00:00Let's next bring in Jeffrey Sachs, the public policy analyst and former senior United Nations advisor.
00:07Jeffrey Sachs, welcome back to the program. Good to see you.
00:10Would you describe this as regime change? Is it regime management?
00:15Or as Donald Trump supporters might say, a jolly good idea?
00:21Well, of course it is regime change of the most brutal kind.
00:26It is a military attack and the president of the United States saying we will run Venezuela.
00:35It doesn't get cruder than this.
00:39And it is part of a more than 20 year effort.
00:42Actually, the United States participated, knowing about and approving and supporting a coup attempt against President Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in 2002.
00:58The United States supported mass protests in Venezuela, a typical U.S. disruption activity.
01:08The U.S. put on comprehensive crushing sanctions on Venezuela in the second half of the last decade, which brought the economy to a crash.
01:21The likes of which have almost not been seen in peacetime in any place in the world, with the income per capita falling by more than 60 percent in the second half of the last decade, basically in Trump's first term.
01:38Trump had a dinner with Latin American presidents in September 2017 on the margin of the U.N. General Assembly, where he said openly, why don't I just invade Venezuela?
01:53So my point is that this is a typical U.S. regime change operation.
01:59These often take years.
02:03Syria was a case where the regime change operation began in 2011 and was 14 years, many hundreds of thousands of deaths.
02:12We're not at the end of the end of the story with Venezuela, but it's notable that just this week, President Trump has threatened explicitly six other countries.
02:23So this is extraordinary.
02:25He's threatening Denmark, of course, in the most vulgar terms.
02:30Of course, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Iran.
02:37So this is an absolute rogue, extraordinarily militarized state.
02:47It does not operate according to constitutional limits within the United States, and it does not obey international law.
02:55So it's a it's a rather dramatic situation.
02:58I know you've just been giving evidence to the United Nations Security Council.
03:01I'm grateful to you racing to to get on air with us.
03:05I must ask you, I know that you've spent so many years as a former senior United Nations adviser.
03:11But with the greatest respect, is that debate really going to make any difference?
03:17Well, in the immediate future, no, because the United States basically has ripped up the U.N. charter.
03:27It is uninterested in what other nations say.
03:30My testimony was essentially to say that we are at what could be the demise of the U.N., and we should take a lesson, because in the 1930s, the League of Nations died, essentially, and the world went into a global war.
03:53If it happens again, this time it's the end because it's the nuclear age that we're in.
04:00So when you ask me, will it make a difference?
04:02No, it will not stop Donald Trump today or tomorrow.
04:06But the question is, will enough nations in the world rally to the cause of international law and avoiding complete anarchy?
04:20Europe is interesting because we just heard on your show the Europeans are largely vassals.
04:27They're terrified of the United States.
04:29The U.S. is about to invade Europe.
04:33Absolutely, Trump is very likely to declare Greenland American territory.
04:39He said today what I have been predicting he would say for months.
04:45He said, well, there are a lot of Russian and Chinese ships around.
04:48This has to be ours.
04:50This is the prelude to grabbing Greenland.
04:53And so Europe should stop its vassalage and open its eyes and wake up to reality.
05:00And that means defending the U.N. charter with the rest of the world, because this is where we are.
05:07We're at a crossroads right now.
05:08And Mr. Trump's supporters, were they here, might well say many Venezuelans have taken to the streets to rejoice at the removal of their leader.
05:17They might say that he was a terrible administrator.
05:19They might say he was responsible for the arrest of countless political prisoners, stole the presidential election, and ran the Venezuelan economy into the ground.
05:30Do they have a point in any of that?
05:32Well, let me remind you of all the people in Baghdad that stood up and cheered when Saddam Hussein fell and not fell, when he was killed by the Americans.
05:45And then watch what happened in the days and weeks and months and years afterwards, the devastation that occurred, the civil wars that occurred, the violence that continued, the wreckage that has continued basically until this day.
06:00Or when Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by the United States or when the United States helped to bring down Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014.
06:14And everyone was celebrating and now it's a country that has suffered millions of deaths because of the U.S. coup and U.S. supported coup.
06:25So, yes, people may stand up and cheer today, but the costs of all of this have been devastating through these dozens and dozens of U.S. regime change operations.
06:50And that's why we have a U.N. charter, because if powerful countries take law into their own hands without rules, we have international anarchy.
07:00And the realists that describe the world as international anarchy freely admit that it leads to the tragedy of great power politics.
07:11So people can cheer the first day and they can sob the next day.
07:16We don't know what the outcome will be.
07:18But when Donald Trump talks about all these wars, maybe next week the war will be in Greenland or maybe it will be in Iran.
07:26If it's in Iran, by the way, that's a powder keg that could blow up the whole world because there the great power confrontations could be absolutely direct and dire in a region with nuclear weapons.
07:37So I would just say that I can understand why people might cheer.
07:44By the way, the hardships in Venezuela have been extreme, but a great deal of those hardships have been U.S. created.
07:52This is something also that needs to be appreciated.
07:56The U.S. deliberately and illegally by international law crushed the Venezuelan economy.
08:04So, yes, people are cheering that maybe they can breathe again.
08:09But this is not the way to achieve stability, well-being or peace.
08:16It's very dangerous what's happening.
08:19Jeffrey Sachs, always grateful to see you and particularly on a day when you're very much in demand, I know.
08:25For the moment, thank you.
08:26We'll speak again in coming days, I'm sure.
08:28Jeffrey Sachs, the public policy analyst and former senior United Nations advisor.
08:33Jeffrey Sachs, the public policy analyst and former senior United Nations advisor.
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