SHANGHAI, July 22. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump should tell his fellow citizens that Washington's support of Kyiv was a mistake, and accept the political costs of ending the conflict in Ukraine, American economist, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs who visited Fudan University, told TASS.
"Trump probably would like to stop the war. He's unwilling to accept the explicit conditions for ending this war. For example, Trump should say to the American people, not just to Russia, to Ukraine: "NATO will not enlarge. This was a mistake. This was a provocation. We will not support this anymore," the expert said. "Publicly, Trump doesn't want to bear the political cost of peace," he noted. Ending the conflict is also complicated by the actions of US senators who are promoting a policy of sanctions and tariffs, Sachs added.
That's the job of an American president to explain to the American people that the US has made a mistake, he said. "That's very hard. But Trump is not bad at it because what he needs to say is: "[44th president Barack] Obama made a mistake. I made a mistake, I never made a mistake. So I'm going to correct their mistake," the professor said.
He believes that the US leader should engage the American people truthfully to say these are the terms in which the war will stop. "He needs to tell Ukraine, sorry, we're not fighting for these principles anymore. You're not going to be part of NATO. It's not going to happen. It's a bad idea because we would never let Russia set a military base in Mexico. <…> When the Soviet Union tried [to place missiles] in Cuba we almost had a nuclear war. We're not going to do it. He has to tell the Ukrainians publicly but he's so weak," Sachs said, adding that "you need a strong leader who can make peace" since "peace isn't just the absence of war.".