A lot of interest in post-communist countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs

From there, however, to being a self-styled expert on military/strategic choices...

Well, excuse me if I find that to be quite a stretch.

Probably thought his Vatican trip idea was such a clever idea! Glad it went Splat!!

is that he was the political "mastermind" behind Bernie's trip to the Vatican!

That said, he has been an economic adviser to several foreign governments and to the UN and related organizations, particularly wrt sustainable development and very involved with the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

His actual experience, however, has been as an academic. I do not believe that he has ever been "on the ground" in any meaningful capacity. He is, however, a proponent of the "Big Idea," a very idealistic view of how poverty can be overcome with few of the practical aspects that must be involved.

Here is an article from someone who has actually been "on the ground" that makes some good points: https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international-development-and-plan-fix-it

Mainly this:

What I want to talk shit on is the paradigm of the Big Idea—that once we identify the correct one, we can simply unfurl it on the entire developing world like a picnic blanket.

What a self-satisfied, smug little twit.

Sounds like this would be just his modus operandi:
"...once we identify the correct (Big Idea), we can simply unfurl it on the entire developing world like a picnic blanket."

From what I'm reading, he's given ecomomic advice to foreign governments.

Quite how that qualifies him to critique the administration's military and strategic choices, in such a complex arena as the Mid-East, escapes me totally.

And he is a self-satisfied, mug little twit!

Some heart and compassion, some of the right ideas, but absolutely arrogant and sure that HE is always right about absolutely everything.

Gee, wonder why he's politically drawn to "he who must not be named"--birds of a feather and all that.

Great minds!!

and Barack? He can hardly contain his mania.

he loses any credibility he might have in other spheres, IMO.

As ugly and uncontrollable as it may be, supporting "self-determination" is an alternative path in foreign policy for us.

Isolation and protectionism is one extreme. Endless military intervention is another extreme.

We'll see where Syria and Libya end up. That includes normal human beings leaving failed states and uninhabitable deserts - if they can!

To hear Sach's self-important broadside, you'd think that Obama willfully misjudged the necessity to take Assad out militarily when that "red line" was crossed.

So now, he's an "interventionist" because Obama wasn't.

Congress and the American people rejected military action against Assad for using chemical weapons on Syrians.

But the "threat" alone ultimately disarmed the Assad regime of chemical weapons usage. In fact, it began the voluntary destruction of at least most of it. And unrelenting vigilance for any more usage.

Obama got what he wanted through diplomacy triggered by the threat of military intervention against a psychotic despot.

And we have "politicians" arguing Assad is acceptable as the leader of Syria. Disgusting.

This morning, 30 seconds into Mika I had to change the channel in disgust, oozing her contempt for Hillary. No pretense of journalistic neutrality there!

And Joe had the morning off.

What a shameful display of "journalistic" ethics.

which was puffed up into the fiction of Sanders being invited to speak and meet with the Pope.