The majority of the world does not want or accept U.S. hegemony and is prepared to face it down rather than submit to its dictates, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams
The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated
Brzezinski was decisively wrong, and his misjudgment helped to lead to the disaster of the war in Ukraine. Russia did not simply succumb to the U.S. plan to expand NATO to Ukraine, as Brzezinski assumed it would. Russia said a firm no, and was prepared to wage war to stop the U.S. plans. As a result of the neocon miscalculations vis-à-vis Ukraine, Russia is now prevailing on the battlefield, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead
I agree with Sachs that Brzezinski was wrong. Sachs does not present the actual reasons why. Brzezinski claimed Russia was incapable of creating an anti-hegemonic collaboration in 1997. That was true, and it was true in much of the 2000’s. At one point that obviously stops being true, Brzezinski’s statement isn’t evergreen that’s simply now how history works.
However Brzezinski’s statement could have been evergreen had the United States asked Russia to join NATO in 2000’s. The NATO-Russia Council was the first step towards making Brzezinkski’s statement evergreen. In 2000 there was a real potential for Russia to join NATO, Putin asked about an invite, NATO said a noncommittal “just apply” response. Had NATO rolled out the red carpet for Russia like they do for Ukraine now, Brzezinksi would have been right forever.
The United States would have extinguished Russia as a competitor had they allowed them a seat at the table comparable to other “Great Powers” of Europe. They did not. When the US picks partners like this, they want bootlickers and grovelers. They want the opposing party to know that they are subservient and to act accordingly, that the US is their savior. That’s been the interaction between the US and most NATO expansion countries in the 2000’s.
The US simply shot themselves in the foot with this one. The reality is that the US is incapable of running an amazing hegemony because of its obvious political neuroses. Those are problem #1, they can’t even handle the #2 problem of the obvious contradictions in the world order and capitalism because they’re stuck viewing it through a neurotic lens of their ideology. Those first order problems of neuroses have weakened the hegemony long before the second order contradictions start nipping at the seams. Those second order contradictions have been nipping, especially with Turkey.
The problem is that this was never possible because NATO is fundamentally subordinate to the US. All the other members are vassals as opposed to sovereign states that are equal partners. Russia was never going to subordinate itself to the US in that way.
I don’t think that’s true. Turkey has never been a subordinate to the US not to the same degree as any EU country. They’ve always been a wildcard in NATO. Likewise Russia especially Putin’s Russia would be easy to subordinate. Putin needs flattery, he wants recognition that he’s part of the club. Had America flattered Putin through official means 95-2010, Russia would be in the tank. There’s very little actual ideological difference between the two countries ruling parties. If Putin was treated like a France level ally, where they’re allowed their own sphere of influence and can influence/direct NATO operations, Putin would have fallen in line.
Just think about it, Russia-Chechnya is a copy-paste of a NATO counter terrorism operation. If Russia was in NATO and could say, hey lets do counterterrorism in Chechnya, whenever the US said “jump” they’d say “how high?”
The west was literally trying to get regime change in Turkey in the last election, and Turkey is now shifting towards BRICS as a direct result of that. Meanwhile, Russia is a far bigger and more powerful country than Turkey with a large military industry that rivals the US. That alone would simply not be acceptable to US because it would diminish its own power within NATO.
The goal of the west has always been to try t Balkanize Russia and then plunder the resources. This is what they tried to do during Yeltsin years and what Putin ultimately put a stop to. While Russia is capitalist, it does have its own interests and it does not see itself as an inferior to the west. That’s the real point of contention.
The goal of the west has always been to try t Balkanize Russia and then plunder the resources. This is what they tried to do during Yeltsin years and what Putin ultimately put a stop to. While Russia is capitalist, it does have its own interests and it does not see itself as an inferior to the west. That’s the real point of contention.
I agree with this. My point is that I think this would also been possible through tiered neocolonialism by giving Russia a seat at the table.
The west was literally trying to get regime change in Turkey in the last election, and Turkey is now shifting towards BRICS as a direct result of that.
Turkey has always been playing both sides. It’s bought Russian weapons throughout the 2000’s to the detriment of NATO weapons dealers. Turkey has never been a rank and file loyal soldier. The US will always have to do this intranacine management within NATO, esp. with Turkey. In the case of France it has been resisting this kind of management and instead letting France manage it’s own colonial legacy through NATO. France has resisted many hegemonic actions spearheaded by the US and the US has simply done internal propaganda against it and has left it mostly alone. My point is that this would have been a viable strategy for managing Russia within NATO and would have worked a lot better against it because unlike France who has a restive population, Russia has a captive population and is well-managed through its hypercapitalist oligarchy.
Not only that but tighter economic ties that would come through NATO would actually have allowed America to over time disassemble Putin’s stranglehold within the country had they played the long game. Building up a cadre of oligarchs that overshadow Putin’s power would have been a lot easier with NATO alliances, because everyone would get rich and many would not have wanted to rock the boat. The West’s best tools of hegemony are economic and cultural. By attempting to isolate Russia they are fighting with one hand behind their back.
Putin’s positioning in the 2000’s was that he wanted a France-style relationship with NATO, not a Turkey one. He wanted NATO to roll out the red carpet as a show of that. That’s ultimately why Russia and NATO fell out. Putin sought his own way.
The other benefit to this is that by giving Russia a France-style seat, it diminishes the power of France. France has special rules because in reality France is the leading military power of continental Europe. The UK is just a tag-a-long. By having 2 large military powers in continental Europe in NATO, the US can easily play one off of the other.
I agree with this. My point is that I think this would also been possible through tiered neocolonialism by giving Russia a seat at the table.
And I’m saying it wasn’t possible because that would be directly at odds with the interests of the existing domestic oligarchs and the political class in Russia. They had no interest in handing the country over to the west.
Turkey has always been playing both sides.
Right, and that’s why there are growing tensions with the west now. The only reason Turkey gets concessions is because NATO wants to have access to Black Sea, and that makes Turkey strategically important. However, the attempts at regime change clearly demonstrate that the west is not content with the status quo.
France may have resisted more than the rest of Europe, but it is politically captured by the US to a huge extent today. As we saw during recent elections, the Atlanticist centre was not displaced even despite being deeply unpopular with the public. France continues to pursue self destructive policy that benefits US in regards to Russia and China.
It’s also worth noting that what you’re describing is precisely the strategy that US took towards China. The US leadership thought that if they brought China into the fold, created economic ties, and so on, then eventually it would become a vassal. It didn’t work in China and it wouldn’t have worked in Russia.
All that said, it is true that Putin very much wanted to have friendly relations with the west at the start. I do think that if NATO was capable of treating Russia with respect then good relations would’ve been possible. However, my original point is precisely that equal relations were never on the table.
existing domestic oligarchs and the political class in Russia. They had no interest in handing the country over to the west.
I think this only holds true if you copy-paste Putin and the oligarchs from 2024 onto Putin and oligarchs in 2000. Putin is the reason oligarchs in Russia found ideological consistency and power ranking. During the years of Yeltsin and the early years of Putin, oligarchs were hypercapitalist outgrowths of organized crime, corrupt Soviet politican holdovers, and a new class of educated liberals leveraging knowledge and forging western ties. All of these people simply were stealing from the same pot, and trying to kneecap each other. They were all essentially vors, the oligarchs didn’t care about “handing the country over to the West”, they cared about personal enrichment. In fact the educated liberal oligarchs would have loved more Western ties.
In this critical period if the US blitzed strong economic ties and huge foreign direct investment, they would have easily bound Russia. If every oligarch regardless of position was offered significantly good deals from the US overnight, Putin would have either been forced into making a real mistake to capitulate to it or he would have had to fight it during a time where he was relatively weak.
The end of this period really started with the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, that’s the point where Putin’s direction and dominance finally crystalized. Compared to the jailing of Khodorkovsky the killing of Boris Nemtsov or any other actions against dissidents were swatting away flies. If in 2000 the red carpet was rolled out Russia would have been captured, and would only need the typical maintenance that the US offers to Gulf States.
Right, and that’s why there are growing tensions with the west now. The only reason Turkey gets concessions is because NATO wants to have access to Black Sea, and that makes Turkey strategically important. However, the attempts at regime change clearly demonstrate that the west is not content with the status quo.
Sure Turkey is embattled, but it’s restrained. That’s the point. By allowing Russia to slip out of NATO’s grasp Russia doesn’t have the same restraints.
France may have resisted more than the rest of Europe, but it is politically captured by the US to a huge extent today. As we saw during recent elections, the Atlanticist centre was not displaced even despite being deeply unpopular with the public. France continues to pursue self destructive policy that benefits US in regards to Russia and China.
Marcon’s unpopular policy decisions such as raising the retirement rate, and neoliberal economic reforms wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in Russia with the public. Just look at how quickly Ukranians who are much more annoying as a population capitulated to IMF capture of their farmlands despite the existence of constitutional barriers. Conscription is deeply unpopular in Russia since WW2, and that barely creates resistance 3 years into a meat-grinder war.
It’s also worth noting that what you’re describing is precisely the strategy that US took towards China. The US leadership thought that if they brought China into the fold, created economic ties, and so on, then eventually it would become a vassal. It didn’t work in China and it wouldn’t have worked in Russia.
The problem with the US-China relation is the ultimate problem of the US as a Capitalist Empire. Capitalists and the runaway displacement of manufacturing were responsible for the US screwing up keeping the lid on China. In 1995-2003 Russia would not have represented a real shift away from US manufacturing given your previous observation and my agreement with that Russia is in fact a gigantic strip mine for natural resources.
However, my original point is precisely that equal relations were never on the table.
I agree, however I think that they weren’t on the table more from the US side, than they were from the Russian side.
I think it’s important not to fall for the whole great man theory here. Putin undoubtedly played a role in shaping Russia, but the reason somebody like Putin got in charge was rooted in the historical and material conditions after the collapse of USSR.
I do think you’re right that if US treated Russia differently during the period after collapse, and actually helped Russia then the relationship could’ve been very different today. Sachs talks about this a lot incidentally.
There was a fundamental difference in perspective however. Russia didn’t see itself as being defeated by the west. They initially saw dissolution of USSR as a peaceful gesture, and a step towards finding a common ground with the west. However, they quickly found out that the west wasn’t interested in that and was looking to dominate. That’s when the relationship started to turn sour.
Sure Turkey is embattled, but it’s restrained. That’s the point. By allowing Russia to slip out of NATO’s grasp Russia doesn’t have the same restraints.
It’s true, but a big difference here is that Turkey was never in the same class as Russia which the biggest nuclear power with a huge military. The two can’t be meaningfully compared.
Marcon’s unpopular policy decisions such as raising the retirement rate, and neoliberal economic reforms wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in Russia with the public.
They very much would I assure you. Labor rights in Russia are still in a far better state than most western countries as a legacy of USSR, this is a great post on the subject https://archive.is/9tMtq
In 1995-2003 Russia would not have represented a real shift away from US manufacturing given your previous observation and my agreement with that Russia is in fact a gigantic strip mine for natural resources.
I agree with that, but I do think the real issue is that Russia sees itself as a sovereign power. That’s where the similarity with China lies. The US can only deal with vassals, and they see sovereignty of other countries as being fundamentally unacceptable. So, I do think you are correct that the problem largely lies on the US side of the equation. Ultimately, the west would have benefited greatly from treating Russia as an equal and using it as a counterbalance to China.
I agree with Sachs that Brzezinski was wrong. Sachs does not present the actual reasons why. Brzezinski claimed Russia was incapable of creating an anti-hegemonic collaboration in 1997. That was true, and it was true in much of the 2000’s. At one point that obviously stops being true, Brzezinski’s statement isn’t evergreen that’s simply now how history works.
However Brzezinski’s statement could have been evergreen had the United States asked Russia to join NATO in 2000’s. The NATO-Russia Council was the first step towards making Brzezinkski’s statement evergreen. In 2000 there was a real potential for Russia to join NATO, Putin asked about an invite, NATO said a noncommittal “just apply” response. Had NATO rolled out the red carpet for Russia like they do for Ukraine now, Brzezinksi would have been right forever.
The United States would have extinguished Russia as a competitor had they allowed them a seat at the table comparable to other “Great Powers” of Europe. They did not. When the US picks partners like this, they want bootlickers and grovelers. They want the opposing party to know that they are subservient and to act accordingly, that the US is their savior. That’s been the interaction between the US and most NATO expansion countries in the 2000’s.
The US simply shot themselves in the foot with this one. The reality is that the US is incapable of running an amazing hegemony because of its obvious political neuroses. Those are problem #1, they can’t even handle the #2 problem of the obvious contradictions in the world order and capitalism because they’re stuck viewing it through a neurotic lens of their ideology. Those first order problems of neuroses have weakened the hegemony long before the second order contradictions start nipping at the seams. Those second order contradictions have been nipping, especially with Turkey.
The problem is that this was never possible because NATO is fundamentally subordinate to the US. All the other members are vassals as opposed to sovereign states that are equal partners. Russia was never going to subordinate itself to the US in that way.
I don’t think that’s true. Turkey has never been a subordinate to the US not to the same degree as any EU country. They’ve always been a wildcard in NATO. Likewise Russia especially Putin’s Russia would be easy to subordinate. Putin needs flattery, he wants recognition that he’s part of the club. Had America flattered Putin through official means 95-2010, Russia would be in the tank. There’s very little actual ideological difference between the two countries ruling parties. If Putin was treated like a France level ally, where they’re allowed their own sphere of influence and can influence/direct NATO operations, Putin would have fallen in line.
Just think about it, Russia-Chechnya is a copy-paste of a NATO counter terrorism operation. If Russia was in NATO and could say, hey lets do counterterrorism in Chechnya, whenever the US said “jump” they’d say “how high?”
The west was literally trying to get regime change in Turkey in the last election, and Turkey is now shifting towards BRICS as a direct result of that. Meanwhile, Russia is a far bigger and more powerful country than Turkey with a large military industry that rivals the US. That alone would simply not be acceptable to US because it would diminish its own power within NATO.
The goal of the west has always been to try t Balkanize Russia and then plunder the resources. This is what they tried to do during Yeltsin years and what Putin ultimately put a stop to. While Russia is capitalist, it does have its own interests and it does not see itself as an inferior to the west. That’s the real point of contention.
I agree with this. My point is that I think this would also been possible through tiered neocolonialism by giving Russia a seat at the table.
Turkey has always been playing both sides. It’s bought Russian weapons throughout the 2000’s to the detriment of NATO weapons dealers. Turkey has never been a rank and file loyal soldier. The US will always have to do this intranacine management within NATO, esp. with Turkey. In the case of France it has been resisting this kind of management and instead letting France manage it’s own colonial legacy through NATO. France has resisted many hegemonic actions spearheaded by the US and the US has simply done internal propaganda against it and has left it mostly alone. My point is that this would have been a viable strategy for managing Russia within NATO and would have worked a lot better against it because unlike France who has a restive population, Russia has a captive population and is well-managed through its hypercapitalist oligarchy.
Not only that but tighter economic ties that would come through NATO would actually have allowed America to over time disassemble Putin’s stranglehold within the country had they played the long game. Building up a cadre of oligarchs that overshadow Putin’s power would have been a lot easier with NATO alliances, because everyone would get rich and many would not have wanted to rock the boat. The West’s best tools of hegemony are economic and cultural. By attempting to isolate Russia they are fighting with one hand behind their back.
Putin’s positioning in the 2000’s was that he wanted a France-style relationship with NATO, not a Turkey one. He wanted NATO to roll out the red carpet as a show of that. That’s ultimately why Russia and NATO fell out. Putin sought his own way.
The other benefit to this is that by giving Russia a France-style seat, it diminishes the power of France. France has special rules because in reality France is the leading military power of continental Europe. The UK is just a tag-a-long. By having 2 large military powers in continental Europe in NATO, the US can easily play one off of the other.
And I’m saying it wasn’t possible because that would be directly at odds with the interests of the existing domestic oligarchs and the political class in Russia. They had no interest in handing the country over to the west.
Right, and that’s why there are growing tensions with the west now. The only reason Turkey gets concessions is because NATO wants to have access to Black Sea, and that makes Turkey strategically important. However, the attempts at regime change clearly demonstrate that the west is not content with the status quo.
France may have resisted more than the rest of Europe, but it is politically captured by the US to a huge extent today. As we saw during recent elections, the Atlanticist centre was not displaced even despite being deeply unpopular with the public. France continues to pursue self destructive policy that benefits US in regards to Russia and China.
It’s also worth noting that what you’re describing is precisely the strategy that US took towards China. The US leadership thought that if they brought China into the fold, created economic ties, and so on, then eventually it would become a vassal. It didn’t work in China and it wouldn’t have worked in Russia.
All that said, it is true that Putin very much wanted to have friendly relations with the west at the start. I do think that if NATO was capable of treating Russia with respect then good relations would’ve been possible. However, my original point is precisely that equal relations were never on the table.
I think this only holds true if you copy-paste Putin and the oligarchs from 2024 onto Putin and oligarchs in 2000. Putin is the reason oligarchs in Russia found ideological consistency and power ranking. During the years of Yeltsin and the early years of Putin, oligarchs were hypercapitalist outgrowths of organized crime, corrupt Soviet politican holdovers, and a new class of educated liberals leveraging knowledge and forging western ties. All of these people simply were stealing from the same pot, and trying to kneecap each other. They were all essentially vors, the oligarchs didn’t care about “handing the country over to the West”, they cared about personal enrichment. In fact the educated liberal oligarchs would have loved more Western ties.
In this critical period if the US blitzed strong economic ties and huge foreign direct investment, they would have easily bound Russia. If every oligarch regardless of position was offered significantly good deals from the US overnight, Putin would have either been forced into making a real mistake to capitulate to it or he would have had to fight it during a time where he was relatively weak.
The end of this period really started with the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, that’s the point where Putin’s direction and dominance finally crystalized. Compared to the jailing of Khodorkovsky the killing of Boris Nemtsov or any other actions against dissidents were swatting away flies. If in 2000 the red carpet was rolled out Russia would have been captured, and would only need the typical maintenance that the US offers to Gulf States.
Sure Turkey is embattled, but it’s restrained. That’s the point. By allowing Russia to slip out of NATO’s grasp Russia doesn’t have the same restraints.
Marcon’s unpopular policy decisions such as raising the retirement rate, and neoliberal economic reforms wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in Russia with the public. Just look at how quickly Ukranians who are much more annoying as a population capitulated to IMF capture of their farmlands despite the existence of constitutional barriers. Conscription is deeply unpopular in Russia since WW2, and that barely creates resistance 3 years into a meat-grinder war.
The problem with the US-China relation is the ultimate problem of the US as a Capitalist Empire. Capitalists and the runaway displacement of manufacturing were responsible for the US screwing up keeping the lid on China. In 1995-2003 Russia would not have represented a real shift away from US manufacturing given your previous observation and my agreement with that Russia is in fact a gigantic strip mine for natural resources.
I agree, however I think that they weren’t on the table more from the US side, than they were from the Russian side.
I think it’s important not to fall for the whole great man theory here. Putin undoubtedly played a role in shaping Russia, but the reason somebody like Putin got in charge was rooted in the historical and material conditions after the collapse of USSR.
I do think you’re right that if US treated Russia differently during the period after collapse, and actually helped Russia then the relationship could’ve been very different today. Sachs talks about this a lot incidentally.
There was a fundamental difference in perspective however. Russia didn’t see itself as being defeated by the west. They initially saw dissolution of USSR as a peaceful gesture, and a step towards finding a common ground with the west. However, they quickly found out that the west wasn’t interested in that and was looking to dominate. That’s when the relationship started to turn sour.
It’s true, but a big difference here is that Turkey was never in the same class as Russia which the biggest nuclear power with a huge military. The two can’t be meaningfully compared.
They very much would I assure you. Labor rights in Russia are still in a far better state than most western countries as a legacy of USSR, this is a great post on the subject https://archive.is/9tMtq
I agree with that, but I do think the real issue is that Russia sees itself as a sovereign power. That’s where the similarity with China lies. The US can only deal with vassals, and they see sovereignty of other countries as being fundamentally unacceptable. So, I do think you are correct that the problem largely lies on the US side of the equation. Ultimately, the west would have benefited greatly from treating Russia as an equal and using it as a counterbalance to China.