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Disappointed
by Bush
A
review of Soros' book, The Bubble of American
Supremacy
By
Håkan
Wiberg
TFF board
member
April 12, 2005
George Soros must be a disappointed
man. In the book, "The Bubble of American
Supremacy", that he published last year he admits
that he has usually been rather indifferent between
different presidential candidates, but sees the 2004
election in a very different light: "I have made it my
primary objective to persuade the American public to
reject President Bush in the forthcoming elections" (p.
viii).
He probably even succeeded in his
avowed purpose. The exit polls in Ohio and elsewhere
showed Kerry as a clear winner, whereas the official
election results proclaimed George W. Bush as the winner.
The more detailed figures were analysed by a group of
very respected mathematicians and statisticians, and show
beyond reasonable doubt that there was gross and
systematic electronic election fraud, even if they of
course cannot tell exactly who were involved in what
ways. If this sounds familiar from Serbia, Georgia and
Ukraine, there is one important difference: the voters
there revolted, those in the USA did not, so Soros lost
at the end of the day.
That, however, does not make the
book less interesting; its value goes far beyond the
election results.
George Soros is not easy to put
into any box. He is a liberal in important sense of this
nebular word, his views deeply rooted in his own
experience of being a Jew under a succession of different
dictatorships - military, then fascist, then Stalinist -
in the Hungary of his youth until he fled to Great
Britain in 1947 (and moved on to the United States a few
years later), and states that he is scared of the
Stalinist language - "if you are not for us, you are
against us" - that he now hears from Bush, Ashcroft and
others.
He is a billionaire who made his
fortune on currency speculation and a firm believer in
market economy, yet he has repeatedly warned of "market
fundamentalism" and self-destructive tendencies in
today´s capitalism. He has a philosophical training
and hails Karl Popper´s epistemology as well as his
enthusiasm for an open society, but also very much a
practical man; it is not much of an exaggeration to say
that he has done as much to support the protagonists of
an open society in former Communist countries - and
elsewhere - as the entire European Union.
The first section of the book is
devoted to critical analysis, the main part of it dealing
with the position of USA in the world, with chapters on
the Bush Doctrine, on the "War on Terrorism", on the
foreign policy of the Bush administration and on the
Iraqi quagmire. His general thesis is that while
September 11 changed the course of history, this was not
so much by the event itself as the way the Bush
administration chose to respond to it: "War on Terror".
Soros documents well that this
should not be seen as a spontaneous panic reaction: the
plans for aggression in the Middle East had been drafted
and published by people with close connections with
Israel who also got prominent members of the Bush
administration, but they had been rejected by Clinton as
well as Bush at the beginning of his presidency before
September 11 created better conjunctures for another
attempt at selling them. Soros documents the lies,
hypocrisy and obfuscations behind the war on Iraq,
summarizing that "we must find a way of getting rid of
the likes of Saddam, but the Bush administration´s
behavior in Iraq renders the task more difficult" (p.
65).
Something similar is concluded
concerning the drastic reductions in civil liberties and
democracy suffered by the US citizens - as well as by
citizens in many other countries under US pressure or in
collusion with the USA.The "PATRIOT" Act that was
bulldozed through a congress that mostly had not even had
the opportunity to read its text, but again this was
largely a matter of the protagonists of an authoritarian
society grabbing a golden opportunity rather than a
"spontaneous" reaction.
The last chapter in this section
deals with the domestic policies of Bush, Soros confines
his remarks "to one subject I know something about: the
budget deficit". Its conclusion from analyzing the
interplay between political and economic decision-making
is that "we will have to pay a heavy price for the
irresponsible fiscal policy of the Bush administration"
(p.74).
The critical analysis is written by
a concerned US citizen ("this is not the America that I
chose to live in") who has the advantage of being able to
see more clearly by comparing with his experiences of
other parts of the world, whether fascist, Stalinist or
democratic. Much of it could have been written by
concerned citizens elsewhere, provided of course that
they also had the intelligence, knowledge and resources
of George Soros.
This is less true for the section
presenting a constructive vision, where the range of
possible alternative authors is more restricted, since
they must put more faith in Soros´s own value
premises. His point of departure is that the arrogant
policies of US supremacy are both self-defeating and
undermining the possibilities of USA eventually playing a
more humble leader role in co-operation with like-minded
countries by alienating allies, emasculating the United
Nations, being niggardly with assistance, etc. Many
Americans - to whom the visions were addressed - will
agree with Soros, as will many reasonable people
elsewhere; many others will see a broader coalition as
inescapably dominated by rich Northern countries anyhow,
whatever noble aims proclaimed for it, and will therefore
see it as an even greater threat to mankind than an
arrogant unilateralist USA.
In spite of that - or because of
that - the vision makes for interesting reading,
discussing globalization and the shortcomings of global
capitalism, sovereignty and intervention, the deficiency
of foreign aid and Soros´s own experiences as an aid
donor, fights over natural resources and rules for them,
and so forth. The summarizing chapter carries the same
title as the book and presents Soros´s own analysis,
with his conceptual framework presented in an
appendix.
Essentially, he tries to
extrapolate the analysis of bubbles and boom-bust cycles
from economics to politics. The point is that for a while
the perceptions of US might and capability held by the
neo-cons contributed to changing reality in that very
direction, thus being apparently self-confirming and
keeping the relations between perceptions and reality
close to an equilibrium; but eventually the gap between
perceptions and reality will get too great, and bust
follows.
To Soros, the reactions to
September 11 - which may well have been foreseen and
intended by Osama bin Laden - defined the turning point
from near-equilibrium to far-from-equilibrium between
perceptions and actions on the one hand and reality on
the other hand, and the US is now caught in the Iraqi
quagmire, from which it needs a radical reassessment of
its foreign policy to extricate itself.
Håkan Wiberg
George Soros
The Bubble of American Supremacy.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2004
ISBN 0-297-94906-9
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