Jeffrey Sachs – About Things That Matter

Since February 2022, Americans have been fed a fairy tale about the war in Ukraine — a story so uniform across NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, CNN, MSNBC, and even Democracy Now that it reveals less about Russian aggression and more about the collapse of critical journalism in the United States.

In that fairy tale, Russia “unprovoked” invaded an innocent neighbor. Ukraine, noble and outgunned, somehow fought the Russian behemoth to a heroic standstill while inflicting catastrophic losses on Moscow. The United States, we are told, has been the grown-up in the room — always seeking peace — while a stubborn, irrational Vladimir Putin refuses compromise.

None of that matches what has actually happened.

I don’t come to that conclusion lightly. Since the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” I’ve written more than a dozen articles on Ukraine — most of them here and for OpEdNews. (See below.) Across those pieces, I’ve argued five things:

By long-established U.S. standards and precedents, Russia had ample cause to defend itself against NATO’s relentless march to its borders.
The war has never been simply Russia vs. Ukraine; it has always been a proxy war between Moscow and the United States/NATO.
Despite the vast imbalance in money, weaponry, and propaganda, Russia has prevailed militarily and strategically at nearly every turn.
Moscow has largely refrained from U.S.-style “Shock and Awe” tactics that deliberately terrorize civilian populations.
Whether one admires him or not, Putin has been the most restrained and predictable major leader in this war.

Those are strong claims. So let me explain how I arrived at them — and what they mean now that Washington and NATO are quietly negotiating terms of capitulation they once declared impossible.

Rejecting Scripted Narratives

From day one, I made a conscious decision to eschew mainstream narratives about Ukraine. I’ve watched this movie too many times: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In each case, official “experts” and prestige media gave us a clean story of good intentions and necessary wars — until reality, corpses, and classified documents told another story.

Instead of relying on that machinery, I turned to analysts with actual experience and memory:

Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs,
Former intelligence and security professionals like Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter,
Military strategists like Col. Douglas MacGregor,
Independent geopolitical commentators like Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, Brian Berletic, Garland Nixon, Jimmy Dore, and Robert Barnes.

These aren’t saints. They disagree with one another. But they share three qualities utterly missing from mainstream coverage:

They know how wars actually work.
They remember U.S. foreign-policy history.
They are willing to analyze “designated enemies” rather than demonize them.

In particular, I’ve followed Alexander Mercouris’ daily 90-minute briefings, where he methodically tracks changes along the 1,000-kilometer line of contact. Through that lens I watched:

The slow, grinding fall of key Ukrainian strongholds,
The complete failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 “summer offensive,”
The steady Russian advance westward in an attrition campaign the mainstream never honestly described.

On paper, NATO’s side had nearly everything: money, high-tech weapons, satellites, intelligence, media power. Russia had geography, industrial capacity, and patience. Patience won.

NATO Expansion: The Forgotten Red Line

To understand why this war happened and why Russia was prepared to fight it, we have to step back.

For decades, Russian leaders of every stripe — including those favored in the West — warned that NATO expansion to Russia’s border was a red line. This wasn’t just Putin’s obsession. It was echoed by George Kennan (the architect of containment), Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to Moscow), and even CIA Director William Burns.

From the 1990s onward, successive U.S. administrations broke informal and formal assurances, pushed NATO eastward, armed and trained Ukrainian forces, and treated Russia as a defeated colony rather than a major power. The 2014 Maidan coup, the subsequent civil war in the Donbass, and eight years of Ukrainian shelling of Russian-speaking regions only deepened the crisis.

By the time Moscow launched its operation in 2022, Russia believed — rightly or wrongly — that it was fighting not for “land,” but for survival as a sovereign state.

That doesn’t make everything Russia has done morally pure. But it does make the word “unprovoked” dishonest.

De-Nazification: Propaganda or Inconvenient Fact?

One of Moscow’s stated objectives was “de-Nazification.” Western commentators mocked this as propaganda. Yet the facts are not really in dispute.

Units like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, and Right Sector have been documented — by Western journalists, Israeli media, and human rights organizations — as harboring neo-Nazi symbols, ideologies, and networks. After 2014, these formations were incorporated into Ukraine’s security structures and presented to the West as heroic defenders.

To acknowledge this is not to demonize all Ukrainians or deny their suffering. It is simply to say that Russia’s reference to Nazi influence was not conjured from thin air. It was rooted in something Western media chose to minimize or forget.

What Surrender Looks Like in a Suit

Today, the battlefield reality is grim for Kyiv:

Ukraine’s pre-war army has been largely destroyed.
Manpower is so depleted that men well into their 50s and 60s are being conscripted.
Western arsenals are drained.
Russia controls key logistical hubs and enjoys overwhelming artillery superiority.

In such a context, the word “stalemate” is a euphemism. Ukraine is no longer capable of decisive offensive action. NATO has no credible conventional path to “defeating” Russia in Ukraine.

So we hear whispers of “peace plans,” “ceasefires,” and “negotiations” — often framed as Donald Trump inexplicably “giving in” to Putin, as though Putin “has something on him.” That story continues the tired Russiagate myth and saves face for a Washington establishment that promised victory.

The truth is less dramatic and more humiliating: Washington and NATO lost their proxy war. The winner, as always, sets conditions.

And here is the irony: those “outrageous” conditions widely described as Putin’s “maximalist demands” are essentially the same objectives Russia articulated before the war began:

Ukrainian neutrality — no NATO membership.
Demilitarization — no NATO missile systems on Russia’s border.
De-Nazification — removal of Nazi-linked formations from state structures.
Recognition of Crimea and breakaway regions as Russian.
Security guarantees that NATO expansion stops.

In April 2022, at Istanbul, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators initialed a draft agreement along those lines. The war could have ended then. Instead, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kyiv and reportedly urged Zelensky to abandon the deal and “fight on” with Western backing.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives were sacrificed on the altar of that decision.

Now, after two and a half years of bloodshed, we are back to those same basic terms — except Russia controls more territory, Ukraine is weaker, and NATO is more divided.

This is what surrender looks like in a suit: euphemisms in press conferences, face-saving language in communiqués, and the quiet acceptance of terms from a side the West swore it would defeat.

The fairy tale said Russia was isolated, collapsing, and on the brink of defeat.
Reality shows something else: NATO marched to Russia’s border, lit a proxy war in Ukraine, and lost.

The Pattern: Who’s Been Right All Along?

Ukraine is not a one-off mistake. It is part of a pattern.

Time and again, the voices that proved right were not the Pentagon spokespersons or network generals. They were the dissidents, the whistleblowers, the realists, the people willing to challenge the mythology of American innocence:

On Vietnam, they were right.
On Iraq’s non-existent WMD, they were right.
On Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, they were right.
On Libya and Syria, they were right.
On Gaza today, they are right again.

And on Ukraine, the “alternative” analysts I’ve followed — Sachs, Mearsheimer, McGovern, Ritter, MacGregor, Mercouris, and others — have been consistently correct where mainstream pundits have repeatedly failed.

That doesn’t make them infallible. It does mean that those who analyze “designated enemies” instead of demonizing them gain access to reality sooner.

Conclusion: A Chance for Humility

The war in Ukraine is ending as sober observers said it would: not with a triumphant Ukrainian flag over Crimea, but with Washington and Brussels quietly negotiating limits they once called unimaginable.

Ukraine did not “stand up” to Russia and win.
NATO did not “stop Putin.”
The West lost its proxy war and is searching for a way to disguise capitulation as diplomacy.

The deeper question now is not whether Russia learns humility, but whether we do. Will we continue to wage unwinnable wars, believe narratives nobody questions, and call that “defending democracy”? Or will we finally listen to the voices who have been right all along — not because they are smarter, but because they refused to confuse propaganda with truth?

For my part, I know where I stand. I stand with those who insist on seeing clearly, even — especially — when it’s our own leaders and our own narratives that must be questioned.

My Previous OpEdNews Articles on Ukraine (Chronological Order)

(2/26/22)
“20 Reasons Why The United States and Europe Bear Ultimate Responsibility for the Ukrainian Crisis”

(3/4/22)
“12 Potentially Good Outcomes of the Ukraine War”

(3/7/22)
“20 Principles for Making Sense of the Ukraine War”

(3/26/22)
“In Ukraine the ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’ Have Gone to the Matrasses Again”

(5/8/22)
“O.K. I’m A Putin Apologist: Here’s Why”

(7/15/22)
“Russia in Ukraine: Champion and Proxy for the World’s Oppressed”

(2/26/23)
“About Ukraine Even Marianne Williamson Has Sold Out to Imperialism and Conventional Thinking”

(4/23/23)
“Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?”

(8/24/23)
“Putin’s a Killer Who’s Guilty Until (Impossibly) Proven Innocent”

(3/26/24)
“Even for ‘Democracy Now,’ Putin’s to Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre”

(12/5/24)
“Neocons Quake as Trump Threatens Peace in Ukraine”

Let’s face it squarely: the United States and Zionist Israel function today as cancers on the body of our planet. Like malignant growths, they spread violence, exploitation, and environmental destruction far beyond their borders. If the earth is to heal, these cancers must be confronted, contained, and ultimately transformed— perhaps not in some apocalyptic purge, but healed through justice, repentance, and the dismantling of imperial systems that have long held humanity hostage.

That may sound harsh. But look at the evidence. Both nations operate as neo-colonial powers whose survival depends on domination—economic, military, and ideological. They perpetuate a global apartheid that privileges a small minority of largely white elites while oppressing and dispossessing the majority of the world’s people. Their leaders speak the language of democracy and freedom while practicing the politics of theft and genocide.

Israel has become a settler-colonial project rooted in dispossession and sustained by U.S. complicity. It violates international law with impunity, massacres civilians under the guise of “self-defense,” and treats the Palestinian people as less than human. The result is genocide—a twenty-first-century repetition of the very atrocities the world once swore “never again” to allow.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson recently observed that Israel’s behavior could easily provoke a war with Iran, a conflict that might finally expose the illegitimacy of Israel’s apartheid state. Though one might pray for peace, it is difficult not to hope for Israel’s utter defeat in its conflict with Iran. The world would be far better off if the Zionist state of Israel did not exist at all.

The same holds true for the United States—Israel’s patron and enabler. The U.S. is guilty of the same imperial arrogance. As economist Jeffrey Sachs reminds us, there is scarcely a conflict anywhere on the globe that cannot be traced back to Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, or Brussels—the old colonial capitals still trying to govern a postcolonial world. Together, they represent barely twelve percent of humanity, yet they presume to dictate the fate of the remaining eighty-eight percent.

Instead of acknowledging their centuries of plunder and offering reparations to the Global South, these powers double down on their arrogance. When formerly colonized nations begin to cooperate for mutual development through alliances such as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the West responds not with support but with sanctions, propaganda, and threats. The message is clear: independence will not be tolerated; self-determination will be punished. The Global South’s neocolonial status and resulting poverty must continue for the benefit of “the developed world.”

Consider the behavior of U.S. presidents—Republican and Democrat alike—who behave less like diplomats than emperors. Donald Trump exemplified this imperial mentality, issuing demands and threats as if the world were his personal fiefdom. He ordered the execution of alleged drug traffickers in Caribbean waters without trial or evidence. He commanded Vladimir Putin to agree to an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, as though Russia were a vassal state. He even demanded that Brazilian President Lula da Silva drop charges against Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right politician accused of attempting a coup.

This is not diplomacy; it is imperial arrogance in its purest form. As Sachs notes, such behavior stems from a toxic blend of stupidity, historical amnesia, and contempt for international law. The U.S., with only 4.2% of the world’s population, continues to imagine it has the divine right to rule the remaining 95.8%. Its military planners openly speak of “full spectrum dominance”—the ambition to control every domain of warfare, from land and sea to air, space, and cyberspace. No other nation on earth — not Russia, not China, not Iran — articulates such a strategy. It is a uniquely American pathology.

Yet history has moved on. The world of 2025 is not the world of 1945. The United States no longer holds uncontested military or economic supremacy. The unipolar moment is over, and multipolar reality has arrived. China has surpassed the U.S. economically and possesses a formidable military that no Western coalition could hope to subdue. Numerous countries now possess nuclear weapons, making large-scale invasions suicidal. Pentagon war games repeatedly reach the same conclusion: in any conventional conflict with China, the United States would lose.

Nor can the U.S. claim superiority in Europe’s proxy war against Russia. The conflict in Ukraine has revealed that the combined military might of NATO—supposedly the greatest alliance in history—cannot defeat Russia on its own borders. Despite unprecedented aid and intelligence sharing, Western powers have been humbled by a nation they long dismissed as backward and fragile. Like David against Goliath, Russia has exposed the limits of Western militarism and the hollowness of its propaganda.

Meanwhile, the rise of digital communication has shattered the West’s monopoly over information. Once, Washington and London could script the global narrative through newspapers, Hollywood, and network television. Today, social media and independent journalism allow the world’s majority to challenge those narratives in real time. The lies that once justified wars and coups are now exposed within hours. The empire’s ideological armor is cracking.

And yet, the rulers of the old order refuse to accept this new reality. They continue to act as though history has not moved on, as though the colonial empires of yesterday still command obedience. They’ve not gotten the memo that humanity has entered a new era—one in which power is shifting toward the Global South, and the earth itself demands a politics rooted in balance rather than domination.

What is at stake is nothing less than planetary survival. The cancers of imperialism and Zionism threaten not only justice but the ecological stability of the planet. Endless war, fossil-fueled militarism, and corporate greed are devouring the biosphere. The U.S. Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of oil on earth. Israel’s occupation of Palestine includes the theft of scarce water resources. Together, these systems of domination represent metastasizing tumors that drain the life force of our shared home.

But cancers, as any doctor will tell you, can be treated. The cure begins with truth-telling—with naming the disease for what it is. It continues with radical surgery: dismantling military bases, ending illegal occupations, canceling debts, and redistributing resources to repair centuries of exploitation. And finally, healing requires transformation: the emergence of a new consciousness that recognizes the oneness of humanity and the sacredness of the earth.

These are the issues voters should insist be addressed. These are the issues both Republicans and Democrats avoid.

The era of empire is ending, whether Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge it or not. The world is awakening to a different vision of civilization—one based on cooperation rather than conquest, on justice rather than greed. If the United States and Israel wish to survive, they must abandon their imperial pretensions and join the human community as equal members, not self-appointed masters.

For the good of the planet—for the sake of life itself—it’s time to stop pretending that the cancers of empire can coexist with the health of the earth. Healing requires courage, repentance, and a willingness to imagine another way of being in the world. The future belongs not to the empires of the past, but to those who choose life, solidarity, and planetary wholeness.

Tag: Jeffrey Sachs

What Yet Another U.S. Surrender Looks Like — This Time in Ukraine