The world is on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, largely because of the failure of Western political leaders to be honest about the causes of escalating global conflicts.
The West's basic narrative is embedded in the US national security strategy. The basic US idea is that China and Russia are implacable enemies «seeking to erode American security and prosperity».
These countries are, according to the US, «determined to transform economies into less free and less fair ones, to develop their armies and control information and data to suppress their societies and expand their influence».
US security strategy is not the work of a single president, but of the US security establishment, which is largely autonomous and operates behind a veil of secrecy.
The Western narrative of the war in Ukraine claims that it is an unprovoked attack by Putin in his attempt to recreate the Russian empire.
However, the real story begins with the West's promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards, which was followed by four waves of NATO enlargement: 1999, with the incorporation of three Central European countries; 2004, with the incorporation of seven more countries, including Black Sea and Baltic countries; 2008, with a commitment to expand to Ukraine and Georgia; and 2022, with the invitation to NATO of four Asian and Pacific leaders to target China.
It is time for the US to recognise the real sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world.
Of course, NATO says this is purely for defensive reasons, so Putin should have nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should not take into account the CIA's operations in Afghanistan and Syria, NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, NATO's overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, NATO's occupation of Afghanistan for 15 years, nor Biden's «blunder» in calling for Putin's removal (which of course was no blunder at all), nor US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's declaration that the US war aim in Ukraine is to weaken Russia.
At the core of all this is the US attempt to remain the hegemonic power of the world by increasing military alliances around the world to contain or defeat China and Russia.
It is a dangerous, paranoid and outdated idea. The US has only 4.2% of the world population, and currently only 16% of world GDP (measured in international prices). In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and the G7 population is only 6% of the world population compared to the 41% of the BRICS.
There is only one country whose self-proclaimed fantasy is to be the dominant power in the world: the United States. It is time for the US to recognize the real sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world, instead of the illusion of hegemony.
With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies would avoid war with China and Russia and allow the world to manage the myriad environmental, energy, food and social crises it faces.
Above all, in this time of extreme danger, European leaders should seek the real source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests of all European nations, certainly including Ukraine, but also Russia, which continues to resist NATO expansions in the Black Sea.
Europe should reflect on the fact that not enlarging NATO and implementing the Minsk II agreements would have prevented this terrible war in Ukraine. At this stage, diplomacy, not military escalation, is the real path to European and global security.
* Mr Jeffrey D. Sachs is a professor at Columbia University, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at the same university and chairman of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as an advisor to three UN Secretaries-General and, currently, serves as a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
