JEFFREY SACHS, via Kyu Lee, klee at ei.columbia.edu, @JeffDSachs
Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. His recent pieces include: “Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath,” which states that, contrary to her claims “Clinton’s role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.”
He also recently wrote “Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine,” which states: “Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria.”
ANDREW BACEVICH, bacevich at bu.edu
Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. His forthcoming book is America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. He just wrote the piece “Outsiders-in-chief and the world: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders need to sharpen their global vision,” which states: “In utterly different ways, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have struck fear into the hearts of a smug, ossified and intellectually lazy establishment. Yet whether either man can make the leap from protest candidate to having a shot at actually winning the White House remains to be seen. Making that leap will require, among other things, that each spell out a plausible foreign policy vision. …
“In effect, the Democratic and Republican establishments see no alternative to the perpetuation of failure. Having given up the attempt to identify any such alternative, they instead recite platitudes and offer testimonials to the troops. …
“When it comes to foreign policy, [Trump’s] instincts are those of a nationalist. He is an America Firster, inclined to see the outside world as filled with scheming foreigners intent on taking advantage of the United States and sticking Americans with the tab. … By privileging domestic issues related to economic fairness and social justice, [Sanders] too is an America Firster, albeit a closeted one.”
