Sachs on US Foreign Policy

The wiki page on the Foreign Policy of the United States states that —

The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America . . . are “to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community”.

All very noble and praiseworthy no doubt. But what exactly is it in practice and is it anything as advertised? Even if we were interested in understanding it (unlikely at best), we don’t really have the time to figure that out. But we should have at least some passing familiarity with the US foreign policy’s impact on the world. Spoiler alert: the impact is extremely terrible.

I am an enemy of the state. It is part of my nature. The state is to some extent a necessary evil but the bigger the state is, the greater evil it is.

The US state is the biggest and therefore the worst. It is shockingly bad. I am persuaded that the US government is the greatest evil ever.

***

A little over a week ago, Tucker Carlson published a conversation he had had with Jeffrey Sachs on his X channel. Tucker is a gifted journalist and immensely successful. He’s a highly opinionated anti-woke, Christian conservative. I do agree with him on many (but not all) political and social issues. He’s moderately intelligent and well read.

But he is woefully uneducated in basic science and economics. That handicap doesn’t appear to have hurt his career. Recently he claimed that there’s no evidence of evolution and anyway, he said, evolution is a just a theory “even after 200 years.” Stupid and ignorant.

Anyhow, Tucker gets around. A few months ago, Vladimir Putin granted him an interview. Tucker did OK in the interview. Some people roundly criticized him and accused him of being a mouthpiece for the Russian dictator.

I thought that it is important to listen to Putin and hear him tell his side of the story. The Western media is too eager to paint the leaders of “enemy” states as irredeemable, misguided villains.

But this is about his conversation with Sachs. I know Sachs is a very competent economist. Some years ago he was listed in the “Top 100 Most Influential Public Intellectuals of the World” and has deservedly earned many other accolades. He toured with Bono to raise money in aid of the poor.

I had met him a couple of times around 2004. That reminds me. In 1997 or so, when I was a grad student at UC Berkeley, I had gone to a talk by Sachs on campus. As we were settling in, two people were busy cleaning up the green boards in the lecture hall before the talk.

Sachs started off by noting that his school (MIT or Harvard, I forget which) is of course great but it was hard to match Berkeley for style. Where else would you have a Nobel laureate and a chief of the Council of Economic Advisors clean the blackboards for you? (George Akerlof and his wife Janet Yellen were the cleaners. Yellen is now the Fed chair.)

Anyway, the Carlson-Sachs conversation is worth a listen. It is about 2 hours 20 minutes long. I found it fascinating enough that I listened to it twice. I present it without commentary. First the link to the X post.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

However since it is just two guys talking, I have a mp3 audio version.

I may come back with a bit of my own commentary. But I will not take any more of your time now hoping that you’d give the conversation a listen.

Good night, goodbye and may your god go with you.

 

Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

3 thoughts on “Sachs on US Foreign Policy”

  1. Tucker is a gifted journalist and immensely successful.

    Hahahahahahahha

    I didn’t realize you were this brain dead Atanu. I mean, seriously. I thought you were an academic and a rational person. But with this single line you exposed your mental illness.

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    1. Jay,

      The word “gifted” means talented, accomplished, having special ability. And “successful” means “having achieved success, wealth, position” and the like. My claim that Tucker is gifted and successful is accurate. Do you have any evidence that contradicts that?

      Perhaps calling me “brain dead” perhaps makes you feel good. If so, knock yourself out.

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      1. Atanu,

        Your semantic dancing around meanings of words is laughable. You point towards “gifted” and “successful”, but you don’t really parse the meaning of “journalist”, which is the key point here.

        Not only Tucker Carlson isn’t a journalist by any definition of the word (you might want to look up the definition and include it in double quotes if it makes you feel better), but his own lawyers argued in court that he isn’t meant to be taken seriously. And a judge ruled the same as well.

        Some people roundly criticized him and accused him of being a mouthpiece for the Russian dictator.

        Yes this is true. He is a mouthpiece for the Russian dictator.

        I thought that it is important to listen to Putin and hear him tell his side of the story.

        “I am an enemy of the state. But I think we should listen to a dictator tell his side of the story by a bootlicker.”

        You are a useful idiot to the Russian propaganda machine. Why is it that the people who claim “libertarian” values are the most subservient to authoritarian regimes?

        Your support for authoritarians like Modi and Trump exposes your hypocrisy. Shame on you.

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        Reply

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