Stand with Ukraine

I am appalled that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) is choosing Jeffrey Sachs for their annual awards ceremony. He is known for a neo-liberal economic agenda for which some claim certain successes but which has had mixed results in places like Russia, where oligarchic gangster capitalism led directly to war in 2014 and escalation in 2022.

Sachs, an economist, is out of his lane with his pronouncements. His views substantially reflect Putin’s desire for a multi-polar world and sphere of influence in which Russia will hegemonize Eastern Europe. A team of distinguished economists authored an open letter objecting to Sach’s dismissal of the rights of the Ukrainian people and responsibility of the Russian Federation to behave responsibly.

There is also an open letter, of which I was one of the drafting signatories, which specifically objects to the action on the part of NAPF in platforming and elevating this very problematic individual’s terrible views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I have supported NAPF for years and prior to that participated as an observer of the UN Disarmament Commission and activist in the Rocky Flats Action Group and the Mobilization for Survival. I was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and was a vociferous opponent of Bush’s Iraq War. But since 2003, there has been a steady drift of the peace activists into the trap of propaganda justification for authoritarian regimes, and public intellectuals like Sachs should know better than to give oxygen to the pronouncement of totalitarians.