Jeffrey Sachs

And there are several different factions in washington right now that are fighting for ultimate say there's a piece by mitch mcconnell our octogenarian who is completely living in a delusional past, who has a lead article in Foreign Affairs magazine calling for America to commit to primacy.

And he calls for a massive military buildup to get ready for every kind of eventuality with Russia and China. That's the old school, and it remains very powerful. And it's got very powerful interests because it's a the biggest business in Washington, about $1.5 trillion of annual spending for the military machine. And Mitch McConnell absolutely represents that.

Then there are groups that say, you know, we don't really have any fundamental conflict with Russia and Russia's no real threat to us, but China's the real threat. So we should end the war in Ukraine, something I completely agree with. But we should do it so that we build up and get ready for the war with China. And this is kind of the middle ground, which is— A war with China. Well—

Everyone is talking about war with China in Washington by 2027. And it's so weird as if we just are trying to rush headlong into complete destruction. But we have official documents, a Navy strategy saying we must prepare for war with China by 2027. We had a major article in the New York Times, which I actually once upon a time read with interest.

But in any event, it was a story about the Pentagon preparing for war with China. And I wrote the reporter, actually. This is another, I know these people for decades. So I wrote the reporter and I said, thank you for writing that story. I was happy to read it now because there'll be no time to read it after the war. We'll all be dead. So I'm glad that we have the story now.

And the reporter wrote back to me right away, said, oh, Jeff, the editor, I had put in three times that the Pentagon doesn't want this war, but the editor took it out three times. And I don't really know why. And I didn't notice that in the hurrying to finish the piece. Do you understand that?

You're one of our world's great journalists, a person writing a front page story about war, and she's written three times the Pentagon doesn't want it, and the editor takes that out all the time, and she didn't recognize that. That's the New York Times. I don't know even what that means. Well, that's when you quit. I mean, you can't allow that. This is so amazing.

But yes, so there is a group gearing up for war with China. It's unbelievable. Nuclear superpower with a much larger army on their shores. I mean, the whole thing is beyond belief. Then there is a group... There actually is a group that says, hey, we don't need war with anybody. We're not threatened.

The United States is more secure than at any time in history and any time that a country could be secure. We have two big oceans. No one can attack us. We have every amount of deterrence. China does not threaten us and could not threaten us. And so what are we talking about war this way? Why are we in war with Russia in Ukraine? And that is a U.S.-Russia war, as everybody should understand.

Why are we at war all over the Middle East? And that is a U.S. war. We've got absolutely troops on the ground. I mean, we have troops on the ground, of course, but we have forces on the ground. They're often CIA or covert forces. But yes, this is our wars. We're paying for them. We're financing them. We're arming them. We're the intelligence, if you can use that word.

Why do we need a war in Afghanistan? And so there are people who say, hey, why don't we make business, advance technology, actually have some attention to our economic needs, not go bankrupt in the process. And that group is also part of the Trump incoming team. And this is probably the most consequential example.

Question that a country could face is which of these different voices will prevail in this new administration.

Thank you.

I have to say, you know, my – I think the Biden administration has been the worst of our governments in modern history. And that's saying a lot because I'm a complainer. So I don't generally praise administrations. I like to think of myself as a responsible, tough grader. And I haven't given high marks to any administration yet. from Clinton onward, I think they've all been failures.

But Biden's administration has been a complete shocking disaster, which has brought us closer to nuclear war, brought us into more conflict, didn't have one iota of diplomacy i don't count diplomacy meaning you go talk to a junior ally i mean diplomacy meaning you talk to someone on the other side to figure out how to appear escalate and uh

We know, you know very well, and you heard it recently from the Russian foreign minister, that our secretary of state and the Russian foreign minister have not spoken at all For years, this is the most mind-bogglingly stupid approach to our security and survival imaginable.

to not even speak, to not try to understand each other's position, to not discuss, to not try to find a way out, when now the most accurate assessment is that there are at least a million Ukrainians dead or severely wounded since February 2022, and the United States hasn't lifted a finger, not even one time, to try to talk to the other side. So yes, this has been a shockingly

terrible government biden we don't know really you may know i don't know whether he's compass mentis i don't know whether the guy thinks i'm told till four in the afternoon he can still function to some extent i don't know if it's true but uh jake sullivan uh anthony blinken i regard as complete failures Sullivan's job is our security. He's not made us any more secure.

He's made us profoundly insecure. And we're getting closer and closer to nuclear war. And the only way we avoid that realization is to Laugh away every statement, and President Putin said it again today, by the way, that we are absolutely mocking Russia's serious red lines. Is that really for our security that we don't have a discussion about them even? And we're not.

And everything, yes, is escalating. We see little fires being set all over the neighborhoods of these war zones. And it's not only throughout the Middle East and the drumbeat for war with Iraq. It's not only Biden authorizing the use of long-distance strikes into Russia, which, as President Putin has accurately said and has not been denied by the United States, are actually U.S. strikes on Russia.