To Move the World, by Jeffrey Sachs – review

Jeffrey Sachs is the world’s best-connected development economist. An academic with highly developed communication skills, he has always managed to secure access to policy makers and to offer them advice.

His record is controversial. Back in the 1990s he worked on Russia’s transition from a command to a capitalist economy. He advocated the approach that Yeltsin adopted — shock therapy. The result was pensioners on the streets selling off furniture, jewellery and even their clothes to raise cash for food. Whilst there were many other factors at play, it now seems obvious that China’s transition to capitalism was better handled. China didn’t take Sachs’s advice.

More recently Sachs has argued that development assistance would be a more effective way of achieving western foreign policy objectives than the use of military force. And he has focused on Africa, where he has faced less criticism, championing sustainable development and playing a notable role in reducing the damage done by HIV, malaria and TB.

However one assesses Sachs’s record, this book is something of a departure for him. After years trying to work out how underperforming economies can reach their full potential, he has taken time out to offer an act of homage to his childhood hero — John F. Kennedy. And he has singled out one of JFK’s speeches for particular praise.

Sachs thinks that some pieces of JFK rhetoric, such as his inauguration address, have hogged the limelight for too long. The true masterpiece, he believes, was a speech delivered to the American University in Washington DC in June 1963 and generally referred to as the Peace Speech. Sachs has come up with an argument making the case that the Peace Speech deserves wider recognition.

I took a look at the speech before reading Sachs’s analysis.