Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn Diesen discuss Europe's push for a new military bloc and what it means for war with Russia
Glenn Diesen interviews economist and professor Jeffrey Sachs on the transformation of European security architecture and the drive toward a new European military bloc.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Jeffrey Sachs on the collapse of post-Cold War security cooperation and the emergence of a new European military project that explicitly excludes Russia. Sachs argues that a historic opportunity in 1990 — Mikhail Gorbachev's offer of a "common European home" and the explicit promise that NATO would not expand one inch eastward — was deliberately abandoned in favour of American hegemonic strategy, driven in part by Zbigniew Brzezinski's grand chessboard doctrine. Sachs traces NATO enlargement through three waves, identifying the 2008 Bucharest summit as the decisive breaking point, and argues that the US-backed Maidan coup of 2014 locked in the trajectory toward war. He describes the current European push for an independent military bloc — one that includes Ukraine but excludes Russia — as outright madness, driven by Eastern European Russophobia, German historical self-unawareness, and British imperial nostalgia, and warns it is a path toward war with a nuclear superpower.
Sachs also highlights a revealing 1994 television debate between former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock and Henry Kissinger on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Matlock urged against NATO enlargement, warning it would poison relations with a cooperative Russia. Kissinger argued for enlargement despite conceding Russia posed no threat and that enlargement would antagonise it — justifying the move on the grounds that the US should act while Russia was weak. Sachs uses this exchange to illustrate what he calls "anticipatory antagonism" as the core logic driving US policy.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The 1990 opportunity: Gorbachev's common European home and the broken promise
Glenn Diesen: After the Cold War we essentially had two options for a European security architecture. We could either have an inclusive European security architecture which included Russia, in which we pursued security with other members instead of security against non-members like a military alliance. But we instead returned to bloc politics with NATO expansion. I think it was primarily to keep the US in Europe, but either way it predictably revived this Cold War logic. Now we see that European leaders are recognising that NATO is fragmenting, and the solution — instead of going back to those agreements we had in the early 1990s — appears to be developing a new NATO that is a European NATO, which should include Ukraine but not Russia. This time without US protection. This is starting to feel like an almost determined march to war with Russia. How do you make sense of this?
Jeffrey Sachs: In 1990, as you say, there was an option on the table that was extraordinary — absolutely historic. It was put on the table by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and he meant it. I know — I watched, I was there, up close. His proposition was a common European home. A common European home that he said stretched right across Asia — from Rotterdam to Vladivostok, as it was put. The idea was that the divisions between Europe and the Soviet Union should be ended, the Cold War should be over, there would be internal reforms in the Soviet Union — democratisation and demilitarisation — and there would be a fundamental change of the security architecture: the disbanding of the Soviet military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, and at most an end to NATO as any kind of expansionist or offensive operation.
Indeed, the promise — absolutely explicit — made by Germany and the United States in February 1990, in pursuit of German reunification, a formal end to World War II, and a response to Gorbachev's offer, was that NATO would not move one inch eastward. That commitment was undoubtedly made, no matter what is claimed today by those who defend NATO enlargement. What was on the table was the concept enshrined fifteen years earlier in the Helsinki Final Act as indivisible security — that there would not be bloc security, that no country would join an alliance that would threaten a neighbour, and in particular no country would join an expanding NATO that would threaten those outside of NATO. This was clear, it was on the table, and it was rejected.
Why NATO expanded: investment security, hegemony, and the Brzezinski doctrine
Jeffrey Sachs: What happened instead, despite the commitment made very clearly by Germany and the United States in 1990, was that NATO expanded — and ultimately this led to the ongoing war in Ukraine. So why did that happen? I think there are two reasons, and those two reasons go back to even the origin of NATO.
One reason was to keep the United States in Europe as a security defender of Europe — but against whom? The Soviet Union wasn't an enemy. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in December 1991, dissolved into fifteen former Soviet republics and now fifteen independent nation states, there was no threat. But some parts of Europe — particularly the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that had just come out of Soviet domination — said, "We want the United States to stay in to protect us against any kind of Soviet or Russian revanchism." These demands were heard especially in Central Europe: in Czechoslovakia at the time, then the Czech Republic, in Poland, in Hungary. We want Europe to be protected still by the United States, even though there was no evident or real threat at the time. There could be no more Soviet invasion — there was no Soviet Union. Russia was absolutely looking inward at internal restructuring and reform. It was dismantling the military-industrial complex. I know that. I was there. I saw that. That wasn't a gimmick — that was a reality. Russia was begging for simple cooperation, for peaceful investment, for turning what had been a military-industrial industry into a civilian industry. That option was turned down.
Interestingly, Germany played a major role in pressing for NATO enlargement for a different reason. German companies wanted to invest next door — in Poland, in Hungary, in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, in Slovenia and so forth — and they said, "We'll feel safer about our investments if these are also NATO countries." So Germany reneged on the clear, firm, unequivocal commitments it had made to achieve reunification and to win Soviet support for unification. It immediately started to call for NATO enlargement, probably to protect new commercial investments being made in neighbouring countries.
But there was a second idea — this was not the only reason for NATO enlargement. The United States chose NATO enlargement also as a policy tool. For what? For hegemony. The idea was that NATO would become not a defensive alliance against a now non-existent Soviet Union, but the military branch of US overseas power. NATO enlargement became part of the new unipolar world that American strategists decided they would create with the fall of the Soviet Union.
In other words, the United States also made a choice. Should it make peace with Russia and see a recovery of Russia to, let's say, great power status — not a belligerent country, but a powerful country, a country of seventeen million square kilometres, roughly twice the size of the United States — or would the United States attempt to keep Russia down, maybe divide it, but at a minimum ensure that it could never rise again as any kind of threat, even though it wasn't threatening anybody? The United States chose that approach.
While European countries — especially Germany and the countries of Central Europe — said we want more NATO, the United States also decided yes, that's a good idea, not to protect those countries, but to project American power. The chief proponent of this idea, the chief ideologue I would say in the 1990s, was Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was a very smart man, a very interesting man, but he didn't like Russia and he did not want Russia to have a strong, even if peaceful, standing. Perhaps as a Polish American, he reflected Poland's long history of anti-Russian sentiments dating back to the eighteenth-century partition of Poland and even wars that went back to earlier centuries between the Polish-Lithuanian Empire and the Russians.
Brzezinski definitely had no sympathy for Russia. He wanted to see it weak. He wanted to see it divided. And he saw NATO enlargement as a core strategy for that. In his very interesting, provocative, and absolutely wrong and dangerous book of 1997, The Grand Chessboard, he played out the US geopolitical game of NATO enlargement. He said that Eurasia is at the centre of the world and Ukraine is the geographic pivot of Eurasia — he who controls Ukraine controls Eurasia. China was seen as a secondary power at the time, not of any real interest to the United States. The question was Russia and what to do about it. In The Grand Chessboard and in an accompanying article written for Foreign Affairs, Brzezinski said we should aim for a weak Russia, we should aim for the expansion of Europe and NATO — both the economic and the military side — to Ukraine. "Russia without Ukraine can never be an empire" was Brzezinski's basic formula. So Ukraine became a prize, a geopolitical prize. If we take Ukraine, then we also banish forever any Russian pretensions to great power status.
Brzezinski in his musings went on to the idea that maybe Russia would just end up dividing — maybe it would be, as he put it, a loose confederation of three component parts: a European Russia, a Siberian Russia, and a Far Eastern Russia. These were delightful musings for Mr. Brzezinski. Russia basically disappearing as a strong state, being a pliant state, maybe one where American companies could gain access to Russian resources, but certainly one where Russia would never pose a threat.
So these were the two lines of thought for Europe: keep the United States in — it gives us security; for Germany in particular, expand NATO, it helps us invest in neighbouring countries because they'll have clear military security as well as eventual membership in the European Union; and for the United States, pieces on the global chessboard to ensure what was the new and clear policy after 1991 — but in a sense always the policy of the United States since 1945 — and that was global hegemony. Between 1945 and 1991 the Cold War intervened and there was a superpower rival, but after 1991 with no superpower rival on the scene, global hegemony came into clear view. The end of history had arrived, and NATO would be a very convenient instrument for the expansion of US power into Eurasia.
The Kissinger interview: anticipatory antagonism
Jeffrey Sachs: I like to refer people to a fascinating debate that took place on American television in 1994, on what was called the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, with a very fine newsman, Robert MacNeil, who interviewed two people about NATO enlargement. One was the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock. The second was Henry Kissinger.
Matlock said, "Don't expand NATO. This could poison relations with Russia. This could undo the goodwill that is clearly here." Matlock said if things go sour later on, we'll have plenty of time to regroup, to reinforce security, to build our defences. But don't antagonise Russia. Russia is trying to be cooperative, friendly. It's a bit down on its knees right now because of economic crisis — don't shake up a fragile but positive path to peace.
Kissinger said, "No, NATO must enlarge." And he was asked by MacNeil, "Why, Mr. Kissinger — is Russia a threat?" And he said, "No, no, Russia's not a threat." Well, is Russia threatening any of its neighbours? "Oh no, Russia's too weak. It's not threatening any of its neighbours." Well, Mr. Kissinger, would NATO enlargement antagonise Russia? "Yes. Yes, it would." Well, Mr. Kissinger, if Russia's not a threat and it would antagonise Russia, why would you do it? And Kissinger gave the classic imperial answer. He said, "Well, if you can't antagonise them when they're weak, what are you going to do when they're strong?"
So it was anticipatory antagonism. In other words, we have to get in there when we're strong and they're weak. We have to provoke. We have to take the territory we can, take the ground we can. Kissinger later on started to say NATO enlargement to Ukraine was not a good idea. Even Brzezinski later said that, I believe. But at the time in the 1990s, they were just gung-ho for American power.
The three waves of NATO enlargement and the 2008 breaking point
Jeffrey Sachs: The Russians were really aggrieved as NATO started to enlarge, but it came in three waves which we should understand. When the first wave of NATO enlargement came in 1999 — with Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, really pushed by those three countries as well as by Václav Havel and others who also wanted NATO protection — the Russians swallowed hard. They were in a weak position. This was still a long way from their borders. They were unhappy. They thought they had been cheated, which they had been, but they went along with the NATO enlargement in this first wave.
When President Putin became president, he was not antagonistic to Europe or to the United States. Famously, he explored Russia actually joining NATO, and then found that no — you don't understand, NATO is against you. This only became apparent later on.
The second wave of NATO enlargement brought NATO to Russia's borders — in the north, in the Baltic states. The wave in 2004 was seven states: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the Baltic region, and Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This was now real national security territory. The Black Sea was being taken by NATO. The Baltic states were being taken by NATO. And this 2004 expansion came in the wake of America's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, which I think really shook the ground, because now the nuclear balance was being undone by the United States as it unilaterally walked away from the treaty. So 2004 was a very, very bad expansion and it put Russian backs up tremendously. That's when they said, "Don't you dare come further." That's when President Putin said at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, "Enough. You've cheated. You've reneged. But don't come further."
And of course the United States being the United States, and Europe at that point not being too unhappy about all this expansion, committed at the Bucharest NATO summit that Ukraine and Georgia — Georgia, a state in the South Caucasus, in the belly of the South Caucasus, a real security concern for Russia — would also join a North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was not defending against anything. It was just expanding.
The 2008 NATO summit was the breaking point. You can even trace it hour by hour in Angela Merkel's memoirs, because she knows — she knows that the NATO commitment to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia was a casus belli. It could lead to war. She knew it. She resisted a specific timetable because she was afraid, but she gave in to American pressure. That was when Europe lost it all, in my view. When the cautious leaders of Europe said, "Okay, NATO is going to enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia" — that wasn't about defence. It wasn't even about investment security. It was just about American hegemony. It was an American project. It was pushed on Europe. Europe went along. When Angela Merkel folded her hand at the end of the first day of the NATO summit in 2008, that's when Europe lost it. And that's where we are today.
It took a US-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014 — the Maidan coup — to bring to power a government that even wanted NATO, because the vast majority of Ukrainians sensed they didn't even want this. They were neutral. But the US backed a coup led by western Ukrainian far-right paramilitaries that took over the government, and then the United States and Ukraine from then on were intent on NATO enlargement.
By the time the United States lost interest in this project — because Russia stood up to it and fought back and said, "No, NATO is not going to enlarge into Ukraine" — the Europeans now take this as their grand project. And this comes back to your opening remark: Europeans are talking about a military alliance that includes Ukraine. If they do so, they are simply choosing war with Russia. It's nuts. Look at a map. Ukraine should be neutral. Period. This is the way to peace. And the Europeans are rejecting that for reasons I cannot fully fathom. But it's crazy.
Europe's failure of security imagination
Glenn Diesen: As you said, the Europeans back then were at least cautious. They knew that taking these steps — expanding NATO, especially to Ukraine — would create a war. And after all this time at the end of the Cold War, trying to replace bloc politics with indivisible security, they actually had it. But they wouldn't take yes for an answer. They knew the risk of reviving bloc politics. They knew that a Europe without Russia would inevitably become a Europe against Russia. This is why it's so hard to understand what is going through their minds, because this new military bloc can't create hegemony. It is definitely not going to create anything that looks like security, because a European military bloc will instigate conflict but without American protection. Which begs the question of what the purpose is. And if you see this together with other initiatives — all these European countries including Germany pushing drone programmes, mass production of long-range drones for the explicit purpose of striking deep into Russia — they keep talking about deterrence and helping Ukraine. But the Europeans have gone to war against Russia. It's difficult to understand what the purpose is.
Jeffrey Sachs: Let me try to give you my explanation. First, let me say it's madness. It's suicidal. It's a path of war. So what I'm about to say is explanation, not justification. I'm trying to understand what is going on, because this is crazy. Europe is girding for war with a nuclear superpower. Crazy.
So what is going on? Part of it is really the mindset of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was under Soviet domination for roughly forty-five years, and there is a visceral hatred and fear of Russia. A lot of this is driven by the Baltic states, driven by Poland — certainly much less so by the Czech Republic or Slovakia, which actually resists all of this, or by Hungary, which has been resisting this, or by Bulgaria and Romania. But the Baltic states and Poland are Russophobic to the core. That's part of their long history. It's part of their Cold War history. It reflects a tremendous lack of understanding of history and a radical unwillingness to understand anything from the Russian perspective. It's very, very sad.
Even the Cold War — maybe we can discuss this another time — had its roots in terrible misunderstandings and security dilemmas. Russia was looking for protective space. Again, just like now, the United States and Britain were not interested in giving protective space to the Soviet Union. They wanted a remilitarised Germany. So lots of mistakes were made that led to the division of Europe in the Cold War period. But from the mindset of the Eastern Europeans, that history is what's driving them now — that Russophobia born of their experience from 1945 to 1989. I think it's a huge mistake, a huge failure of understanding history, a huge misreading of everything going on right now.
I fear this is one major part of the explanation. And then in Brussels, the European project depends on keeping these new entrants happy, so they don't want a politically divided Europe. Who is their chief foreign policy spokesman? An Estonian of complete Russophobia. This is crazy — for the European continent to go with the most Russophobic ideas as its guidelines. But that's what they're doing, in part for internal cohesion in Europe.
Germany's abandonment of Ostpolitik
Jeffrey Sachs: But there is a second matter, Glenn, that I think is really, really important. Germany is failing its historic role right now of making a European peace. For decades, German chancellors understood: make peace with Russia, make peace with the Soviet Union. This goes back to Ostpolitik with Willy Brandt. It continued with Helmut Schmidt. It continued with Helmut Kohl in 1990. It continued with Schröder. But it began to fail when German industry said, "Expand NATO so we can invest" — that was the beginning. Then it failed with Merkel's lack of will to resist NATO enlargement. She knew intellectually this was dangerous, but she went along with the United States. That is rather regrettable.
And then it got worse and worse. Scholz became nothing but a factotum of the Biden administration — not a peep of any thinking about how dangerous this situation was. And Merz is even worse. Merz is almost an open warmonger. Shocking for a German chancellor, actually. Completely shocking.
So in addition to the Eastern European fears — understandable but wrongheaded in my view — there is Germany's lack of self-understanding, its lack of historical awareness, its failure to understand that Germany broke its own commitment to the Soviet Union and then to Russia, and that Germany is key to indivisible security in Europe. You have Merz now just openly saying we need to prepare for war. Why? It's shocking. It's such a bad misunderstanding of Germany's real needs and real place in the world. It's actually terrifying in a way.
Maybe Merz also sees an economic dimension to this — the retooling of industry for war-making. God forbid. Military Keynesianism. Is this really what Germany is about right now? Germany is losing its industrial base. But what Merz is doing is going to possibly provoke a disastrous war while leaving Germany even further behind economically. It's completely the wrong track.
So all of this is to say that I see two strands at work right now. Most of Western Europe is not so much in this agenda. Eastern Europe — absolutely, or much of Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Poland in particular — is pushing this Russophobic line. Germany, absurdly and tragically, unaware of its own history, is now even championing this idea. And then always in the background one has to add British Russophobia, because Britain to my mind is madness — imperial nostalgia to this moment. Even as Starmer goes down the drain, they put Ukraine as a great national project because they have hated Russia since 1840.
So just to add one coda to this: at best we have the classic security dilemma, where Europe is taking steps it calls defensive that are going to lead to war because they are really offensive in what they're doing. What we see is a complete lack of political and security imagination in Europe. What started as a misguided project for Central Europe and for American hegemony has turned into an absolutely profoundly dangerous European project for remilitarisation — and that would be the march to war.
Glenn Diesen: It's incredible that they took all these steps, and how they're also defining the terms these days. If it were all about the terms, that would be horrible enough, but what they put under that category today has clearly nothing to do with the terms. But here we are. Anyway, thank you very much for your analysis.
Jeffrey Sachs: Great. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.