Last weekend, Sen. Carlo Calenda of the Italian Republic cut off American academic Jeffrey Sachs mid-sentence. “You’re lying,” Calenda said flatly. Sachs looked extremely offended. The clip went viral because Calenda refused to treat Sachs’s sophisticated falsehoods as credible arguments.
Sachs is a professor at Columbia University. In the early 1990s, he advised Russia during its transition from the Soviet economy. He argued that the West should provide major financial support to stabilize the country. When the transition went badly and oligarchs captured the economy, he blamed the United States for not delivering enough aid. He seemed to forget that Russia’s collapse came from decisions made in Moscow, not elsewhere. This point, like many other Russian actions subsequently, escaped him. Instead, he now casts Moscow as a victim of Western policies.
Over time, Sachs has become one of the loudest Kremlin defenders and a regular guest on Russian state television. He often sits on Russian state puppet Vladimir Solovyov’s show, where nuclear strikes on NATO capitals are casually discussed. He speaks at Kremlin-aligned conferences and pro-Russian politicians invite him to repeat his message at high-profile venues, including briefings at the United Nations and appearances in the European Parliament. His positions have earned him praise beyond Russia. And it’s not surprising that China honored him after he praised Beijing. Sachs benefits from American media echo-chambers, his Ivy League credentials give him credibility, and his contrarian posture offers the appearance of brave truth-telling to those eager to hear that America is the bad guy.
Sachs pushes a familiar script used by those who want to “understand” Russian President Vladimir Putin and end up embracing anti-American storylines.
He argues that NATO surrounded Russia in order to threaten it, that the United States helped stage Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan protests against a lawful democratic government, and that peace requires Ukraine to surrender much of its territory and sovereignty. He also often cites a supposed NATO promise to Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand eastward. All of these claims are false.
Let’s take the 2014 Maidan protests. These protests began after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected an EU agreement he had pledged to endorse shortly after meeting Putin. In February 2014, more than 100 protesters were shot and killed by the security forces of his government under Russian pressure. Sachs also claims Crimea should remain Russian because Moscow took it in 1783, a principle that would unsettle many European borders if applied broadly. His account omits Russia’s use of force in the 1990s, before NATO ever became an issue in Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.
We can keep debunking each claim, but that misses the point. There is one truth. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor. This is why what Calenda did was right; he didn’t follow Sachs down the rabbit hole and instead had the courage to call a spade a spade.
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Whether Sachs genuinely believes his claims or whether bitterness, as some allege, financial incentives, attention-seeking, or ego are to blame for his positions is unclear. But he illustrates where extremes meet. The left-wing views America as an imperialist oppressor, and the right-wing finds Putin a defender of traditional values against Western “decadence.” The horseshoe closes. Both ends meet in Putin apologism in the service of undermining American power, resolve, and society.
And this is where the danger lies: it encourages Americans to accept a false moral equivalence between their society and authoritarian ones. The distinction is clear. Russia and China oppress their people, while open societies, such as the U.S., despite its imperfections, uphold individual freedoms. Those trying to blur that line are, quite simply, useful idiots.