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0:00this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman in New York
0:05joined by democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez in Chicago hi Juan hi Amy and welcome to all of our
0:12listeners and viewers across the country and around the world China is facing criticism in Europe
0:18after China's ambassador to France questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet States under international law
0:24during a television interview the Baltic countries Lithuania Latvia Estonia
0:30condemned the remarks and summoned Chinese envoys to explain beijing's official position the Chinese foreign
0:37Ministry walked back the ambassador's comment saying quote China respects all countries sovereignty Independence and
0:44territorial integrity The Diplomatic spat comes as China is making headlines across the globe though
0:52maybe not so much in the United States for its diplomatic efforts in late
0:57February China released a 12 point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine on March
1:0410th Iran and Saudi Arabia announced they would restore ties as part of an
1:09agreement brokered by China days later in mid-march Chinese president Xi
1:15Jinping hosted the Brazilian present Luis inacio Lula de Silva to talk about
1:20Ukraine trade and moving away from the U.S dollar Xi Jinping then met with French
1:27president Emmanuel McCall in Beijing during macomb's visit she spoke about
1:32the roles of China and France in world affairs
1:40the world today is undergoing profound historic changes as permanent members of
1:45the U.N security Council and major countries with the tradition of Independence China and France as
1:50promoters of the multi-polarization of the world and the democratization of international relations have the ability
1:57and responsibility to transcend differences adhere to the comprehensive strategic
2:02Cooperative Partnerships between China reciprocity development and progress
2:09practice true multilateralism and maintain World Peace stability and
2:14prosperity while in Beijing the French President Emmanuel macron suggested France and European nations should not
2:21become a vassal of the United States when it comes to Taiwan
2:27France supports the single China policy and the search for peaceful solution to the
2:34situation for that matter it's Europe's position it's a position so it has always been compatible with the role of
2:40an ally but it's precisely why I'm stressing the important of strategic
2:45autonomy Ally doesn't mean being a vassal um it's not because we do things
2:52together that we can't think alone that we're going to follow the people in that are the toughest in a country that's
2:58allied with us when we look at the facts France has lessons to be received from no one be either in Ukraine and saw hell
3:06or in Taiwan China's continued its diplomatic Outreach by offering last week to hold
3:13talks between Israel and Palestine to look more at China's recent diplomatic actions we're joined by
3:19Jeffrey Sachs director of the center for sustainable development at Columbia University and president of the UN
3:26sustainable development Solutions Network he's also served as advisor to three U.N secretaries General and
3:34currently serves as a sustainable development Solutions Advocate under Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez his
3:40latest article published is headline the need for a new U.S foreign policy
3:46Professor Sachs thanks so much for being with us all of the Diplomatic gestures of China
3:55you know the meeting with macron in Beijing with Lula in Beijing brokering
4:01this deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia now offering not only to negotiate
4:08between Ukraine and Russia but Israel and Palestine this hardly gets attention
4:14in the United States India but around the world the headlines are far more
4:20there are far more headlines about this talk about the significance of this and
4:25you if you see a direct parallel between all the Headway that China is making and
4:32increasing U.S hostility towards China thanks Amy very good to be with you and
4:38indeed this is a a crucial topic and as president Xi Jinping said in that
4:45meeting with macron this is a it is a historic Watershed that the world is
4:50living through right now uh what China is after if we view it from China's
4:57perspective is what was also said true multilateralism and what that means are
5:04true multi-polarity another term that they use and that means they don't want
5:10a U.S led World they want a multi-polar world and the basis of that is that the
5:19United States is 4.1 percent of the world population China is 17.5 of the
5:27world population China's economy is comparable to the U.S economy and indeed China is the lead
5:34trade partner for much of the world so China is saying we're there to alongside
5:40you we want a multi-polar world we don't want a U.S led world and while the
5:49United States sometimes talks about a rule-based order
5:54the fact of the matter is that the U.S Grand strategy if we can use that term
6:01of the grand strategists of the U.S state
6:07see our grand strategy in the United States as being dominance and I often
6:14refer to a an article that I think is very clear uh succinct and revealing by
6:23a former colleague of mine at Harvard University Robert Blackwell and esteemed
6:28ambassador of the United States who wrote in 2015 and I'll quote from the
6:33article since its founding the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and
6:40maintaining preeminent power over various Rivals first on the North
6:46American continent then in the Western Hemisphere and finally globally
6:52well China doesn't want the United States to be the preeminent power it
6:57wants to live alongside the United States Blackwell writing in 2015 uh said
7:06China's rise is a threat to U.S preeminence and he laid out a series of
7:11steps that the Biden Administration actually is following almost step by
7:16step what Blackwell laid out already back in 2015 is that the United States should
7:23create quote new preferential trading Arrangements among U.S friends and
7:29allies to increase their Mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China there should be a
7:37technology control regime to block China's strategic capabilities a buildup
7:43of quote power political capacities of U.S friends and allies on China's
7:49periphery and strengthen U.S military forces along the Asian rimland despite any Chinese
7:57opposition this has become the Biden foreign policy China knows it China
8:05really is pushing back but what's very important and interesting to understand
8:11and we've seen it clearly in the Dynamics involving the Ukraine war most of the
8:18world also does not want the U.S as the
8:24as the the global preeminent power most of the world wants a multi-polar world
8:30and does is therefore not lined up behind the United States sanctions on
8:36Russia and so forth and this was also the message of President Lula visiting
8:41China saying to president XI ji ping we as Brazil
8:46also want multi-polarity true multi-polarity and we want peace
8:55for example in the Russian Ukraine war that is based on not a U.S perception of
9:03dominance say nato enlargement but rather a piece that reflects a
9:08multi-polar world this is real it's happening all over the
9:14world and the the fact of the matter is the reason why this is a historic
9:19Watershed is that the underlying economics and technological change have
9:25made it so the the U.S is no longer the dominant World economy and the G7 which
9:33is the U.S Canada Britain France Italy Germany and Japan is actually smaller
9:41than the brics countries in economic size which is Brazil Russia India China
9:47and South Africa so we really are in fact in a multi-polar world but in
9:53ideology we're we're in a conflict uh Jeffrey Sachs I wanted to ask about
9:59that uh you mentioned the bricks of the the uh the the brics bank that is now in
10:08China uh and the president Lula has named Wilma Rousseff as the as the head
10:13of the Brinks back its importance in terms of this multi uh multi-polarity of
10:19in the world economies the the the potential for even the creation of
10:25alternative uh of major currencies to the dollar as a result of the brics
10:30alliance the impact of that uh on uh world affairs
10:36this is a big deal and in fact the United States is withdrawing it doesn't
10:43know it necessarily our politicians don't understand this but our politicians are withdrawing from the
10:50world financial and monetary scene and opening up the space for a completely
10:56different kind of Interest international finance I'll give you an example the the U.S was the creator of the World Bank
11:03but now the U.S Congress won't put new money into the World Bank and because of
11:10that the world bank's actually a quite small institution's got a big name but it's a quite small institution in the
11:17financial scheme of things the U.S won't put more money in the Congress says no
11:22why should we waste our money internationally and so forth and we get a lot of hubbub about that so China and
11:30the rest of the brics say okay we'll make our own Development Bank and they establish the new development bank or
11:37sometimes called the brics bank based in Shanghai and that's just one of the
11:43institutions that is really changing the scene there's the Asia infrastructure Investment Bank aiib based in Beijing in
11:53fact there is as president Lula uh said and it's happening also in the context
11:59of the Ukraine war a move away from the use of the dollar which the United
12:05States has thought well that's that's our race in the whole you know that is our ultimate hold on things because we
12:13can use sanctions we can use our financial control to keep other
12:19countries in line but other countries are saying not so much will trade in
12:24Redmond B we'll trade in Rubles we'll trade in rupees we'll we'll trade in our
12:29own National currencies and they're quickly setting up alternative institutions to do this the United
12:36States doubles down we will confiscate your reserves we will if you don't follow and the other countries are
12:43saying you know if you want to go through the UN and get
12:49really multilateral rules or with you
12:54but but if you want uh to just impose the rules we won't follow along and so
13:02we have this very funny expression called a rule-based international order the United States government uses it
13:09every day but what does it mean who writes the rules and what most of the
13:15world wants in fact is rules written in a multi-polar or multilateral setting
13:22not rules written by the United States and a few friends and allies
13:29I wanted to ask you uh you've been an advisor to uh to the United Nations for
13:35uh quite often the issue of how much longer the permanent members of the
13:41security Council can keep the number to five because clearly Brazil and other
13:46countries of the global South have been saying the U.N needs to be reformed and countries from Latin America
13:53specifically Brazil and Africa should have representation on the U.N security
13:58Council permanent members yes you know the P5 the permanent five
14:05which is the United States China Russia France and the United Kingdom was the
14:12World War II Victor group in 1945. they
14:18wrote Into the rules of the UN incidentally that they would be the permanent Security Council Members and
14:24have a veto over any change in the U.N Charter so it's it's really a group that
14:30gave itself uh power that the other
14:36188 countries of the world look on and say what is this we need change I I
14:43would say the country that is most amazed and frustrated by this in fact is
14:49India India is now the most populous country in the world the United States
14:55has 335 million roughly in the population uh
15:02Britain France uh roughly 60 million India 1.4 billion not on the security
15:11Council a nuclear power a world superpower the president of the G20 this
15:17year really not happy about that uh Brazil
15:23the large largest economy of South America similarly uh not on the security
15:30Council so this has been an issue for more than 20 years the P5 in various
15:36ways have blocked uh particular countries but added up the P5 have said
15:42you know what this is our club we want to stay as the permanent five but I think as we really face the reality of a
15:51it's not just a post-us dominated world but actually a
15:56post-western dominated world because it was the U.S as the dominant power among
16:02the so-called West which means the U.S Britain European Union uh and honorary
16:08Western membership Japan let's say but we're post-western as well as post-us
16:15indominance and these International institutions will need to change or they
16:21won't function in the 21st century and if they don't function it's actually a
16:26disaster for us if they didn't exist we'd have to make them because we need them to function so we also need to
16:35renovate them I wanted to talk about China negotiating
16:40these various agreements um let's turn to Brazil's president Luis
16:46enacio Lula de Silva speaking before his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping
16:54what does Putin want Putin can't keep Ukraine's territory maybe we don't even
16:59discuss Crimea but he will have to rethink what he has invaded also zielinski can't have everything he wants
17:06to demand NATO will not be able to set itself up at the border so this is something we have to put on a table
17:13foreign I think this war has dragged on for too
17:20long Brazil has already criticized what it had to criticize Brazil defends each
17:25nation's territorial Integrity so we disagree with Russia's invasion of Ukraine because it looks like
17:32um Ukraine is on the verge of a major counter-offensive against Russia and in
17:38order to do this needs massive support from Western countries meaning military weapons can you talk about
17:46what China's role is here the peace plan it has put forward but also these other
17:54deals that China is helping to negotiate like the success the successful
18:00rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and then with their uh what they're
18:05suggesting about Israel and Palestine president Lula uttered in a few words
18:12the core of this issue that our most of our media dare not explain to the
18:19American people and that is the expansion of NATO this is a war fundamentally about the
18:27U.S attempt to expand a U.S military Alliance to Ukraine and to Georgia
18:35Georgia's a country in the caucuses also on the Black Sea the U.S strategy going
18:41back decades has been to surround Russia in the Black Sea with Ukraine Romania
18:48Bulgaria turkey and Georgia all NATO members surrounding Russia and its naval
18:56fleet in the Black Sea with a naval fleet that has been the Black Sea naval fleet of Russia since 1783. Russia has
19:05said this is our red line and it has said that for decades and it said this
19:11clearly in 2007 before George W Bush Jr had the I'll call it the harebrained
19:18idea to announce in 2008 and force NATO to announce that Ukraine will be a
19:26member of NATO and this is what president Lula was saying and what president what president
19:33XI ji ping of China has been saying we can't have a war that is essentially a
19:39proxy war between Russia and the United States over the expansion of
19:45the U.S military Alliance right up to a 1200 kilometer and more border with
19:54Russia which Russia views and I would say understandably views as a fundamental national security threat to
20:01Russia keep some space keep some distance that's president Lula's meaning
20:07that's what China means when it says in its peace plan we want a peace plan that
20:13respects the security interests of all parties what that is is code word for
20:20saying make peace end the war but don't expand NATO right up to the border the
20:27American people have not heard an explanation of this all along it's shocking to me because as a close
20:34Observer of this for 30 years this has been the Casas bellai and yet our
20:39newspapers won't even report the background to this but this is why China
20:45South Africa India Brazil are saying we
20:51want peace but we don't want NATO expansion as the meaning of so-called
20:57peace we want the big superpowers to give each other some space and some
21:02distance so that the world isn't on a knife edge that's exactly what president Lula was saying and it's exactly what
21:10the meaning of the Chinese peace initiative is is to say yes absolutely
21:16make peace protect Ukraine's sovereignty and its security but no to Nato
21:21expansion but the Biden Administration won't even discuss this issue that has been the major failing and the reason
21:30why we have not been able to get to the negotiating table in my opinion even
21:35when zielinski said in March 2022 maybe not NATO maybe something else Russia and
21:42Ukraine were close to an agreement and the United States into being with Ukraine and said we don't think that's a
21:49good agreement because the U.S neocon so-called have been pushing for NATO
21:54enlargement as the core of this issue but this goes back to the more General point for us which is that what is at
22:03stake in Ukraine and over Taiwan and many other issues from the point of view
22:09of China or Russia or other countries including Brazil now Saudi Arabia Iran
22:17and others is whether the U.S does what it wants to do or whether the U.S
22:24respects some limits based on what other countries say well this is what we think
22:30so that we need true multi-polarity not U.S dominance alone rules written by all
22:38of us not rules written just by the United States and Jeff sacks we only have a few uh
22:45about a minute left but I was wondering if you could comment on the the parallels between this expansion of NATO
22:53further and further uh East in Europe uh this year marks the 200th anniversary of
23:00the Monroe Doctrine of President Monroe declaring to all the European powers that the Western Hemisphere was off
23:07limits to them coming to attempting to move their forces and their militaries
23:12into Latin America and for these past 200 years Latin America has essentially
23:18been uh the major sphere of influence of the United States uh and yet here we are
23:24saying that Russia has no right to declare that it's immediate uh the
23:29countries in on immediately its borders uh cannot uh cannot uh welcome in uh
23:36NATO troops well yes a little empathy would go a long way would have spared us actually a
23:43lot of Wars but for Americans it would be useful to think suppose Mexico made a
23:49military alliance with China with the United States say well that's Mexico's right what are we going to do about it
23:55or might there be actually an invasion in short order or something like that I
24:01would strongly advise to China and Mexico don't try it at home don't experiment with this but the United
24:08States government refuses that empathy because in other words refuses to put
24:13itself in the position of the other side that's the fundamental arrogance of thinking that you determine the rules of
24:20the world the problem with arrogance is not only the comeuppance from it but you can't
24:27you stumble into terrible crises that you don't even understand because the United States has not been allowed the
24:34public has not been allowed to even think from the perspective of the other side so the analogy is is actually a
24:42very very clear analogy it is what China and Russia and others say all the time
24:49is why have those double standards why don't we actually deal with each other
24:55with mutual respect not with the rules that you write we want to thank you Jeffrey Sachs for
25:01joining us director of the center for sustainable development at Columbia University president of the UN sustainable development Solutions
25:08Network we'll link to your new article the need for a new U.S foreign policy uh
25:14Professor Sachs was speaking to us from Cordova Spain