The Bubble of American Supremacy

Speech by George Soros

Delivered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Washington, DC

Monday, January 12, 2004

I have never been involved in party politics but I am deeply disturbed by the direction America has taken under President Bush.  It is not a matter of party politics or personal animosity against President Bush.  I consider it crucial that the policies of the Bush administration be rejected in the forthcoming elections.  Let me explain why.

President Bush was elected in 2000 on a platform that promised a humble foreign policy.  Yet, from the day he was inaugurated, he went out of his way to denounce international agreements and institutions. Then came the terrorist attack of September 11th, which according to him changed everything.  He used the war on terror as a pretext to pursue a dream of American supremacy that is neither attainable nor desirable.  It endangers civil liberties at home and embroils us in military adventures abroad.  There has been a dangerous discontinuity in the way we conduct our affairs:  we engage in behavior that in normal times would have been considered unacceptable.

Our new national security posture has been embodied in the Bush doctrine.  The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars.  First, we must maintain our unquestioned military superiority at all costs the United States will not tolerate any military rival, globally or in any region of the world.  Second, we have the right to engage in pre-emptive military action.  Taken together, these two pillars support two levels of sovereignty:  The sovereignty of the United States which is sacrosanct and exempt from any constraint imposed by international law, and the sovereignty of all other states which is subject to the pre-emptive actions of the United Sates.  This is reminiscent of George Orwell's famous book Animal Farm in which all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

Underlying the Bush doctrine is the belief that international relations are relations of power not law , and that international law merely serves to ratify what the use of power has wrought.  This dogma can be very appealing especially when you are powerful, but it contradicts the values that have made America great.  And the rest of the world cannot possibly accept it.  This has been demonstrated in the case of Iraq.  The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine and the rest of the world had an allergic reaction to it.  Nobody had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein yet the overwhelming majority of the people and governments of the world opposed the invasion because we did it unilaterally, indulging in pre-emptive military action.

If we reelect Bush in 2004 we endorse the Bush doctrine and we will have to live with the consequences.  We shall be regarded with widespread hostility and terrorists will be able to count on many sympathizers around the world.  We are liable to be trapped in a vicious circle of violence, as we already are in Iraq.  But if we reject him we can write off the Bush doctrine as a temporary aberration and resume our rightful place in the world as a powerful but peace-loving nation.

That is one of the main points I should like to drive home.  2004 is not an ordinary election; it is a referendum on the Bush doctrine. The future of the world hangs in the balance.  That is the other point that I want to make; it is not enough to defeat President Bush.  We must also develop and adopt a more constructive vision.  It is exactly because America is so powerful that it matters so much what role it plays in the world.  We set the agenda: the rest of the world has to respond to whatever policies we pursue.  Our preeminence imposes on us a unique responsibility: we must take a broader view of our self-interest and concern ourselves with the well being of the world.  But that is not how President Bush and a dominant group around him, the neo-conservatives, see the world.  For them, life is a struggle for supremacy, and the outcome depends mainly on military power.

It is important to make clear that the question before us is not whether we want America to be safer.  We all agree on that goal.  The question is which set of policies will best accomplish that goal.

I am not opposed to the use of military force.  I advocated it in the case of Bosnia and Kosovo.  I supported the invasion of Afghanistan.  But I drew the line on their unilateral action against Iraq.  Military force should be used as a last resort and not as a means of asserting our supremacy and imposing our will on the world.

My views  have been caricatured by the Bush propaganda machine. But make no mistake about it.  It is American foreign policy that has gone off the rails, not me.   Quite simply, the Bush Doctrine is making us less, not more, safe, and renders us less able to foster free and open societies around the world. Perhaps I am more sensitive to the dangers than most Americans because of my background.  I was born in Hungary and I am Jewish.  The Nazis occupied Hungary and the Jews were deported.  I would have perished if my father had not had the foresight to procure false identities for his family.  

Then Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union and my life could have been wasted if I had not emigrated.  So I learnt at a very early age how important it is what kind of social system prevails.  I chose freedom, first in England and then in America.  As a student I was greatly influenced by Karl Popper, the philosopher.  He showed that there was something common to both the Nazis and the Communists.  They believed they had the final answers.  But the ultimate truth is not within our reach.  So the final answers can be imposed only by force or repression.  He advocated a different approach:  A social system based on the recognition that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth and might is not necessarily right.  That is the social system I chose when I came to America and became an American citizen. Now I find the values of open society endangered by the Bush administration.

I have made the rejection of the Bush doctrine the central project of my life for the next year.  This may sound grandiose but this is not the first time that I devote all my energies to fostering the values of an open society.  When I had made more money in the financial markets than I needed for my personal use I set up a foundation devoted to that goal.  That was in 1979.  It had a slow start but it gradually built up momentum. My first project was in South Africa which was a closed society based on racism.  Then I turned to Eastern Europe and set up a foundation in my native country, Hungary. That was in 1984 when Hungary was still under communist rule.  The foundation supported all kinds of unofficial activities on the theory that the official dogma was false and its falsehood would become apparent if alternatives were available.  The foundation was successful beyond my wildest dreams and encouraged me to expand to other countries.

As the Soviet system crumbled my foundation network expanded until it covered more than thirty countries.  Annual expenditures rose from $3 million to nearly $600 million at their peak.  I saw an historic opportunity to help the transition from closed to open societies and for a few years I made it the central project of my life.  When the historic moment had passed I reoriented the foundation network to address the problems of globalization.  When President Bush was elected and even more after September 11th  I decided that I should pay more attention to the United States, not only because the United States sets the agenda for the world but even more because President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction. 

I have written a book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, that spells out a more constructive vision for America's role in the world.  That is the book I am launching today.  The Bush propaganda machine has demonized me in an attempt to pre-empt a substantive discussion on the ideas contained in my book.  They know my record, yet The Wall Street Journal published a lead article entitled "Who Is George Soros?" without even mentioning the open society foundation network.  I have been in the business of promoting democratic regime change.  I can testify from personal experience that invading Iraq was not the right way to foster democracy.  

Introducing democracy by military means is a quaint idea.  There is an historical precedent form from the Second World War when democracy was established in Germany and Japan after a military defeat.  But that precedent is not applicable to Iraq. Moreover, the welfare of the Iraqi people was not our primary motivation.  That was manifest in the way we prepared for and managed the occupation.  We may claim to be liberators but even victims of Saddam's repression regard us as occupiers.  As a result, we have suffered more casualties during the occupation than in the invasion itself.

Now that Saddam has finally been captured there is a reasonable prospect that the back of the insurgency can be broken and the casualties reduced.  But the political problems of establishing democracy will remain and we are not in a good position to resolve them because we are regarded as occupiers.  Any government we install will lack legitimacy.  The Bush administration is reluctant to turn to the United Nations, which could confer the required legitimacy.  So it will have to struggle with the political problems on its own.  A different President with a different attitude towards international cooperation would be in a much better position to bring about a resolution.  I rejoice at the fall of Saddam and I am particularly pleased that he has been captured in a rat hole without putting up resistance.  But that does not change the fact that the invasion of Iraq was a grievous error.  To my mind, Iraq constitutes the defining issue for the forthcoming elections.  It raises a number of questions.

First, there is the question of deception.  There can be little doubt that the Bush  administration has deliberately deceived the public.  It was determined to invade Iraq, irrespective of what anybody said or did.  The real reasons have not been disclosed or discussed to this day.  President Bush justified the invasion by claiming that Saddam was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and he was somehow connected with al Qaeda.  When these claims proved false he asserted that the purpose of the invasion was to liberate the Iraqi people from a heinous tyrant.  

Second, there is the question of unintended adverse consequences.  After September 11th we had the sympathy and support of the entire world.  Today, we are widely feared and resented.  It is difficult to think of a period in history when the standing of America in the world has deteriorated so far, so fast.  Even in terms of its own objectives the policies of the Bush administration have been a dismal failure.  It sought to establish the supremacy of the United States, especially in military terms.  But our ability to project our military power has been greatly diminished by the occupation of Iraq.  As Wes Clark argues so cogently in his book Winning Modern Wars, the American military has been programmed to project overwhelming force, not to engage in military occupation.  Having become bogged down in Iraq it cannot now fulfill its original objective.  President Bush scores the worst where he is supposed to be at his best:  national security.

Third, there is the question of America's role in the world.  Do we want to impose our will on the world or do we want to lead the world to a more prosperous and peaceful future?  That is the question I address at length in my book.  I advocate a different kind of intervention:  preventive action of a constructive affirmative nature.  I shall not even try to summarize the argument of the book here.  I talk about a Community of Democracies that America could lead.  I discuss an emerging new concept of sovereignty, “ the sovereignty of the people, “and the responsibility to protect the people against rulers who abuse their power.  I explore the resource course and how to overcome it,“ but all that would take too long.  I cannot reduce my ideas to sound bites.  You will have to read the book.  

Here,  I am confining my remarks to Iraq because I regard it as the defining issue for the elections.  Many political pundits would argue that the Iraqi quagmire will not be sufficient to assure the rejection of the Bush doctrine.  According to them, the most important issue is the economy and the Bush administration has done everything it can to pump up the economy for the elections even if it means borrowing from the future and practically assuring a setback after the elections.  Moreover, the security situation in Iraq is bound to improve after the capture of Saddam and the Bush administration will try to reduce the number of bodybags even if it means compromising our other objectives.

I am afraid that these pundits may be right.  That is why I have decided to speak out.  And that is why I am ready to put my money where my mouth is.  In my view, the 2004 elections are not business as usual. There has been a radical change in the behavior of our government.  The Bush administration has exploited the terrorist threat and taken us and the world in a radically wrong direction.  

In the book I compare the present situation to a stock market bubble.  Bubbles don't arise out of thin air.  They have a solid foundation in reality.  It is the misinterpretation of reality that gives rise to a bubble. In this case, the reality is that we are powerful and we occupy a dominant position in the world.  The misinterpretation is that might is right and we ought to use our dominant position to impose our will on the world.  The invasion of Iraq demonstrates where this false ideology can lead.  The forthcoming elections pose a critical test.  We can either deflate the bubble before it does any more damage or we can endorse the Bush doctrine and suffer the consequences.

On the basis of all the experience I have gained in the international arena I am determined to do what I can to ensure that we make the right choice.  I can only hope that the electorate will resist the efforts of the Bush propaganda machine to discredit me and consider my arguments on their merit.

Let me end where I started: Much more than partisan politics is involved.  It is the future of the United States and the world that is at stake.  I believe many Republicans share my concerns. Thank you.