The world stands at a critical crossroads between escalating chaos and a long-overdue commitment to international law and cooperative governance.

During the Boao Forum for Asia, American Economist and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, Professor Jerrfyr Sachs said that the international community is “attempting to create a system of principles and law at the international level as opposed to a system of power.”
In a panel discussion on Building Trust in the Shifting Global Landscape, he said that such a framework has never effectively existed on a global scale, but now must.

“The dangers we face are obvious. Nuclear war is very close. Environmental catastrophe is very close. And many other dangers are very, very close.”

Yet, despite these existential threats, Professor Sachs added that global politics remains dominated by brute power, calling the United States out explicitly for flouting international norms.

The American economist also said the U.S. government was abandoning any commitment to international law, citing examples such as President Donald Trump’s reckless suggestion that Canada could become the “51st state” of the United States, a remark labelled not as overstatement, but as “a brutal expression of power.”

He also pointed out U.S. action in Greenland, alleging that the American government plans to send senior officials, a move he described as an “expression of brutal power” and a threatening signal that the U.S. may seek to literally take over Greenland in the coming years.

Drawing historical parallels, Professor Sachs compared U.S. foreign policy to centuries of European imperialism.

“For hundreds of years the European powers imperialized and conquered the rest of the world. The United States got into the act late, but now it’s trying to catch up for lost time.”

Despite accounting for only 10% of the world’s population, the U.S. and European Union exert outsized influence on global systems, a disparity the economist says is increasingly at odds with the desires of the vast majority of the world, which seeks peace, order, and the rule of law.

He called on emerging powers such as China, India, Russia, the European Union, the African Union, and members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to unite and vocally oppose U.S. exceptionalism and unilateralism.

The Director of Sustainable Development at Columbia University referenced longstanding patterns of U.S. interventionism, regime change, and withdrawal from international treaties.

His address also criticized the United Nations as increasingly toothless.

“It doesn’t function. It doesn’t make enforcement. It doesn’t even follow through.”

Professor Sachs urged the international community to reform and revitalize the U.N. or risk its total irrelevance.

He expressed cautious optimism, contrasting the West’s history of conflict with China’s historically more peaceful regional lead

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