A former architect of globalization turned moral critic of American power, Jeffrey Sachs embodies the paradoxes of an age torn between idealism and empire.
This is the first in a series of portraits of leading figures in the American political debate.
I decided to write them because there are intellectuals, journalists, and politicians I often reference in my articles, yet rarely have the time or space to explain who they really are—or what they actually believe in—amid today’s complex crossroads for America and the world.
From Globalist Wunderkind to System Critic
Among the many paradoxes of contemporary American and global politics, one stands out as particularly curious: while the liberal left has increasingly become interventionist, while many American Republicans have rediscovered their isolationist instincts, and while several European conservatives have turned out to be more pacifist than the usual rainbow-flag wavers, one of the loudest voices against war and the “American empire” comes from an economist who was once a leading symbol of progressive globalism.
His name is Jeffrey Sachs — and for years he has been one of the most provocative and widely heard figures in international debate.
A Jewish-American economist, public policy analyst, and professor at Columbia University, Sachs rose to fame in the 1980s as the “wunderkind” of transition economics. He was the architect behind the shock therapies meant to move Bolivia, Poland, and later Russia from planned economies to free markets.
At the time, he embodied the archetype of the neoliberal technocrat: he believed in markets, globalization, and in the power of international finance to “fix” the world.
The Turning Point
Whatever the cause, Sachs evolved into a radical critic of the very system he once served. Today, he accuses the United States of being dominated by a warlike elite — what he calls “the party of permanent war.”
In recent years, his views have become explicitly anti-neoconservative. Sachs argues that Washington is ruled by a bipartisan establishment — Republican neocons and Democratic “liberal interventionists” — united by the belief that American dominance must be defended by force.
In his vocabulary, this bloc includes figures such as Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan: “the elite that dragged the United States into useless wars — Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine — and now risks pushing us into conflict with Russia or China.”
Within this framework, Sachs also condemns America’s “complicity” with Israel and speaks openly of “genocide in Gaza.” Coming from a Jewish-American intellectual, such language struck like blasphemy in the temple of the progressive establishment.
Sachs and Trump: Opposite Sides of the Same Coin
In fact, quite the opposite happened. To Sachs, Trump represents the other side of the same imperial coin — not an outsider, but an impulsive populist who ultimately reinforced America’s most dangerous tendencies.
He accuses Trump of “economic illiteracy” for his tariff policies; of “one-person rule” for his autocratic management style; and of destabilizing the international order without any coherent vision.
He even called Trump’s foreign policy “a populist farce doomed to fail,” built on the illusion that America could “raise its national income by stealing from someone else.”
These are the kind of scathing critiques one might expect from a European Christian Democrat — sharing the same inability to connect with the mindset of contemporary American conservatives, now light-years away from both the Reagan and Bush eras.
Unexpected Convergences
And yet, curiously enough, on foreign policy, Trump and the broader MAGA movement have ended up partially converging with some of Sachs’s battles: opposing NATO expansion, U.S. involvement in Ukraine, and the madness of sanctions upon sanctions.
But their motivations could not be more different.
Where Sachs sees the risk of an empire ravaging the world in the name of a “moral mission,” Tucker Carlson — America’s most famous conservative commentator, now a kind of sovereigntist tribune — sees instead a betrayal from within: an elite that despises its own nation and squanders U.S. power on globalist ideologies.
For Carlson and other MAGA leaders, including the late Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, the goal is not to dismantle American power but to reclaim it for a healthy nationalism — one that defends borders and American culture.
Sachs, by contrast, seeks the opposite: to reduce U.S. power, restore sovereignty to other nations, and build a multipolar order based on cooperation.
Two Worlds, Two Philosophies
Where Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Dan Bongino speak of patriotism, Sachs speaks of interdependence.
Where they denounce the moral decay of the West, he denounces the economic and military dominance of the West.
They all attack the neocons — but from almost mirror-opposite perspectives.
Ultimately, the difference is more philosophical than political.
The MAGA movement is anti-interventionist because it wants to save America from itself — from progressive ideology, from the bureaucratic empire, from the betrayal of its founding values.
Sachs is anti-interventionist because he wants to save the world from America — from military dominance, from unipolar arrogance, from geopolitical hubris.
Carlson, Owens, Ingraham, and Senator J.D. Vance speak of God, family, and borders.
Sachs speaks of international law, diplomacy, and sustainable development.
The former defend American civilization; the latter dreams of a global community of equal nations.
All of them, in opposing ways, have broken with liberal orthodoxy — and for that reason are labeled “populists” or “pro-Putin.”
The Prophet and the Realists
Yet there is a persistent tension in Sachs’s thinking: his moralism.
In condemning America’s sins, he often uses almost prophetic language — “genocide,” “war crimes,” “imperial sin” — which places him more on moral than strategic ground.
That’s why many American realists (such as John Mearsheimer) regard him as an uneasy ally: they share his diagnosis, but not the secular theology that comes with it.
Still, Sachs’s voice matters — even for those who disagree.
In an era when foreign policy has been reduced to slogans and sanctions, he brings the debate back to deeper questions:
What does it truly mean to be a “power” in the 21st century?
To command — or to cooperate?
To defend oneself — or to dominate others?
Conclusion
In the end, Jeffrey Sachs is not a man of any party.
He is a disillusioned intellectual who looks at America with a mix of sadness and indignation.
He is not a neocon, not a Trumpist, not a fashionable progressive.
He is a former “son of the system” who chose to denounce the system from within — and perhaps that’s precisely why he manages to irritate just about everyone.
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