book Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World: Demystifying Enduring Traditions and Dynamic Constraints.
I have recently proposed 10 Principles for Perpetual Peace in the 21st Century, building on China’s five principles for peaceful co-existence, plus five practical further steps, hence, a mixture of Confucian ethics and institutionalism. My idea is to harness the ethics of cooperation and the practical benefits of international law and the UN Charter.
As the world assembles in September at the UN Summit of the Future, the key message is this. We don’t want or need a hegemon. We don’t need a balance of power, which can too easily become an imbalance of force. We need a lasting peace built on ethics, common interests, and international law and institutions.
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Jeffrey Sachs gives us hope of a new multipolar world based on mutual respect and shared humanity
From dezayasalfred.wordpress.com
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Jeffrey Sachs gives us hope of a new multipolar world based on mutual respect and shared humanity
Giving Birth to the New International Order
Jeffrey D. Sachs | April 11, 2025
The multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight.
Writing in his cell as political prisoner in fascist Italy after World War I, the philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously declared: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” A century later, we are in another interregnum, and the morbid symptoms are everywhere. The US-led order has ended, but the multipolar world is not yet born. The urgent priority is to give birth to a new multilateral order that can keep the peace and the path to sustainable development.
We are at the end of a long wave of human history that commenced with the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama more than 500 years ago. Those voyages initiated more than four centuries of European imperialism that peaked with Britain’s global dominance from the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) to the outbreak of World War I (1914). Following World War II, the US claimed the mantle as the world’s new hegemon. Asia was pushed aside during this long period. According to widely used macroeconomic estimates, Asia produced 65 percent of world output in 1500, but by 1950, that share had declined to just 19% (compared with 55% of the world population).
In the 80 years since World War 2, Asia recovered its place in the global economy. Japan led the way with rapid growth in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the four “Asian tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea) beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, and then by China beginning around 1980, and India beginning around 1990. As of today, Asia constitutes around 50% of the world economy, according to IMF estimates.
The multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight. This needed shift in geopolitics has been delayed as the US and Europe cling to outdated prerogatives built into international institutions and to their outdated mindsets. Even today, the US bullies Canada, Greenland, Panama and others in the Western Hemisphere and threatens the rest of the world with unilateral tariffs and sanctions that are blatantly in violation of international rules.
Asia, Africa and Latin America need to stick together to raise their collective voice and their UN votes to usher in a new and fair international system. A crucial institution in need of reform is the UN Security Council, given its unique responsibility under the UN Charter to keep the peace. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the P5) – Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States – reflect the world of 1945, not of 2025. There are no permanent Latin American or African seats, and Asia holds only one permanent seat of the five, despite being home to almost 60% of the world population. Over the years, many new potential UN Security Council permanent members have been proposed, but the existing P5 have held firmly to their privileged position.
The proper restructuring of the UN Security Council will be frustrated for years to come. Yet there is one crucial change that is within immediate reach and that would serve the entire world. By any metric, India indisputably merits a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Given India’s outstanding track record in global diplomacy, its admission to the UN Security Council would also elevate a crucial voice for world peace and justice.
On all counts, India is a great power. India is the world’s most populous country, having overtaken China in 2024. India is the world’s third largest economy measured at international prices (purchasing-power parity), at $17 trillion, behind China ($40 trillion) and the United States ($30 trillion) and ahead of all the rest. India is the fastest growing major economy in the world, with annual growth of around 6% per year. India’s GDP (PPP) is likely to overtake that of the US by mid-century. India is a nuclear-armed nation, a digital technology innovator, and a country with a leading space program. No other country mentioned as candidate for a permanent UN Security Council member comes close to India’s credentials for a seat.
The same can be said about India’s diplomatic heft. India’s skillful diplomacy was displayed by India’s superb leadership of the G20 in 2023. India deftly managed a hugely successful G20 despite the bitter divide in 2024 between Russia and the NATO countries. Not only did India achieve a G20 consensus; it made history, by welcoming the African Union to a new permanent membership in the G20.
China has dragged its feet on supporting India’s permanent seat in the UN Security Council, guarding its own unique position as the only Asian power in the P5. Yet China’s vital national interests would be well served and bolstered by India’s ascension to a permanent UN Security Council seat. This is especially the case given that the US is carrying out a last-ditch and vicious effort through tariffs and sanctions to block China’s hard-earned rise in economic prosperity and technological prowess.
By supporting India for the UN Security Council, China would establish decisively that geopolitics are being remade to reflect the true multipolar world. While China would create an Asian peer in the UN Security Council, it would also win a vital partner in overcoming the US and European resistance to geopolitical change. If China calls for India’s permanent membership in the UN Security Council, Russia will immediately concur, while the US, UK, and France will vote for India as well.
The US geopolitical tantrums of recent weeks – abandoning the fight against climate change, attacking the Sustainable Development Goals, and imposing unilateral tariffs in contravention of core WTO rules – reflect the truly “morbid symptoms” of a dying old order. It’s time to make way for a truly multipolar and just international order.
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Why Western Hegemony is Over: Jeffrey D. Sachs Interview in South China Morning Post
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Why Western Hegemony is Over: Jeffrey D. Sachs Interview in South China Morning Post
August 4, 2025
The tariff truce between China and the United States is set to end in August. What do you forecast will happen after that? And what will happen to trade relations between China and the US for the rest of US President Donald Trump’s second term?
The United States learned that it can’t impose its will on China. The rare earths threat by itself was enough to cause the US to reconsider. So, almost immediately after putting on the high tariffs, the US backed down. And both sides know that each has some chokeholds on the other. For that reason, we might expect the two sides to maintain certain limits on the trade frictions in the years ahead. There will be, therefore, some kind of agreement, but it won’t stick in the details, and frictions will continue to wax and wane, with neither side definitively imposing its will on the other. The basic reason is that both sides have a mutual gain from continued trade. I’m hopeful that a measure of rationality will therefore prevail.
The biggest challenge, of course, is the behaviour of the US. The US started this trade war. This is not two sides fighting each other, but rather the US fighting China. We should remember that. The US needs to show some prudence at this point. I do suspect that there is a chastened view among many senior US officials. Trump himself is unpredictable. He has a very short attention span. Agreements with Trump don’t stick. So, I don’t foresee a quiet period, but I do foresee some limits to the competition because each side can do damage to the other and both sides have a strong reason to achieve some cooperation.
Let me add one more point. From a long-term point of view, China certainly should not regard the US as a growth market for its exports. The US is going to restrict China’s exports to the US one way or another. The relationship will not be harmonious. The US will not be friendly to China, or trustworthy. China should just take care that it’s expanding its exports to other markets, and should not be overly focused on trying to break through to the US market, or even to Europe for that matter. The rapid growth of China’s exports will be with Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, west Asia, Central Asia, Latin America – not with the US and western Europe.
What is your forecast for theUS midterm elections, and will it be a tough battle for Trump? Can you comment on how divided the US is compared to before the election of Trump last year?
I think that the Democrats will likely regain control of one or both houses of Congress, because in midterm elections that is generally the pattern.
Even without getting deeply specific about the current context, the prevailing party that holds the White House almost always loses ground in the midterms, and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress is very small. Having said this, we should also understand that Trump is ruling mainly by executive decree, not by legislation. Even if the Democrats regain one or both houses of Congress, Trump will continue with his decrees.
The US currently does not have a functioning constitutional system in my view. It is one-person rule by declarations of emergencies by Trump. The orders generally start with the statement: “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered”. This is a kind of soft dictatorship, not a constitutional system. The lower courts object, but the Supreme Court lets Trump have his way. The Congress is nearly moribund.
Even if the Democrats regain some control of the House or the Senate, it won’t stop a lot of what Trump is doing. I should also add that while Americans are polarised, they generally dislike both political parties. Most Americans are unhappy about the direction of the country. They’re distrustful of the politicians. Our political institutions are not functioning properly and that’s why there’s a high level of distrust.
Another point that I think is important to understand is that the swings between the Democrats and the Republicans do not change US foreign policy. [Former president Barack] Obama started the anti-China policies in his term. Then came Trump’s tariffs in his first term. Biden kept those Trump tariffs and had a hostile policy towards China. Now Trump is picking up where Biden left off. The deep state drives foreign policy, not public opinion or presidents.
In sum, I don’t have much hope that some change in the midterm elections will change the direction of US politics very much. Even a change in the White House in four years is not likely to change US politics very much. Our problems are deep seated. Our institutional failings are deep. It’s going to take perhaps 20 years to work through this. This is not a Trump phenomenon by itself.
What effect will theOne Big Beautiful Billhave on the US economy?
The One Big Beautiful Bill weakens the US in two ways. First, it adds to the already large budget deficits by making additional tax cuts that mainly benefit rich Americans and the corporate class. These tax cuts raise the budget deficit substantially and are partially offset by cuts in healthcare benefits for the poorest Americans. The bill, therefore, is dramatically unfair and unwise in its impacts on the deficit and inequality.
Second, the legislation phases out some of the modest earlier US efforts towards low-carbon energy and modernisation of infrastructure. So, the legislation marks a US retreat from leadership on 21st-century technologies. Basically, the Trump administration is a gift to China, with Trump’s policies saying to China, “China should lead the way on climate safety, low-carbon energy, electric vehicles and all of the green and digital technologies that the world needs, while the US will ignore the future”.
So, none of this is a big, beautiful bill. It is a mess that reflects the failures of the American political system.
What are the implications of the fallout between billionaire Elon Musk and Trump?
Trump doesn’t have long-term relations with any individual other than his immediate family. Trump falls out with everybody. Remember Steve Bannon? He was once Trump’s closest adviser. That came to an end quickly. Almost all Trump advisers get fired at one point or another. Trump is not a person with long-term loyalties to anybody.
The individual feuds don’t mean very much. Breaking with Musk does not mean breaking with Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley put Trump back into the White House with enormous financial backing for Trump’s campaign. There are still tens of billions of dollars of government contracts going also to Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other Big Tech operators.
The basic relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington remains intact because the Pentagon believes that it needs AI and can’t pursue AI on its own. While Trump has cut support for EVs, including Tesla, the Pentagon will continue to rely on Musk’s SpaceX for many years to come. And the same is true of the Pentagon’s reliance on Big Tech’s AI capacities generally.
You have mentioned in other interviews that Trump lacked a coherent strategy in foreign policy, including his handling of China. Why do you think this? And what do you see ahead for China-US relations?
The most fundamental trend in the world economy is the rapid rise of the non-Western economies, led by China and including Russia, India, Southeast Asia and, in future decades, Africa. The US is flailing about trying to maintain its dominance in a world in which the emerging economies are rising rapidly. The US will not be able to prevent the emergence of multipolarity, but it will try. Trump will try one thing or another, but without success or coherence. Multipolarity has already arrived.
The broad pattern of economic convergence – in which the emerging economies narrow or close the income gap with the high-income countries of the West – means that Western hegemony is over. This is leading to deep frustration, not only in the US political class but in Europe as well.
China vastly outproduces the United States in advanced industrial goods, such as EVs, solar power, wind power, advanced nuclear power, batteries, low-cost 5G and many other key technologies. China incorporates AI into advanced manufacturing processes more than the US.
Many European leaders feel that if they stick with the US against China and Russia, then maybe the Western hegemony will continue. This is delusional in my view, but nonetheless creates a lot of noise, friction and risks of conflict. None of it is a coherent strategy, however.
The US has no strategy to stay ahead of China. In fact, the US can’t succeed in that. We hear a lot of US sabre-rattling against China, Russia and the BRICS countries. This is all dangerous. I think the heated rhetoric by itself can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of war. There are a lot of ignorant people in the US political leadership, and I worry very much about their naivety and delusions.
This, in my view, is essentially the origin of the “trade war”. The US decided during 2010-2015 that China is now a threat to US primacy. The US has tried a lot of things to block China’s continued rise, including: a military build-up in East Asia; export restrictions on hi-tech goods, especially advanced chips; economic sanctions on key Chinese companies; investment restrictions by US companies, and ownership restrictions on Chinese companies in the US; high tariffs against China’s exports; and others. But none of this stops China’s rise. China’s development results from hard work, ingenuity, high rates of saving, high rates of investment, very effective long-term planning and a very skilled, very entrepreneurial generation of business leaders, especially young business leaders. Those fundamental strengths continue despite America’s anti-China policies.
Trump’s policies are accelerating the move of top scientists to China. My overall view is that Trump is creating a lot of noise and some real dangers, but with no real strategy and no likelihood of success in holding back China’s rise. That’s a good thing. The rest of the world benefits from China’s economic success, including the US.
In your last Open Questions interview, you talked about “the deep state”, a complex vested interest group in industry, the military and other spheres. Does the deep state want military conflict with China? And do foreign governments – such as China and Russia – believe in the existence of a deep state, which many dismiss as a conspiracy theory?
The deep state means the permanent security system of the United States and its partners in Europe and in East Asia, including Japan, Korea and other places where the US has military bases and other security institutions. It includes the military, the CIA, the military contractors and the politicians who serve the military-industrial complex.
Does such a deep state exist? Yes. The US has around 750 overseas military bases and many of them are in East Asia. The US has many major military contractors with hundreds of billions of dollars of annual business with the US government. The US fights overt and covert wars pretty much non-stop, some of which are proxy wars (in which the US arms and funds Ukraine to fight Russia), and sometimes open conflicts with heavy US involvement, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has the extensive global networks of the CIA and other intelligence and covert institutions. All of this constitutes the deep state. Presidents come and go but the underlying foreign policy is consistent and set largely out of view of the public, and without any reference to public opinion.
When Obama replaced [US president George] Bush Jr, and Trump replaced Obama, and Biden replaced Trump, and Trump replaced Biden, on the PR level there was alleged to be change, but in fact very little policy change occurred. For example, how much foreign policy change was there when Obama succeeded Bush Jr? Very little. Obama launched many wars, just as Bush had done. Obama’s team actively participated in the coup in Ukraine in 2014 that set the path for the Ukraine war. Obama went to war against Libya. Obama gave the CIA the order to overthrow the Syrian government. All of this was a continuation of the policies of the Bush period.
Trump continued most of the same policies. Trump continued to build up the Ukraine military. The Trump administration dismissed the Minsk 2 agreement that could have prevented the escalation of the Ukraine war. There was not any major change between Obama and Trump.
When Biden came in, their claim again was that there would be a new foreign policy, but it didn’t happen. What did Biden do with China? He continued Trump’s tariffs. He continued Trump’s hardline rhetoric. Biden absurdly divided the world between the so-called democracies and autocracies, which was an incredibly naive approach, as I said from the beginning.
Biden escalated the Ukraine war. He rejected all attempts at peace negotiations, including the Istanbul process that could have ended the Ukraine war in 2022. When it came to the Middle East, Biden was complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide. So, Biden did very little different from Bush Jr, Obama and Trump before him.
Now, Trump has returned. What’s the real difference? Trump is different in style, in his unpredictability, nastiness, self-dealing and endless flip-flops. Yet, in terms of basic foreign policy, Trump is not very different from his predecessors.
This is the sense in which deep state means an ongoing consistency of the US security institutions that run American foreign policy. American foreign policy is not determined by public opinion, or Congress, or even the president in large part. Look instead to the CIA, the Pentagon and the other parts of the deep state.
The deep state also determines the politics of US vassal states. Many observers consider Japan to be a US-occupied country, with Japan’s foreign policy basically subservient to the US. One can say the same about many other countries. Where the US has military bases, the host countries tend to act like occupied countries, bending their own foreign policy to that of the US.
The US deep state is profoundly arrogant, thinking that it can have its way around the world. The US deep state thinks that it can dominate not only US allies, which is typically true, but also China, Russia, Iran, Brazil and others. When US arrogance becomes too strong, we face the danger of disaster. That’s what happened in Ukraine. The US thought that it could push Russia around to its will. It could not. The attempt to assert US power in Ukraine led to war.
US arrogance deeply worries me. Trump certainly is not a strategist. There’s no long-term plan. The US is playing poker, but not very well or wisely. It often bluffs. The whole approach can lead to war.
China is now drafting its economic policies for the next five years. You have advised many countries before. What is your advice to China in the face of this tension and the global tariff war?
My main advice to China is look to the non-Western world for the strongest partnerships in trade, investment and diplomacy, at least for a while. The US-led alliance (US, Canada, Britain, EU, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand) is around 13 per cent of the world population. China is another 17 per cent. The remaining 70 per cent of the world – in Asia, Africa and Latin America – wants good and strong economic and diplomatic relations with China. That 70 per cent of the world population wants to modernise, and China provides the means for those countries to achieve rapid growth and modernisation. China is key to the global energy transition to zero-carbon energy, especially in the markets outside the US and Europe.
The emerging and developing economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America will be the markets for China’s rapid export growth in the years ahead. China will play a vital global role in these economies in building advanced green and digital economies, using Chinese cutting-edge technologies.
This will be a great win-win for the world because China will continue to grow rapidly while also empowering rapid growth throughout the emerging and developing nations. Sadly, in my view, the US will not play much of a role in that modernisation in the next generation. The US under Trump is withdrawing from green technologies, and from global responsibility.
The US cannot compete with China for the global renewable energy market. The US can’t compete with China for the global digital connectivity market. The US can’t compete with China in fast rail or low-carbon ocean shipping. In all these sectors, Trump is handing world trade and leadership over to China.
Regarding the US markets, China should certainly attempt to make a suitable trade deal with the US but China should not fret too much either way. The US is already a small part of China’s exports – perhaps around 10-12 per cent. That share of China’s exports will most likely decline further.
I hope that I’m wrong and that the US regains some sense and rejoins the global effort for green transformation and re-establishes normal trade with China. Yet, I don’t think that’s going to happen for many years, and I don’t think that China can, or should, base its policies on a return to normal trade with the US.
More specifically, I advocate expanding [China’s] Belt and Road Initiative. I advocate that China should deal with regional groups, including ASEAN, the African Union, the Arab League and the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC). China’s relations with these regional groups can be very strategic, as the regional groups can, and should, spur the interconnectivity of infrastructure among all the members of the group. For China, it will be easier to interact with regional plans rather than one country at a time.
In fact, no individual state in ASEAN, or the Middle East, or Latin America can modernise on its own without strong links with its neighbours through trade, finance and infrastructure. With ASEAN, for example, there really is the need for an ASEAN-wide energy system, not separate energy systems for Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. These countries need an interconnected power grid, and China will play a key role in achieving an ASEAN-wide grid. Therefore, China-ASEAN diplomacy is strongly win-win.
I also believe that Hong Kong will have a huge and indeed unique leadership role in the global transformation. Hong Kong is vital for China’s growing links with ASEAN, the African Union, and beyond. The Greater Bay Area (GBA) combines Hong Kong’s world-class leadership in international finance, higher education and global management, with Shenzhen’s leadership in cutting-edge technologies, and the advanced manufacturing of Dongguan, Guangzhou and other GBA cities.
Put these strengths together, and the GBA becomes the beating heart of the global green transformation, in zero-carbon energy, robotics, AI-based manufacturing, digital connectivity and much more. All of this will help to fuel China’s – and Hong Kong’s – rapid growth for the next generation.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. How is the post-war world order changing and what will the new world order look like?
There are three scenarios.
One is that we create a truly multilateral world. For that, we need a United Nations 2.0. We need an upgraded international system in which all the major powers agree to invest in the international rule of law and peaceful resolution of conflicts. This will require an upgrade of the UN Security Council, and UN institutions more generally.
I’d love to see a major UN campus in China, to help lead the green and digital transformation worldwide. I’d love to see China and India working together closely at the UN, including towards India’s seat in the UN Security Council. I’d like China to support the African Union to play a much larger role in global governance. I’d like to see China, Japan and Korea end the geopolitical divisions and form a strong alliance in northeast Asia. Most importantly in this scenario, the US and Europe accept the rising role of China, India and the rest of the non-Western world.
A second scenario is that the Western world hunkers down. It goes protectionist and the US tries to divide the world into camps. This is perhaps the likely US strategy, but I think it is significantly worse for the US and the rest of the world than the first scenario. I think the US absolutely should abandon the idea of building competing camps.
The third scenario is that we don’t have a global system at all, but rather increasing chaos from climate change, wars and geopolitical conflicts. This dire scenario is a real possibility.
Any of these three trajectories is possible. We should be aiming for the first. The United States and Europe should take a deep breath, sigh and welcome the non-Western world into a shared global leadership. The major powers – the US, Europe, Russia, China, India – should agree to prevent confrontations.
The US should stop NATO enlargement and should stop providing armaments to Taiwan. Such actions are provocative and lead to great-power conflicts that threaten the safety and security of the whole world.
In short, the West should stop asking “Who is Number One?” and instead ask, “How can the whole world work together for the global common good?” In my experience, China, Russia and other nations would enthusiastically back such a global, cooperative effort that is based on mutual respect and mutual security.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3320575/jeffrey-sachs-says-us-sabre-rattling-china-can-become-self-fulfilling-prophecy-war?module=inline&pgtype=article
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The US ‘has the delusion they run the show’: Jeffrey Sachs
Honen bidez: @AJEnglish
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The US ‘has the delusion they run the show’: Jeffrey Sachs
Marc Lamont Hill speaks with economist Jeffrey Sachs on the United States’s place in a multipolar world.
Is the status of the United States as a global hegemon shifting?
Under President Donald Trump, US foreign policy has adopted an America First approach – one that many critics argue weakens international cooperation and prioritises transactional relationships over long-term alliances.
Meanwhile, major powers like China, India and Russia have been expanding both their global influence and strategic ties.
So how will the US deal with its waning dominance
Transkripzioa:
Intro
0:00
us foreign policy under Donald Trump has
0:03
been defined by an America first agenda
0:06
But what does this mean in a world where
0:08
the old centers of hegemonic power are
0:10
shifting this week on Upfront I’ll be
0:12
speaking to renowned economist and
0:14
director of Columbia University’s Center
0:16
for Sustainable Development Jeffrey Saxs
0:25
Jeffrey Sachs thanks so much for joining
0:26
us on Upront I’m delighted to be with
0:28
you uh you said that we’re now living in
0:30
a multi-olar world uh with major powers
0:33
like Russia China India asserting their
0:36
own influence uh whether that’s economic
0:38
or political You’ve also said that the
0:41
US sort of state is in decline Uh can
0:45
you explain why you think that is and
0:47
how that’s come to pass where we have
0:49
this new arrangement of power we have a
0:51
new arrangement of power because these
0:53
other parts of the world have made a lot
0:56
of economic and technological progress
0:59
So China was a poor country 40 years ago
1:02
It is now a quite uh wealthy and
1:05
technologically advanced country I’d say
1:07
it’s at the cutting edge of many of the
1:10
most important technologies How did they
1:12
get there very hard work very high
1:15
investment rates very good strategy
1:18
serious planning They thought ahead they
1:21
worked hard at it and they were
1:22
successful This is the main fact Second
1:26
fact is is a basic technological fact
1:29
which we kind of understood in the cold
1:31
war and kind of forgot after 1991 but
1:35
it’s a a real truth every moment of our
1:39
lives And that is because of nuclear
1:42
weapons and because other countries have
1:45
a lot of them we can’t defeat those
1:47
countries So the world’s intrinsically
1:50
multipolar in the sense don’t mess with
1:54
another nuclear superpower can really
1:56
wreck your day And we forgot that after
2:00
1991 Why 1991 that was the year that the
2:04
Soviet Union dissolved into 15 states
2:09
And the American elite said “Okay now we
2:13
really are all alone We are the world’s
2:17
sole superpower We treated Russia
2:21
absolutely stupidly I abused our power
2:26
which was real but abused it to the
2:29
point where we ended up having a
2:31
full-fledged war It’s in a way a proxy
2:34
war in Ukraine but it’s a war between
2:37
the United States and Russia Actually
2:39
it’s not described that way in our press
2:42
but it is that way And the point I’m
2:45
making is you can’t win a war like that
2:47
because if you win you lose Russia has
2:50
thousands of nuclear warheads It’s not
2:52
going down And if you lose on the
2:55
battlefield with conventional you lose
2:57
again So this whole Ukraine
3:01
adventure uh was forgetting that there
3:05
was already intrinsically a multipolar
3:09
world simply because there are multiple
3:12
powers with many nuclear arms that can
3:17
ruin your day that can end up destroying
3:20
our country and the world So the fact of
3:24
the matter is the United States is 4.1%
3:29
of the world’s population We have 335
3:33
million people approximately The world
3:36
is 8.1 billion people There are a lot of
3:39
other people They don’t see it the way
3:41
that Washington sees it that Washington
3:44
runs the show But I know Washington
3:48
till this day has the delusion that they
3:52
run the show Does that delusion make it
3:55
hard for the United States to maintain
3:57
its current footing or even regain power
4:00
you can’t regain unipolarity or you
4:03
can’t even regain the position the
4:05
United States was in 30 or 40 years ago
4:07
in relative terms because China is China
4:11
now an advanced technologically
4:14
sophisticated militarily powerful
4:17
country not an enemy in my view at all
4:20
but so powerful uh we better not go to
4:22
war with China that’s for sure It would
4:25
end up either blowing up the world or
4:27
defeating us or doing something
4:29
completely out totally disastrous
4:33
Do the American policy makers understand
4:36
those realities do they understand that
4:38
India has changed because India was in
4:42
in the American mind an impoverished
4:46
country that we could bring around to be
4:49
enemies of China and so forth which is
4:51
what they try to do they don’t
4:53
understand India is making remarkable
4:57
advances economically and
4:59
technologically is a milit is a nuclear
5:02
superpower has a space program that is
5:06
very active is in the forefront of
5:08
digital uh technologies So this is the
5:12
the truth of the world but we don’t
5:14
understand it We still make demands Uh
5:19
we think we can make trade wars or we
5:22
can launch real wars or we can threaten
5:24
other countries with this and that It
5:26
doesn’t work Under Trump the US has
5:28
withdrawn from the World Health
5:30
Organization uh the United Nations Human
5:32
Rights Council uh the Paris Climate
5:34
Agreement Uh he’s also imposed
5:36
significant tariffs on allies like
5:38
Canada and the European Union What’s
5:41
your take on the broader impact of these
5:43
kinds of moves the idea of the Trump
5:48
administration is um we shouldn’t be
5:50
bound by things like the UN That’s
5:54
stupid Uh we shouldn’t be bound by
5:56
treaties Uh we are sovereign We have
6:01
power We should use our power Uh this is
6:06
uh in my view not very sensible as a
6:11
kind of highlevel approach It’s it’s a
6:14
little bit like saying you go to the
6:16
traffic light and traffic lights red and
6:19
you say I’m walking anyway Who’s going
6:21
to tell me what to do well the lights
6:25
there for a reason It’s it’s good to
6:27
actually regulate the flows in in all
6:29
directions Trade rules are not to uh
6:34
harm the United States Trade rules are
6:37
to act like a traffic light to make sure
6:39
that the trade flows in a systematic way
6:42
according to rules that are common to
6:45
all countries So I think the basic
6:48
conceptual idea that we don’t like the
6:51
UN we’re not going to be bound by any of
6:53
these stupid organizations We are
6:56
America Is there any legitimacy to these
6:59
u some of these moves for example uh
7:01
Trump will say that the UN Human Rights
7:04
Council is unfair to the United States
7:06
It places an unfair burden on them that
7:07
it doesn’t on other nations or that the
7:09
climate accords are unreasonable given
7:11
what they’re asking Uh what do you say
7:14
to those kinds of questions well when it
7:15
comes to climate change one basic point
7:19
uh well a couple basic points First
7:22
climate change is real Second it’s
7:26
really dangerous Third it is
7:30
accelerating Uh it’s worse than the
7:34
scientists thought it would be at this
7:36
point because uh in the last few years
7:40
the rate of the earth’s warming has
7:42
dramatically increased And the
7:44
scientists are trying to figure out
7:46
what’s going on But we’re reaching very
7:49
dangerous levels on the planet That’s
7:51
why all the forest fires the category 5
7:54
hurricanes many many terrible things are
7:57
happening around the world So that’s all
7:59
true Then comes uh President Trump’s
8:02
claim that the Paris agreement is
8:05
against the United States Paris
8:07
agreement doesn’t mention the United
8:09
States So it’s not against the United
8:12
States It’s an agreement of 196
8:15
countries all the rest that we should be
8:19
sitting down with Russia with the Saudis
8:22
with Canada with China with India with
8:25
other big emitting countries and saying
8:28
all of us we got a problem What do we do
8:31
that’s what we should be doing Not
8:33
walking out the door and not saying you
8:37
know what we’re just going to live with
8:38
it climate changes This is actually um
8:43
doesn’t pass muster if you take even
8:47
just a little bit of a careful look at
8:50
this What the United States is doing
8:52
inadvertently I’m I’m sure that Trump
8:54
doesn’t appreciate this but the United
8:57
States is giving the technological lead
9:00
over to China It’s handing it over
9:03
saying “We’re we’re not going to get
9:05
into things like electric vehicles We’re
9:07
not going to get into solar.” And so
9:08
that’s we’re going to drill baby drill
9:11
So you have the lead of the future
9:14
economy of the 21st century which China
9:16
says okay we will produce most of the
9:19
electric vehicles in the world Thank you
9:21
very much We will produce uh fourth
9:23
generation nuclear the modular nuclear
9:26
We will produce wind solar hydro We’ll
9:29
have smart digital grids That’s all the
9:32
things China is doing right now Let’s
9:34
talk a little bit on the domestic front
9:36
Uh in your 2018 book A New American
9:39
Foreign Policy: Beyond American
9:40
Exceptionalism you wrote that Trump’s
9:42
America First agenda was really about
9:44
putting white America first that he’s
9:46
part of a global wave of anti-immigrant
9:48
and racist politics Uh recently Trump
9:51
unleashed ICE agents on undocumented
9:53
immigrants which of course sparked heavy
9:55
protests in California Uh there’s
9:57
clearly resistance to his policies Uh
9:59
but do you think that resistance is
10:01
enough to shift anything
10:04
no not right now Uh I think but we are
10:08
in for many years of instability in the
10:11
United States This is not one day one
10:14
week one month Uh this is a pretty deep
10:18
social divide I do believe if you have
10:21
to put it down into one fundamental
10:25
concept it is racism in the end Uh this
10:28
is uh about uh the changing racial
10:32
composition changing ethnic composition
10:35
of America which is becoming less white
10:38
over time uh and a lot more uh immigrant
10:42
population foreign born and so forth I
10:46
happen to like that I love New York City
10:48
You hear English once in a while but but
10:51
you hear everything And uh it is that
10:54
diversity which I think is the greatest
10:55
strength of America But that’s not the
10:58
view of Trump’s base Uh and that I
11:01
believe is probably the fundamental
11:05
motive force It would be denied but I
11:07
think it’s the fundamental motive force
11:10
There is a point by the way that I do
11:12
agree with uh the rhetoric not any of
11:16
the action uh of uh Trump and I I think
11:20
any country should have borders that are
11:24
regular and pleased I don’t think a rich
11:27
country like the United States can have
11:29
open borders A billion people would show
11:31
up Uh that would not be manageable That
11:34
would not be right It would not work Um
11:38
and so I don’t think that the
11:40
alternative is uh
11:44
to say
11:46
no we we don’t have any borders I think
11:49
what is awful about the way things are
11:53
done is the cruelty of it Uh and part of
11:56
the the game of this administration is
11:58
cruelty Uh they’re trying to shock and
12:01
awe Uh they’re trying to scare the hell
12:03
out of people And they are by the way
12:05
scaring the hell out of people They are
12:07
arresting my students Um I don’t like
12:10
that of course I mean nobody can like
12:13
that And uh and it is to instill the
12:16
fear factor That does not make America
12:19
great That is really sad And it’s not a
12:24
superficial thing and it’s not something
12:26
that’s going to go away in a short
12:28
period of time You’ve spoken often about
12:31
integrating African countries more
12:32
deeply into the global economy and
12:34
you’ve advocated for the uh African
12:36
Union to lead the continent’s
12:37
development uh through really greater
12:40
global integration Um given how
12:43
entrenched global power structures are
12:45
how does that become
12:47
a reality how does that go from vision
12:48
to reality so great question and I will
12:53
predict absolutely that the next decades
12:55
will be very positive decades for Africa
12:58
really Uh I’m I’m very optimistic
13:01
actually because I think the new
13:02
technologies will allow for a lot of
13:05
leapfrogging a lot of economic
13:07
development Um I think Africa countries
13:11
have a lot of work to do to make that
13:13
happen But I think they’re What kind of
13:15
work needs to happen the main thing
13:17
absolutely get every kid in school get
13:20
them a digital device get them good
13:22
online materials for education train the
13:25
young people of Africa This is number
13:28
one two three four and five of economic
13:31
development and uh it raises some issues
13:35
because very poor countries don’t have
13:37
the means at hand to get all their kids
13:40
in school and so they literally cannot
13:42
fund that by themselves So I’m trying to
13:45
work on financing models ways that they
13:48
can do it Basic idea quite simple Uh
13:51
borrow today but on very long-term low
13:55
interest Oh that makes me nervous J No
13:57
but I’m going to tell you why Because
13:59
the next generation is going to be a lot
14:01
richer if they get that education The
14:04
returns to education are extremely high
14:07
They’re about 20% rate of return of
14:11
putting a kid from say kindergarten up
14:15
through uh if you do tertiary if if you
14:19
do twoyear or fouryear uh post high
14:22
school you get about a 20% compound
14:25
return If you borrow at two or 3% real
14:29
real interest rates and you do that for
14:32
40 years where’s the money come from to
14:34
repay the loan a wealthy economy Uh that
14:38
sounds great and I love the model I
14:40
think what I’m concerned with is that
14:42
history demonstrates a different kind of
14:44
outcome I think about countries like
14:46
China for example that have invested
14:47
billions into African infrastructure
14:50
uh ostensibly to produce growth and
14:53
development in the country Uh it seems
14:56
like a it’s working Yeah but look at a
14:58
place like Zambia It’s it’s working But
15:00
I’ll tell you what mistake they make and
15:02
and I tell them all the time by the way
15:05
which is that they gave Zambia an 8-year
15:08
loan or I was going to say they spend so
15:10
much money on debt repayments that they
15:11
have to cut social services healthcare
15:13
all this stuff to pay the debt back
15:14
Completely correct But but that’s what’s
15:16
that’s kind of the history of of Africa
15:18
And yeah but the mistake is and it it’s
15:20
it’s China’s mistake also It’s not a
15:23
malevolent mistake It’s not a trap It is
15:25
a mistake though M you cannot finance
15:29
development on a 10-year loan
15:32
Development is a 40-year process It’s
15:35
not a 10-year process And we are so
15:39
nasty to tell a poor country that maybe
15:44
gets the kid from kindergarten to 9th
15:46
grade Now you pay back the loan I’m
15:49
sorry the kid’s still in ninth grade
15:51
Right so you need 40-year debt And what
15:55
I’m saying to the Chinese government
15:58
officials who listen to me and and at
16:01
least hear my arguments is just extend
16:05
these loans for at low interest but make
16:09
this not due today That’s crazy Make it
16:12
due 25 years They do that I mean I could
16:15
see why these superpowers don’t want to
16:16
do that It’s in their interest to get I
16:18
think I think that they are willing to
16:20
do that actually Okay Uh so that is my
16:24
my uh idea Um the the other idea which I
16:28
don’t like which is the IMF’s idea I’m
16:31
sorry to say is well Mr Finance Minister
16:35
it would just be great for all those
16:37
kids to be in school but you don’t have
16:40
the money and I know you’d love a little
16:42
electricity but so sorry there’s no
16:45
money there So that to my mind is the
16:48
real uh poverty trap which is you don’t
16:51
finance the absolute core investment But
16:55
coming back to Africa’s prospects when I
16:58
do the arithmetic on my spreadsheets I
17:01
find that Africa can grow 7% to 10% per
17:06
year for the next 40 years In 1980
17:11
uh with its 1.4 billion people China
17:14
took off India with its 1.4 four billion
17:18
people now 1.5
17:20
it started about 20 years after China in
17:23
rapid growth around 2000 I want Africa
17:26
to start now it’s also got 1.5 billion
17:29
people it’s the same size actually the
17:32
additional challenge of being multiple
17:33
countries as opposed to singular nations
17:35
well you know in 1885
17:37
in that very polite Congress of Berlin
17:41
the European countries with no Africans
17:43
present took the map and divided among
17:46
themselves and colonized the whole damn
17:48
continent and left it in the end as 55
17:52
separate countries on one continent
17:55
where there’s one China and there’s one
17:57
India right that makes governance hard
18:01
And so my point about governance in
18:04
Africa is be a union Really have an
18:08
Africa continental free trade area When
18:11
you plan your infrastructure don’t plan
18:14
it 55 times Get that rail to connect
18:17
across Africa Get the highways to
18:20
connect Get the fiber to connect Think
18:22
of it as one country Basically think of
18:24
it truly as a union Let’s move to
18:27
something less controversial Let’s talk
18:28
Israel Palestine Yeah that one’s an easy
18:30
one The genocide in Gaza has been going
18:34
on for a little over a year and a half
18:36
now And recently we’ve seen a shift uh
18:38
countries like France the UK Canada even
18:41
Germany’s chancellor uh Friedrich Mertz
18:43
has been more critical of Israel Uh
18:47
given the scale of devastation are we at
18:50
a point where the response we’re
18:51
starting to see is a case of kind of too
18:53
little too late well it’s shockingly
18:56
late This is for sure Because you know
18:59
just on the official count there are
19:00
more than 50,000 dead and mostly women
19:03
and children Yeah So a genocide’s been
19:06
going on all this time and Europe and
19:09
the United States were either supporting
19:11
it actively as the United States has
19:13
been doing or supporting it tacitly by
19:17
just standing by Now they’re saying
19:20
something They’re murmuring but God it’s
19:24
still far too little because what should
19:27
be said to my mind is not only that this
19:31
has to stop and there was a vote in the
19:33
UN Security Council just in recent days
19:37
14 of the 15 countries said immediate
19:41
ceasefire because people are getting
19:43
killed massively every day civilians
19:47
But one vetoed it the Trump
19:49
administration So
19:52
first thing is of course stop this mass
19:55
killing but the second thing is
19:59
recognize the state of Palestine No
20:01
doubt no negotiations no peace process
20:06
no baloney No we need to get Israel to
20:09
agree because Israel will never agree
20:12
The problem of course is that Israel has
20:15
a completely
20:17
radical I think genocidal government
20:20
with Netanyahu and Ben Gavir and
20:22
Smootrich and their mur they’re mass
20:26
murderers as far as I’m concerned and
20:28
their goal is not defeat Hamas Their
20:32
goal is to control everything This is
20:34
clear They don’t say and I think it’s
20:37
the telltale point about Netanyahu
20:40
Although if you press him then he would
20:42
acknowledge it They don’t say we need to
20:44
defeat Hamas and then we’re going to
20:46
have a state of Palestine They say we
20:49
need to defeat Hamas Well what after
20:52
that well it’s none of your goddamn
20:54
business And and if you press hard well
20:56
we’re going to be there forever Well
20:58
recently uh we’ve seen some tensions
21:00
emerge between Donald Trump and Israeli
21:03
Prime Minister Benjamin Nathan Boy I
21:04
hope so I hope so I hope we’re seeing
21:07
some tensions I mean Trump did not meet
21:08
with him in his most recent trip to the
21:10
Middle East which seems like a a big
21:12
deal Some people even said it was a snub
21:14
Uh do you I hope so God if there’s
21:17
anyone that deserves a snub it’s BB
21:19
Netanyahu If that’s true does that
21:22
change anything on the ground uh in
21:23
terms of the US policy look the the
21:27
president needs to do one thing
21:31
basically one thing and one thing only
21:33
and that’s to drop the US veto on a
21:36
state of Palestine Why is there not a
21:39
state of Palestine according to
21:42
international law for one and only one
21:45
reason the US vetos it because
21:49
membership in the United Nations goes
21:51
through the UN Security Council When it
21:53
came up last year the US was the only
21:58
veto It was actually 12 in favor two
22:01
abstained The United States vetoed When
22:04
it goes to the general assembly where
22:07
there are 193 countries about 185 say
22:12
yes Yeah And when I added up the
22:15
population of those 185 it is 95% of the
22:21
world population saying yes So President
22:25
Trump snubbing Netanyahu is one thing
22:28
not liking him is another thing But
22:30
there’s only one operational thing that
22:33
counts Stop vetoing
22:36
Palestine’s membership in the United
22:39
Nations And the point that I would make
22:42
to President Trump and to the American
22:45
people is this would be hugely
22:48
beneficial for American national
22:51
security because it would bring peace to
22:54
the Middle East The reason the wars rage
22:58
is that there is no state of Palestine
23:00
That leads to resistance That leads to
23:02
counter wars that leads to Netanyahu’s
23:05
counter wars or calling on the United
23:08
States to invade another country as he
23:10
has done repeatedly If we want peace
23:13
which we do
23:15
the way to peace is a state of Palestine
23:18
alongside the state of Israel period
23:21
which 185 countries of the world support
23:26
uh you’ve written about the US belief in
23:28
its need to dominate and the idea that
23:31
historically uh the United States has
23:33
seen itself as exceptional In your book
23:36
on American exceptionalism which was
23:37
published during the first Trump
23:38
administration uh you warned that this
23:40
mindset was not only outdated but also
23:43
dangerous Uh are there any signs that
23:45
the US’s self-perception is shifting
23:48
from the exceptionalist ide yeah it’s a
23:50
very good question Uh there are glimmers
23:54
of hope Uh our Secretary of State Marco
23:57
Rubio said and I nearly quote him that
24:01
we are now in a multi-olar world Thank
24:04
you Mr Secretary That is a very good
24:07
statement President Trump has said he
24:10
can see President Putin’s point of view
24:13
that NATO should not enlarge Ukraine
24:15
That is a very good statement That is
24:19
absolutely positive I want him to
24:22
recognize the same thing when it comes
24:24
to the Middle East I want the president
24:26
to recognize the same thing when it
24:28
comes to China I want the president to
24:30
make peace with Iran rather than
24:32
following BB Netanyahu into some bombing
24:35
mission against Iran If those things
24:38
happen that would be the recognition
24:40
that we have some limits that we’re in a
24:42
multipolar world and that we can’t bomb
24:44
our way out of it Jeffrey Sachs thanks
24:46
so much for joining me on Up Front Oh
24:48
really great to be with you Thanks
oooooo
Geure herriari, Euskal Herriari dagokionez, hona hemen gure apustu bakarra:
We Basques do need a real Basque independent State in the Western Pyrenees, just a democratic lay or secular state, with all the formal characteristics of any independent State: Central Bank, Treasury, proper currency1, out of the European Distopia and faraway from NATO, being a BRICS partner…
Ikus Euskal Herriaren independentzia eta Mikel Torka
eta
Esadazu arren, zer da gu euskaldunok egiten ari garena eta zer egingo dugun
gehi
MTM: Zipriztinak (2), 2025: Warren Mosler
(Pinturak: Mikel Torka)
Gehigarriak:
MTM klase borrokarik gabe, kontabilitate hutsa da
oooooo
1 This way, our new Basque government will have infinite money to deal with. (Gogoratzekoa: Moneta jaulkitzaileko kasu guztietan, Gobernuak infinitu diru dauka.)
