America's Global Role

Soros is likely more conservative than many of us like, and his desire
for intervention in "bad" governments is troublesome, but his
advocacy for an open society struck a positive chord.

Jerry Shepperd

America's Global Role

George Soros
The American Prospect

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16087

June 4, 2003

Viewed on June 5, 2003

On May 27, 1999, at the invitation of then-Dean Paul Wolfowitz, I
delivered a commencement address at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies in Washington. I spoke about my vision for a global
open society and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense, seemed to be
on the same wavelength. We had both participated in a small group called
The Action Council for the Balkans, which was agitating for a more
muscular policy against Slobodan Milosevic. We advocated military
intervention in Bosnia much sooner than it happened. I remember a lively
exchange with Colin Powell when I questioned the Powell doctrine of
"we do deserts but we don't do mountains." I was very
supportive of Madeleine Albright's activism on Kosovo, where I was in
favor of a coalition of the willing: NATO intervention without United
Nations authorization. 

On March 7, 2003, on the eve of war with Iraq, I gave another speech at
the same graduate school. This article is adapted from that speech. I was
then and continue to be in favor of the removal from power of Saddam
Hussein, who was, because of his chemical and biological weapons, an even
more dangerous despot than Milosevic. I would like to see regime change
in many other places. I am particularly concerned about Zimbabwe, where
Robert Mugabe's regime is going from bad to worse. I also see Muammar
Quaddafi as a dangerous troublemaker in Africa. I support a project on
Burma, or Myanmar as it is now called, which backs Aung San Suu Kyi as
the democratically elected leader. I have foundations in central Asia,
and I would like to see regime change in countries such as Turkmenistan.
And, of course, I hoped for an easy victory in Iraq, if we went to war at
all. 

Yet I am profoundly opposed to the Bush administration's policies, not
only in Iraq but altogether. My opposition is much more profound than it
was in the case of the Clinton administration. I believe the Bush
administration is leading the United States and the world in the wrong
direction. In the past, my philanthropy focused on defeating communism
and helping with the transition from closed societies to open societies
in the former Soviet empire. Now I would go so far as to say that the
fight for a global open society has to be fought in the United States. In
short, America ought to play a very different role in the world than it
is playing today. 

Because open society is an abstract idea, I shall proceed from the
abstract and general to the concrete and particular. The concept of
"open society" was developed by philosopher Karl R. Popper,
whose book "Open Society and Its Enemies" argued that
totalitarian ideologies -- such as communism and fascism -- posed a
threat to an open society because they claimed to have found the final
solution. The ultimate truth is beyond human reach. Those who say they
are in possession of it are making a false claim, and they can enforce it
only by coercion and repression. So Popper derived the principles of
freedom and democracy -- the same principles that President Bush
championed in his February speech on Iraq -- from the recognition that we
may be wrong. 

That brings us to the crux of the matter. Bush makes absolutely no
allowance for the possibility that we may be wrong, and he has no
tolerance for dissenting opinion. If you are not with us you are against
us, he proclaims. Donald Rumsfeld berates our European allies who
disagree with him on Iraq in no uncertain terms, and he has a visceral
aversion to international cooperation, be it with NATO or UN peacekeepers
in Afghanistan. And John Ashcroft accuses those who opposed the USA
Patriot Act of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. These are the views
of extremists, not adherents to an open society. Perhaps because of my
background, these views push the wrong buttons in me. And I am amazed and
disappointed that the general public does not have a similar allergic
reaction. Of course, that has a lot to do with September 11. 

But the trouble goes much deeper. It is not merely that the Bush
administration's policies may be wrong, it is that they are
wrong, and I would go even further: They are bound to be wrong
because they are based on a false ideology. A dominant faction within the
Bush administration believes that international relations are relations
of power. Because we are unquestionably the most powerful, they claim, we
have earned the right to impose our will on the rest of the world.

This position is enshrined in the Bush doctrine that was first enunciated
in the president's speech at West Point in June 2002 and then
incorporated in the National Security Strategy last September. 

The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars: First, the United States will
do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military
supremacy, and second, the United States arrogates the right to
preemptive action. Taken together, these two pillars support two classes
of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes
precedence over international treaties and obligations, and the
sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the Bush doctrine.
This is reminiscent of George Orwell's "Animal Farm": All
animals are equal but some are more equal than others. 

To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated so starkly; it is buried in
Orwellian doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because there is a
contradiction between the Bush administration's concepts of freedom and
democracy and the principles of open society. 

In an open society, people can decide for themselves what they mean by
freedom and democracy. But the Bush administration claims that we have
discovered the ultimate truth. The very first sentence of our latest
National Security Strategy reads as follows: 

"The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and
totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom
-- and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom,
democracy, and free enterprise." 

This statement is false on two counts. First, there is no single,
sustainable model for national success. And second, our model, which has
been successful, is not available to others because our success depends
greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist
system, and that position is not attainable by others. 

According to the ideologues of the far right, who currently dominate the
Bush administration, the success of the American model has been brought
about by a combination of market fundamentalism in economic matters and
the pursuit of military supremacy in international relations. These two
objectives fit neatly together into a coherent ideology -- an ideology
that is internally consistent but does not jibe with reality or with the
principles of open society. It is a kind of crude social Darwinism in
which the survival of the fittest depends on competition, not
cooperation. In the economy, the competition is among firms; in
international relations, among states. Cooperation does not seem
necessary because there is supposed to be an invisible hand at work that
will ensure that as long as everybody looks out for his or her own
interests, the common interest will look after itself. 

This doctrine is false, even with regard to the economy. Financial
markets left to their own devices do not tend toward an equilibrium that
guarantees the optimum allocation of resources. The theories of efficient
markets and rational expectations don't stand up to critical examination.
But at least these theories exist, and they are widely accepted.

No similar theory can reasonably be proposed with regard to international
relations. There is the well-known doctrine of geopolitical realism
according to which states have interests but no principles. But nobody
can deny that there are common human interests that transcend national
interests. 

We live in an increasingly interdependent world and, due to the progress
of technology, our power over nature has increased by leaps and bounds.
Unless we use that power wisely, we are in danger of damaging or
destroying both our environment and our civilization. These are not empty
words. Terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction give us a
taste of what lies ahead. The need for a better world order predates
September 11, but the terrorist threat has rendered international
cooperation all the more necessary. 

That is not how the Bush administration sees the world. Its perspective
is not totally false but it emphasizes one aspect of reality to the
exclusion of others. The aspect it stresses is power, and in particular
military power. But military power is not the only kind of power; no
empire could ever be held together by military power alone. Joseph S. Nye
Jr., in his recent book "The Paradox of American Power,"
introduced the concept of "soft power" to bring the point home.

I would go even further. Applying the concept of power to human affairs
is altogether questionable. In physics, power or force governs the
behavior of objects. That is a misleading analogy for human affairs.
People have a will of their own. They may be cowed by military power or
other forms of repression, but that is not a sound principle of social
organization. Might is not right. 

Yet that is the belief that guides the Bush administration. Israel's
Ariel Sharon shares the same belief, and look where that has led. The
idea that might is right cannot be reconciled with the idea of an open
society. 

The objective of disarming Saddam Hussein was a valid one, but the way
the U.S. government has gone about it is not. That is why there was so
much opposition to the war throughout the world and at home. That is why
I shall remain opposed to the Bush administration's conduct of foreign
policy. 

There is an alternative vision of the role that the United States ought
to play in the world, and it is based on the concept of open society. The
current world order is a distorted form of a global open society. It is
distorted because we have global markets but we do not have global
political institutions. As a consequence, we are much better at producing
private goods than taking care of public goods such as preserving peace,
protecting the environment and ensuring economic stability, progress and
social justice. This is not by accident. 

Globalization -- and by that I mean the globalization of financial
markets -- was a market fundamentalist project, and the United States was
its chief architect. We are also the chief beneficiary. We are
unquestionably the dominant power in the world today. Our dominance is
not only economic and financial but also military and technological. No
other country can even come close to us. 

This puts us in a position of unique responsibility. Other countries have
to respond to U.S. policy, but the United States is in a position to
choose the policy to which others have to respond. We have a greater
degree of discretion than anybody else in deciding what shape the world
should take. Therefore it is not enough for the United States to preserve
its supremacy over other states; it must also concern itself with the
well-being of the world. 

There were great tensions in the global capitalist system prior to
September 11, but they have gotten much worse since then. We must work to
reduce the tensions and make the system stable and equitable so that we
can maintain our dominant position within it. 

That is the responsibility that we fail to live up to. Worse, the Bush
administration does not even acknowledge that we bear such a
responsibility. It attributes our dominant position to the success of the
American model in fair competition with other countries. But that is a
self-deception. 

Contrary to the tenets of market fundamentalism, the global capitalist
system does not constitute a level playing field. In economic and
financial matters, there is a disparity between the center and the
periphery. And in military matters, there is a disparity between the
United States and the rest of the world because the European Union, as
distinct from its member states, does not seek to be a military power.
There are large and growing inequalities in the world, and we lack the
mechanism for reducing them. Therefore we need to strengthen our
international political institutions to match the globalization of our
markets. Only the United States can lead the way because without U.S.
participation, nothing much can be done in the way of international
cooperation. 

A world order based on the sovereignty of states, moreover, cannot take
care of our common human interests. The main source of poverty and misery
in the world today is bad government -- repressive, corrupt regimes and
failed states. And yet it is difficult to intervene in the internal
affairs of other countries because the principle of sovereignty stands in
the way. 

One way to overcome the problem is to offer countries positive
inducements for becoming open societies. That is the missing ingredient
in the current world order. There are penalties for bad behavior, from
trade sanctions to military intervention, but not enough incentives and
reinforcements for good behavior. A global open society would achieve
certain standards by providing assistance to those who are unable to meet
them. States that violate the standards could be punished through
exclusion. There would be a better balance between rewards and
reinforcements on the one hand and penalties on the other. In a global
open society, every country would benefit from belonging to it.
Developing countries would get better access to markets under the World
Trade Organization. Countries at the periphery, such as Brazil, would be
guaranteed an adequate supply of credit through the International
Monetary Fund as long as they followed sound policies, and there would be
a genuine attempt to meet the UN's millennium goals of reducing poverty
and improving lives throughout the world. 

Providing incentives, of course, would not be sufficient. Not all
countries have governments that want or tolerate an open society. A rogue
regime such as Saddam Hussein's was a threat to the rest of the world,
and a global open society must be able to defend itself. But the use of
military force must remain a last resort. 

The United States cannot create a global open society on its own. No
single country can act as the police officer or the benefactor of the
entire world. But a global open society cannot be achieved without
American leadership. This means that the United States must engage in
international cooperation. It must be willing to abide by the rules it
seeks to impose on others, to accept its share of the costs and, most
importantly, to accept that other participants are bound to have other
opinions, and other states other national interests. The United States
will always have veto rights due to its weight and importance. 

Here is an alternative vision of America's role in the world. It is the
vision of America leading the world toward a global open society. Such a
vision is badly needed. After September 11, President Bush has managed to
convince the country that it is unpatriotic to disagree with him.

The two visions -- American supremacy and America as the leader of a
global open society -- are not that far apart. In fact, they are so close
to each other that I am afraid that when the pursuit of American
supremacy fails -- as it is bound to fail -- the vision of a global open
society will also be abandoned. That is why it is so important to
distinguish between them. 

Both visions recognize the dominant position of the United States. Both
agree that the United States has to take an active leadership role in
international affairs. Both favor preemptive action. But when it comes to
the kind of preemptive action that America ought to take, the two visions
differ. A global open society requires affirmative action on a global
scale while the Bush approach is restricted to punitive action. In the
open-society version, crisis prevention cannot start early enough; it is
impossible to predict which grievance will develop into bloodshed, and by
the time we know, it is too late. That is why the best way to prevent
conflicts is to foster open societies. 

The Bush administration claims to be fostering democracy by invading
Iraq. But democracy cannot be imposed from the outside. I have been
actively involved in building open societies in a number of countries
through my network of foundations. Speaking from experience, I would
never choose Iraq for nation building. 

Military occupation is the easy part; what comes afterward is what should
give us pause. The internal tensions and the external ones with
neighboring countries such as Turkey and Iran will make it very difficult
to establish a democratic Iraqi regime. To impose a military regime as
Douglas MacArthur did in post-World War II Japan would be to court
disaster. 

It would have been easier to achieve success in Afghanistan because both
the Taliban and al-Qaeda were alien oppressors. But having won a
resounding military victory, we failed to follow through with nation
building. Secretary Rumsfeld opposed the extension of UN peacekeeping
beyond Kabul, and, as a result, law and order have still not been fully
established outside the capital. Hamid Karzai needs to be protected by
American bodyguards. His government is making slow progress, but the
historic opportunity to build on the momentum of liberation was
irretrievably lost. 

The war with Iraq does not help the building of open societies in other
countries, either. In our efforts to gain allies and buy votes in the
United Nations, we have become less concerned with internal conditions in
those countries than we ought to be. This is true of Russia and Pakistan
and all the central Asian republics, not to mention Angola and Cameroon,
which are among the most corrupt regimes in Africa. To claim that we are
invading Iraq for the sake of establishing democracy is a sham, and the
rest of the world sees it as such. The Atlantic Alliance has been
severely disrupted, and both NATO and the European Union are in disarray.

Disarming Iraq is a valid objective, but with regard to weapons of mass
destruction, Iraq ought not to be the top priority today. North Korea is
much more dangerous, and it has to be said that President Bush
precipitated the current crisis. North Korea's nuclear program had been
more or less contained in 1994 by the Agreed Framework concluded by the
Clinton administration. In the meantime, President Kim Dae Jung of South
Korea had engaged in a sunshine policy, and it began to bear fruit. There
was progress in removing land mines along the border, and a direct train
connection was about to be opened. The North Korean leadership seemed to
become increasingly aware that it needed economic reforms. 

When Kim Dae Jung came to Washington as the first foreign head of state
to visit President Bush, he wanted to enlist the president's support for
the sunshine policy. But Bush rebuffed him rather brusquely and publicly.
Bush disapproved of what he regarded as the appeasement of North Korea,
and he was eager to establish a discontinuity with the Clinton
administration. He also needed North Korea out in the cold in order to
justify the first phase of the National Missile Defense program, the
initial linchpin in the Bush strategy of asserting U.S. supremacy. Then
came the "axis of evil" speech, and when North Korea surprised
the Bush administration by admitting its uranium-enrichment program
(strictly speaking not in violation of the Agreed Framework because that
covered only plutonium), Bush cut off the supply of fuel oil. North Korea
responded with various provocations. 

As this magazine goes to press, North Korea could soon start producing a
nuclear bomb a month. In mid-April, it backed off its demand for
bilateral talks with the United States and agreed to three-way talks with
the United States and China. But a serious rift between the United States
and South Korea remains. South Koreans now regard the United States as
being as much of an aggressor as North Korea, and this renders our
position very difficult. 

The Bush administration's policies have brought about many unintended,
adverse consequences. Indeed, it is difficult to find a similar time span
during which political and economic conditions have deteriorated as
rapidly as they have in the last couple of years. 

But the game is not yet over. The quick victory in Iraq could bring about
a dramatic change in the overall situation. The price of oil could fall,
the stock market could celebrate, consumers could overcome their
anxieties and resume spending, and business could respond by stepping up
capital expenditures. The United States could reduce its dependency on
Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could become more
tractable and negotiations with North Korea could calm tensions with
Pyongyang. That is what the Bush administration is counting on. 

The jury is out. But whatever the outcome in Iraq, I predict that the
Bush approach is bound to fail eventually because it is based on false
premises. I base my prediction on my theory of reflexivity and my study
of boom-bust processes, or bubbles, in the financial markets. 

Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality,
but misconception distorts reality. In this case, the dominant position
of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of American supremacy
the misconception. For a while, reality can reinforce the misconception,
but eventually it is bound to become unsustainable. During the
self-reinforcing phase, the misconception seems irresistible but, unless
it is corrected earlier, a dramatic reversal becomes inevitable. The
later it comes the more devastating the consequences. There seems to be
an inexorable quality about the course of events, but, of course, a
boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage. Most stock-market booms
are aborted long before the extremes of the recent bull market are
reached. The sooner it happens, the better. That is how I feel about the
Bush doctrine. 

I firmly believe that President Bush is leading the United States and the
world in the wrong direction and I consider it nothing short of tragic
that the terrorist threat has induced the country to line up behind him
so uncritically. The Bush administration came into office with an unsound
and eventually unsustainable ideology. Prior to September 11, it could
not make much headway in implementing its ideology because it lacked a
clear mandate and a clearly defined enemy. September 11 changed all that.
The terrorist attack removed both constraints. 

Terrorism is the ideal enemy because it is invisible and therefore never
disappears. Having an enemy that poses a genuine and widely recognized
threat can be very effective in holding the nation together. That is
particularly useful when the prevailing ideology is based on the
unabashed pursuit of self-interest. By declaring war on terrorism,
President Bush gained the mandate he had previously lacked to pursue his
goals. The Bush administration is deliberately fostering fear because it
helps to keep the nation lined up behind the president. We have come a
long way from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said that we have nothing to
fear but fear itself. 

But the war on terrorism -- which is supposed to include the war on Iraq
-- cannot be accepted as the guiding principle of our foreign policy.
What will happen to the world if the most powerful country on earth --
the one that sets the agenda -- is solely preoccupied with
self-preservation? America must play a more constructive role if humanity
is to make any progress. 

Acting as the leader of a global open society will not protect the United
States from terrorist attacks. But by playing a constructive role, we can
regain the respect and support of the world, and this will make the task
of fighting terrorism easier. 

The Bush vision of American supremacy is not only unsound and
unsustainable, it is also in contradiction with American values. We are
an open society. The principles of open society are enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence. And the institutions of our democracy are
protected by our Constitution. The fact that we have a bunch of far-right
ideologues in our executive branch does not turn us into a totalitarian
dictatorship. There are checks and balances, and the president must
obtain the support of the people. I put my faith in the people. But in
the end, open society will not survive unless those who live in it
believe in it.