We’re led by the most incompetent leaders imaginable
The latest NATO summit was presented as a demonstration of Western unity. Instead, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, it revealed something far more dangerous: an alliance increasingly consumed by militarism, detached from strategic thinking, and drifting toward a direct confrontation between nuclear powers. While leaders celebrated record defense spending, reaffirmed support for expanding the war in Ukraine, and doubled down on confrontation with Russia, Sachs argues that almost no serious discussion took place about diplomacy, de-escalation, or the catastrophic risks of continued escalation.
In a wide-ranging interview with political scientist Glenn Diesen, Sachs delivered one of his most scathing assessments yet of the current Western political establishment. He described NATO as an alliance “in disarray,” led by politicians who, in his view, mistake escalation for strategy while serving the interests of what he calls the “military-industrial-digital complex”—a network of defense contractors, intelligence institutions, and increasingly Silicon Valley firms whose profits expand alongside global conflict. Rather than charting a coherent foreign policy, Sachs contends, Western governments are stumbling from crisis to crisis, normalizing reckless rhetoric, abandoning diplomacy, and treating the possibility of nuclear confrontation with alarming complacency.
For Sachs, the concern extends well beyond Donald Trump. While he is sharply critical of Trump’s erratic leadership and broken promises to end America’s wars, he argues that the deeper problem lies within a bipartisan foreign policy establishment that has remained committed to military primacy regardless of who occupies the White House. As public support for continued escalation declines across the United States and Europe, Sachs warns that political leaders appear increasingly disconnected from both public opinion and geopolitical reality, raising the unsettling possibility that the greatest threat to global security is no longer a lack of military power, but a profound absence of strategic thinking. If anyone was still searching for evidence that NATO has abandoned even the pretense of being a defensive alliance or a forum for serious diplomacy, this year’s summit provided it in abundance. Rather than confronting the growing dangers of direct confrontation between nuclear powers, Western leaders gathered to celebrate higher military spending, pledge deeper involvement in ongoing wars, and reaffirm a geopolitical strategy that appears increasingly disconnected from both reality and public opinion.
“I think the NATO alliance is largely in disarray. This is not a serious group, and it’s not seriously strategizing. The summit was essentially two days of Trumpisms. Donald Trump is mentally unstable. We normalize it, we laugh about it, we call it a tactic, but he’s really something awful—and everyone plays along. You watch two days of increasingly bizarre exchanges: Trump says Spain is awful and that the United States should cut off all trade with Spain, and Spain responds by saying they had a wonderful conversation. He says Greenland should belong to the United States, and everyone simply moves on. This is not really an alliance right now, and these are not meetings of serious people.” – Jeffrey Sachs
