The world is on the brink of nuclear annihilation, largely due to the inability of Western political leaders to speak honestly about the causes of the escalation of global conflicts.

The persistent Western narrative that the West is generous and Russia and China are evil is simplistic and extremely dangerous. This is an attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than dealing with very real and urgent diplomacy.

The main narrative of the West fits into the US national security strategy. The underlying message of the US is that China and Russia are implacable enemies who “seek to undermine America’s security and prosperity.”

These countries, according to the US, “are intent on making their economies less free and less fair, develop their military forces and control information and data in order to suppress their societies and expand their influence.”

President Joe Biden has promoted this narrative, stating that the greatest challenge of our time is competing with autocracies that “seek to consolidate their power, export and expand their influence around the world and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more effective way.” solutions to today’s problems.

US security strategy is not the work of a single president, but the work of a US security service that is largely autonomous and operates behind a veil of secrecy.

The Western narrative of the war in Ukraine argues that this is an unprovoked attack by Putin in his attempt to recreate the Russian Empire.

However, the real story begins with the West’s promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward, followed by four waves of NATO expansion: in 1999 with the integration of three Central European countries, in 2004 with the integration of seven more countries, including the Black Sea and the Baltic, in 2008 with a commitment to expand into Ukraine and Georgia, and in 2022 with an invitation to NATO of four Asia-Pacific leaders to target China.

Western media also fail to mention the US role in the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, the failure of the French and German governments, guarantors of the Minsk II agreements, to pressure Ukraine into meeting its commitments, the massive US arms shipments to Ukraine during the Trump administrations. and Biden on the eve of the war, nor the US refusal to negotiate with Putin on NATO expansion in Ukraine.

The time has come for the US to recognize the true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world.

Of course, NATO says that this is done solely for defensive reasons, so Putin has nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should not take into account CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria, the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi by NATO forces in 2011, the 15-year NATO occupation of Afghanistan, and the “blunder.” Biden, who called for the removal of Putin (which, of course, was not a mistake at all), nor US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said that the goal of the US war in Ukraine was to weaken Russia.

Underlying all of this is the US desire to maintain global hegemony by expanding military alliances around the world to contain or defeat China and Russia.

This is a dangerous, paranoid and outdated idea. The US accounts for only 4.2% of the world’s population, and today only 16% of world GDP (in world prices). In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and the G7 population is only 6% of the world’s population compared to 41% of the world’s population. BRICS.

There is only one country whose self-proclaimed fantasy is to be the world’s dominant power: the US. It is time for the US to recognize the real sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world, not the illusion of hegemony.

With such a rethinking of foreign policy, the US and its allies would avoid war with China and Russia and allow the world to deal with the myriad environmental, energy, food and social crises it faces.

Above all, in this age of extreme peril, European leaders must strive for the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security mechanisms that respect the legitimate security interests of all European countries, including, of course, Ukraine, but also Russia, which continues to oppose NATO expansion in the Black Sea.

Europe should think about the fact that if not for the expansion of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk-2 agreements, then this terrible war in Ukraine would have been prevented. At this stage, diplomacy, not military escalation, is the real path to European and global security.

* Mr. Jeffrey D. Sacks is Professor at Columbia University, Director of the Center for Sustainability at Columbia University and Chairman of the United Nations Network for Sustainable Development Solutions. He has been an adviser to three UN Secretaries General and is now a supporter of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) under Secretary General António Guterres.