‘Don’t Play The American Game Against China’: Sachs Has A Word Of Caution For India At Rising Bharat – News18

Last Updated:April 08, 2025, 21:43 IST

Rising Bharat Summit: “The US loves for India to be at the Quad to bash China…India is a peace-loving country and is doing wonderfully. You had 600 million people assemble peacefully for the Mahakumbh. India needs to be in the UNSC,” says US analyst Jeffrey…Read More

Jeffrey D Sachs at the Rising Bharat Summit.

At the Rising Bharat Summit 2025, American economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey D Sachs cautioned India against falling for the US game against China.

“I have spent my whole lifetime seeing countries destroyed by America’s friendship. I don’t think I have to give advice to India. Just be careful. There is no alliance. You are an alliance in yourself. Civilisations behave like civilisations. Being the most populous country in the world, you take care of your relations everywhere. I hope I am not rude or misunderstood. But America wants to use India to beat up China. Don’t play the American game. It makes no sense. It is superfluous for me to tell you that. The entire US foreign policy is divide and conquer in any part of the world. That is how empires behave. That is what they learnt from the master empire of all, the British. The US loves for India to be at the Quad to bash China…India is too big for a US game,” he said.

SACHS DOCTRINE

When asked if the Sachs doctrine was a counter to the Washington consensus, Sachs said, “It is certainly not the Washington consensus, because we don’t need any one capital in this world telling the rest of the world what to do. What I like to follow is the consensus of the world which agreed in 2015 to the idea of sustainable development for all people, countries and all parts of the world. It means we should be working together in peace, global trade, cooperation, with mutual respect to abolish poverty, to face the climate crisis, to address the other global challenges, and stop the strong-arming by any one country which puts us into peril. That’s the global consensus and I would say that’s the one that I try to follow.”

“The fact of the matter is in September 2015, all 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) adopted the idea of sustainable development as their framework. Six weeks later, all 193 UN member states adopted the UN Paris Agreement recognising that it is no joke. We really have an environmental emergency, whether we like it or not. That consensus is very fragile though. Because my country, the United States, doesn’t spend too much time thinking about it. It is very much ‘America First’, whether it is this administration or the one that preceded it. It is pretty much the same. But what happened in recent weeks is actually alarming. The new US government administration actually voted against, if you can believe it, a resolution calling for a ‘Day of Peaceful Coexistence’. It said no for two reasons. One, it says the Chinese use the phrase ‘peaceful coexistence’, so we think it may be somehow be in praise of China. So we won’t use the phrase. The second was the declaration said the world supports sustainable development. The US government said, ‘No. We do not.’ It is not in America’s national interest.”

“If you ask me if it is a global consensus, 192 countries agree, but one does not and that one is on a bit of an adventure every day to prove to the world that it can do what it wants, when it wants and that is not conducive to the kind of the world we want,” he said.

THE US POLICIES

“Everyone observing the last few days should be puzzled about what’s going on in Washington. My answer is, ‘Nobody knows’. The real answer that is the most alarming one is for the first time in American history, we are in a one-man army, one-person show. The authors of our Constitution spent a lot of time, and they were very brilliant, trying to devise checks and balances to the new system they were introducing in 1787. They would be horrified by what is happening now. How can one person change the whole world trade system? It wasn’t a vote or discussion of Congress, wasn’t even a public discussion. It was an executive order. The President of the US declared an emergency and can govern without law, just govern by decree. This is what we had a revolution for in 1776. It was even then the British Commons passing law. He calls the trade deficit an emergency. It is not something that one person should decide and override the laws of the land in an emergency decree.”

“We have one-person rule. We don’t know whether there will be any reaction to it, whether courts will be able to do anything or whether Congress will say we have a rule that says the right to levy duties is with the Congress. If we had the Indian Supreme Court, I wouldn’t worry. They would have overruled it as a presidential overreach. We don’t know if we have a checks and balances democracy. One footnote, they took away my second-year master’s student in the middle of the night in front of his eight-month pregnant wife,” he said.

“We don’t know how things will play out. It is quite worrisome. Yes, Americans have voted for Donald Trump, but under the Constitution, they did not vote for him to be ruled by executive decree, which in any event is illegal. We are in a test whether a president can declare emergency after emergency after emergency. This isn’t an emergency, hurricane or disaster, it is a trade policy. Which is why we have a Congress and Constitution. It is dangerous for the world. It is a little bit of a grim situation.”

‘INDIA DOING WONDERFULLY’

“India is doing wonderfully. I have watched India in its take-off and I have been privileged to be coming here for 46 years. I have watched India’s remarkable achievement. When I first came to India with my girlfriend, now wife of 45 years, with a book by Nobel Prize-winning Swedish author Gunnar Myrdal called ‘Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations’. It said that India could never go past, what was euphemistically called, its Hindu growth rate of 2%. This was my first book as I roamed in India. I never believed any country is condemned to poverty.”

“We are in an age of convergence, where countries are catching up for lost time. India was the leading economy in the world for 100-150 years, until the British showed up. Every country has a British story at its core, China, India, the Middle East. They fell far behind till independence. India and China then started catching up. Now the rate is robust and India will become the second largest economy overtaking the US in 10-15 years, the largest in the second half of the 21st century…Advanced, high-tech, your government is doing a good job of promoting it. It should help explain the weirdness in the US. The US is in a neurotic reaction.”

“The US is expected to be number 1 forever. China ruptured the illusion. So Americans hate China. This violates every rule according to American thinking. They will come to resent India as you overtake the US. Just a friendly caution. The American mindset can’t understand other countries are more populous and free. It is driving the Americans crazy. In a world where technology, skills, innovation is everywhere, the US can’t stay on top. Don’t be pulled into it. India and China can settle their issues together. Together, they make up for 40% of the population. You could help run a very decent world,” he said.

‘TRUMP CAN END RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR’

“The war in Ukraine was a terrible debacle the US walked into for 30 years by expanding NATO, despite Russia’s continuing objections. I worked for both sides. Russia wanted some space so the US wasn’t pushing its missile and military bases. But the US said we go where we want, when we want. The war could have ended in 2022. Ukraine and Russia were to sign a peace agreement based on neutrality, but the US didn’t want it. Trump just needs to say it explicitly that he doesn’t want NATO enlargement. Trump knows what Biden was saying wasn’t right, but he hasn’t said it,” he said.

“The US didn’t end NATO after Gorbachev said peace amid the Warsaw agreement…It was like a poker game, they gambled Ukraine’s safety and they lost. All people knew this was a disaster but the politicians went ahead with it anyway because they knew the US is a superpower and it can do what it wants.”

INDIA-CHINA ALLIANCE?

“I see a huge diplomatic role for India in the future peace talks. My advice is you must get China to help you to be a member of the UNSC. A UNSC cannot be without India. I want China to be a strong supporter of India. India is a peace-loving country. You had 600 million people assemble peacefully for the Mahakumbh. I can’t get 100 people together in my neighbourhood. I want India to emphasise that it did in the G20 that the world is one family. It is a wonderful philosophy of Hinduism and peace. Wars are the resolve of politics. You end the war by political resolution. You end the war in Ukraine with neutrality and stopping NATO enlargement. You end the war in the Middle-East by Palestine as a sovereign place with Israel…”

“I always tell Chinese politicians to support India in the UNSC. We are way past the US leading anything. India needs to be there and China wants that so they don’t face American bashing all the time.”

CAN TAIWAN DEPEND ON US?

“If Taiwan thinks the US will save them from China, God help us. There is no way the US could…Besides, the last thing the world needs is a US-China war. Taiwan is part of China. They don’t argue about it that there is one China. If the US supports Taiwan to fight, it will be the same story as Ukraine….Trump believes Canada, Panama, Greenland belong to the US, but no this is a recipe for war,” Sachs said.

“If you ask ChatGPT, it will give you a better answer than the UNSC. The reason is it will give both sides of the argument. In the US, it is only one side, it is propaganda. If we sit down with both sides and listen to both sides of the argument, it will be a peaceful world.”