In this interview, Jeffrey Sachs discusses with Judge Napolitano the ongoing Ukraine conflict and Gaza crisis.
On Ukraine, Sachs argues the war stems from U.S. violation of reciprocal security principles, comparing NATO expansion to a hypothetical Chinese base in Mexico. He traces the conflict to decades of U.S. meddling despite warnings from diplomats like George Kennan and Bill Perry. Sachs criticizes Trump’s ambiguous approach, noting his vague “security guarantees” and failure to clearly state NATO won’t expand to Ukraine. He advocates for Ukrainian neutrality, citing Austria’s successful 1955 model.
Regarding economics, Sachs notes Trump has inadvertently united BRICS nations through hostile policies—imposing tariffs on India for buying Russian oil and penalizing Brazil over a domestic court case. This has triggered intensive diplomacy among Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
On Gaza, Sachs condemns Israel as a “lawless, violent, criminal rogue state” committing genocide against 2 million Palestinians. He criticizes Netanyahu’s planned Gaza occupation and West Bank settlements, with Minister Smotrich explicitly stating intentions to prevent Palestinian statehood. Sachs denounces U.S. complicity, noting Trump calls Netanyahu a “war hero” while sanctioning the International Criminal Court. He emphasizes that American public opinion overwhelmingly opposes these policies, demanding recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Streamed live on August 21, 2025
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NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 21st, 2025. As you can see, the good professor Jeffrey Saxs is here with us. Uh, Professor Saxs, we we spent a happy morning together on Saturday at the Ron Paul Institute where I must tell you, you gave a most informative lecture that brought the house down and then you were kind enough to sit on the panel with Colonel McGregor and Ana Parample and Max Blumenthal and that program together with your lecturer has been viewed by about 250,000 of our regular viewers and I’m grateful for for it. Since then, uh, of course, we’ve learned a little bit more about Alaska and we had this Kabuki dance, if you will, in the White House on Monday. All right, that’s background. I mainly want to talk to you about Netanyahu invading Gaza. But before we get there, the US must know that Russia has legitimate sovereignty-based security concerns and would no more accept EU, UK, or US troops on the ground or in the air in Ukraine than the US would accept Russian or Chinese or North Korean troops in Mexico.
SACHS: This is exactly right. All of the issue of the Ukraine war comes down to a basic reciprocity or the golden rule. Uh we should not do in other places what we would not have others do to us in our own neighborhood. We have had the so-called Monroe Doctrine for 2022 years. The Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 by President Monroe, written by his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. It said to the Europeans, don’t meddle in our neighborhood and we won’t meddle in yours. Very important, that second clause, very often forgotten. uh as the United States became its own imperial power uh it was more do as we say not as we do in other words don’t come close to us but we will meddle wherever we want in your neighborhood and of course the war in Ukraine I say of course because anyone who knows the background knows that it is of course though the narrative or propaganda and of the US government is the opposite. But of course, the war in Ukraine came because the US was meddling right against Russia’s border. Medddling in a most direct security sense, which is to push NATO and US missile systems into Ukraine. And not only into Ukraine, into the South Caucus’ region as well. People should look at a map and look at the absurdity uh worse than absurdity, the tragic uh arrogance of the US saying that the country Georgia should also be part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Well, the idea was the opposite of what we would ever tolerate in our own region. That is the United States wanted to surround Russia in the Black Sea region forming literally pincers of Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia to surround Russia where its Black Sea naval fleet is. It’s out of a playbook from the 19th century, believe it or not. It’s the playbook of the British and French empires in 1853 when they launched a war against Russia called the Crimean War. Well, all of this is to say that Russia said, “No, don’t do that.” It said that in the 1990s. It said really don’t do that. In 2007, President Putin said, “Don’t you dare do that.” In 2008, the United States, being the arrogant US that it is, said, “Of course, we’ll do it. Who are you? You’re a third rate power. We can do whatever we want,” and pushed our vassal states uh otherwise known as the European countries to support the US-led expansion of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit. As we’ve discussed many times, there was one little fly in the ointment and that is the Ukrainians didn’t want to be drawn into this proxy war between the US and Russia. So Ukrainians voted for a president who said we’ll be neutral. That was President Yanukovic. Well, the US hates neutrality. And so the US overthrew Yanukovich in February 2014 and the rahrrah yes will be part of NATO regime came including Zelensky to this day. Anyway, the whole upshot of it is the Russians are not tolerating understandably the US and Europe having military presence on their border in Ukraine. And anyone who says, and this is the mantra of the people who don’t think very clearly in the US, “oh, Ukraine has any right to choose what it wants.” It’s not about Ukraine choosing. It’s about if Russia invites China to have a military base in Mexico, if Mexico chooses that, are these people going to say, “Yeah, that’s Mexico’s choice. We’re fine with a Chinese military base in Mexico on our border.” Of course, the United States would not tolerate that. So, this is the point, and this is clear, it’s understood by everyone that has looked closely at this. It was understood by US diplomats going back to the 1990s who told the CIA and the politicians, “Stop. This is crazy. You’re going to get us into deep trouble.” George Kennan, who was the greatest Russia expert of the age, the great statesman, said in 1997, “This is the the biggest conceivable blunder that we’re making to expand NATO. This is going to ruin everything. What should be peace is going to be turned into a new confrontation.”
Bill Perry, who was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, said to Clinton, “You’ll ruin everything.” And Perry thought about resigning in protest because the decisions to expand NATO were so stupid and so reckless. Anyway, here we are, Judge, all this time later, except with a million Ukrainian dead because of this little US adventure.
NAPOLITANO: So when and and we we know that he must have said this, President Trump must have given the unmistakable impression to Prime Minister Starmer, Chancellor Meritz, and President Macron that the United States would participate in militarily in security guarantees. I’m doing air quotes because nobody can really define what that means to the satisfaction of everybody else. He must have known that Putin and Lavough would never accept EU, UK, US troops on the ground or in the air. Then the president said to Fox News the next day, “Well, I didn’t mean boots on the ground. I meant boots in the air.” He didn’t say boots in the air, but reference to American pilots in the air. They’re not going to accept that. Doesn’t Donald Trump know that? Or is he telling the Kabuki dancers who visited him in the Oval Office, who he treated like children, another story for another time, what he thinks they want to hear?
SACHS: Everything is deliberately vague, opaque, smiles. This is why the war didn’t end in 24 hours as Trump said that it would. Because if there were clarity and honesty, the war could have ended in 24 hours. The president of the United States should say clearly, “NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine. There will not be NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. Ukraine security is not going to come through NATO. It’s going to come through Ukraine’s neutrality, which all sides are going to respect because it’s going to be very visible and any violation of that will be understood by the whole world.” And so that’s where the security is going to come from. If the president knew some history or had any adviserss who knew some history, they would know that the neutrality approach has actually worked repeatedly and dramatically well. The most famous example is Austria becoming neutral in 1955 with an agreement with the Soviet Union that the Soviet Union with with would withdraw its troops from Austria on the basis of Austria’s neutrality. That happened and the Soviet troops went home and never bothered Austria again. That’s also the truth. Unfortunately, we don’t have a president who speaks other than by True Social posts that Yeah. that change by the moment. Nobody explains anything. Nobody’s willing to say clearly almost anything. Everything has ambiguity to it deliberately. They think this is somehow clever. All it means is the war goes on and on and on. And one of the reasons is that the United States was playing a game. Of course, the Ukraine in NATO is not core to US security. So what was the US doing? Pushing this. It was pushing NATO enlargement as a game to weaken Russia. Brzezinski spelled it out. You just people have to read. But of course, the whole public narrative of the US government is to keep people away from basic facts. But the whole game that the US would play was spelled out by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997. And the game was to weaken Russia. And it was a game because it’s not core to US security. In fact, it’s created US insecurity by bringing the United States into war with Russia. Now Trump somehow, you know, gets this or people around him kind of get this, but nobody explains it clearly. Nobody. And so everything is like you say, Kabuki theater of what do these words mean? Yes. And Trump, we love you and we love you and we love you and everything is ambiguous and the result is the war goes on day by day.
NAPOLITANO: Before we get to Netanyahu’s latest monstrosities, I want to prevail upon your other field of expertise, which is international economics. Was Vladimir Putin in Alaska in a certain sense there representing BRICS?
SACHS: Well, in in the following strange way, President Trump has united the BRICS countries. The BRICS countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and a number of new members. But the five that I mentioned are the original BRICS countries. President Trump has united them because he has gone after every one of them to a shocking extent. And in the leadup to the Alaska summit, Trump destroyed years of developing closer relations with India. destroyed it almost overnight by putting a so-called security tariff uh against India 25% tariff because India buys oil from Russia as Europe buys natural gas from Russia as the United States buys many things from Russia but they decided to go after India. That pushed India away from the United States. I can only tell you in shortorthhand the reactions in India which I follow very very closely are to have united a country of 1.5 billion people to say the United States is completely untrustworthy. Completely. It united the whole country. Same with Brazil by the way. He penalized Brazil. Why? Because there is a court case in Brazil against the previous president, Bolsonaro. And President Trump said, “I’m going to punish Brazil because of a court case in Brazil.” Well, President Lula, the duly elected president of Brazil, said, “Excuse me, we don’t need an emperor. We have an independent judiciary.” So Trump has put on tariffs against Brazil. And basically what he did was say to all of these large countries, “the US is your enemy and we are untrustworthy because we will punish you as we want.” And then uh the uh the big guns of the administration, Peter Navarro, the advisor to the president and uh secretary of treasury Bessent have gone on a a campaign of insulting India every day. It is shockingly stupid, unbelievable from America’s point of view. What do they think they are doing? Well, what they’re doing is there has been a flurry of diplomacy of Brazil, Russia, India, China meeting each other nonstop in phone calls, visits by foreign ministers, visits by heads of state, calls of heads of state, meetings coming up of Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping coming up in just a few days. Okay, fine. This is American foreign policy? You couldn’t make this up! How inept this is, by the way. It’s unbelievable.
NAPOLITANO: Transitioning to the uh unfortunate and deplorable situation in Gaza, under what conceivable, rational basis and by what moral or legal standard can Netanyahu justify an invasion and occupation of Gaza, which he is apparently beginning as we speak.
SACHS: Israel is the most lawless, violent, criminal, rogue state on the planet. It is committing a genocide. It is starving 2 million people. And it is now proposing to do more. Very explicitly. First to occupy Gaza through another major military operation against a population facing starvation and in the occupied West Bank of Palestine, to establish new settlements that explicitly according to the minister, zealot minister of this government, Smotrich, will destroy any chance for a state of Palestine. In other words, Israel is not only committing a genocide, it is upping the ante right now. It is a rogue state operating completely outside of international law, spitting in the face of the entire world. The American people are overwhelmingly against what Israel is doing. Overwhelmingly. And they are calling for the United States to recognize a state of Palestine to save millions of people who are being starved to death or facing expulsion, ethnic cleansing, murder, and expropriation. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but we have not seen anything so shocking as this in our lifetimes, actually, in recent decades. What is happening right now is utter criminality. What is the US doing about it? It is siding with Israel in everything. It is completely complicit in everything. It sanctions the International Criminal Court, which cites these war crimes. It sanctions the judges of the International Criminal Court. President Trump declares that Netanyahu, who presides over these crimes, is a great person and a war hero. And he calls himself a war hero also for his war on Iran. We are seeing something that is beyond imagining taking place before our eyes. And it is two countries doing it, not one. It is the United States and Israel. And how Trump operates in this way and draws the American people against our will into this is a disgrace. He calls himself a peace president. This is a genocide president.
NAPOLITANO: Not to add to your heartburn, but here is uh Minister Smotrich who with his colleague Ben Gavir are really the lynchpins of the government because if they and their colleagues leave the Netanyahu government, then he has to face the Israeli public and likely loss of his position and resumption of prosecutions. Anyway, here’s Smootrich 4 days ago:
The time has come to fully apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, to forever remove from the table the idea of dividing the land, and to make sure that by September, Europe’s hypocrite leaders will simply have nothing to recognize.
NAPOLITANO: He’s notorious and bold about what they’re doing. They recognize no standards, no humanitarian constraints on their behavior whatsoever.
SACHS: No international law, no international community, no respect for the decent opinions of mankind, as Thomas Jefferson said. Just mass murder, by the way. Mass murder. And the United States is a full party to this.
NAPOLITANO: I was particularly upset when I heard President Trump refer to Prime Minister Netanyahu as a war hero.
SACHS: He’s a war criminal and
NAPOLITANO: He’s absolutely a war criminal.
SACHS: He’s under arraignment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, for war crimes, and his country is uh at the Hague in the International Court of Justice facing charges brought by numerous countries for the crime of genocide. And the United States is every hour, every day, not only a party to this, it is a partner in this.
NAPOLITANO: I have to run, Professor Sachs, I didn’t mean to ruin your morning, but thank you very much. You needn’t apologize for being blunt. The the Israeli behavior calls for blunt speech, whether people are listening or not. A lot of people are listening. Not Trump and his cohorts and not the people that run the Israeli government, but the world is listening to.
SACHS: And by the way, if if American politicians, the ones that aren’t so corrupted or blackmailed, would open their eyes, they would see the American people are disgusted by the behavior of the Congress, standing ovations for this war criminal. Look at the Reuters poll just a few days ago. We are disgusted by the behavior of Washington. It’s Trump. It’s the Congress in the hands of this lobby that is committing a genocide. We’re disgusted. It has to stop. And this is the overwhelming view of the American people.
NAPOLITANO: Professor Sachs, thank you very much. Safe travels and we look forward to seeing you next week. All the best.
SACHS: Thanks a lot.
NAPOLITANO: Thank you. This tough and direct talk is absolutely required in the face of this genocide.
