Enclosed is a commencement speech delivered on May 27 by George Soros
in Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John
Hopkins University, in which Mr. Soros gave his personal opinions on
the current Kosovo crisis and war in Yugoslavia.
OSI Office of Communications
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Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
John Hopkins University
Commencement Speech delivered by George Soros
May 27, 1999
I am honored to be your commencement speaker. A commencement speech is
meant to be an inspiration to the young people who are completing their
education and going out into the big world. I am not sure whether I can
deliver such a speech because as a citizen of that big world, I am
stunned and devastated by what is happening in Kosovo. I am deeply
involved in that part of the world and what is happening there has
raised in my mind a lot of questions to which, frankly speaking, I
don*t
have the answers. The results of the NATO intervention have shocked me
and forced me to reconsider some of my most cherished preconceptions.
I am a believer in what I call an open society which is basically a
broader and more universal concept of democracy. Open society is based
on the recognition that nobody has access to the ultimate truth;
perfection is unattainable and therefore we must be satisfied with the
next best thing: a society that holds itself open to improvement. An
open society allows people with different views, identities and
interests to live together in peace. An open society transcends
boundaries; it allows intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign
states because people living in an oppressive regime often cannot defend
themselves against oppression without outside intervention but the
intervention must be confined to supporting the people living in a
country to attain their legitimate aspirations, not to impose a
particular ideology or to subjugate one state to the interests of
another. These are the principles I have put into practice through my
network of open society foundations.
Judging by these principles, I have no doubt that Milosevic infringed
the rights of the Albanian population in Kosovo. Nor do I have any
doubts that the situation required outside intervention. The case for
intervention is clearer in Kosovo than in most other situations of
ethnic conflict because Milosevic unilaterally deprived the inhabitants
of Kosovo of the autonomy that they had already enjoyed. He also broke
an international agreement into which he entered in October of last
year. My doubts center on the ways in which international pressure can
be successfully applied.
I am more aware than most people that actions have unintended
consequences. Nevertheless I*m shocked by the consequences of our
intervention. We have accomplished exactly the opposite of what we
intended. We have accelerated the ethnic cleansing we sought to
interdict. We have helped to consolidate in power the Milosevic regime
and we have helped to create instability in the neighboring countries of
Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania, not to mention the broader
international implications such as our relationship with China.
It is obvious that something has gone woefully wrong and we find
ourselves in an awful quandary. I am not going to discuss how we got
there and how we can extricate ourselves. I want to discuss the
principle of intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state
in
order to protect its people. Because that is what we are doing and it
is not working. It is easy to find fault with the way we have gone
about it, but the problem that preoccupies me goes deeper. In the case
of Yugoslavia we have intervened in different ways. In Bosnia we tried
it with the United Nations and it didn*t work. That is why in Kosovo
we
tried it without the United Nations and that didn*t work either. We
also tried it by applying economic sanctions but that too had adverse
consequences. The sanctions could be broken with the help of the
ruling
regimes by shady businessmen who in turn became an important source of
support for the ruling regimes not only in Yugoslavia but also in the
neighboring countries. In short, nothing worked. And we have a
similar
record in Africa.
The question I have to ask myself: is it possible, is it appropriate to
intervene in the internal affairs of a state in the name of some general
principle like human rights or open society? I did not want to consider
such a question and I certainly don*t want to accept no for an answer.
It would be the end of the aspiration to an open society. In the
absence of outside intervention oppressive regimes could perpetrate
untold atrocities. Moreover, internal conflicts could easily broaden
into international hostilities. In our increasingly interdependent
world, there are certain kinds of behavior by sovereign states *
aggression, terrorism, ethnic cleansing * that cannot be tolerated by
the international community. At the same time we must recognize that
the current approach does not work. We must find some better way. This
will require a profound rethinking and reorganization of the way we
conduct international relations.
As things are now, international relations involve relations between
states. How a state treats its own citizens involves relations within
the state. The two relations are largely independent of each other
because the states enjoy sovereignty over their territory and their
inhabitants. Sovereignty is an outdated concept but it prevails. It
derives from the time when kings wielded power over their subjects but
in the French Revolution when the people of France overthrew their king
they assumed his sovereignty. That was the birth of the modern state.
Since then, there has been a gradual recognition that states must also
be subject to the rule of law but international law has been slow to
develop and it does not have any teeth. We have the United Nations but
the UN does not work well because it is an association of states and
states are guided by their interests not by universal principles, and
we
have the Declaration of Universal Human Rights.
The principles which ought to govern the behavior of states towards
their own citizens have been reasonably well-established. What is
missing is an authority to enforce those principles * an authority that
transcends the sovereign state. Since the sovereignty of the modern
state is derived from the people, the authority that transcends the
sovereign state must be derived from the people of the world. As long
as we live in a world of sovereign states, the people need to exercise
their authority through the states to which they belong, particularly
where military action is concerned. Democratic states are supposed to
carry out the will of the people. So in the ultimate analysis the
development and enforcement of international law depends on the will of
the people who live in democratic countries.
And that is where the problem lies. People who live in democratic
countries do not believe in democracy as a universal principle. They
tend to be guided by self-interest, not by universal principles. They
may be willing to defend democracy in their own country because they
consider it to be in their own self-interest but few people care
sufficiently about democracy as an abstract idea to defend it in other
countries, especially when the idea is so far removed from the reality.
Yet people do have some concerns that go beyond self-interest. They are
aroused by pictures of atrocities. How could these concerns be mobilized
to prevent the atrocities? That is the question that preoccupies me.
I have attended a number of discussions about Kosovo and I was shocked
to discover how vague and confused people, well-informed people, are
about the reasons for our involvement. They speak of humanitarian
reasons and human rights almost interchangeably. Yet the two are quite
different. Human rights are political rights. When they are violated, it
may lead to a humanitarian disaster, pictures on CNN that arouse
people*s emotions but by then it is too late. The damage is done and the
intervention is often counterproductive. The humanitarian disaster
could have been prevented only by protecting the political rights of the
people. But to achieve this, people must take an interest in the
principles of open society. Prevention cannot start early enough. To be
successful it must be guided by a set of clear objectives. That is what
the concept of open society can provide.
For instance, if the people of the world had been sufficiently aroused
by the atrocities in Kosovo to impose a ban on Yugoslav basketball
teams, the eventual bombing of Yugoslavia might have been more
effective. The Serbs would have been aware that the people of the world
are revolted by the behavior of the Milosevic regime. As it is, the
Serbs simply fail to connect what is done to them with what they have
done to others. It fits their self-image as victims, and those who
think of themselves as victims are often the worst victimizers.
Unfortunately, the people of the world were not aroused by Kosovo. The
atrocities started more than a year ago, and the principles of open
society were violated ten years ago. But people did not even know where
Kosovo was until we started bombing Yugoslavia.
Suppose that the people subscribed to the principles of an open
society; how could those principles be translated into effective
institutions? It would require the cooperation of democratic states.
We need an authority that transcends the sovereignty of states. We have
such an authority in the form of the United Nations, but the UN is not
guided by the principles of open society. It is an association of
states, some of which are democratic, others not, each of which is
guided by its national interests. We have an association of democratic
states, NATO, which did intervene in defense of democratic values, but
it is a military alliance incapable of preventive action. By the time
it
intervenes it is too late and we have seen that its intervention can be
counterproductive. It needs to be complemented by a political alliance
dedicated to the promotion of open society and capable of acting both
within the UN and outside it.
Such an alliance would work more by providing rewards for good behavior
than punishment for bad behavior. Belonging to the alliance or meeting
its standards should be a rewarding experience. This would encourage
voluntary compliance and defer any problems connected with the
infringement of national sovereignty. The first degree of punishment
would be exclusion; only if it fails need other measures be considered.
The greatest rewards would be access to markets, access to finance,
better treatment by the international financial institutions and, where
appropriate, association with the European Union. There are a thousand
little ways that diplomatic pressure can be applied; the important thing
is to be clear about the objectives. I am sure that the abolition of
Kosovo*s autonomy in 1989 could have been reversed if the international
community had been determined enough about it. In Latvia, international
pressure had led to a reform of the naturalization law which could have
caused conflict in Russia. In Croatia, the international community did
not do enough to assure the existence of independent media. Nor is it
sufficiently aroused by proposals in various Central Asian republics to
introduce lifetime presidencies. We shall not be able to get rid of
Milosevic by bombing but if, after the war, there is a grand plan for
the reconstruction of South East Europe involving a customs union and
virtual membership in the EU for those countries which qualify, I am
sure that the Serbs would soon get rid of Milosevic in order to
qualify.
A political alliance dedicated to the promotion of open society might
even be able to change the way the UN functions, especially if it had a
much broader membership than NATO. NATO could still serve as its
military arm.
Ironically, it is the US that stands in the way of such a political
alliance. We are caught in a trap of our own making. We used to be one
of the two superpowers and the leaders of the free world. We are now the
sole remaining superpower and we would like to think of ourselves as the
leaders of the free world. But that is where we fail, because we fail to
observe one of the basic principles of the open society. Nobody has a
monopoly of the truth, yet we act as if we did. We are willing to
violate the sovereignty of other states in the name of universal
principles but we are unwilling to accept any infringement of our own
sovereignty. We are willing to drop bombs on others from high altitudes
but we are reluctant to expose our own men to risk. We refuse to submit
ourselves to any kind of international governance. We were one of seven
countries which refused to subscribe to the International Criminal
Court; the others were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen. We
do not even pay our dues to the United Nations. This kind of behavior
does not lend much legitimacy to our claim to be the leaders of the free
world.
To reclaim that role we must radically alter our attitude to
international cooperation. We cannot and should not be the policemen of
the world; but the world needs a policeman. Therefore we must cooperate
with likeminded countries and abide by the rules that we seek to impose
on others. We cannot bomb the world into submission but we cannot
withdraw into isolation either. If we cannot prevent atrocities like
Kosovo we must also be willing to accept bodybags. I hate to end on
such a note, but that is where we are right now.
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