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Renowned economist and global affairs expert Jeffrey Sachs delivers a blistering assessment of the state of American governance, warning that the United States is being run without accountability, restraint, or serious leadership.
In an exclusive interview, Sachs argues that executive power has become dangerously personalized, Congress has been sidelined, and a small circle of tech billionaires now wields unprecedented influence over the White House, the Pentagon, and the media. He describes what he calls a “military-industrial digital complex” — where Silicon Valley, defense contractors, and executive power merge into a single unaccountable system.
From emergency rule and executive decrees to tech surveillance and AI warfare, Sachs says America’s institutions are being hollowed out — and the world is paying the price.
“We need a grown-up to run this country,” Sachs warns.
Watch the full interview and decide for yourself.
#trump #jeffreysachs #apt
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpLEtz3H0jSfEneSdf1YKnw/join
Renowned economist and global affairs expert Jeffrey Sachs delivers a blistering assessment of the state of American governance, warning that the United States is being run without accountability, restraint, or serious leadership.
In an exclusive interview, Sachs argues that executive power has become dangerously personalized, Congress has been sidelined, and a small circle of tech billionaires now wields unprecedented influence over the White House, the Pentagon, and the media. He describes what he calls a “military-industrial digital complex” — where Silicon Valley, defense contractors, and executive power merge into a single unaccountable system.
From emergency rule and executive decrees to tech surveillance and AI warfare, Sachs says America’s institutions are being hollowed out — and the world is paying the price.
“We need a grown-up to run this country,” Sachs warns.
Watch the full interview and decide for yourself.
#trump #jeffreysachs #apt
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Professor Sachs, you've been on a whirlwind here in India.
00:00:03You came for a personal visit, I just learned,
00:00:06but you've come at a time where you are in demand
00:00:09because there's so much changing with America and with geopolitics.
00:00:13And it's all obviously a long, lots of changes have been happening for a long time,
00:00:17but it feels like in the last 10, 15 days, it's all kind of just come together.
00:00:24Absolute craziness.
00:00:25This craziness of U.S. attacks on Venezuela, seizing ships on the high seas,
00:00:32but then one declaration after another by Trump and by his cronies, if I may say so,
00:00:39that are absolutely extraordinary.
00:00:42And the U.S. leaving more than 60 international organizations in one executive order.
00:00:48It's a kind of madness in the last week.
00:00:50So I've been following your work for a long time
00:00:53and your interviews of late and even before.
00:00:57I think the one thing that I really enjoyed of yours was your conversation with a gentleman
00:01:04whose name I'm forgetting right now, but at the Horizon magazine,
00:01:07where you painted this beautifully elaborate picture of the whole world in the last 100 years.
00:01:12So I've been a fan of yours since then.
00:01:14But since you've done a lot of interviews,
00:01:15I thought we'll just structure this a little bit differently.
00:01:17And, you know, just bear with me and we'll see where it goes.
00:01:21I'm being a little bit risky when I say that.
00:01:23But I thought we can kind of start with what happened yesterday, right?
00:01:28I mean, Lutnik coming on a podcast run by techies, you know,
00:01:35and just kind of very casually saying, you know, India never, you know,
00:01:40Modi never called Trump to close the American deal.
00:01:44It just sounds so callous.
00:01:45It just sounds so insensitive to what trade means for people, for livelihoods.
00:01:50And what we did in today's Indian Express this morning was actually detailed fact check.
00:01:56I mean, Trump, Modi couldn't have called Trump.
00:02:00We were in the middle of Operation Sindhu.
00:02:01We were striking Pakistan at that particular point in time.
00:02:04He said that trade deals going forward will only get larger.
00:02:11So, the guys who come first get the least amount of tariff.
00:02:15The guys who go the whole staircase also be fact-checked.
00:02:18That's not the case.
00:02:19After Vietnam, they did smaller deals.
00:02:22So, I mean, just...
00:02:24Let me give you a few thoughts.
00:02:26First, I'm just hearing about this statement by Lutnik today, like the rest of us.
00:02:34And it was in an all-in show.
00:02:37I've participated in that show in the past.
00:02:40Yes, you have.
00:02:40And it's interesting.
00:02:43That's not only a group of techies.
00:02:46That's the inside group to the White House.
00:02:50So, people should understand that this is a tech-owned White House.
00:02:57They bought the White House.
00:03:00So, Lutnik feels very comfortable in this environment because this particular group within the broader Silicon Valley
00:03:10for example, hosted a dinner in California where they sat Trump down next to J.D. Vance.
00:03:19And they explained to Trump, this is your vice president.
00:03:24They created Mr. Vance, who came out of their finance world.
00:03:29So, this is a group that is very heady right now.
00:03:34They're intoxicated with their wealth and their power.
00:03:38They have it.
00:03:39They own the media.
00:03:41They own the White House.
00:03:42They own the AI.
00:03:45The Pentagon is desperately after them.
00:03:48So, there's a kind of intoxication of power right now.
00:03:52And that's why a secretary of commerce would go on a show and just casually make a statement.
00:03:58Hey, I don't have to be careful.
00:04:00I run the world.
00:04:02And I'm with my friends.
00:04:03And we're the small group that runs the world.
00:04:07So, the mindset shows.
00:04:11Second, to say, well, the relations between the two giant economies of the world fell apart because the prime minister didn't make a phone call.
00:04:24Well, it's, of course, absurd.
00:04:27And, at the same time, maybe even real.
00:04:33Real in the sense that it's not a false statement, but a measure of how unreal our reality is right now.
00:04:41We have a narcissism in Trump and a power in the executive branch to do things by executive decree, by presidential order.
00:04:53Instead of systems, negotiation, diplomacy, technical working groups, the prime minister should have made a call.
00:05:07So, I don't even dispute the statement.
00:05:10But what I would underscore is how completely bizarre it is and how it shows the collapse of any systematic governance in the United States right now.
00:05:26Things that are happening, attacking Venezuela, leaving U.N. agencies.
00:05:32This is the work of a small group of people, depending on a base in the U.S. of maybe a third of the population or so, that thinks they can do things on their own.
00:05:48And they're testing every limit to see if there are any remaining limits.
00:05:55Then there is the substance of all of this.
00:05:59What kind of trade deal is the United States capable of making a trade deal?
00:06:06You look at the way that India has been completely and arbitrarily abused this year.
00:06:1425% reciprocal tariff, 25% penalty for buying oil from Russia when everybody is buying oil from Russia.
00:06:22But we want to punish India for this in particular.
00:06:26And then specific sectors, the steel and others hit by the United States.
00:06:32And then just this past week, Trump saying, I'll go along with my least favorite senator in the United States, Lindsey Graham, who is really not a nice man, not a smart man, completely irresponsible.
00:06:52Wants to put maximum pressure on Russia.
00:06:56And so now we're hearing about 500% tariffs that are going to be slapped on India.
00:07:02This is what a phone call was supposed to be about.
00:07:05The United States.
00:07:06And a phone call when we were literally at war with Pakistan.
00:07:10Didn't Trump end that war?
00:07:11Didn't Trump end that war?
00:07:12And that became an issue that we couldn't actually, that became a diplomatic crisis of its own that he's saying it to end that war.
00:07:19So then it was more loaded for Modi to make that phone call.
00:07:22Lots of things you said and we can go many directions here.
00:07:25But one thing that you've always said is this military industrial complex in America, the American economy, the American sort of political system actually is catering to and living for.
00:07:35Is Silicon Valley part of that complex or is it now something, is there an addition to it now?
00:07:40How does, what is the relationship between Silicon Valley and...
00:07:43That's the new thing, actually, the advent of AI in weaponry and it's pervasive, of course, it's pervasive for intelligence, for, I mean, geospatial intelligence.
00:07:59It's absolutely fundamental for autonomous weapons, for the drone warfare that is being, quote, perfected in Ukraine and in Gaza right now.
00:08:13The Pentagon, which used to kind of run the show, and the old guard major military contractors, Raytheon or Boeing or General Dynamics and so forth, they're now taking a back seat to Musk, obviously, SpaceX, which does the heavy lifting of the Pentagon's needs in space,
00:08:37to Palantir for facial identification, to Palantir for facial identification, to kill people, and for many, many other things.
00:08:45And so my feeling is that we have now a military industrial digital complex.
00:08:53Silicon Valley is extremely powerful in this because the Pentagon does not have in-house capacity.
00:09:03So everything is being contracted out, and all the big tech companies now have this extraordinary position.
00:09:11They dominate their sector.
00:09:14They are all centibillionaires in U.S. dollars.
00:09:17They own the mass media, control the daily discourse, whether it's on X or whether it's on Facebook or whether it's on actually the old guard media like Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post or Ellison's increasing media empire.
00:09:40So they own the mass media, they bought the White House, they have the inside track on the White House, they have the security state basically begging them for the technology, the contracts, the help.
00:09:58It's an extraordinary amount of power and an extraordinary giddiness.
00:10:02And they're also personally enriching the president and his family at the same time that he is enriching them.
00:10:10So there's a personal angle in all of this as well.
00:10:14I can't remember an analogy.
00:10:18I don't think that J.P. Morgan or Vanderbilt or Rockefeller, though they were as rich as rich can be, had anything like the commanding power of this group.
00:10:35I should add one more obvious point, which is that they watch every keystroke we make and they listen to every word that we utter, whether it's through our watch or through our phone.
00:10:44And so the surveillance and the loss of privacy is also pervasive.
00:10:51So what an incredible combination of forces that has suddenly come on the scene in the last 10 years.
00:10:59It is completely unaccountable.
00:11:02I don't know how it operates in any detail, though I try.
00:11:07But you can see it pervasively everywhere.
00:11:10But I don't think that publicly it seems as if they're all on the same page.
00:11:13I mean, maybe just that one dinner, that famous dinner where, you know, Mark Zuckerberg was caught with a hot mic and, you know, saying, I hope that was okay.
00:11:20That was an incredible moment for everybody.
00:11:23But, you know, Google, Meta, you know, not the Palantir necessarily, but and obviously not Musk.
00:11:31That's a different case altogether.
00:11:32But the other traditional big tech, when I say traditional big tech, I mean like these names that, you know, we're talking about, the Googles and the Facebooks and the Amazons and, you know, they have actually had a up and down relationship with American government, unlike Boeing.
00:11:48I mean, you know, across the board, it's a bipartisan support for Boeing's always been there in American.
00:11:55I think with Trump, there's no up and down.
00:11:59It's just up right now.
00:12:00Congress is supine, barely exists.
00:12:05Trump is buddies with Musk, with Peter Thiel, with the insiders of all of this group.
00:12:16Again, I don't know all of the different personalities exactly.
00:12:21And of course, they're competing with each other.
00:12:23Who can get to the moon first?
00:12:24Who can get to Mars first?
00:12:25Who can do whatever first?
00:12:27Who can get to a trillion dollars first?
00:12:29But this is a lot of raw power.
00:12:32The personalization, right?
00:12:34The, this, this massive personalization of the office of the president.
00:12:39Is that something which started with Trump or could we go back even beyond, you know, even before Trump?
00:12:45I mean, you know, the, there was always this thing that the office of the president is institutionalized and the president is the face of this institution, which is the office of the president.
00:12:57It just seems to me now as a, as an outsider looking in, and I was studying in Los Angeles for a long time.
00:13:02I was covering the Obama's campaign for my, for my school newspaper.
00:13:07And I, you know, I, it struck me also there that there was a lot of personality making decisions, even in Obama's White House, where, you know, it, which wasn't the case before that.
00:13:20Uh, so has that been something which you, which you see as a trend?
00:13:24I think there are two very important things to distinguish, but they've gone along with each other.
00:13:31The first is the, um, the end of constitutional control by the representative branch, uh, over foreign policy.
00:13:43That began immediately after World War II, or it began, of course, during World War II, but with the 1947 National Security Act, which created the Defense Department, now the War Department, and which created the CIA, uh, basically foreign policy, then became the purview of the executive branch.
00:14:05And in January 17, uh, 1961, in his farewell address to the country, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president, uh, who was the supreme allied commander, uh, in World War II.
00:14:21So, uh, not only a general, but the general in World War II said, we are, our institutions, our core democracy, uh, is, uh, highly vulnerable to the military industrial complex.
00:14:36That was quite a warning, a warning by a general to the public.
00:14:41It means that that process was very, very far advanced.
00:14:46So, the wars in the last 50 years have been executive branch wars.
00:14:53Congress, uh, around the edges has sometimes tried to say, no, don't do that, or we restrict you.
00:14:59But basically, over the last 50 years, the constitutional bounds have broken.
00:15:05At the same time, the political system has become more and more money drenched.
00:15:12And that is also, uh, a deliberate set of, uh, decisions that were taken to end restrictions on corporate giving to campaigns.
00:15:23So, we're up to campaigns that are now 15 to $20 billion campaigns.
00:15:30Elon Musk, you know, gave away a million dollars a day to someone who won some lottery when they were campaigning for votes in,
00:15:38uh, for Trump in, uh, in, uh, Pennsylvania in the 2024 election.
00:15:44So, it's a money game.
00:15:45Uh, and, uh, Silicon Valley bought, uh, effectively bought the government, put Trump in power.
00:15:52He's got other backers like Miriam Adelson that he absolutely, uh, listens to because she gave hundreds of millions of dollars
00:16:01to make sure that, uh, that the, uh, Trump, uh, is every moment aligned with Israel.
00:16:08And that's serious money, uh, associated with that.
00:16:13If you do that long enough, things also become personalized.
00:16:18Because if you're operating on executive decision-making, you don't have the normal deliberative checks that you have an investigation in Congress.
00:16:30You have a report.
00:16:32We used to have reports.
00:16:33Governments told us that they were going to do things or they had long hearings and they were quite interesting hearings.
00:16:39And people testified it.
00:16:41We don't have any of that right now.
00:16:42I mean, some of the formalisms remain, but basically, this is executive branch.
00:16:49Quantitatively, when you come to the Trump administration, there are no laws anymore, almost at all.
00:16:54Trump and Congress passed the fewest, uh, legislative acts in 2025 of any modern Congress.
00:17:03And Trump issued the most executive orders of any president.
00:17:08And every order that I look at, because I'm looking at a particular subset of them, like the tariffs, all start with, by the powers vested in me as president of the United States and invoking the emergency powers in the international, uh, emergency, economic emergency powers act.
00:17:30This is all declaration of one emergency after another, personalized to Trump.
00:17:38And we hear, and I believe it, that who's ever in the Oval Office last gives Trump the idea, you know, Mr. President Greenland, you should own Greenland.
00:17:49And Trump is not a highly sophisticated person, uh, from all that I hear from a lot of people who meet with him.
00:17:58And I think that this personalization with this extreme personality of Trump, with the withering away of constitutional control, with the control of Silicon Valley, it's quite a story.
00:18:13And what happens now? So how, how would you advise, like, you know, in, in, in, with India's trade deal, uh, Modi should call Trump.
00:18:20Now we hear from our sources in India that they kept moving the goalpost.
00:18:26The, all the teams work, they figure out, they come to an agreement and then no, we don't, you know, and then the other side says, we don't want that anymore.
00:18:32Now the goalpost has changed. That keeps happening.
00:18:35And that's based on the whims and fancies of the president, right? So how does, how, how would you advise India to manage that in this scenario?
00:18:43I wouldn't, because I wouldn't, uh, chase that phantom. Uh, I would, uh, rather that a great power like India, uh, together with other great powers behave like great powers, which is, um, we would like, uh, peaceful, respectful relations. Uh, we would like to negotiate and we would like to do this properly.
00:19:08And I would like the United States to be run by grownups, frankly. Uh, so I believe that India is, um, uh, I believe with Trump's specific personality also, uh, that, uh, any concession he views as weakness, uh, to demand more.
00:19:26But in general, we can't have a world run where it's a phone call here and a phone call there. Nothing's going to stick out of that anyway.
00:19:35And we need, uh, systems. We need transparency. Uh, prime minister Modi needs to be able to return to, uh, the politicians in this country and to the public and explain, this is the process. This is how an agreement was reached.
00:19:52And I, of course, uh, believe at the basis of all of this, that the United States is not the be-all and end-all.
00:20:01It is for India, for the Indian economy. I think for India and for all major fast-growing economies, it is the emerging and developing countries that is by far the most interesting part of the world.
00:20:18What's happened is, first, the U.S. and Europe are the slow-growing parts of the world. Europe doesn't grow anymore.
00:20:28It may not again because it's so, uh, divided and unable to act in a coherent manner for the moment.
00:20:37Uh, the United-
00:20:37Italy and Germany aren't having a resurgence economically?
00:20:39German industry is not competitive, uh, faces, uh, extremely high energy prices, is being out-competed by China, and, uh, Germany's hope is to team up with China.
00:20:55That's what's starting to happen. Volkswagen, for example, is saying the only way we're going to be able to make cars that are competitive is if we're using Chinese technology and advancing right now.
00:21:08Other than that, no, uh, there would not be a, a German recovery. There would be a continuing decline of the German automotive industry, which cannot compete with the Chinese automotive industry.
00:21:20Eastern European, the story is different. Poland and the smaller countries, there, there seem to be a lot of growth.
00:21:24Eastern Europe-
00:21:25It's too small, I know.
00:21:26Eastern Europe's success was that, and I was there to help that, uh, as an economic advisor, was that, uh, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary built up industry that was supplying German industry.
00:21:44Germany was the center of the European economy.
00:21:47Germany, if Germany goes down, all of those countries around the edge suffer. Of course, they used to have an Eastern, uh, trade as well to Russia.
00:21:58That they severed, which is completely suicidal in my mind.
00:22:02Right.
00:22:02Uh, and, but they've done it, and so Europe is therefore in economic crisis.
00:22:08The United States is not in the same kind of economic crisis, but is in a bubble because the AI is not going to, the AI valuations will not be justified because China's going to find out much cheaper ways to do a lot of this anyway.
00:22:28And second, the U.S. has all of its other governance problems, including a budget deficit that's 7% of GDP, uh, the move away from the U.S. dollar and all rising interest rates, a big inequality of income, uh, a, uh, a new, uh, epidemic of greed among the super, super, super, super rich.
00:22:54And so all of this means the United States is not in good shape also.
00:23:00Then you have the 85% the rest of the world, which is, uh, everything that isn't the U.S., Europe, and depending on how you count, maybe you could say Japan and Korea, but in any event, to my mind, India, China, Russia, the BRICS should see that 85% is where the huge growth is going to come.
00:23:24Okay.
00:23:25In the next 30 years.
00:23:26India, of course, will be the fastest growing large economy in the world, but it's not because it's selling its traditional items to the United States.
00:23:38It's going to be selling them to Southeast Asia.
00:23:40It's going to be selling them to Africa.
00:23:41It's going to be selling them to Russia, to China.
00:23:45So use the BRICS because that is where the big markets are going to be fast growing.
00:23:50So I thought we can break this up into a small game because we're always talking with anxiety about the unpredictability of this precedent.
00:23:57Uh, and the whole world is like, oh, when is this going to end?
00:23:59Right.
00:23:59So, uh, so let's just assume we have fast forwarded three years and the Trump presidency is over.
00:24:05You are now the president.
00:24:07Ah, that's easy.
00:24:08Okay.
00:24:09And I'm going to just list down a few things.
00:24:11Right.
00:24:12And you tell me, what is it that you think you can reverse?
00:24:16What is it that you think is too far?
00:24:17You can't reverse it anymore.
00:24:19And if you do want to reverse it, how?
00:24:21If you don't want to reverse it, why don't you want to reverse it?
00:24:23Right.
00:24:23So let's start with the whole, the tariff regime.
00:24:27Three years later, you're the president.
00:24:29Would you want to reverse it?
00:24:30I'm hoping that within days of our discussion, the Supreme Court reverses it.
00:24:35Supreme Court has said they're not going to give a decision.
00:24:37They've held on, right?
00:24:38Now they've said they're going to.
00:24:39Well, they just said they weren't, wouldn't give a decision yesterday as we're talking,
00:24:45but, um, they will give a decision.
00:24:47They're, they're not going to.
00:24:48And if they agree, if they say it's allowed, if they say it's legal.
00:24:51Oh, if they say it goes, then of course I would reverse it.
00:24:54I think this is madness from an economic point of view.
00:24:57And, and let's get deeper to that because there is a view that America is actually winning
00:25:01in this tariff war.
00:25:03There's a 1% of GDP is coming from tariffs that, uh, the deficit, the annual deficit is
00:25:09dropped from 6.9 to 6%.
00:25:10There is a view amongst the voters there or that the, that, that it's actually, it's working
00:25:15for America.
00:25:18It depends what you mean by working.
00:25:20Uh, the tariffs are arbitrary, regressive, not creating any kind of real industrial policy,
00:25:28not leading to a new, uh, uh, growth of, uh, employment in manufacturing, as he claimed,
00:25:35uh, disrupting a world trade, making everything less efficient and more uncertain.
00:25:42And I would rather have, uh, taxes other than these arbitrary tariffs, uh, in place.
00:25:50So the fact of the matter is, uh, Trump, uh, gave a big tax cut for the corporate sector
00:25:57and for the rich, and then put these tariffs on.
00:26:00So to my mind, that's not sound fiscal policy.
00:26:03None of this from an economic standpoint, efficiency, industrial policy, the world, uh, system, long
00:26:14term U S economic growth, employment patterns, uh, fiscal policy, economic, uh, uh, justice.
00:26:22None of it to my mind makes sense, which is why we had a consensus in the United States
00:26:29for many decades that open trade was a preferable policy.
00:26:34And that if you wanted to do something, uh, beyond that, well, then you would use specific
00:26:40industrial policy tools to do that.
00:26:43And that I think is the right answer.
00:26:46Of course, I'm an economist.
00:26:47It goes back to Adam Smith next year, Adam Smith's, uh, great work.
00:26:52The wealth of nations will be the 250th anniversary.
00:26:56I think it has withstood the test of time.
00:26:59And that's what I would revert to.
00:27:01So are you saying that the, whatever economic growth that they're, that the
00:27:04MAGA supporters are citing or are getting sort of a following is short, is too short term?
00:27:10I mean, it's a, there is the, the one thing that has happened, uh, that has, uh, underpinned
00:27:19the consumption this year is a high stock market.
00:27:24Yeah.
00:27:26So if you interpret that as a signal of, uh, a huge rise of, uh, American profitability
00:27:33in the future, you take one view.
00:27:35If you view it as a tech bubble, which I do, uh, you say, okay, that's the one bright spot.
00:27:44But if you look at employment data, if you look at wage data, if you look at, uh, at, uh, how people
00:27:51are hurting in the United States, by the way, if you look, you mentioned the MAGA base, uh,
00:27:57the MAGA base is a third of the American population.
00:28:01Trump's approval rating, depending on, uh, the week and the survey you look at, maybe 40%,
00:28:08maybe 38%.
00:28:09This is not a popular president and this has not been popular policies.
00:28:15And it was not voted by Congress because it never would have been voted by Congress.
00:28:20The fact that the U S dollar is the world's global currency.
00:28:24And, you know, I had Larry Summers a couple of years ago and I asked him about alternatives
00:28:28and he gave me a very, very, very catchy line.
00:28:32He said, look, where will you go?
00:28:33He said, where will you go?
00:28:34Japan's a nursing home, China's a jail and Europe's a museum.
00:28:39Where do you take your, and so, and so is that something which, and you mentioned it earlier,
00:28:43but I wanted to kind of elaborate on that.
00:28:44One of the things about America's winning is the fact that the dollar is,
00:28:48there's a view of the dollar is just impenetrable.
00:28:51And if it does get, and if it is shaken, it's shaken by alternatives like crypto and gold.
00:28:55It's not shaken by some other currencies.
00:28:57How do you think about that?
00:28:59Completely wrong.
00:29:01In 10 years from now, the renminbi will be probably,
00:29:07I don't know, 15, 20% of, of, world transactions.
00:29:12It's moving very fast in that direction.
00:29:15China is the world's lead trade partner for perhaps, oh, at least 100 countries,
00:29:24if not 125 to 150 countries in the world.
00:29:29China saves a lot more than the U.S.
00:29:32China's interest rates are lower than American interest rates.
00:29:36And the U.S. has weaponized the dollar.
00:29:39Yeah.
00:29:40And frankly, I think it would be foolish to continue in dollar transactions,
00:29:47knowing that that is precisely the instrument that holds the rest of the world by the throat.
00:29:54And so that, to my mind, is why in India's BRICS presidency, it should support-
00:30:00A BRICS currency?
00:30:02Not a BRICS currency, but non-dollar settlements as a routine matter.
00:30:07Why should India say, yes, we'll allow ourselves to be punished arbitrarily by any whim
00:30:14that the United States wants because our banks are vulnerable to being cut out from SWIFT?
00:30:20From the SWIFT.
00:30:20Why?
00:30:21I don't see it.
00:30:22I don't think China's going to stand for it.
00:30:24I don't think Russia's going to stand for it.
00:30:27I know Brazil doesn't want to stand for it.
00:30:29Why should India agree, yes, we'll allow ourselves to be abused this way?
00:30:35I would not do it.
00:30:36But it's logistically very tough because the balance of payments with any country
00:30:41you're buying oil from, they don't need your currency.
00:30:43So how do you actually bypass the dollar?
00:30:46I don't understand the argument about this at all because I'm a monetary economist.
00:30:52I've helped to design national currencies in different parts of the world.
00:30:57There's no problem in transacting in any currency in the world.
00:31:05You don't need the dollar to do it.
00:31:07Mechanically, it's not hard to settle in rupees.
00:31:10It's not hard to settle in rubles.
00:31:12Of course, the question then of the exchange rate and how it's managed and whether it's stable
00:31:17and do you have a lender of last resort behind it matters.
00:31:22There are network economies of scale in money that money holding assets or denominating
00:31:30transactions in a particular currency is better if others are doing it.
00:31:35And that's why there's a certain lock on things that the pound sterling lasted a lot
00:31:40longer than the British Empire did.
00:31:42It finally gave up in 1947 and the dollar hangs on even as the U.S. share of world trade continues to go down.
00:31:54But at this point, because of the weaponization of the dollar, there's now active movement forward.
00:32:02I believe that China will increasingly and systematically internationalize the Renminbi in the coming years.
00:32:12And it's taking steps to do that.
00:32:14The Chinese interbank payment system, SIPs, is a part of that.
00:32:19The BRICS bridge is a part of this.
00:32:22So at a technical level, this is not a problem.
00:32:26If rupees are convertible into rubles or into Renminbi or into other currencies and they are selling things of interest, there's no problem.
00:32:36And that is how the world's going to be.
00:32:38The idea, which is now a meme around the world that, for example, the U.S. has invaded Venezuela to keep the petrodollar in order that the dollar is used, is not good economics, by the way.
00:33:00And the whole idea that the U.S. dollar depended on the agreement with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to price oil in dollars is not the basis of the U.S. role.
00:33:18Of course, it added to it.
00:33:19But the basis of the U.S. role goes back to the founding of the Bretton Woods system, and it goes to the size of the U.S. economy and to the efficiency of using dollars, the depth of the U.S. financial markets in London and in New York, their unique role, the geopolitics, definitely.
00:33:41But all of the things which gave the dollar its dominance are fading, and especially the misuse of the dollar.
00:33:52So is it in India's interest to empower China and Russia by trading in that currency, by encouraging trade in that currency?
00:33:58Yes.
00:33:59And China is Pakistan's best friend right now.
00:34:03Whose best friend is Pakistan?
00:34:06I'm a little puzzled.
00:34:07Okay.
00:34:08Which general, where did the general just have lunch?
00:34:13Was it in Beijing or was it in Washington with the president of the United States?
00:34:18We're talking post-Trump.
00:34:20We're talking post-Trump.
00:34:20No, I don't even understand that argument.
00:34:23Who brought down Imran Khan?
00:34:25Who has emboldened the Pakistani military in the last three years?
00:34:31It's all been U.S., more than China.
00:34:33Well, wasn't it?
00:34:34Yeah.
00:34:35It has been.
00:34:36It was Biden who brought down Imran Khan, Donald Liu.
00:34:41That man must go.
00:34:43And Trump is playing his Pakistan game.
00:34:47So this idea that this is a China thing.
00:34:50So we can trust China more than America?
00:34:53It's not a matter of trust.
00:34:55It's a matter that India should say we need grown-up superpower relations with China, stable, and especially to have our mutual regard so that the United States isn't dividing and conquering and isn't bullying us.
00:35:17This is extremely important.
00:35:19Here are the two largest countries in the world.
00:35:23And by the way, by mid-century, we'll be number one and two in the world economy, overtaking the United States.
00:35:30They're on a border with each other, which has not been stable and easy.
00:35:34And where the problems go back to 1914 and Mr. McMahon.
00:35:40And now the two superpowers should solve that problem, not let the British legacy continue to disrupt this, where the common interest of India and China in facing an unstable U.S.
00:35:58And in protecting an international order are paramount.
00:36:04To my mind, this is a bilateral issue with India and China.
00:36:10And I say on the Chinese side, just to be absolutely clear, all the time, support India as the sixth member of the U.N. Security Council permanent seat.
00:36:23That's extremely important.
00:36:25Pro-China.
00:36:26So don't delay, because the real problem is not India versus China.
00:36:32The real problem is that the Western imperial age is over, but we don't have stability right now because of the United States.
00:36:42I want to come, I want to find more time on this, but I want to cover a few more things.
00:36:44So we'll come back.
00:36:45But you mentioned Maduro in this piece.
00:36:49Again, back to my game, you're sort of the president.
00:36:52Would you hand Maduro back to Venezuela?
00:36:54Well, I certainly would not keep presidents, I would not kidnap presidents of other countries.
00:37:02This is a starting point.
00:37:02But now that it's done, can we reverse that?
00:37:04And second, I don't know if, you know, three years from now is a long time on that particular issue.
00:37:09But let me just say, I do not divide the world between democracies and autocracies like Biden did.
00:37:17I don't believe that you say, I don't like your government, I therefore intervene.
00:37:26So I don't really believe in any unilateral actions by any country vis-a-vis any other country on these grounds other than through the United Nations.
00:37:41And so if there's really a problem, and if there's something desperate going on that is a threat to the global peace because it's massacre or something else,
00:37:53then go to the UN Security Council and get the major powers in agreement that the abuse should stop.
00:38:01But the claim, I don't like him, he's a drug dealer, he's this, he's that, that is not the business for the United States to invade.
00:38:11That's just a narrative game anyway.
00:38:13It's shocking. I mean, the whole world was shocked by, I mean, you know, what stops America?
00:38:18We have a fight with Modi, you know, coming and picking up Modi.
00:38:20I mean, it's just, it's just bizarre, but he's done it.
00:38:22So now I just want to understand what's next.
00:38:25For some reason, Venezuelan stock market was up 100% after that.
00:38:30And I was, I was very surprised by that.
00:38:32I would like you to also decode that. Why did that happen?
00:38:35And has the world, I mean, has America, you know, the whole MAGA base has been retreat.
00:38:41Like, don't get involved with the world. Just focus on your country and your economy.
00:38:46That's, that's what he claimed he would do when he started off.
00:38:48But he seems to be going, instead, he seems to be going, the opposite happened.
00:38:51And his voters seem to be liking that.
00:38:53I don't know what his voters like or not. No one cares about the voters in the United States.
00:38:57Nobody. Not in foreign policy. No one's been asked.
00:39:01I don't even know if opinion surveys have been done on any of this.
00:39:05But none of this is because of American public opinion or his political base.
00:39:10Is it good for the American economy, at least, that he's got so much of oil now that needs to be explored and it's, you know, it's thick oil?
00:39:20No. Anyway, the numbers, even if you took the most rosy and optimistic scenario, this is small bore stuff for the United States.
00:39:32Venezuela is not, not a big difference for the U.S. economy.
00:39:37But it's interesting.
00:39:37Largest oil reserves in the world. That's what we hear.
00:39:40Yeah. Very expensive.
00:39:42And expensive to explore.
00:39:43Yeah. Because it's, this is heavy sludge.
00:39:47It's a molasses consistency.
00:39:49It's heavy sludge.
00:39:50And at the White House meeting with the oil executives yesterday, the head of ExxonMobil said, this is not an investable country.
00:40:00Oh, I see.
00:40:00Yeah.
00:40:01Okay.
00:40:01This, I could say, this is crude stuff in the other sense.
00:40:07But this is not how economies...
00:40:10But how is it different from all the other times there's been regime change done by America?
00:40:14How is this particular case different?
00:40:17Because it's happened many times in the past.
00:40:18Usually, when the U.S. kills another leader, kidnaps another leader, typically...
00:40:26It's masked with some humanitarian...
00:40:27Typically, it gives an excuse.
00:40:29It gives an excuse, yes.
00:40:30Here, it's just bravado.
00:40:32Of course, last week, the excuse was drug trafficking.
00:40:36They don't even mention that anymore.
00:40:37Now it's just oil, oil, oil, and power is right, and we can do whatever we want.
00:40:43And interestingly, though, I don't know every detail on this.
00:40:48The original arraignment of Maduro under Trump one term said that he was the head of the drug cartel.
00:40:55And now they've dropped all of that because somebody told them, no, that phrase of the drug cartel is a slang.
00:41:03It doesn't actually mean a group.
00:41:05It was just a slang of, like we say, the blob in Washington.
00:41:10The blob isn't a formal organization.
00:41:13It's a slang.
00:41:14And so these people are stupid, honestly, aside from everything else.
00:41:19But you could say, oh, come on, Jeff.
00:41:21That's just also...
00:41:23And my wife, when I say they're stupid, she hates that I use the word stupid.
00:41:27But they're really stupid.
00:41:29But why are they stupid?
00:41:31Because they're so arrogant.
00:41:33Nobody calls them on that.
00:41:35And so they say these things.
00:41:37Oh, he's head of this cartel that doesn't even exist.
00:41:41And then when they throw it out, they get away with it because it's such a noisy world.
00:41:47Isn't it, in a sense, refreshing that there's no cloak of humanitarian excuses for this regime change?
00:41:53It's very clear.
00:41:54And he's openly saying it's for the oil.
00:41:56Yeah, yeah.
00:41:56No, no.
00:41:57To that extent, it's a...
00:41:59We have a deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller.
00:42:04Oh, he's really a piece of work.
00:42:07And they call him Trump's brain, which I'm inclined to believe.
00:42:14And he's absolutely out and out, thoroughly vulgar.
00:42:22And he says, niceties in this world, like international law, what counts is power.
00:42:30Okay, this is a kind of drunkenness of power.
00:42:34And we have it right now.
00:42:36It's in Silicon Valley.
00:42:38It's in the White House.
00:42:39It's in Pete Hegseth coming from Fox News to run the Pentagon.
00:42:46And they're having their wars and they're bombing countries and so forth.
00:42:49So there's a bit of a drunkenness of power right now.
00:42:53And that does not go well.
00:42:57And these days, I often make an analogy to one of the most famous episodes of history of the West, which was the Peloponnesian Wars.
00:43:10A lot of people have referred to that in recent years for many analogies.
00:43:14But one of them is that in 416 BC, in the Peloponnesian Wars, the Athenians told this little island state of Melos in the Aegean that you side with us or we kill you.
00:43:32And the Athenian general made a famous expression, which is repeated throughout Western history, that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
00:43:43And this is how Stephen Miller talks right now, exactly this way.
00:43:48And this is what Trump believes.
00:43:48And what's interesting is that was in 416 and in 404, the Athenian state was defeated.
00:43:57So it was arrogance.
00:43:59It was incredible arrogance.
00:44:01Where did the arrogance lead?
00:44:02It led to defeat.
00:44:04Correct.
00:44:04So when I watch this bravado, this blustering, these threats, the commerce secretary saying, Mr. Modi should have called our president.
00:44:15Doesn't he show respect?
00:44:17This is completely self-defeating.
00:44:20But is it also the fact that this version of power and his definition of power is the reason I feel that Trump seems to have a lot of respect for Russia and China, in spite of all the differences.
00:44:32There seems to be some sense of respect.
00:44:33And is he trying to just divide the world up as I'm the biggest guy in my side of the world.
00:44:40Europe, you take care of, let Russia manage Europe.
00:44:44I just want my border with Russia taken care of.
00:44:46So I'm going to take care of green.
00:44:47I'm going to invade and own Greenland.
00:44:50And China, do what you want with Asia.
00:44:52Is he thinking of the world like that?
00:44:53It's very interesting that there are glimmers of that, that we'll take the Americas and you take your part.
00:45:04But it's not quite like that.
00:45:08First, it really is, we'll take our part.
00:45:12Canada's ours.
00:45:14Greenland is ours.
00:45:16Panama is ours.
00:45:18Of course, Venezuela's ours.
00:45:20Colombia will be ours and so forth.
00:45:22So the Americas are ours.
00:45:24But just a footnote, the Middle East is also ours because we have Israel and everything around Israel has to be friendly to Israel because we're Israel's protector.
00:45:38So that all that goes all the way to Iran.
00:45:41That includes all the Gulf countries because we have military bases all through the Arabian Peninsula.
00:45:49We have to control Yemen.
00:45:50And we're going to control, of course, the Red Sea and so forth.
00:45:56So we extend there as well.
00:46:00The caucuses, you might think that was in Russia's neighborhood.
00:46:05But the Trump highway is going to cut through there because, really, Turkey is part of NATO.
00:46:12And so Azerbaijan is ours.
00:46:16And we need that corridor because that has to make sure that Iran is there.
00:46:22So, and then Southeast Asia can't be too careful.
00:46:28Yes, it's in China's area, but these are our allies and this is our alliance.
00:46:34And ultimately, ultimately, we're going to have that showdown with China.
00:46:39This is the big issue.
00:46:40So, it's not really like it might seem right now with his good buddy, Xi Jinping.
00:46:48It is really still lurking in the American mind.
00:46:54Yes, global hegemony, it's a little harder than we thought, but it's not over yet.
00:47:00I see.
00:47:00That's it.
00:47:01And Russia and China having a lot to do in Venezuela and just kind of being expansionist
00:47:06themselves.
00:47:08Russia expanding into Ukraine, China and the islands around Philippines, Chinese presence
00:47:12in Venezuela, you know.
00:47:14Is that something which needed to be checked from a...
00:47:18If China or Russia had a military base in Venezuela, I would say that would be a problem.
00:47:28Trading oil after the U.S. has completely sanctioned the hell out of Venezuela, no, I don't see that
00:47:36as a problem.
00:47:36Why did the markets jump 100%?
00:47:39Because the U.S. has crushed the Venezuelan economy.
00:47:43And then they think that the U.S. is going to stop crushing the Venezuelan economy.
00:47:49It's very important to understand, from 2015 onward, but especially from 2017 onward,
00:47:57the U.S. has deliberately destroyed the Venezuelan economy.
00:48:04Their only export of value was oil.
00:48:07So it was surgically possible to destroy the whole economy by destroying the oil sector.
00:48:15In 2017, they said PDVSA is now under sanction.
00:48:23Nobody can do business with PDVSA.
00:48:26We confiscate the reserves.
00:48:27They don't have financial rights in the dollar world.
00:48:32And oil production in Venezuela fell 75% in physical terms between 2016 and 2020.
00:48:41And that put the economy into total disaster.
00:48:45If you look at the official IMF data, GDP per capita in purchasing power terms fell 62%
00:48:54between 2016 and 2020.
00:48:57They crushed the economy.
00:48:59What people say now is, oh, Trump's going to end that isolation.
00:49:05Stock market jumps because there could be survival again.
00:49:08So the U.S. can put on the pressure.
00:49:11It can take off the pressure.
00:49:13The U.S. drives this.
00:49:14This is what's happening.
00:49:16The opportunity to win a Nobel Prize.
00:49:18Well, that was part of the game.
00:49:19Was it a pleasant coincidence?
00:49:22Or was it, do you think, engineered to give that person legitimacy when...
00:49:26It was a deeply unpleasant connivance.
00:49:31And I call it the Nobel War Prize.
00:49:34Now, not the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:49:37So that's how far the deep state can go.
00:49:40The deep state absolutely penetrates wherever there are military bases.
00:49:46Wow.
00:49:47And that includes Norway, certainly.
00:49:49Wow.
00:49:50Because that is...
00:49:52You're an occupied country if you have a U.S. military base.
00:49:56If you have a U.S. military base, you have a CIA post there as well.
00:50:00But to get an independent body...
00:50:02If you have a CIA post there, it means your media, it means your civil society organizations
00:50:08are all penetrated also.
00:50:10So if you want to do the checklist, check whether the National Endowment for Democracy
00:50:16is democratizing your country as well.
00:50:19Because this is what the U.S. is doing.
00:50:23In the deep state part, this isn't Trump's invention.
00:50:27This goes back decades.
00:50:28Is America involved in Iran right now?
00:50:30In Iran, of course.
00:50:32Bangladesh?
00:50:33Probably.
00:50:35Probably.
00:50:36Bangladesh, I don't know as many of the facts on the ground.
00:50:40I did know a lot more about Pakistan and Imran Khan.
00:50:45And there, I think it's as clear as can be.
00:50:47That's as clear as can be.
00:50:49There's no question.
00:50:49But with Bangladesh, also we believe that...
00:50:51I think in Bangladesh, it's quite likely.
00:50:54Just given how things went down, this is how it happens.
00:50:57Okay.
00:50:57In Iran, there's no doubt.
00:51:00Even, look, the former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, in his New Year's tweet,
00:51:09sent his regards or made some statement about all the Mossad agents running in the streets
00:51:15of Tehran with the demonstrators.
00:51:18Well, duh.
00:51:19Yeah.
00:51:20I'm not saying that's Israel, but I'm saying the American involvement in that...
00:51:24Mossad means America.
00:51:26Come on.
00:51:26This is...
00:51:27What makes Israel's relationship with America so bipartisan?
00:51:31I mean, whatever happens, America is there for Israel.
00:51:33How, like, whatever...
00:51:35I mean, you know, and I was there, actually.
00:51:36I was in...
00:51:37I covered Netanyahu when he was in L.A.
00:51:39What is it about Israel and America that's so unshakable?
00:51:43I have to tell you, it's a bit of a mystery.
00:51:47Of course, there's the money, there's the lobbying and all the rest.
00:51:51But still, it's even more than one could imagine.
00:51:56It seems like superglue, no matter who comes and goes.
00:51:58Exactly.
00:51:59There have been a lot of stories in the last year which are quite remarkable that I didn't
00:52:07really know the details.
00:52:09But in 1962-63, when Israel was developing the bomb, Kennedy was trying desperately to
00:52:19stop Israel from developing a bomb.
00:52:21He really believed in non-proliferation.
00:52:24And it turns out, and now it's so thoroughly documented, it was the CIA that was undoing
00:52:32Kennedy's efforts.
00:52:33And it was especially led by James Angleton, who was the head of counterintelligence, who
00:52:40was facilitating Israel getting the bomb within the U.S. government itself.
00:52:45And contrary to Kennedy, of course, James Angleton is the same one that when his safe was opened
00:52:52after his death, there were the papers showing that he had been running Lee Harvey Oswald.
00:52:57So there's a lot that we don't really understand.
00:53:01And the larger objective, the bipartisan objective of all of this is that there must be some war
00:53:06happening somewhere in the world so we can sell ammunition.
00:53:08Is that as simple as it gets?
00:53:10It's not so simple as that, though there's a business side, definitely.
00:53:16I don't think it's only business.
00:53:18I think it is domination.
00:53:20There are a lot of motivations.
00:53:22But basically, the United States, like any would-be grand empire, wants to have its way.
00:53:31It wants to control the politics.
00:53:33It doesn't want noise.
00:53:35It wants to be able to impose sanctions.
00:53:37It wants other prime ministers to call them, not for them to call other prime ministers.
00:53:42And so this is a mindset that is quite deep.
00:53:46Again, learn from the English.
00:53:48Learn from the British Empire.
00:53:51And to this day, now with a Trumpian version of it in operation.
00:53:58If Iran regime change happens and an American-friendly regime comes, will that lead at least to peace
00:54:03finally there?
00:54:04I don't know.
00:54:05So it's in their interest to keep a conflict going?
00:54:08It's not to keep the conflict going.
00:54:10It is the hubris that has led to 100 or so regime change operations where the U.S. seems to believe
00:54:23will run things afterwards.
00:54:26I don't think it was to keep violence in Afghanistan that they invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
00:54:33I thought that they felt they'd get it in order.
00:54:36I think they felt that they'd get Iraq in order.
00:54:39I think that they felt that Bashar al-Assad in Syria would fall within a year or two when Obama
00:54:46tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government.
00:54:51I think that they believed that Libya would fall into their lap with all the gas in 2011 when
00:54:59they pushed out Gaddafi.
00:55:00I think that when they broke Sudan into, they felt that South Sudan, which would now inherit
00:55:08all the oil, would fall into the Western lap.
00:55:12So my feeling is not that they are out for ongoing violence.
00:55:18My feeling is that they're out for control.
00:55:21Of course, if you have control, then they buy your military equipment also.
00:55:25So you have a ready-made market.
00:55:26But I don't think that the idea is constant war.
00:55:30I think the idea is full control.
00:55:33Okay.
00:55:33You're an American relationship.
00:55:36Would you reverse that?
00:55:38Can you fix that now?
00:55:39I would end NATO.
00:55:41You would end NATO?
00:55:42Yes.
00:55:43Okay.
00:55:45NATO is a dagger aimed at Russia.
00:55:51That became its purpose after 1991.
00:55:56NATO was established in order to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
00:56:05Okay.
00:56:05When Gorbachev disbanded the Warsaw Pact, the United States should have ended NATO.
00:56:12Okay.
00:56:12In February 1990, the United States and Germany promised Gorbachev that in the context
00:56:21of German reunification, NATO would not move one inch eastward.
00:56:26That promise was immediately revoked with the end of the Soviet Union and then denied afterwards
00:56:34in our constant narrative.
00:56:36But it's absolutely real.
00:56:38And why did NATO expand eastward?
00:56:41Because that was American control.
00:56:45And Zbigniew Brzezinski, our geostrategist, in 1997 explained that if you control Ukraine,
00:56:54then Russia becomes a third-rate power.
00:56:57It's blocked in the Mediterranean.
00:56:59It's blocked in the Black Sea.
00:57:01And so Ukraine is a pivot and very important to control.
00:57:06And that's why NATO was to move to Ukraine.
00:57:09Russia wasn't dumb.
00:57:10It said, no, you won't move to Ukraine.
00:57:13And that's why we have the Ukraine war.
00:57:17So I think...
00:57:18America lied, broke its promise.
00:57:19And Germany, by the way, also, let me add, because Germany played a very bad role in this
00:57:24and because the promise was made in the context of German reunification in 1990.
00:57:31So I would end NATO.
00:57:33I would not invade Denmark.
00:57:38I would not invade Greenland.
00:57:40I would not make these outrageous claims.
00:57:43I would encourage the European Union and Russia to have a collective security arrangement.
00:57:54I would extend France's nuclear arms to a nuclear security umbrella for the European Union.
00:58:05I wouldn't be naive in that.
00:58:07But it doesn't take much to have a nuclear deterrent.
00:58:10And there should be a nuclear deterrent.
00:58:12But beyond a nuclear deterrent, Russia is not going to invade Europe,
00:58:18except if there's an incredible ongoing war.
00:58:25And so this is what really needs to be done.
00:58:27So you're saying America...
00:58:29You will want America to be a global cop, but also have other global cops.
00:58:34I would like America to be a responsible country, reflecting its power,
00:58:40but under the UN Charter.
00:58:44So I've said the following...
00:58:46Nobody has faith in the UN anymore, Professor Saxel.
00:58:48There's one institution which everybody's kind of given up on.
00:58:51I don't know.
00:58:52Yeah.
00:58:52You keep going back to the UN, and I...
00:58:54But I just...
00:58:55Whoever I talk to, just...
00:58:56It's like a...
00:58:57It's a...
00:58:58Right.
00:58:59It's considered a waste of time.
00:59:00I mean...
00:59:01That is the feeling, and that may be correct, by the way.
00:59:06But the alternative is, I believe, devastating.
00:59:10So it may be, like one would have said about the League of Nations in the 1930s,
00:59:16well, it's a defunct organization.
00:59:18That may be true, but that is not satisfying.
00:59:23Yeah.
00:59:23That's not an answer.
00:59:24I often say one of my closest intellectual counterparts is John Mearsheimer,
00:59:32who's our leading realist thinker.
00:59:35I like him enormously.
00:59:37We had him in our office last year.
00:59:39We have a wonderful interchange, and we're friends, and I respect him enormously.
00:59:44But I always point out, his great book is called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
00:59:51And I'm saying all the time, we can't accept tragedy.
00:59:55So that can't be the last book on this subject.
00:59:59Correct.
00:59:59And that's why I say we should save the UN.
01:00:02And in a multipolar world, which is what you're kind of thinking about.
01:00:07Yes.
01:00:07Does there have to be one leader?
01:00:11I mean, this thing that there is one country, which is the largest economy and has to, you know.
01:00:15No.
01:00:15This is a very good point, by the way.
01:00:18The Europe has been a continent at war basically since roughly 900 AD.
01:00:28Okay.
01:00:29But they had some moments of peace.
01:00:33And one of the moments of peace was after 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars.
01:00:39And the way that they made the peace, which lasted, depending on exactly how you count, 30 years or, by some count, 80 years,
01:00:51was an avoiding major war, was what was called the Concert of Europe.
01:00:55And the Concert of Europe was that several major governments in Europe, including Russia, including Britain, including France, including Prussia at the time, would have co-responsibility.
01:01:10It was a concert.
01:01:11It wasn't one hegemon.
01:01:13And it worked.
01:01:16And they had norms, systematic norms.
01:01:19We will deal with each other with negotiation.
01:01:23We will, they were rather conservative.
01:01:26We won't allow unilateral regime change operations and the like.
01:01:31It kept the peace for quite a long time.
01:01:35At the tail end of the 19th century, there was the wars that created German unification.
01:01:47And there were the wars that created Italian unification.
01:01:50And there was the Crimean War.
01:01:51But there wasn't a European-wide war.
01:01:53And the great diplomat at the end of the 19th century was the German Chancellor, Bismarck.
01:02:05And Bismarck was a genius at maneuvering, but he wanted peace.
01:02:14He was fundamentally for peace through diplomacy.
01:02:17And he, of course, was Chancellor at the behest of the Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm.
01:02:28And when Kaiser Wilhelm died and his son, Wilhelm II, took power, the sun was a hothead.
01:02:36The sun said, now it's time for Germany's place in the sun.
01:02:39We need our navy.
01:02:41We need to compete with the British Empire and so forth.
01:02:45And Bismarck said, no, we don't need a navy.
01:02:48We don't need to compete.
01:02:49We need this concert of Europe.
01:02:52And the sun said to Bismarck, what will you do if the British arrive on our northern shore?
01:03:02And Bismarck said, well, I'll have them arrested.
01:03:05And the Kaiser threw him out and proceeded to try to build a navy against the British.
01:03:17And, of course, eventually World War I came as a result of this German unification and so on.
01:03:24So many lessons of this.
01:03:27But one of the lessons was there was a group of countries that had mutual responsibility and behaved themselves for quite a long time.
01:03:36Second, it requires a lot of diplomacy.
01:03:39And third, it's an unstable system.
01:03:42When power balances change, it can break.
01:03:46We don't have any kind of system right now like this.
01:03:49The rise of China is viewed as a threat, direct threat to the United States because the U.S. expected a unipolar U.S. world.
01:04:00I always regarded that as both arrogant and economically naive because, as an economist, I could look forward and say, China's going to be a major power.
01:04:10Are you kidding?
01:04:11And I look the same way with India.
01:04:12India's a superpower.
01:04:13So, to my mind, of course, we're in a multipolar world and we need the major powers to be actually working together.
01:04:22So, I've recommended three things.
01:04:25One is what I call spheres of security, which is that the great powers should stay out of each other's neighborhood.
01:04:34I don't want Russia or China building a military base in Venezuela or Mexico.
01:04:40And they have no right to do it.
01:04:43Similarly, the United States has no right to build a military base in Ukraine or in Georgia or to arm Taiwan.
01:04:53None of this.
01:04:54This is the neighborhood of a great power.
01:04:57Stay clear of that.
01:04:59That's number one.
01:05:01Number two, and similarly with spheres of security, it's a little harder with India and China abutting each other in the Himalayas.
01:05:10But respect buffer states like Bhutan, like Nepal, and so forth, and demilitarize the region at the border for sure on both sides.
01:05:26This is spheres of security.
01:05:28Second, good neighbor policy.
01:05:31We had two Roosevelts as president.
01:05:34One of them was an imperialist, straight out and out, Theodore Roosevelt.
01:05:39His sixth cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, was in my mind the greatest president of the United States.
01:05:44And when he came into office, he repudiated his distant cousin's imperialism in the Americas.
01:05:51He said, we're going to have a good neighbor policy.
01:05:54And he said, we're not going to send the Marines to the other countries.
01:05:59Now, Trump is the first Roosevelt ten times over, blatantly saying, we own the Americas, even.
01:06:08I want the great powers to go back to good neighbor policies in all of their respective domains.
01:06:17China has a big responsibility not to scare the wits out of its neighbors.
01:06:22India, similarly, it's the hegemon of this region, but it shouldn't dominate the region militarily.
01:06:30The United States has no right to do what it's doing in the Americas under Trump.
01:06:36So that's the good neighbor policy.
01:06:38And the third pillar of my foreign policy agenda is the United Nations.
01:06:45I refuse to believe it's over until it's over.
01:06:49And to really be over means that we have reverted to full-scale war.
01:06:55Until then, I want us to avoid that war.
01:06:58I like the UN Charter.
01:07:00I think the principles are right.
01:07:02I want the Security Council to work.
01:07:04For the Security Council to work, we need India to have a seat on the Security Council.
01:07:09And by the way, while there are many claimants to a Security Council seat, India is the only absolutely, completely, 100% indisputable claimant.
01:07:19Not Japan, not Brazil.
01:07:22Nobody else measures up on every criterion to India's size, scope, superpower status.
01:07:29And it needs to be there.
01:07:31And China needs to make that happen.
01:07:33But then, the two will benefit from this.
01:07:37That's my point.
01:07:38And India's track record.
01:07:39I think that's the biggest qualifier.
01:07:40We have never invaded.
01:07:41We don't go around doing this kind of stuff.
01:07:43Perfect.
01:07:43Which I agree.
01:07:44If you want security, you need to do that.
01:07:46Last question, if I let you go.
01:07:47I think my opinion again here is America's most successful export has been the American dream.
01:07:54It is now the world's dream.
01:07:56You study, you take a loan, you do your education, you get great education, you work hard, you live a life of freedom, you get a house, you've got kids, you've got a soccer, you have a Volvo driving, you throw a soccer, the kids throw a soccer match.
01:08:09That entire image, and you retire well and peacefully and live happily, that entire image of the American dream, you have been talking about how, you know, it's, you've said lots of things very revelatory about what makes that look so good from the back.
01:08:26It is the military industrial complex, the deep state, that kind of keeping American economy as that big aspiration for the world.
01:08:34Has that dream been sold as a lie to the world?
01:08:38And when that dream is exposed in a sense as unviable for everybody to chase, is there another dream that takes its place?
01:08:48The American dream was not a lie, but it was just a piece of the truth.
01:08:55And America has multiple characters to it and multiple faces and multiple tendencies.
01:09:02And while you say that the American dream was the great export of America, the great import of America was people from all over the world.
01:09:13And as you know, and people here know, the group in America that is the top educated, most professional group are the Indian Americans living in the United States right now.
01:09:26It's our professional class.
01:09:27So this has been a wonderful success.
01:09:30And where did America's great scientific leadership of the last 75 years come from?
01:09:38Well, you could say it came from Hitler because Hitler pushed a whole generation of scientists to the United States and the United States at the time opened its arms to them.
01:09:52And I know I'm a direct beneficiary of that because by the time I got to primary school several decades ago, we had a mathematics curriculum, which was modern, which could educate me beyond basic arithmetic and teach me something that would be technically valuable for my life.
01:10:16And that happened throughout the U.S.
01:10:17And that happened throughout the U.S. economy.
01:10:20Now, America had another face without question.
01:10:24It is a settler colonial country settled by British colonies who then fought violently across North America for conquering a continent.
01:10:39And it was racist, exclusionary, slave owning, and genocidal.
01:10:48This is true.
01:10:51The disease, they would fight with disease rather than just kind of taking over.
01:10:56They would actually kill people together.
01:10:57Yeah, throwing rugs with smallpox and so forth into the Native American areas.
01:11:05So that's a real side of America, too.
01:11:10America had deep racism.
01:11:14It had a pluralism and a racism competing against each other.
01:11:21And this remains true until today.
01:11:24I believe we have Trump because we had Obama.
01:11:29And by that, I mean we had an African-American president.
01:11:33And that triggered also a racist counterpoint.
01:11:38So I think that at a sociological level, at just the level of the field, without Obama, there was no Trump.
01:11:46What's happening in America is that diversity is still in its ascendancy without question.
01:11:52Demographically, the U.S. used to be 85% white European, basically.
01:12:00And now it's something like 55% we say white non-Hispanic because, strangely, Hispanic white by skin color is not the American dominant group.
01:12:15By 2042 or so, according to the U.S. census, America will be a minority of white non-Hispanic.
01:12:26Wonderful.
01:12:28I live in New York City.
01:12:31I love the fact that once in a while I hear English, but that's on a rare occasion.
01:12:36We have people from everywhere in New York, and it works.
01:12:41Of course, it's got its inequalities, its divisions.
01:12:44We have a fantastic new mayor, so we're very excited about that.
01:12:48But that is America at its finest, in my view.
01:12:52Trump is America at bringing out some of the white backlash.
01:12:58It's not the only thing.
01:12:59There's also economic disgruntlement.
01:13:01There's a lot of unhappiness because we're divided in so many ways right now.
01:13:08No one talks to each other.
01:13:09Everyone yells at each other.
01:13:11The wealth inequality is extraordinary.
01:13:15The deep state role is despicable and extraordinary.
01:13:21The racism is not pervasive in society, but it is a big part of Trump's base.
01:13:27And so all of this, to my mind, explains our turmoil right now.
01:13:36If we can get through this without disaster, if we can avoid world confrontation, if we
01:13:44can keep alive international law, if India continues its dynamic growth, if Africa joins
01:13:53finally this economic takeoff, which I think is possible as well, we'll have a multipolar
01:14:00world and we'll have a United States, which actually then will have this wonderful strength
01:14:08that it has people from all over the world and it will regain its composure and its sense.
01:14:13It will not run the world.
01:14:15It will not try to run the world.
01:14:18It will try to enjoy life, have prosperity, and get along with the rest of the world, but
01:14:25not run the world.
01:14:26We're not at that level of wisdom right now, unfortunately, of saying we don't want to
01:14:31run the world.
01:14:32We just want to have a quality of life.
01:14:34If you pointed out that that was, in a sense, what Trump was saying to MAGA, no, we're going
01:14:42to take care of ourselves.
01:14:43Yes.
01:14:44Of course, you see the deep state is so much more powerful and Trump's megalomania is so
01:14:51unstable that we're not having that direction, but we could in the future.
01:14:56One of the things I think comes in the way is this obsession for GDP, you know, who's
01:15:00the largest GDP and who's bigger, you know, that competitiveness amongst nations that
01:15:06is a ranking and, you know, does it even make a difference what the GDP is?
01:15:09Like, how does it matter?
01:15:11I mean, we all know that China is going to one day be the largest country with our GDP.
01:15:15That metric is so important to the world.
01:15:18Why is that?
01:15:18I mean, why aren't we talking about per capita GDP?
01:15:20Thank you for mentioning it.
01:15:21Why aren't we talking about happiness indexes and quality of life and things like, you know.
01:15:26And why are we talking about who's number one, who's number two, rather than the quality
01:15:30of life, peace, cooperation, enjoying culture, using our new technologies?
01:15:36Of course, this is the enlightenment that I hope for.
01:15:40The American dream, the reason I was saying it's broken and why it was a lie is because
01:15:43we look at the underlying economy, it's the high debt to GDP ratio, the growing deficit.
01:15:49All of that stuff is what powered that American dream.
01:15:51In some way.
01:15:52Now, will the world look at another model?
01:15:55One of the things that the RSS chief has told me, and I mean, I think he said publicly as
01:15:59well, is the world needs a new model beyond American capitalism.
01:16:03So, is that model going to be Chinese model now?
01:16:06It'll be more autocracy mixed with capitalism.
01:16:09How does that American dream now evolve?
01:16:11Is what I was trying to get at.
01:16:12Countries all share in our technological revolution.
01:16:21So, in some sense, there's a similarity going on anywhere in the world.
01:16:25If you walk down the street in Mumbai or Kolkata or any other place, everyone's on the phone
01:16:32using the same apps, doing the same things.
01:16:34That's true in an African city.
01:16:36That's true in Moscow.
01:16:37That's true in Shenzhen.
01:16:40So, in one sense, we're all part of the same global technological systems.
01:16:47That's undeniable.
01:16:49At the same time, if you're in India or in China or in Russia or in the United States,
01:16:56the culture, the nature of the discourse, the political systems are very distinct.
01:17:02And the characteristic feel of the economies are also distinct.
01:17:07There is something called culture.
01:17:09It's real.
01:17:10Political culture, I've learned over many decades, is real.
01:17:15To me, President Xi Jinping has an imperial feel of a Chinese emperor.
01:17:22To me, President Putin has the feel of a czar.
01:17:27But that's not terrible.
01:17:30That's culture.
01:17:30And Prime Minister Modi, I think, really reflects and helps to bring about a new pride in India
01:17:42as a superpower, which it is.
01:17:45But I feel the culture as really reflecting something that is persistent and ongoing
01:17:56and not to be feared, but to reflect diversity.
01:18:00And so, I am rather impressed by Chinese statecraft in many, many ways.
01:18:09But I also know that it's been honed at least since 200 B.C. with the Han Dynasty,
01:18:18that centralized, administrative, bureaucratic, Confucian system.
01:18:24You can see that all the way to the present.
01:18:28Fine.
01:18:29That's not going to be the system in some other places.
01:18:32And so, I don't want us to have one hegemon.
01:18:38We all are going to live together with AI.
01:18:41We're going to live together with the climate crisis.
01:18:43We're going to live together with green technology, electric vehicles.
01:18:47Many things will be common for the world.
01:18:49But we're going to have our diversity.
01:18:51We're going to have our culture.
01:18:53We should respect that.
01:18:55We should understand that's not the threat.
01:18:58China's not going to take over India.
01:19:01Believe me.
01:19:02India's not going to take over China.
01:19:05China's not going to invade the United States.
01:19:08Russia's not going to invade Europe.
01:19:10We should all calm down, put away our missile toys and other things,
01:19:16and get on with the issues that are really important for well-being.
01:19:20Thank you so much for your time.
01:19:22Thank you so much.
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