SIGN THE OPEN LETTER HERE
September 17, 2023
Dear President Hughes, Chair Bognar, Members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Board:
We the undersigned appreciate your work against the spread, possession, and use of nuclear weapons. We are stunned, however, that you are honoring Jeffrey Sachs as a “Distinguished Peace Leader.” His attitudes, interviews, and speeches concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine do not further peace. To the contrary, he repeats simplistic cliches which put a false light on a complex and dangerous situation. He has appeared with and lent influence to an overtly belligerent advocate of Russian aggression, Vladimir Solovyov, who has openly called for a nuclear first strike against Ukraine.
We are appalled that despite decades of work educating the public about the dangers of thermonuclear weapons, NAPF has apparently overlooked this failure of Jeffrey Sachs to be in any manner helpful in reducing the risk of nuclear escalation. To the contrary, his every word and deed with regard to Ukraine only fuels misunderstanding, suspicion, and fear.
As you know the fighting in Ukraine is not just another war. There is a real risk of it leading to the use of nuclear weapons primarily as a result of nuclear bullying by the Russian Federation.
Russia has moved nuclear warheads into close proximity to Ukraine’s cities and made overt threats to use them. Already Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian nuclear power plants threatens massive releases of radiation.
Sachs has appeared five times on the program of Russian propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, only criticizing actions of the “West” and Ukraine’s government: March 9, 2023, June 3, 2023, June 22, 2023, July 12, 2023 and on August 2, 2023. Sachs never mentions–let alone condemns–Solovyov’s calls for the use of nuclear weapons against Ukrainians, which Solovyov made on November 21, 2022, January 25, 2023 , June 22, 2023 and August 22, 2023.
In March 2023, scores of economists wrote to Sachs in an open letter noting Sachs “repeated appearances on the talk shows of one of the chief Russian propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov (apart from calling to wipe Ukrainian cities off the face of the earth, [Solovyov] called for nuclear strikes against NATO countries)”.
How can an organization dedicated to avoiding nuclear war honor someone who will appear on a program with a man who has repeatedly advocated for the immediate use of nuclear weapons?
In an article in June 2022 in Tikkun, Sachs baldly states, “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement.” Putin’s project to restore the Russian empire is not mentioned, nor are the majority of Ukraine supporters “neocons.”
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in its own Declaration of Concern notes that the Russian attack is a violation of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Sachs never brings that up. Instead, he talks again and again about “NATO enlargement” and “hegemony.” One would think the invading force that crossed the border into Ukraine came from Poland or Estonia. The views Sachs expressed in Tikkun were not a one off. Sachs repeatedly claims that Putin was provoked into war. Repeatedly Sachs touts the supposed power in offers of negotiations and claims that, “President Putin wants political outcomes that, in my view, absolutely can be met at the negotiating table.” Sachs maintains this even while Putin has annexed large and resource-rich sections of Ukraine, which Putin says Russia will retain “forever.”
We don’t agree that Sachs is a peacemaker. He’s an economist, one with a dreadful record in Russia; the social conditions that Sachs helped to create there were are widely viewed as contributing to the rise of the Putin kleptocracy. Sachs’ “shock therapy” formula for Russia led it to sell off collectively owned institutions and rush to a poorly planned, makeshift capitalist system. Russia ended up with “tycoon capitalism.” For the Russian people this was a social disaster with Russia’s population declining very significantly.
We call on you to withdraw the designation of Jeffrey Sachs as a “Distinguished Peace Leader” and to withdraw his invitation to speak at your meeting.
Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign 