The 200-Year-Old Lie Pushing Us Towards Nuclear War | Dr. Jeffrey Sachs

## Introduction A conversation about the geopolitics of the 21st century opened on an arresting claim: a two-hundred-year-old precedent—America’s own Monroe Doctrine—has been selectively forgotten while its logic is used to condemn others. The result is a dangerous double standard that propels the world toward confrontation rather than restraint. From this starting point, Professor Jeffrey Sachs advances a provocative corrective: replace the loaded, imperial language of “spheres of influence” with the pragmatic, life-preserving idea of “spheres of security.” That semantic shift is no mere rhetorical flourish. It reframes what counts as legitimate great-power behavior, elevating mutual survival and neutrality over domination and interference. If taken seriously, the proposal would require difficult trade-offs, new treaty architecture, and a cultural shift away from the zero-sum logic that declares every state must be either “with us or against us.” The stakes could not be higher—given the nuclear weapons that now sit at the heart of great-power rivalry. ## Why 'spheres of security' instead of 'spheres of influence'? The difference between a sphere of influence and a sphere of security is not hair-splitting. A sphere of influence implies political control—direct or indirect—over the domestic choices of neighboring states. A sphere of security, as articulated in the discussion, is a spatial claim that a great power should not be threatened by rival militaries, missile systems, or covert operations on its doorstep. Russia’s objections to NATO and U.S. deployments near its borders, for instance, can be read not as a desire to recolonize former Soviet space but as a demand for predictable geographic buffers against potential first-strike capabilities and regime-subversion tools. This reframing confronts hypocrisy head-on. The United States long insisted that European powers refrain from reasserting colonial dominance in the Americas while reserving for itself the right to shape its hemisphere’s politics—an asymmetry enshrined in the Monroe Doctrine. Sachs points out that the doctrine carried a reciprocal promise not to meddle in Europe, a reciprocity now routinely forgotten. The same logic that the U.S. used to bar European military bases in the Western Hemisphere is what opponents of NATO expansion invoke when they ask why Russia should not have comparable assurances around its borders. To treat one side’s security concerns as illegitimate while legitimizing one’s own is not moral consistency; it is geopolitical self-interest dressed as principle. The sphere-of-security concept also aims to disentangle legitimate defensive geography from imperial domination. It would acknowledge the right of small states to sovereignty and internal self-determination while accepting prudential limits on where great powers can deploy offensive systems against one another. The model draws historical precedent from mid-20th-century compromises—Austria’s neutral status after 1955, for example—showing that mutually agreed neutral zones can defuse tensions rather than inflame them. The point is not to hand any power a veto over neighbors’ internal affairs; it is to prevent the kinds of proximate military deployments and covert operations that escalate into existential crises. ## How can we overcome the 'with us or against us' mentality? Breaking the binary “with us or against us” mindset means confronting a deep psychological and institutional reflex in great-power politics. The Melian Dialogue from Thucydides—invoked during the discussion—captures this perfectly: when imperial powers demand allegiance, neutrality is treated as a provocation, not a legitimate stance. Modern equivalents range from doctrinal foreign-policy assertions to the daily incentives of alliance politics and domestic politics that reward toughness over restraint. Several practical steps emerge from the conversation as ways to change this psychology into policy: - Reclaim neutrality as a legitimate international status. Neutrality must be protected not as weakness but as a consensus product. Treaties recognizing neutral zones—geographically specified and verifiable—would reduce the temptation of preventive or preemptive deployments. Historical examples such as Austria show that neutral arrangements can be durable when backed by enforceable commitments. - Insist on reciprocity and limits on forward deployments. States should negotiate clear lines: no foreign missiles, bases, or offensive command-and-control systems within defined distances of another nuclear power’s borders. Reciprocal concessions are harder to reject politically, because each side gains the same protective buffer. - Strengthen verification and transparency. Trust-building cannot depend on faith. Inspections, technical monitoring, and mutually acceptable verification mechanisms—modeled after arms-control regimes—would make spheres of security concrete. The cost of verification is small compared with the risk of catastrophic miscalculation. - Empower small states to defend their neutrality. Neutrality must be credible. That means small states or buffer zones must be able to defend their airspace and diplomatic spaces from being used by third powers as springboards for aggression—whether through posture, defensive arms, or international guarantees. Qatar’s recent vulnerability as host to negotiating teams demonstrated how hosting great-power resources can make a state a target; a conscious neutrality policy would minimize such exposures. - Rethink alliance structures and doctrine. Alliances that automatically expand military footprints or demand uncompromising alignment exacerbate the “us or them” dynamic. Allies should develop protocols that allow for neutrality options and respect neutral zones without treating them as vacuums to be filled. - Take realism seriously but not as fatalism. Some scholars argue great powers inevitably clash over zones of influence. That is a cautionary tale but not a fatalistic script. Institutional mechanisms, long-term norms, and repeated, well-enforced treaties can create incentives to preserve peace even among competitive powers. The alternative—assuming conflict is unavoidable—becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shifting norms will be slow and often politically contested, but the alternatives are grim: continual brinkmanship and the increasing probability of nuclear miscalculation. The conversation stresses that changing political language—normalizing neutral buffer zones and the language of security rather than influence—is a necessary first move. ## What does renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War signify? Names are not neutral. To talk about renaming a Department of Defense as a Department of War is to reveal an underlying conceptual posture: defense or deterrence implies preservation; war implies active pursuit and normalization of violence as a policy instrument. The suggestion—whether made in jest or earnest—illuminates how the bureaucratic and political language of institutions shapes expectations and behavior. A Department of War nomenclature would signal an open embrace of military solutions and expansionary power. It would legitimate doctrines that prioritize offensive capabilities, create incentives for preemptive strategy, and legitimize a permanent war footing in peacetime. Even without a formal name change, the long-term trend toward militarized institutions with vast budgets, permanent overseas bases, and intelligence operations that meddle in foreign polities creates the same cultural effect: normalization of intervention. The remedy is not merely linguistic. It requires institutional reforms that invert incentives. Concrete reforms include: - Rebalancing budgets toward diplomacy, development, and multilateral conflict resolution. Defense spending can coexist with robust civilian instruments of statecraft; the balance has simply been skewed for decade

The 200-Year-Old Lie Pushing Us Towards Nuclear War While the West decries Russia's demand for a "sphere of influence," it ignores its own 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine. Is this hypocrisy pushing us toward a major war? And could the solution be redefining the concept as "spheres of security"? To discuss this and more, today I’m talking again to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a Professor at Columbia University, advisor to countless governments, and a prolific analyst—I’m absolutely sure you all know him very well. We explore his powerful argument for creating neutral buffer zones between great powers to prevent catastrophe. We also break down the dangerous "with us or against us" logic driving current conflicts, the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, and why understanding history is crucial to our survival in the nuclear age. Links: Jeffrey Sachs' essay mentioned in the video: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/p/sachs-and-mearsheimer- on-spheres Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:00:31 - Why 'spheres of security' instead of 'spheres of influence'? 00:17:54 - How can we overcome the 'with us or against us' mentality? 00:30:14 - What does renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War signify? #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Neutrality Studies. Today we're here with an update from Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, who recently wrote a very important essay on what he calls "spheres of security," an approach to squaring the security circle of the 21st-century multipolar world. He's here to update us on this and on what's going on otherwise. Jeffrey, welcome back. Great to be with you, Pascal. Great having you, and really, congratulations on that essay you wrote. The link is, of course, in the description of this video. Can you maybe tell us why you came up with the idea of conceptualizing not spheres of influence, but spheres of security? #M3 We hear a lot of resistance to spheres of influence, which is taken to mean, in US political parlance, that big powers lean on small countries in their neighborhood and regard those countries as part of their sphere of influence. By the way, the United States does that nonstop, but it criticizes any other power that would do the same as the United States does. The claim from the US and European side is that Russia is trying to insist on a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and especially in Ukraine right now, and that that is illegitimate. My point is something else, and that is that what Russia has been saying—and I think consistently for 35 years—is that what Russia is concerned about is not interfering in the internal affairs even of Ukraine, much less Central and Eastern Europe, but not -- 1 of 9 -- having Russia's own security threatened by the encroachments of the United States into its near neighborhood. This is completely different. What Russia is saying is that there needs to be a geographic sphere around Russia that protects Russia against US missile systems, the US military, the US CIA operating freely to destabilize or to overthrow the Russian government—which, after all, has been a stated aim of the CIA for decades. And what Russia is saying is there needs to be space between us and you, and Ukraine is that space. So there are two interpretations of what Russia is doing in Ukraine. One interpretation is that Russia is trying to recreate its empire, either formally or informally, and that it regards Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence. And I think that this is wrong factually, and it certainly is not what Russian leaders have been saying since 1990 and 1991, which is that they do not want the United States threatening Soviet and then Russian security by putting U.S. weapon systems, missiles, and military bases on the Soviet border when it was, in 1990, under discussion, and on the Russian border since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Now, I therefore propose that we distinguish very clearly—analytically, in practice, in treaties—the concept of a sphere of security that is a legitimate claim; not only legitimate, but a completely prudential claim of a big power not to have other major powers involved right on their doorsteps with military or other security agency means that could be first-strike capacity, decapitation strikes, or subversion and covert regime change operations, and that big powers sensibly declare a sphere of security around themselves in which other great powers should not tread. Now, I have to say this idea is—and I distinguish that from spheres of influence in the pejorative sense, as it is widely used, at least in US and European political parlance—to mean that Russia should not own and operate Ukraine as a vassal state, or other states in the neighborhood, and that Russia should not be allowed to claim a sphere of influence over its neighborhood because those countries don't want that kind of internal interference. Again, I want to state without question: the United States interferes directly throughout the Western Hemisphere in the latter sense—in the sense of a sphere of influence. It repeatedly overthrows governments, subverts governments, it has just put a bounty on the head of the president of Venezuela, it has warships in Venezuelan waters, it has threatened Panama, it repeatedly subverts the internal affairs of Western Hemisphere countries and of countries in other places. So even when the United States objects to any claim that Russia has or seeks a sphere of influence, it's hypocritical. But what I do want to say is that the United States made this distinction over 200 years ago, in effect, between a sphere of security and a sphere of influence, because the Monroe Doctrine, delivered to the US Congress by President James Monroe on December 2nd, 1823, said that the United States would regard it as a direct threat to US security if any European power meddled in the affairs of the newly independent countries of the Western Hemisphere. What isn't remembered, by the way, about the Monroe Doctrine is that the United States also said, "And we, the United States, will not interfere in the affairs of Europe." -- 2 of 9 -- So it's a reciprocal proposition. That claim in 1823 has been repeated again and again over the last two centuries, including by Donald Trump at the United Nations—as I sat in the UN General Assembly listening to him a few years ago—and he repeated the Monroe Doctrine. That is a claim of a sphere of security. It is a claim that we do not want Russian military bases in Mexico. We don't want Chinese military bases in Mexico. We did not want Soviet military bases in Cuba. We nearly went to nuclear war over that in October 1962. The United States is run fundamentally by hypocrites and dunderheads, by people who have no principles, or by people who are idiots. So I just want to be absolutely clear. I have no tolerance for American foreign policy at all. The only two presidents who have made sense of this in modern times have been Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Maybe John F. Kennedy was killed because he made sense about the call for peace. The rest of our presidents, including our current dunderhead, and including other U.S. presidents, have argued that Russia has no security interest in what happens in Ukraine, no say in what happens in Ukraine, and after all, is only after a sphere of influence to subvert Ukraine's sovereignty. So the United States refuses to recognize exactly what it claims for itself in the Western Hemisphere. And incidentally, let me add another real dunderhead. I'm sorry to use the term, but these days I feel like we're ruled by idiots. And we should say it clearly, because we don't deserve to die at the hands of these idiots who are going to lead us to nuclear war. And I'm talking about Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, who explicitly said last week that Russia has no say in who stations what troops and what weapon systems in Ukraine. After all, Ukraine's a sovereign country; it can do what it wants. This is the opposite of the Monroe Doctrine. This is the opposite of common sense. And this is the opposite of what I am proposing, which is that we legitimize, understand, and accept as a matter of utter prudence and survival that great powers should not sit on the necks of other great powers, that nuclear superpowers should give some space. It doesn't mean to tolerate their misbehavior. It means to give some space so that we don't provoke a nuclear war. And specifically— and I'll just end here and turn it back over to you, Pascal—the United States should not be in Ukraine. The United States should not be arming Taiwan. That's also the same sphere of security for China. And China and Russia should stay clear of the Caribbean and Mexico and Central America with their military bases. We should keep the great powers far enough apart that we are not triggering World War III. And that's the idea. #M2 I couldn't agree more. And it is very important here to state that your concept of spheres of security is a passive one—not one in which one country controls that place and decides its affairs, but one in which that place passively contributes to the security of one and the other state. And very importantly, the people who deny this right to Russia, or who deny that Russia should have something like that in Ukraine, are the people who are not only in favor of a sphere of interest for -- 3 of 9 -- the United States, they are in favor of the next step, which is a sphere of interference for the United States. The United States is allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of Ukraine in order to help Ukraine— whatever justification you want to use. And the Maidan and so on, of course, are just ways for the U. S. and the West to "help" Ukraine in order for it to become, in the end, a subservient vassal state— of course, one that is run by the CIA, right? The CIA and the U.S. military are still now, in Germany, with top-level generals still running a good part of the war against Russia through Ukraine. So Ukraine is not just a sphere of interest where the U.S. says what it would like to happen; it's where it actually implements its policies. And the opposite of that is what you're proposing, and... One more thing. The spheres idea is, of course, one in which you have centers—power centers—and around them emanate these spheres. And the place where the spheres meet should be passive in order to create stability between them. So we are closer to a concept of caesarenity, and how sovereignty then interacts in these different spheres, than we are to a clear-cut, "here my border starts and here is yours." It's this appreciation that security is a reciprocal identity that depends on each other and not just on one or the other side. #M3 And that fits exactly with your idea that neutrality can be a key for mutual security. The idea, which the Soviet Union had—and I was reminded of this because the great historian Jeffrey Roberts sent you and me one of his articles from 2002—was about the ideas of a very senior Soviet diplomat of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, Maxim Litvinov, who envisioned that Europe had to have essentially a zone of neutrality that ran through, in the north, Sweden and Finland, and then down through Austria to the Mediterranean. This would not be a zone in which the Soviet Union would aim to dominate, nor, as he thought, would the British Empire be the dominant power aiming to dominate. Rather, it would be neutral and peaceful. Neither side would claim it as a sphere of influence. But it would be a sphere of security for both sides, actually, in that it would both protect the West from their fear of a Soviet incursion and protect the Soviet Union from its fear of a repeat of the Nazi Germany invasion of the Soviet Union. And it made absolutely perfect sense. It was implemented in the case of Austria in 1955, when the S