In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American economist and...

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American economist and academic and political commentator, Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs). He's best-known for his deep hate for the "US hegemony", and for his love for the totalitarian regimes in Russia, China and in Syria.

1/18

Sachs studied economics at Harvard and is currently working as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and as the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

2/18

He's advised various countries on economic policy, including Bolivia, United Arab Emirates and several post-communist economies, often advising with transition from Marxism-Leninism to market economies.

3/18

After successfully stabilizing the Polish economy, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and later Russian president Boris Yeltsin asked for his help. He was an adviser to Yegor Gaidar on macroeconomic policies, utilizing so-called economic shock therapy.

4/18

As you may know, the reckless adaptation of market economy in Russia mostly led to poverty, starvation and transfer of wealth to oligarchs and to organized crime.

5/18

For a long time, Sachs has been an advocate for dismantling the "US hegemony". He's a big proponent of the "multipolar world", and has lately suggested that the "world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe", naturally blaming the US because it's the US that forced Putin...

6/18

...and his acolytes and propagandists to threaten everyone with nukes. He's also suggested that it was actually the CIA that provoked the Soviet Union to attack Afghanistan in 1980. He's blamed CIA's 2011 operations in Syria for Putin's military assistance to al-Assad in...

7/18

...himself, was never even made. Naturally, according to Sachs, the Revolution of Dignity and the outing of Yanukovych were also planned by the US. Jeffrey has also said that "the Minsk Agreements failed when Ukraine’s leaders decided not to honor the agreements", ...

9/18

which is just utter BS:


And if you want to talk about political agreements, why didn't Russia honour the Budapest Memorandum of 1994?

10/18

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And again, if the verbal "security guarantees" made to Gorbachev were supposed to be honored, why did Putin invade Crimea in 2014 even though in 2008 he said that it's part of Ukraine? Makes you wonder.

11/18

In Sachs' rhetoric, the nations that have joined and want to join NATO have no sovereignty or free will to join any alliance they want. In this line of thinking, these countries are just pawns and "buffer zones" between the imperialist nations.

12/18

But for most Eastern European countries Russia is the reason they joined NATO - the leaked documents have shown, that Putin and his cronies had plans to take over at least Moldova and Ukraine, and also had pretty nasty plans for the Baltic countries who are in NATO.

13/18

In 1939 USSR, along with Nazi Germany, invaded Poland. Then in the same year, Finland. 1940 they attacked the Baltics and annexed parts of Romania. In 1956, USSR went for Hungary. Then in 1968 they invaded Czechoslovakia.

I wonder why these countries wanted to join NATO?

14/18

Sachs has also blamed the US for COVID-19, saying that it came out of "US lab biotechnology".

Previously, he had called Trump's Wuhan lab leak theory, blaming the Wuhan lab for leaking the virus, as "reckless and dangerous".

15/18

In May 2022, Sachs stated that Finland's NATO membership would undermine peace in Ukraine, saying that "All of this talk of defeating Russia, to my mind, is reckless". In Jun 2022, he co-signed a letter calling for ceasefire and questioning the military support for Ukraine.
16/18

He's also appeared twice on Solovyov's show, calling for Ukraine to negotiate and stop calling for the retreat of Russian troops in Ukraine. He's also blamed the US for the Nord Stream sabotage, and even addressed the UN Security Council on behalf of Russia about the topic.
17/18

Jeffrey is also a big fan of China. He's said that the term "genocide" doesn't apply to the repression of Uyghurs in China. When asked about this in an interview, he evaded the question & referred to "huge human rights abuses committed by the US" - pretty solid whataboutism.18/18

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Past soups: vatniksoup.com

Related soups:
Revolution of Dignity:

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Vladimir Solovyov:

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The Grayzone:

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NATO expansion:

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APPENDIX: The @JeffreyASachs I tagged in the first tweet is not THE Jeffrey Sachs in this thread. Apologies for the inconvenience.