Flak Magazine: Review of The Bubble of American Supremacy, 2.17.04

George Soros has become the Howard Dean of philanthropy: he is angry, fiercely accusatory and eager to oust the current administration. Three months ago, the Hungarian financier gave $15.5 million in personal contributions to organizations committed to getting a Democratic candidate elected in November. "It is the central focus of my life," he told the Washington Post, adding that the 2004 presidential race is "a matter of life and death."

Soros is perhaps best known outside financial circles for his foundation, Open Society Institute, which takes its name from the term popularized by the late philosopher Karl Popper in his 1945 book, "Open Society and its Enemies. "An 'open society,'" explains the foundation's website, "is a society based on the recognition that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, that different people have different views and interests, and that there is a need for institutions to protect the rights of all people." This is the vision Soros sees threatened by the policies of the Bush administration, and this is the impetus for his newest book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy."

The bubble here is an analogy to the stock market bubble of the 1990s: Misconceptions (for instance, that the new economy meant the end of the business cycle) are reinforced by prevailing trends (irrational exuberance), distorting the market equilibrium. As the market enters far-from-equilibrium territory, these distortions postpone and exacerbate the eventual bursting of the bubble. Soros' analogy casts the United States' dominant global position as the distortion and the Bush administration's foreign policy as the misconceptions amplifying it. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he writes "allowed the advocates of American supremacy to carry the nation behind them, and it was with the invasion of Iraq that we entered far-from-equilibrium territory."

Here is where Soros founds his damning critique. He sees these "advocates of American supremacy" as a neoconservative cabal that developed during the first Bush administration, regained control in 2000, and used the pretext of the war on terror to implement their dogma. "These people had a clear idea of the direction in which they wanted to take the country," he writes, "and when the September 11 terrorist attacks presented an opportunity, they seized it without ever coming clean about all of their goals." This may prove to be true, particularly if the recent revelations by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill about the early intentions of the administration toward Iraq are to be believed. Even more damning is Soros' charge that "to silence criticism and keep the nation united behind the president, the administration deliberately fostered the fear that has gripped the country." For this Soros unfortunately provides little substantiation, though the outgoing chief American weapons inspector, David Kay, recently said he was almost certain that Iraq had no significant banned weaponry before the war.

Soros sees this all as the work of neocons. Political scientists divide basically between those who believe international relations are relations of power — realists — and those who believe them to be relations of law — liberalists. Neocons figure somewhere on the realist side of the spectrum, arguing that the United States must maintain its military supremacy and wield its military power to protect its interests. Soros vehemently disagrees, arguing that the US should shift its foreign policy toward promoting cooperation, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and international development assistance. But his view is not that of a liberalist. He does not ask the US to support the growth of the UN to protect international law. Rather, he sees his proposals as more effective ways of securing American interests. "The role I am advocating for the United States," he writes, "is based not on altruism but on enlightened self-interest." The rub here is that few neocons would disagree; the only disagreement is on method: What are American interests and how do we protect them? The lines seem grayer than Soros might realize.

Perhaps most astute is Soros' concern for the anti-American sentiment being fomented by the policies of the Bush administration. He notes that, "The war on terrorism has claimed more innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq than have the attacks on the World Trade Center." The concern is that victims often turn into perpetrators. This is, after all, how Hitler attained power, cashing in on the German sense of victimhood following defeat in the First World War and the embarrassing reparations agreed to at Versailles. The US itself was the victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and in turn became a perpetrator by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Likewise, families and communities of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to become more anti-American and perhaps even perpetrate attacks on American forces. And as the death toll in Iraq mounts and democracy seems increasingly distant, it does seem that, as Soros argues, "We are liable to be trapped in a vicious cycle of violence."

Still, Soros provides little remedy. He argues that if we reject President Bush in November, "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." This is not only easier said than done — we are already knee-deep in rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq — it is a nostalgic reading of history. While the Clinton years were a time of relative peace, the United States was certainly not the bastion of peace and liberalist humanitarian responsibility (recall Somalia and Rwanda, to name but two examples). So it might be left to the real Howard Dean (or, more likely, John Kerry) to come up with another alternative.

— Noam Lupu (noam at flakmag dot com)