End Ukraine conflict, end NATO enlargement, bring back OSCE, says former UN advisor

As Ukraine hosted European leaders on Monday to mark three years of conflict with Russia, a former senior UN advisor has called for NATO enlargement to cease and for China to be given a key role in ensuring global peace.

Jeffrey Sachs, a public policy analyst and special advisor to the UN Secretary General from 2001 to 2018, told CGTN: "The war should stop, NATO enlargement should stop, an agreement along the lines that was on the table in Istanbul in March 2022, that the United States batted away, should be brought back to the forefront."

The Istanbul deal thrashed out between Russia and Ukraine was reportedly rejected by powerful advisors to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weeks into the conflict that entered its fourth year on Monday. 

There has been disputed suggestions that the U.S. and UK were influential in Ukraine rejecting the deal which would have seen Kyiv agree to a range of concessions including future neutrality and giving up its bid for membership of NATO, while Russia would have accepted Ukraine’s membership of the EU. 

Shockwaves

U.S. President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through Europe last week when he announced that only Russia and the U.S. would be involved in talks to end the conflict.

Sachs said the U.S. shouldn't be involved in talks over future security arrangements. He said: "Europe - and I mean Europe, not the United States - and Russia directly should negotiate over a suitable European security arrangement. I would like to see the OSCE, the organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, brought back to life. 

"This is quite different from NATO. This is quite different from bloc ideology. This is about collective security. That's what Europe and Russia should be negotiating." 

Zelenskyy, who has told Europe to create its own army while urging the U.S. to be pragmatic, welcomed a slew of European and other leaders to a summit in Kyiv to commemorate the start in 2022 of the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II.

The visitors included European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and the leaders of Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Leaders of 11 other countries, including Germany and the UK, spoke by video link, while there was no sign of U.S. representation.

Sachs said he was "cautious but also optimistic" that peace between Ukraine and Russia was close. He added: "I'm very cautious, but I am hopeful because we've heard some truth, some clarity, from leading U.S. officials. 

"There have been meetings between senior Russian and U.S. officials, there will be more meetings this coming week. The phone call between President Trump and President Putin, which broke three years of diplomatic non communication, is a real breakthrough."

American 'unipolar delusion'

Sachs said Europe needed to act quickly to secure its place in the new multipolar world after the ending of what he dubbed "the U.S. unipolar delusion."

He said: "The US unipolar world, which was an illusion from the beginning, but was U.S. foreign policy for more than 30 years, has failed. We are in a multipolar world. We're in a world in which great powers, including the United States, Russia, China, India - and I think if it gets its act together, Europe - need to negotiate with each other and operate in a multilateral, multipolar, manner based on mutual respect and the UN charter. That's the kind of world we need."

Sachs insisted there should be a key role for China in securing global unity. He insisted: "China is a great civilization, a great power, a country with a 2,200-year history of unity and very long and great traditions of peace, east Asian peace, sometimes called the Confucian Peace, which lasted many centuries until Britain and its warships showed up in the 19th century in the First Opium War. 

"China can help a lot for the world to find a harmonious existence in diversity, using its long and remarkable statecraft."