George Soros Discusses War on Terrorism on NPR

The following is a transcript from a conversation between George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute, and Robert Siegel, host of the National Public Radio (NPR) program "All Things Considered." The program aired on June 6, 2002.

ROBERT SIEGEL:

Last Saturday President Bush spoke at the West Point commencement, where he told the graduating cadets of his vision of America's role in keeping the peace and in combating terrorism.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.

(Soundbite of applause)

SIEGEL: This coming Saturday the president will receive a rebuttal of sorts when George Soros, the financier and philanthropist, receives the Dayton Peace Prize, which commemorates the Bosnia peace accords negotiated in Dayton, Ohio. Mr. Soros joins us to offer a critique of Mr. Bush's West Point speech.

Mr. Soros, President Bush, in his speech, consigned the policies of deterrence and containment to a bygone Cold War inappropriate to fighting present-day threats. Do you agree with that?

GEORGE SOROS: I do. And actually I wouldn't exactly say that my speech is going to be a rebuttal because I think that President Bush delivered a very important foreign policy statement that can be now the basis of a discussion because he said that deterrence and containment are no longer valid and we must now be ready for pre-emptive action. And I am all in favor of crisis prevention, but I think he is emphasizing punitive action. And I think that we must do constructive things to encourage other countries to move towards what I call open societies. To engage in punitive action may be necessary, but we cannot just high-handedly interfere with or violate the sovereignty of other countries unilaterally. We need to have some form of legitimacy for taking punitive action.

SIEGEL: In the case of Afghanistan, do you think that the president's action, and the actions of the United States, measure up to your standards of multilateral engagement toward an open society?

SOROS: Absolutely. And I think the actions were justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter, self-defense. But we are not following up properly. We are in danger of losing the peace having won the war because we are opposed to the extension of international peacekeeping beyond Kabul.

SIEGEL: You think that the United States should be committed to peacekeeping throughout the country to aid in the further development of Afghanistan.

SOROS: That's right. And we are, I think, ideologically opposed to UN peacekeeping. So we are discouraging the extension which has been requested by Prime Minister Karzai.

SIEGEL: Well, you have criticized the Bush administration's aversion to multilateralism.

SOROS: That's right.

SIEGEL: And I was thinking in reading both the speech the president gave at West Point and the draft of your speech to be given in Dayton, back to the Balkans and back to the fighting in Bosnia. And I wondered whether ideas like making sure we're in step with our allies in NATO, maintaining the moral high ground, a high ground which to some people made all of the players in the Balkans look equally unsavory--that those ideas were discredited by what happened, as the U.S. did that the people in the Balkans were dying, and that when the U.S. got more unilateral things changed.

SOROS: Well, there is a lot of validity in that point of view. And, in fact, I think the United States is quite disillusioned with the way NATO worked and, you know, the lack of flexibility and so on. So I think that is a valid point. I had been very much involved in Bosnia. I gave $50 million to UNHCR; it was put to very good use in actually helping Sarajevo to survive. But I felt that having to give that money was an admission of defeat compared to the work of my foundations in other countries where we were spending not $50 million but $5 million helping to build open societies. And the sooner you start, the less it costs, the less human suffering is involved and the better the chances of success. So that is where we ought to be changing our policy.

SIEGEL: Is the notion of economic development and progress toward an open society truly an antidote to the phenomenon of...

SOROS: Terrorism.

SIEGEL: ...militant terrorism, particularly Islamic terrorism, which one can attribute to other sorts of complaints and clashes?

SOROS: Again, you're absolutely right. We also have to defend ourselves against terrorism. But we should not forget this other, let's say, longer-term goal. One doesn't exclude the other. But there is a disproportion. Our military budget is now approaching $400 billion and our international assistance budget is $10 billion, so it's out of proportion.

SIEGEL: Mr. Soros, thank you very much for talking with us today.

SOROS: My pleasure.

SIEGEL: The financier and philanthropist George Soros. He receives the Dayton Peace Prize on Saturday.

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