In a wide-ranging Dec. 28 interview on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom” webcast, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University launched a scathing attack against U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his Dec. 7 statement during a press conference with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron. In answer to a question on the Ukraine war, Blinken said in part: “One other footnote on this, and this is more for the American audience. If you look at the investments that we’ve made in Ukraine’s defense to deal with this aggression, 90% of the security assistance we’ve provided has actually been spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that’s produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy. So this has also been a win-win that we need to continue.”
In response, Professor Sachs had the following to say: “The fact that Blinken resorts to this—and the White House passed around fact sheets of where the munitions factories are across the United States—shows the desperation. They couldn’t win on the facts: They lied about the causes of the wars; they lied about the progress of the wars; they lied about the military and civilian disasters of the wars; they lost the argument that this is in the American interest in foreign policy or security or anything like that. And so they resorted to this last desperation of saying you got factories in your district as if this is the best use of the American people and knowhow and technology—is to be making munitions that massively kill people and that do absolutely nothing for the American people other than tragically make us complicit in this against our will and also raise the debt that we’re going to have to pay for all of this as if our workers couldn’t be doing something else.”
He continued: “And I just want to underscore as an economist Blinken’s total phony use of the word investment; investment in Ukraine. You know investment is a term in economics. It means you build some capital which gives you the ability to be more productive in the future. We’re not making an investment in Ukraine. We are destroying Ukraine through these munitions. So the idea that this is an investment—well this is an investment that makes you bankrupt; that kills hundreds of thousands of people ... and is destroying the physical infrastructure. That is not an investment Secretary Blinken, that is a disaster and you should stop!”
