“To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
These are the words of American economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs during his speech at the European Parliament on February 19.
The event, “The Geopolitics of Peace,” was hosted by former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General and current Member of the European Parliament Michael von der Schulenburg.
In his hour-long address, Sachs proposed that the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine — the war that began in February 2022 under what Russia called a “special military operation” — was an avoidable conflict if Ukraine had declared neutrality instead of seeking membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
He also claimed that Russia had no territorial ambitions even during the earlier 2014 conflict, when it occupied Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, stating, “Russia was negotiating during 2010 a 25-year lease to 2042 for the Sevastopol naval base. That’s it. There were no Russian demands for Crimea or for the Donbas.”
Sachs criticized NATO’s “open door” policy as provocative for its willingness to accept new members without regard for Russia’s security concerns. He argued that NATO’s eastward expansion, particularly moves toward Ukraine and Georgia, directly provoked Russia’s response.
He also dismissed the idea of NATO as a purely defensive alliance, claiming it became an instrument of U.S. power projection after the Cold War. Likewise, Sachs said that the conflict reflects Europe’s failure, blaming its blind alignment with U.S. foreign policy instead of developing its independent diplomatic solutions.
He described U.S. foreign policy as reckless, rooted in a belief in “unipolar” American dominance — meaning the idea that the U.S. should lead the world without compromise. Sachs said there is no real diplomacy, only a continued effort to assert U.S. control through media messaging and “game theory” thinking, where American leaders assume rivals’ strategies instead of engaging in actual negotiation.
He believes the war is close to an end because re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump would prefer a negotiating stance, seeking a settlement rather than carrying a losing war into a second term, similar to how Trump ended the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan in 2020 during his first term.
