I TOTALLY AGREE WITH GEOFF CROCKER AND HIS LETTER ON THE TODAY'S FINANCIAL TIMES : _ Jeffrey Sachs’s letter “A misreading of the true choices facing Ukraine” (December 9) in turn misreads Martin Wolf (Opinion, December 7). Wolf nowhere specifies any “maximalist” victory of regaining Crimea. Neither does he decry a negotiated settlement as Sachs implies. Wolf’s concern is that world powers should continue backing Ukraine, a view which likely has majority support.
Sachs’s dire predictions of the outcome of a “maximalist” Ukrainian victory are in any case imaginary. Sachs is sympathetic to Russia’s position on Nato, Crimea, Donbas and Viktor Yanukovych. But Nato expansion is a “pull”, not a “push” process. In 1990, when eastern Europe was freed from communist Soviet domination, newly independent countries like Poland understandably sought Nato protection against any repeat of Budapest 1956, Prague 1968, etc. Equally, Sweden and Finland’s applications are a response to a clear Russian threat, not the other way round. It was the Ukrainian people who overthrew Yanukovych in their understandable preference to join the free world rather than Vladimir Putin’s totalitarian state. Their previous president Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned by Putin’s regime, as had Alexander Litvinenko, Alexei Navalny and the UK city of Salisbury.
Putin has initiated a war which has destroyed whole cities, killed 200,000 people, created millions of refugees, and now destroyed heat and power for winter months. This is all monstrous and deserves none of the understandings Sachs expresses. Putin lies, as Angela Merkel complained. He is a cynical master of the black arts, and totally unreliable. So where are Sachs’s “plenty of reasonable grounds for ending the war quickly and peacefully through negotiation”?
If Sachs wants historical perspective, he should look back to 1990, when in discussions at which I was present as an objecting voice, IMF and World Bank teams, advised by Sachs, insisted on shock therapy to destroy Russia’s planned economy overnight, causing gross domestic product to drop by 40 per cent, a huge reduction in male life expectancy, and a devastating economic humiliation of Russia. Herein lie the seeds of Putin’s anti-western resentment.
