Jeffrey Sachs: End of the Western-Centric World & Rise of BRICS

Below is the transcript from the YouTube interview between Glenn Diesen and Jeffrey Sachs, titled “Jeffrey Sachs: End of the Western-Centric World & Rise of BRICS,” originally aired on July 15, 2025. 

Glenn Diesen: Hi, everyone. We are joined today by Jeffrey Sachs to discuss the redefinition of America First and the future of BRICS. Welcome back to the program.

Jeffrey Sachs: Great to be with you, Glenn.

Glenn Diesen: The economic dominance of the Western world has been declining for many years, and it appears to have already come to an end. This meant that the US could embrace two different paths. The first being the US scaling back its empire and facilitating a multipolar system in which the US would be, if not the first among equals, one among equals. This appeared to be a possibility under Trump’s America First platform. The other option would be for the United States to fight all other poles of power to restore hegemony. However, then a multipolar system would likely be developed in opposition to the United States. It appears that Trump has, if it was not always intended, shifted to the second path, as he’s now very much making the Russia war his own war, attacking Iran, and encouraging allies to prepare for war, or at least commit to war, with China. What do you see having happened to America First? Was it always destined to be a failure, or was it always a deception? How are you interpreting this?

Jeffrey Sachs: First, let me clarify one major point: the West is not in decline; the rest of the world is catching up. From a historical point of view, modern economic development—meaning the Industrial Revolution, the industrial age of the 19th century, then the age of electricity, the age of the automobile, and now the age of information and the digital age—was led initially by the North Atlantic, what we call the West. Britain was the first industrialized country, the place where the steam engine created industrialization. In the 19th century, the gap between the West, so-called, and the rest widened considerably. This came partly because of advances in technology, literacy, and science in the Western world, and the imperial domination that brought over much of Asia and, by the end of the 19th century, all of Africa.

The West widened its lead through its economic and technological advances but also through the brutal age of high imperialism of Europe in the 19th century and indeed until the middle of the 20th century. At the end of World War II, Europe had basically battered itself to death in two civil wars in the first half of the 20th century. That opened the way for the colonized parts of the world to gain their political independence. This happened, of course, in the late 1940s and 1950s, stretching into the 1970s and, in some cases, the 1980s, depending on whether the European powers fought wars to keep their colonies or let them go through exhaustion or for other reasons.

From the second half of the 20th century, countries were independent for the first time, typically in more than a hundred years. What did they do? They began to catch up. The first thing they did was engage in education, which the European imperial powers did not offer to most of their subjects, certainly not in any quality that would enable their colonies to achieve economic development. I raise this because what has happened is a normal process where Asia, and now Africa, and other parts of the non-Western world are achieving economic development by raising educational standards—the most fundamental part of economic development—building infrastructure, and, in many cases, with China being the most notable in the world, moving from catching up to moving forward by becoming great innovators of new technologies on their own.

This is a normal, healthy, and good process. It’s driving the Western world nuts, especially our nutty government in the United States. Why? Because the Western world came to believe in its superiority over several centuries. When you’re ahead, you say, “I’m ahead because I’m better. I’m ahead because of the God I believe in. I’m ahead because of some kind of intrinsic superiority.” A lot of white supremacy, a lot of religious supremacy, all sorts of reasons have been given in the last 250 years by Europeans and Americans about why they naturally run the world.

We’re at the end of that Western-led world. Truth be told, it’s not only the United States that’s crazy; it’s also Europe. They don’t want to give up these advantages because they came to believe, for a lot of reasons—some absolutely vulgar, some mistaken ideas, some sophisticated fallacies, like the belief Max Weber proposed that Protestantism would be the key to economic success, so even the Catholic regions of southern Europe would not be able to catch up. All these reasons led to a mindset that I think is still very much alive in Europe and the US: an air of superiority, a belief that, “How dare the Russians threaten us? They’re not quite us. They’re not quite Europe.” And China, my God, the deep antipathy to China is shocking to me. I believe, basically, it’s racism in the end, because it’s widely held and taken for granted in the United States, especially in the political class. It’s part of our deep-seated history. By the 1880s, there were anti-Chinese immigration laws. The racism and antipathy have been there for a long time.

Now that China is a rival innovator in the world, having surpassed the United States in industrial output by quite a large margin and being the low-cost producer of much of what the world needs—whether it’s zero-carbon energy, new electric vehicles, or 5G digital technologies—China is wonderfully adept, competitive, and innovative. This is driving the political class crazy in the United States: “How dare they insult Western dominance?” To my mind, your question is almost a question of psychology, not grounded in actual facts about security or threats, but rather an attitude issue.

If you ask me what America First stands for, it stands for “America first and dominant.” Trump exposes this every day, in a cruder and more dangerous way. He believes he can post something on Truth Social, and the world has to respond to it; that he can give orders to Putin, Xi Jinping, Lula, or the BRICS, and everybody will fall in line. That’s his real belief. It’s rather crude at a personal level, but it’s kind of in the air in Washington that, “Oh yes, multipolarity,” as Marco Rubio says once in a while in speeches, but really, America is going to tell the world what to do.

What’s problematic right now is that the rest of the world isn’t going to follow the US line. We have a president who is out of control of law in the United States. He issues executive decrees every day. The Supreme Court has basically said, “We’re not going to stop him.” Congress has said, “We’re pathetic; we have nothing to do with this.” So, we have one person, nearly an octogenarian, who has delusions of American power, giving orders to the world. The orders change by the hour. Some countries are trying to say, “Yes, please, we love you, we respect you, we honor you.” But, in fact, a lot of the world follows President Lula’s line. Although President Lula is just about the only one with the gumption to say it, he said last week, “We don’t want an emperor.” Period. And he meant it. When Donald Trump responded by saying, “Okay, Brazil gets 50% tariffs,” President Lula said, “Okay, we have a reciprocity law. We retaliate. We don’t want an emperor.”

This is where we are this week. It’s rather shocking, rather amazing. It’s not, “Let’s live in a multipolar world, let’s make peace, let’s make business, let’s get along.” It’s more dangerous than that right now. It is an erratic leader who has no institutional control, who both exemplifies and exacerbates this Western delusion of power over the rest of the world—something that is past. It’s already an anachronism. It was true for 200 or 250 years, but it ain’t true today. This conflict between perception and reality is very dangerous.

Glenn Diesen: Your analysis is very spot-on. “Relative decline” would have been a better term, as the rest catches up to the West. It also appears that much of the antagonism stems from the fact that it’s not that the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians are a threat, but rather a threat to the hegemony. It’s not absurd to say Russia should have a seat at the table in Europe. China obviously can’t be broken just because it’s growing too fast, and Iran deserves a role in the Middle East. You mentioned Lula, and this seems like a case of the collapse of American coercive language, as you suggest. In the context of the BRICS summit, Trump sent out a Truth Social post calling the BRICS’ policies anti-American, and on the same day, he also signed and sent tariff letters. I’m not sure if that’s meant to symbolize something, but to what extent is the United States capable of slowing down BRICS? Is this only a counterproductive initiative by threatening countries to abandon BRICS?

Jeffrey Sachs: Listeners should go online and type in “BRICS Declaration Rio de Janeiro” to get the actual text of what the BRICS countries said. It’s good reading, a little turgid as these multilateral documents are, but, unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think the United States is mentioned one time. There’s no sense in which the document is anti-US. What is mentioned repeatedly is the United Nations, the international rule of law, multilateralism, a rules-based order—not according to Donald Trump’s rules, but according to the rules of the World Trade Organization, the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly, or the UN Security Council. That’s mentioned repeatedly. The BRICS sign on to multilateral processes. To call this anti-American only reflects the fact that it is the United States that has walked out of multilateralism. The United States walked out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The United States walked out of the World Health Organization. The United States does not pay its dues to the United Nations. The United States said it opposes the Sustainable Development Goals. In our English cliché, that’s like being opposed to motherhood and apple pie. We’re opposed to sustainable development, to ending poverty, to fighting climate change.

When I say opposed, I mean the US government is voting against UN resolutions that call for the Sustainable Development Goals because, as US spokespeople at the UN say, “This is not in America’s interest.” So, when the BRICS come out for the international system, yes, Donald Trump says, “Oh, that’s anti-American,” because the United States is absenting itself from the multilateral system. I have to say again and again, though, because we use these terms as shorthand, when I say “the United States,” I mean, almost literally these days, Donald Trump—one person. Congress doesn’t say a word; it’s pathetic. As I said, the Supreme Court is basically saying, “Well, the president can do what he wants.” The American public has no say in anything. The American public supports the United Nations, as one opinion survey after another has demonstrated for decades.

We use shorthands of countries, but what we mean is governments. In most cases, governments are institutionalized. In the United States, of course, there is an institutionalized government—it’s the deep state, the military-industrial complex that really runs the US government. It’s personalized in a president who doesn’t rule by law or legislation but by executive order. This is even more true than in just about any so-called authoritarian country in the world that I know of, where, in most countries, there’s at least a ruling council or some kind of group of governors of the provinces or some such institution. In the United States, it’s one person right now who decides 50% tariffs for Brazil, 30% tariffs on this, we tax whatever—the whole international tax system of the United States is being determined by one person, announced on social media. It’s extraordinary what’s happening.

Glenn Diesen: This is not just a concern for his voters or base domestically but also for foreign leaders. Many had hopes they could reach a deal with Trump based on his rhetoric, but the most recent example is Trump seemingly reversing on Russia. He now says Putin isn’t a nice guy after all because he hasn’t stopped the war or agreed to a ceasefire, which is strange because, at the beginning of this presidency, he seemed to recognize the need for a political settlement that included neutrality for Ukraine. That appears to be out the window, and now Putin is a bad man again. It seems Trump is going back to Biden’s policies, approving sending weapons. What do you make of this? Is this simply Trump going back to Biden’s policies, or do you see this as a negotiation tactic? How do you make sense of this?

Jeffrey Sachs: I don’t believe this is a tactic. I think this is a very grave and very dangerous example of what we’re experiencing right now. For a glimmer of a moment, Trump more or less said, privately or through some aides in brief statements, “Yes, NATO enlargement was a bad idea, and it was a provocation that led to this war.” That gave a lot of us—you, me, and others—the hope that, okay, we’re getting to the real issue, which is that this war can be stopped by a clear political settlement in which the United States and NATO allies say that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine, Georgia, or other countries on Russia’s borders. That goes back to plans of the 1990s to surround Russia with military force and render Russia a third-rate power. That was the plan, and Zbigniew Brzezinski laid it out in 1997 in his book The Grand Chessboard, where he has a chapter explaining that, in his view, Russia will be able to do nothing but accept this. That’s the arrogance I was speaking about earlier.

Trump gave a hint, and apparently, his negotiators told the Russians, “Yes, we understand; we want to reach a political settlement.” The US deep state—that’s the CIA, the intelligence agencies, the armed services committees of Congress, the weapons makers, and so forth—erupted: “How can you accept this? This is weakness.” The Europeans—Starmer, Macron, and it was Scholz then, and then Merz—all said, “No, you can’t do this; we fight on, we fight on.” Mark Rutte, now the Secretary General of NATO, who is unspeakably childish in his behavior, first calling Trump “daddy” but also declaring at the recent NATO summit that Ukraine inevitably will become part of NATO.

That message, which was a glimmer of hope for rationality and finding a way for peaceful coexistence—to use an old phrase but meaning staying alive—has gone out the door. What replaced it was this typical demand: “Stop fighting, ceasefire.” They don’t talk about politics. “NATO is inevitably going to go to Ukraine,” says Mark Rutte. The United States does nothing to say, “No, no, that’s not right. You can’t say that.” Quite the contrary, President Trump greets NATO Secretary General Rutte in the White House; everything is lovey-dovey. There’s no politics left, just demands. Trump says, “You stop fighting, ceasefire.” Putin says, “No, we said we need to get to the core of these issues.” So Trump says, “Oh, you’re a bad person. Now we’re going to send weapons to hit you deep inside Russia.”

It’s so unbelievably immature and erratic that you couldn’t imagine a high school game being played this way. We’re talking about nuclear superpowers. This is profoundly dangerous, reflecting this mindset. Trump says, “I told Putin what the answer would be, and he didn’t agree; he’s a bad man.” So, he calls Zelenskyy and says, “Could you hit Moscow?” Apparently, this is what the Financial Times is reporting today. “Could you hit St. Petersburg?” “Yeah, we could, Mr. President,” because Zelenskyy is also the epitome of responsibility that will get us all killed in World War III if this man has his way. This is how the world is right now. It’s very bad. It reflects this extraordinary mix of personalization of global affairs in the United States, the longstanding deep state project, and an arrogance that is absolutely stunning. It’s not just the United States; it’s Germany, France, Britain, and, by the way, Norway joining in the chorus, and many others acting as if, “Yes, of course, we run the world. How dare Putin tell us anything?” They don’t have to talk about politics or political settlements; they just say, “He’s a bad man, and keep fighting.” Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this, and how dangerous it is.

Glenn Diesen: This is my great fear now: not just the Russians but also the Iranians and Chinese increasingly see Trump’s policies as deceptive and his diplomacy as theater. The Europeans follow blindly, whitewashing anything Washington does. It appears they are now willing to forgo hopes of a diplomatic solution with Washington and prepare to play hardball, which is not a good thing for anyone in the world.

Jeffrey Sachs: Absolutely. In this nuclear-armed world, this whole approach is so reckless, so dangerous. The Western world needs to open its eyes to reality. It does not run the show. That doesn’t make it a loser. The United States has every bit of security any country in the world could dream of. In a conventional sense, the US is untouchable. The only danger to the United States of America, the only security issue, is nuclear war. And it seems to be the only path the US is on right now, which is the most direct antagonism of the other major powers in the world in the crudest possible way.

Glenn Diesen: Jeffrey Sachs, thanks so much. I know you’re very busy there in Beijing and probably have a full day ahead of you. Thank you for taking the time.

Jeffrey Sachs: By the way, I’ve been having lots of meetings all over the world, and there’s a lot of concern all over the world, expressed by very responsible people and professional diplomats with long experience. People are not finding this fun, a game, or a joke. They’re finding it very dangerous and destabilizing. We had better get a grip with mature, adult behavior. That’s what I’m hoping someone in Europe can come forward with.

Glenn Diesen: I hope to be able to ask you about your experiences in China once you’re back in New York.

Jeffrey Sachs: Wonderful.

Glenn Diesen: Thank you again. We’ll do that.

Jeffrey Sachs: Great to talk with you.