They say you should never meet your heroes. They might be right.
This week, my university in Mexico hosted the renowned economist and Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs. I had read Sachs’ book The End of Poverty in 2006, and, along with Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion (the latter is a much better book and work of scholarship), these anti-poverty, pro-development (and admittedly mass-audience) tomes inspired me to transition from education to development. I would apply to and attend Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) just two years later and focus my studies on international development. I was going to be a part of this broader effort to save the world.
Those of you who know me will know that I spent the next several years in development work. I interned for UNICEF in Kenya—an experience that convinced me I didn’t want to work for the UN. And I worked for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) full-time in the Dominican Republic and Haiti for three years upon graduating from SAIS—an experience that I loved. Over the subsequent few years, I worked on short-term contracts for CRS in the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Niger, enjoying the work and feeling justifiably proud of our accomplishments in these challenging development environments. But fully aware of the massive, daunting challenges and needs that lingered and remained.
While I left development work in 2014 to pursue my PhD and pursue a career in academia, I always held a soft spot for development work and aid workers in general, who are almost universally good, dedicated, selfless people. So when I heard that Jeff Sachs, one of the most prominent apostles of foreign aid, was coming to my university, I was understandably excited.
I should note at this point that I hadn’t really followed Sachs’ career closely since I initially read The End of Poverty. I knew that he was a world-famous economist in the 1980s and 90s and had advised many governments after the end of Communism on the best ways in which to transition their economies to market capitalism; these projects had checkered success, with some spectacular success amidst equally spectacular failures. I knew that he shifted gears in the 2000s to head Columbia’s Earth Institute with its focus on sustainable development. And I knew that he had been an advisor to the UN on its Millenium and Sustainable Development Goals, which seemed like positive initiatives to me, the former being more successful than the latter to date.
So this was my background knowledge when Sachs sat down to first address a larger group of our students and then a smaller group of us academics later that afternoon. He repeated some fairly standard talking points: he wasn’t a huge fan of the Trump Administration and American foreign policy hubris in general; he believed that the economic convergence of poorer nations with richer ones was and would continue progressing rapidly in this century in a positive trend (while seemingly ignoring the rising inequality within many of these nations that has fueled polarization and populism); and that China was likely if not certain to be the dominant power of the 21st century. None of this struck me as terribly controversial (or particularly insightful for that matter).
And then he went off the rails. In succession, he made three points with which I vehemently disagreed and had me questioning not only his judgment but his motivations. He asserted his firm belief in all of the following statements:
- Ukraine is to blame for the Russian invasion of its country.
- There was no genocide in Xinjiang committed by the Chinese Communist Party.
- The dismantling of USAID, while it will cost lives and close some valuable programs, wasn’t all bad because they were responsible for some coup d’états and actively undermining sovereign governments.
I was astounded to hear what I believed to be a respected scholar utter one horrible take and two outright falsehoods. Let’s break them down one by one.
Ukraine Is to Blame for the Russian Invasion
Sachs, of course, is not the only one to make this claim, as famed political scientist John Mearsheimer (a respected mind) and numerous people within the Republican Party (thoroughly mediocre minds, some of which may have been gnawed at by worms) have espoused this realist position. The thinking goes that Ukraine, in seeking NATO membership, compelled Russia to invade its sovereign neighbor, which Sachs seemed to contend was a perfectly justifiable response. He said this was just basic realist theory (he cited Mearsheimer and proceeded to give a room full of political science profs a feeble lecture on IR theory). He also said, displaying the hubris that was on full display the entire time, that he had personally warned Zelensky against his provocative actions and that the US would never honor its commitments (sadly, he has been proven more correct on this latter contention). In the next breath however, he was boasting about his international credentials and pro-bono work advising the UN, while claiming that he was an internationalist who believed in international law and international norms. Jeff, buddy, you need to bone up on your IR theory. You can’t claim to be a realist one minute and then tout your adherence to institutionalism the next. These are inherently contradictory positions and betray clear ideological inconsistency and hypocrisy on the issue.
As one of my colleagues rightly pointed out to Sachs, his assertion that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame, stripped Ukraine of all agency. If Sachs believed in international law, as he claimed to, where was the respect for Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination? What about the innumerable Russian war crimes and violations of international law? He made no mention of these. Apparently, he felt it was the Russians’ right to invade Ukraine, given the latter country’s expressed desire to join NATO and the EU.
No Genocide Happened in Xinjiang
This was seemingly a flippant, offhand comment about how the Western media “gets it wrong”, but in his vocal, passionate defense of the Chinese Communist Party, he claims that accusations of genocide in Xinjiang were flat wrong. He bases this on his observations having visited Xinjiang multiple times. Say Jeff, who took you around Xinjiang? Did you go on your own? Did you get a Chinese rail pass and tour the countryside? Of course not. The CCP gave you the special Potemkin village guided tour, and you naively bought it hook, line, and sinker. There is a mountain of evidence from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and The New York Times that genocide (or at very least the marginally watered-down “ethnic cleansing”) most certainly did occur. There were the forced labor camps, the sterilization of women, the stealing of children from their families to live with Han Chinese families, and the banning of the Uighur language, not to mention the persecution of Uighurs abroad. This is accepted fact. Shilling for these conspiracy theories that no genocide occurred only serves the false narrative of the CCP.
Beyond this falsification, Sachs claimed that China has had the best policy of any country in the world over the last 15 years. If you dated that sentence from 1980-2015, I might not have disagreed (you know, if you discount massive human rights abuses and the widespread violations of political rights and civil liberties). But in the last ten years, since Premier Xi Jinping eliminated term limits, we’ve seen the quality and consistency of CCP policy nose dive: there was the hyper-aggressive foreign policy (“wolf warrior diplomacy”) that pissed off all of its neighbors; the disastrous zero-COVID policy that tanked the economy; the over-reliance on and financing of state-owned industries at the expense of private entrepreneurship; and the collapse of the real estate and banking sectors due to overexpansion and bad loans. I don’t know, seems like great policy to me Jeff!
Whatabouting the Dismantling of USAID
Sachs then turned his keen eye to the defunding and dismantling of USAID by the Trump Administration. Mind you, this is the person whose central thesis in The End of Poverty was that the world needed an immediate massive aid push to solve poverty traps and promote development. The sort of thing that USAID has been committed to for decades. He correctly asserted that the shuttering of USAID would cost countless lives and close vital programs. I was fully on board there. But then he went into a rant about how USAID has fomented coups and agitated against sovereign governments in poor countries the world over with its pro-democracy programming. What?
To be clear, USAID supports and funds (or did) vital, lifesaving health interventions (almost half of its total spending) while also promoting civil societies, democratic institution-building, and other pro-democracy causes. They do not launch coups. And all of their activities must be approved by the governments of the countries in which they work. Has the CIA or the State Department used USAID as a front in some countries? Maybe. Possibly probably. Does this represent the lion’s share of their work or provide a justification for ending their programs? Absolutely not! And the guy who advocated for all of this aid—and USAID is the world’s BIGGEST aid funder—should definitely know better.
All told, it was a shameful display that left me disheartened and angry. How could such a renowned scholar utter such baseless claims and absurd nonsense? He was seemingly in thrall to the Chinese Communist Party. And appeared content to repeat Russian talking points that Ukraine was to blame for the war and the illegitimate work of USAID. It was simultaneously puzzling and infuriating. He left saying that we should continue the discussion over Zoom and that a healthy debate of dissenting ideas was a good thing. Sure, we can discuss realism vs. internationalist interpretations of the Russia-Ukraine War, but not the right of Ukraine to exist. I am not willing to discuss whether the CCP committed genocide in Xinjiang. They fucking did. And every reasonable person agrees with this. And we can debate how USAID funding can best be used and eliminating some of the waste in regard to for-profit developing consulting firms around DC (I’m looking at you, Chemonics and DAI). But I will not debate whether USAID is an insidious arm of the US Government that foments coups across the developing world—that is conspiracy theory and does not merit attention or discussion among serious people.
In the aftermath of this dispiriting discussion, I thought of my old mentor Francis Fukuyama, who was my professor at SAIS. In the years since he also rose to fame in the 1980s as one of the world’s leading political scientists, he has tirelessly campaigned and advocated for liberal democracy and international development. He has led a program at Stanford University, where he now works and teaches, to bring in young Ukrainian scholars to help train them in political science and public policy to help make Ukraine a stronger, more transparent, and more vibrant nation. Fukuyama has been a leading voice for Ukrainian sovereignty and resistance to Russian aggression. And against the democratic backsliding that we have seen the world over in countries like the United States, Mexico, Hungary, Brazil, Venezuela, India, Turkey, and many others. I reached out to him to thank him for his mentorship and for continuing to fight the good fight. And in minutes, he responded with a kind message, showing his typical humility. And I couldn’t help but note the contrast with Sachs.
They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Or maybe we (and in particular I) should pick them more carefully. Do our/my due diligence. I hadn’t done my homework on Sachs, as he has espoused a number of puzzling and troublesome positions in recent years. Thankfully, I have been lucky enough to have some great mentors in my life like Fukuyama who taught me well and who continue to inspire me to do better. So maybe do meet your heroes, just choose wisely.
Too Many Thoughts, So Little Time 