Currently, the
big money man the Bush2 loyalists love to hate, George Soros pens commentary on
Bush foreign policy. I am
excerpting here from about midpoint in this essay, which appears in the current
issue of The Atlantic Monthly. You
will see some familiar phrases here. - KWC
The Atlantic
Monthly | December 2003
The Bubble of American
Supremacy
A prominent
financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world
resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here
by George Soros
…“September 11 introduced a discontinuity
into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that
would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as
appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been
redefined as normal. The
advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since.
To explain the significance of the transition, I should like to draw on my
experience in the financial markets. Stock markets often give rise to a
boom-bust process, or bubble. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a basis in reality—but reality as
distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are
self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium.
Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality,
and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between
reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble
bursts.
Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be
established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants
are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their
beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the
stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes,
it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to
have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any
stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few
bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in
2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.
The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position
the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being
distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses
its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the
misconception. It is exactly
by not abusing its power that America attained its current position.
Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is
either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will
only reinforce the trend.
Whatever the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, there can be no doubt
that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President
Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over the
opinions of our allies. The gap between the Administration's expectations and
the actual state of affairs could not be wider. It is difficult to think of a
recent military operation that has gone so wrong. Our soldiers have been forced
to do police duty in
combat gear, and they
continue to be killed. We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the
combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are
no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might
have legitimate need to project that power. North Korea is openly building
nuclear weapons, and Iran is clandestinely doing so. The Taliban is regrouping
in Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war are weighing
heavily on our economy, and we are failing to address many festering
problems—domestic and global. If we ever needed proof that the dream of
American supremacy is misconceived, the occupation of Iraq has provided it. If
we fail to heed the evidence, we will have to pay a heavier price in the
future.
Meanwhile, largely as a result of our preoccupation with
supremacy, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the war on terrorism.
Indeed, war is a false metaphor in this context. Terrorists do pose a threat to
our national and personal security, and we must protect ourselves. Many of the
measures we have taken are necessary and proper. It can even be argued that not
enough has been done to prevent future attacks. But the war being waged has
little to do with ending terrorism or enhancing homeland security; on the
contrary, it endangers our security by engendering a vicious circle of
escalating violence.
The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as
a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not
military action. Protection against terrorism requires precautionary measures,
awareness, and intelligence gathering—all of which ultimately depend on the
support of the populations among which the terrorists operate. Imagine for a
moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded
Iraq, and we would not have our military struggling to perform police work and
getting shot at.
Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush
Administration, because it invoked military might; but this is the wrong way to deal with the problem.
Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result
the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring
terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are
often sponsored by states.
The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On
the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to
provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy. That pursuit, in turn,
will continue to generate resistance. Further, by turning the hunt for
terrorists into a war, we are bound to create innocent victims. The more
innocent victims there are, the greater the resentment and the better the
chances that some victims will turn into perpetrators.
The terrorist threat must be seen in proper perspective. Terrorism is not new.
It was an important factor in nineteenth-century Russia, and it had a great
influence on the character of the czarist regime, enhancing the importance of secret police
and justifying authoritarianism. More recently several European countries—Italy, Germany,
Great Britain—had to contend with terrorist gangs, and it took those countries
a decade or more to root them out. But those countries did not live under the
spell of terrorism during all that time. Granted, using hijacked planes for
suicide attacks is something new, and so is the prospect of terrorists with
weapons of mass destruction. To come to terms with these threats will take some
adjustment; but the threats cannot be allowed to dominate our existence. Exaggerating
them will only make them worse. The most powerful country on earth cannot
afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national
strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world.
Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are
playing into the terrorists' hands. They
are setting our priorities.
A recent Council on Foreign Relations publication sketches
out three alternative
national-security strategies. The first calls for the pursuit of American supremacy through the Bush doctrine
of pre-emptive military action. It is advocated by neoconservatives. The second seeks the continuation of our earlier policy of deterrence
and containment. It is advocated by Colin Powell and other moderates, who may
be associated with either political party. The third would have the United States lead a cooperative effort to improve the
world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not
advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip
service to it. That is the policy I stand for.
The evidence shows the first option to be extremely dangerous, and I believe
that the second is no longer practical. The Bush Administration has done too
much damage to our standing in the world to permit a return to the status quo.
Moreover, the policies pursued before September 11 were clearly inadequate for
dealing with the problems of globalization. Those problems require collective action. The United States is uniquely
positioned to lead the effort. We cannot just do anything we want, as the Iraqi
situation demonstrates, but nothing much can be done in the way of
international cooperation without the leadership—or at least the participation—of
the United States.
Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but
international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states. What goes
on within individual states can be of vital interest to the rest of the world,
but the principle of sovereignty militates against interfering in their
internal affairs. How to deal with failed states and oppressive, corrupt, and
inept regimes? How to get rid of the likes of Saddam? There are too many such
regimes to wage war against every one. This is the great unresolved problem
confronting us today.
I propose replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action with
preventive action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign
aid or better and fairer trade rules, for example, would not violate the
sovereignty of the recipients. Military action should remain a last resort. The
United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so.
But the framework
within which to think about security is collective
security. Neither
nuclear proliferation nor international terrorism can be successfully addressed
without international cooperation. The world is looking to us for leadership.
We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are
so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/12/soros.htm
