Under President Donald Trump, US foreign policy has adopted an America First approach – one that many critics argue weakens international cooperation and prioritises transactional relationships over long-term alliances.
Meanwhile, major powers like China, India and Russia have been expanding both their global influence and strategic ties.
So how will the US deal with its waning dominance?
Editor’s note: this episode of UpFront was recorded on June 11th prior to Israel’s bombing of Iran.
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Marc Lamont Hill: U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump has been defined by an “America First” agenda. But what does this mean in a world where the old centers of hegemonic power are shifting?
This week on Upfront, I’ll be speaking to renowned economist and director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development, Jeffrey Sachs.
Jeffrey Sachs, thanks so much for joining us on Upfront.
Jeffrey Sachs: I’m delighted to be with you.
Marc Lamont Hill: You said that we’re now living in a multipolar world, with major powers like Russia, China, and India asserting their own influence—whether that’s economic or political. You’ve also said that the U.S. state is in decline. Can you explain why you think that is, and how that’s come to pass—where we have this new arrangement of power?
Jeffrey Sachs: We have a new arrangement of power because these other parts of the world have made a lot of economic and technological progress. So, China was a poor country 40 years ago. It is now quite a wealthy and technologically advanced country. I’d say it’s at the cutting edge of many of the most important technologies.
How did they get there? Very hard work, very high investment rates, very good strategy, serious planning. They thought ahead, they worked hard at it, and they were successful. This is the main fact.
The second fact is a basic technological fact, which we kind of understood in the Cold War and kind of forgot after 1991—but it’s a real truth every moment of our lives. And that is: because of nuclear weapons, and because other countries have a lot of them, we can’t defeat those countries.
So the world’s intrinsically multipolar in the sense that you don’t mess with another nuclear superpower—it can really wreck your day. And we forgot that after 1991.
Why 1991? That was the year that the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 states. And the American elite said, “Okay, now we really are all alone. We are the world’s sole superpower.”
We treated Russia absolutely stupidly. We abused our power—which was real—but abused it to the point where we ended up having a full-fledged war. It’s in a way a proxy war in Ukraine, but it’s a war between the United States and Russia, actually. It’s not described that way in our press, but it is that way.
And the point I’m making is: you can’t win a war like that. Because if you win, you lose—Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads. It’s not going down. And if you lose on the battlefield with conventional weapons, you lose again.
So this whole Ukraine adventure was about forgetting that there was already intrinsically a multipolar world—simply because there are multiple powers with many nuclear arms that can ruin your day, that can end up destroying our country and the world.
So, the fact of the matter is: the United States is 4.1% of the world’s population. We have approximately 335 million people. The world has 8.1 billion people. There are a lot of other people. They don’t see it the way that Washington sees it—that Washington runs the show.
But I know Washington. Washington, to this day, has the delusion that they run the show.
Marc Lamont Hill: Does that delusion make it hard for the United States to maintain its current footing or even regain power?
Jeffrey Sachs: You can’t regain unipolarity. You can’t even regain the position the United States was in 30 or 40 years ago, in relative terms, because China is China now—an advanced, technologically sophisticated, militarily powerful country. Not an enemy in my view at all, but so powerful that we better not go to war with China. That’s for sure. It would end up either blowing up the world, or defeating us, or doing something totally disastrous.
Do American policymakers understand those realities? Do they understand that India has changed? Because India was, in the American mind, an impoverished country that we could bring around to be enemies of China and so forth—which is what they try to do. They don’t understand. India is making remarkable advances economically and technologically, is a nuclear superpower, has a space program that is very active, and is in the forefront of digital technologies.
So this is the truth of the world—but we don’t understand it. We still make demands. We think we can make trade wars, or we can launch real wars, or we can threaten other countries with this and that. It doesn’t work.
Marc Lamont Hill: Under Trump, the U.S. has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the Paris Climate Agreement. He’s also imposed significant tariffs on allies like Canada and the European Union. What’s your take on the broader impact of these kinds of moves?
Jeffrey Sachs: The idea of the Trump administration is: “We shouldn’t be bound by things like the UN. That’s stupid. We shouldn’t be bound by treaties. We are sovereign. We have power. We should use our power.”
This is, in my view, not very sensible as a kind of high-level approach. It’s a little bit like saying: you go to the traffic light, and the traffic light’s red, and you say, “I’m walking anyway. Who’s going to tell me what to do!” Well, the light’s there for a reason. It’s good to actually regulate the flows in all directions.
Trade rules are not to harm the United States. Trade rules are to act like a traffic light—to make sure that the trade flows in a systematic way, according to rules that are common to all countries.
So I think the basic conceptual idea—“We don’t like the UN, we’re not going to be bound by any of these stupid organizations, we are America”—it’s just not viable.
Marc Lamont Hill: Is there any legitimacy to some of these moves? For example, Trump will say that the UN Human Rights Council is unfair to the United States, that it places an unfair burden on them that it doesn’t on other nations. Or that the climate accords are unreasonable given what they’re asking. What do you say to those kinds of questions?
Jeffrey Sachs: Well, when it comes to climate change, one basic point—well, a couple of basic points. First, climate change is real. Second, it’s really dangerous. Third, it is accelerating. It’s worse than the scientists thought it would be at this point. Because in the last few years, the rate of the Earth’s warming has dramatically increased. And the scientists are trying to figure out what’s going on. But we’re reaching very dangerous levels on the planet. That’s why all the forest fires, the Category 5 hurricanes, many, many terrible things are happening around the world. So that’s all true.
Then comes President Trump’s claim that the Paris Agreement is against the United States. The Paris Agreement doesn’t mention the United States. So it’s not against the United States. It’s an agreement of 196 countries.
What we should be doing is sitting down—with Russia, with the Saudis, with Canada, with China, with India, with other big-emitting countries—and saying, “All of us, we’ve got a problem. What do we do?” That’s what we should be doing—not walking out the door and saying, “You know what? We’re just going to live with it. Climate change is fine.”
This actually doesn’t pass muster if you take even just a little bit of a careful look at it.
What the United States is doing—inadvertently, I’m sure that Trump doesn’t appreciate this—is giving the technological lead over to China. It’s handing it over, saying, “We’re not going to get into things like electric vehicles. We’re not going to get into solar. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. So you have the lead of the future economy of the 21st century”—which China says, “Okay, we will produce most of the electric vehicles in the world, thank you very much. We will produce fourth-generation nuclear, the modular nuclear. We will produce wind, solar, hydro. We’ll have smart digital grids.”
That’s all the things China is doing right now.
Marc Lamont Hill: Let’s talk a little bit on the domestic front. In your 2018 book A New American Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, you wrote that Trump’s “America First” agenda was really about putting white America first—that he’s part of a global wave of anti-immigrant and racist politics.
Recently, Trump unleashed ICE agents on undocumented immigrants, which of course sparked heavy protests in California. There’s clearly resistance to his policies, but do you think that resistance is enough to shift anything?
Jeffrey Sachs: No, not right now. I think we are in for many years of instability in the United States. This is not one day, one week, or one month. This is a pretty deep social divide.
I do believe, if you have to put it down into one fundamental concept, it is racism in the end. This is about the changing racial composition, the changing ethnic composition of America—which is becoming less white over time, and a lot more immigrant, foreign-born, and so forth.
I happen to like that. I love New York City. You hear English once in a while—but you hear everything. And it is that diversity which I think is the greatest strength of America.
But that’s not the view of Trump’s base. And that, I believe, is probably the fundamental motive force. It would be denied, but I think it’s the fundamental motive force.
There is a point, by the way, that I do agree with—rhetorically, not in any of the action—of Trump. I think any country should have borders that are regular and policed. I don’t think a rich country like the United States can have open borders. A billion people would show up. That would not be manageable. That would not be right. It would not work.
So I don’t think the alternative is to say, “No, we don’t have any borders.” I think what is awful about the way things are done is the cruelty of it. And part of the game of this administration is cruelty. They’re trying to shock and awe. They’re trying to scare the hell out of people.
And they are, by the way, scaring the hell out of people. They are arresting my students. I don’t like that, of course. I mean, nobody can like that. And it is to instill the fear factor. That does not make America great. That is really sad. And it’s not a superficial thing, and it’s not something that’s going to go away in a short period of time.
Marc Lamont Hill: You’ve spoken often about integrating African countries more deeply into the global economy. You’ve advocated for the African Union to lead the continent’s development through greater global integration. Given how entrenched global power structures are, how does that become a reality? How does that go from vision to reality?
Jeffrey Sachs: So, great question. And I will predict absolutely that the next decades will be very positive decades for Africa—really. I’m very optimistic, actually, because I think the new technologies will allow for a lot of leapfrogging, a lot of economic development.
Marc Lamont Hill: What kind of work needs to happen?
Jeffrey Sachs: The main thing—absolutely—get every kid in school. Get them a digital device. Get them good online materials for education. Train the young people of Africa. This is number one, two, three, four, and five of economic development.
It raises some issues because very poor countries don’t have the means at hand to get all their kids in school. So they literally cannot fund that by themselves. So I’m trying to work on financing models—ways that they can do it.
Basic idea is quite simple: borrow today, but on very long-term, low interest.
Marc Lamont Hill: Oh, that makes me nervous.
Jeffrey Sachs: No, but I’m going to tell you why. Because the next generation is going to be a lot richer if they get that education. The returns to education are extremely high. They’re about a 20% rate of return—putting a kid from, say, kindergarten up through tertiary education. If you do two-year or four-year post-high school, you get about a 20% compound return.
If you borrow at 2% or 3% real interest rates, and you do that for 40 years, where does the money come from to repay the loan? A wealthy economy.
Marc Lamont Hill: That sounds great, and I love the model. I think what I’m concerned with is that history demonstrates a different kind of outcome. I think about countries like China, for example, that have invested billions into African infrastructure—ostensibly to produce growth and development in the country.
Jeffrey Sachs: It’s working.
Marc Lamont Hill: Yeah, but look at a place like Zambia…
Jeffrey Sachs: It’s working. But I’ll tell you what mistake they make—and I tell them all the time, by the way—which is that they gave Zambia an 8-year loan.
Marc Lamont Hill: I was going to say—they spend so much money on debt repayments that they have to cut social services, healthcare, all this stuff, to pay the debt back.
Jeffrey Sachs: Completely correct.
Marc Lamont Hill: But that’s the history of Africa.
Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, but the mistake is—and it’s China’s mistake also. It’s not a malevolent mistake. It’s not a trap. It is a mistake, though. You cannot finance development on a 10-year loan. Development is a 40-year process. It’s not a 10-year process.
And we are so nasty to tell a poor country that maybe gets the kid from kindergarten to 9th grade, “Now you pay back the loan.” I’m sorry, the kid’s still in 9th grade.
So you need 40-year debt. And what I’m saying to the Chinese government officials—who listen to me and at least hear my arguments—is: just extend these loans for a longer term, at low interest. Make this not due today. That’s crazy. Make it due in 25 years.
Marc Lamont Hill: They do that? I mean, I could see why these superpowers don’t want to do that—it’s in their interest to get repayment.
Jeffrey Sachs: I think that they are willing to do that, actually.
Marc Lamont Hill: Okay.
Jeffrey Sachs: So that is my idea. The other idea, which I don’t like—sorry to say—is the IMF’s idea, which is: “Well, Mr. Finance Minister, it would just be great for all those kids to be in school, but you don’t have the money. And I know you’d love a little electricity, but so sorry, there’s no money there.”
So that, to my mind, is the real poverty trap: you don’t finance the absolute core investment.
But coming back to Africa’s prospects—when I do the arithmetic on my spreadsheets, I find that Africa can grow 7% to 10% per year for the next 40 years.
In 1980, with its 1.4 billion people, China took off. India, with its 1.4—now 1.5—billion people, started about 20 years after China in rapid growth, around 2000.
I want Africa to start now. It’s also got 1.5 billion people. It’s the same size, actually.
Marc Lamont Hill: The additional challenge of being multiple countries as opposed to singular nations…
Jeffrey Sachs: Well, you know, in 1885, in that very polite Congress of Berlin, the European countries—with no Africans present—took the map and divided it among themselves and colonized the whole damn continent. And they left it, in the end, as 55 separate countries on one continent—where there’s one China and there’s one India. That makes governance hard.
And so my point about governance in Africa is: be a union. Really have an Africa Continental Free Trade Area. When you plan your infrastructure, don’t plan it 55 times. Get that rail to connect across Africa. Get the highways to connect. Get the fiber to connect. Think of it as one country. Basically, think of it truly as a union.
Marc Lamont Hill: Let’s move to something less controversial. Let’s talk Israel-Palestine.
Jeffrey Sachs: Yeah, that one’s an easy one.
Marc Lamont Hill: The genocide in Gaza has been going on for a little over a year and a half now. And recently we’ve seen a shift—countries like France, the UK, Canada, even Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz—have been more critical of Israel. Given the scale of devastation, are we at a point where the response we’re starting to see is a case of kind of “too little, too late”?
Jeffrey Sachs: Well, it’s shockingly late, that’s for sure. Because, you know, just on the official count, there are more than 50,000 dead—and mostly women and children. So, a genocide’s been going on all this time, and Europe and the United States were either supporting it actively—as the United States has been doing—or supporting it tacitly by just standing by. Now they’re saying something. They’re murmuring. But God, it’s still far too little. Because what should be said, to my mind, is not only that this has to stop. There was a vote in the UN Security Council just in recent days—14 of the 15 countries said, “Immediate ceasefire,” because people are getting killed massively every day. Civilians. But one vetoed it: the Trump administration.
So, the first thing is, of course, stop this mass killing. But the second thing is: recognize the state of Palestine. No doubt. No negotiations. No peace process. No baloney. No, “We need to get Israel to agree,” because Israel will never agree.
The problem, of course, is that Israel has a completely radical—I think genocidal—government with Netanyahu and Ben Gvir and Smotrich. And they’re mass murderers, as far as I’m concerned. Their goal is not “defeat Hamas.” Their goal is to control everything. This is clear.
They don’t say—and I think it’s the telltale point about Netanyahu—although if you press him, then he would acknowledge it. They don’t say, “We need to defeat Hamas and then we’re going to have a state of Palestine.” They say, “We need to defeat Hamas.” Well, what after that? “Well, it’s none of your goddamn business.” And if you press hard, “Well, we’re going to be there forever.”
Marc Lamont Hill: Well, recently we’ve seen some tensions emerge between Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jeffrey Sachs: Boy, I hope so. I hope so. I hope we’re seeing some tensions.
Marc Lamont Hill: I mean, Trump did not meet with him in his most recent trip to the Middle East, which seems like a big deal. Some people even said it was a snub. If that’s true, does that change anything on the ground in terms of US policy?
Jeffrey Sachs: Look, the president needs to do one thing—basically one thing and one thing only—and that’s to drop the US veto on a state of Palestine. Why is there not a state of Palestine according to international law? For one and only one reason: the US vetoes it. Because membership in the United Nations goes through the UN Security Council. When it came up last year, the US was the only veto. It was actually 12 in favor, two abstained. The United States vetoed. When it goes to the General Assembly, where there are 193 countries, about 185 say yes.
And when I added up the population of those 185, it is 95% of the world population saying yes. So President Trump snubbing Netanyahu is one thing. Not liking him is another thing. But there’s only one operational thing that counts: stop vetoing Palestine’s membership in the United Nations.
And the point that I would make to President Trump and to the American people is: this would be hugely beneficial for American national security because it would bring peace to the Middle East. The reason the wars rage is that there is no state of Palestine. That leads to resistance. That leads to counter-wars. That leads to Netanyahu’s counter-wars or calling on the United States to invade another country, as he has done repeatedly.
If we want peace—which we do—the way to peace is a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. Period. Which 185 countries of the world support.
Marc Lamont Hill: You’ve written about the US belief in its need to dominate and the idea that historically the United States has seen itself as exceptional. In your book on American exceptionalism, which was published during the first Trump administration, you warned that this mindset was not only outdated but also dangerous. Are there any signs that the US’s self-perception is shifting from the exceptionalist idea?
Jeffrey Sachs: Yeah, it’s a very good question. There are glimmers of hope. Our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said—and I nearly quote him—that we are now in a multipolar world. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. That is a very good statement.
President Trump has said he can see President Putin’s point of view—that NATO should not enlarge Ukraine. That is a very good statement. That is absolutely positive.
I want him to recognize the same thing when it comes to the Middle East. I want the president to recognize the same thing when it comes to China. I want the president to make peace with Iran, rather than following Bibi Netanyahu into some bombing mission against Iran.
If those things happen, that would be the recognition that we have some limits, that we’re in a multipolar world, and that we can’t bomb our way out of it.
Marc Lamont Hill: Jeffrey Sachs, thanks so much for joining me on Up Front.
Jeffrey Sachs: Oh, really great to be with you. Thanks.
