Sounding the alarm on America’s direction

More than any other philanthropist, the Hungarian-born emigre George Soros has operated on a global scale. Having survived both the Nazis and the Communists to flee to Britain, where he was educated at the London School of Economics, he came to the United States in 1956 as a young man, to make a fortune and become a paradigm of the American dream. For several decades now, as a consistent advocate and supporter of human rights, freedom of expression and democratic institutions, he has promoted “open societies” -- those recognizing “that people have divergent views and interests and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth” -- in key areas of the world, especially in those countries emerging from Marxist-Leninist or authoritarian pasts.

Any critical assessment of him as a phenomenon must acknowledge, at the very least, that he has put his money where his mouth is. Since he began his philanthropic life, he has donated some $5 billion to civic and educational institutions and projects in 50 countries, giving away almost half a billion dollars last year. The entire corpus of his international philanthropies comprises something close to an imperium -- albeit one whose sovereign has invented a new kind of private, pro bono power that thrives by giving rather than taking. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that his Open Society Institute has made modest grants to Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where I am dean.) From Davos and Beijing to Budapest and Johannesburg, Soros has roamed the world investing his considerable wealth, only to dispense it in a manner befitting not so much a wealthy private citizen as the head of a prosperous virtual state visiting his far-flung embassies.

In reality, of course, Soros has no ambassadors, no legions, not even any official status. He is just an exceedingly rich altruist with a vision, who describes himself as seeking to reverse Cardinal Richelieu’s (and Henry Kissinger’s) famous dictum that “States have interests but no principles.” “I have principles but no interests,” he says. Of late, he has dubbed his efforts to foster open societies, and his conviction that the world will be a better place for them, the “Soros doctrine.”

In the process of getting and spending his billions, Soros has developed a unique perspective on our evolving global commonweal. He has also acquired a flinty eye for its strengths and weaknesses. While other titans of capitalism have spewed out hundreds of books on how to become an uber-CEO or hot-shot corporate manager, or how to acquire vast wealth (see Donald Trump on “How to Get Rich”), Soros has set forth his understanding of world markets, political philosophy and global interaction in a series of almost scholarly books, including “The Crisis of Global Capitalism” (1998), “Open Society (2000)” and “George Soros on Globalization” (2002).

Until now, his efforts have been largely aimed at societies and countries overseas, especially those exiting from communism. However, with this most recent book, Soros has turned his attention to America. Like a missionary who suddenly hears the call to interrupt his evangelizing in heathen lands and return home to heal the mother church, Soros believes that America must begin to minister to itself before it will ever again be effective in ministering to others. Though he once considered America something of “a city on a hill,” a global inspiration for enlightened governance and democratic principles, Soros now views it as in peril of losing not only its role as global exemplar but its ability to govern itself in a manner consonant with the principles of its Founding Fathers. As he bluntly declares at the outset of “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” “This is not the America I chose as my home”; rather, it has fallen into “the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude.”

It is Soros’ contention that “at no other time has America’s position declined as dramatically in as short a period as it has since George W. Bush became president.” Soros views this America as having become “a dangerous aberration.” Moreover, because “it is the United States that sets the agenda for the world,” not only is the U.S. itself in jeopardy but the international community is both alienated from us and, collectively, more rudderless than at any other time in the last half-century. “We have lost the moral high ground for advocating a better world order,” he writes dispiritedly. “A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world.... The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme [have been] redefined as the normal.”

The main target of Soros’ critique is the Bush doctrine of preemptive military action. He considers the administration’s dream of global preeminence not just “unattainable” but “in contradiction with the principles America has traditionally stood for. It endangers our values as well as our security.” He perceives America’s new unilateralist approach as dangerous because it rends the already incompletely woven fabric of global governance, on which world markets, international trade, transnational environmental concerns and myriad other intertwined political interests depend. Storming one of the most sacred of conservative citadels, he raises the specter of world government, daring to propose that the very “principle of sovereignty needs to be reconsidered.”

“We live in a much more interdependent world than ever before, but our political arrangements are still based on sovereignty of states,” he writes. “What happens within individual countries is of concern to all other countries. This was true before September 11, but the terrorist attack brought it home as never before. Yet, the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. That is the great unresolved problem of the current world order.” In Soros’ view, our lapsed moral standing and weakened leadership role in the global community can be remedied only “by rejecting President Bush when he stands for reelection in 2004 and by adopting a more benevolent role in the world.”

But Soros does not stop here. Lest the reader imagine that he is concerned solely with America’s foreign affairs, he argues that “[t]he swing in our international position matches the swing in our budget deficit. Whatever the flaws in the ideology that has guided the Bush administration, the practical results have been nothing short of disastrous.” The administration’s deployment of military power abroad coupled with its radical tax cuts at home have created an unsustainable “bubble of American supremacy” that, when it bursts, will bring on even graver perils, including the potentially catastrophic disruption of global markets. And so, for Soros, “[i]t is not enough to defeat President Bush at the polls; we must repudiate the Bush doctrine and adopt a more enlightened vision of America’s role in the world.”

This book is hardly impartial. Indeed, it is more of a broadside than a dispassionate analysis. Many readers will find Soros’ judgments harsh and his remedies extreme, even un-American. It is, however, worth pointing out that they represent a very different George Soros from the one the world knew several years ago, when he was content to have a foreign policy but no comprehensive domestic policy. Times have radically changed, and in many ways this odyssey, in which he has turned his attention back to his adopted home from the remote lands that once preoccupied him, suggests that Soros is at last becoming a true American. These days he has redirected much of his philanthropic energy toward American politics, giving millions away to activist groups such as MoveOn.org and America Coming Together and tirelessly traveling the country to raise an even larger war chest to defeat George Bush.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Soros’ views and newfound home-based activism, he must be given credit as standing virtually alone among the very wealthy citizens of this country, in that he not only seeks to buy influence (although he insists he expects nothing but a better society in return) but has taken the time to sit down and write a comprehensive analysis of America’s present dilemma and a cogent scenario for the future.

“The Bubble of American Supremacy” is one more reminder of how angry many Americans have become over the last three years. But it is also a reminder of how grievously Democrats and Republicans alike have failed to articulate a larger vision of America’s role in the post-Sept. 11 world, settling instead for a patchwork approach that has led to little more than charges and countercharges on the campaign trail. Soros’ intensely polemical but also succinct and well-reasoned book ought to provide a welcome template for how the candidates might begin to think their way through to a more coherent view of America’s place in the world. *