[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 13495-13496]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS OF GEORGE SOROS AT THE PAUL H. NITZE SCHOOL OF 
                     ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 17, 1999

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, this is the season of commencement speeches. 
Many of them deserve the oblivion that most of them receive. There are 
a few, however, that are particularly worthy of note. One outstanding 
exception was the commencement address given by my friend George Soros 
at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns 
Hopkins University on May 27th of this year.
  Mr. Soros has used this commencement address as an opportunity to 
give us his thoughtful and incisive reflections on the current conflict 
in Kosova and the broader significance of that conflict for the 
international system as the world enters the 21st century. It is ironic 
that the end of the Cold War has brought about a significant reduction 
in the threat of major confrontation involving the United States 
directly, but at the same time we have seen an increase in the violence 
of regional ethnic and religious conflicts, such as that in Kosova. 
George Soros has given considerable critical thought to the role of the 
United States in the post-Cold War era, and his thoughts are useful for 
all of us here in the Congress who must grapple with the question of 
the appropriate international role for the United States.
  A successful international financier and investment advisor, George 
Soros is a major philanthropist with a focus on encouraging the 
development of the infrastructure and culture necessary for democratic 
societies. He established the Open Society Foundation which operates a 
number of foundations throughout Central and Eastern Europe, South 
Africa, and the United States. These foundations are helping to build 
the infrastructure and institutions of a free and open and democratic 
society through supporting a variety of educational, cultural and 
economic restructuring activities. A native of Budapest, Hungary, and a 
current citizen of the United States, Mr. Soros brings a personal 
insight to the problems of Southeastern Europe and the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit George Soros' commencement address to be placed 
in the Record, and I invite my colleagues to give it thoughtful 
attention.

 Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins 
                               University


      Commencement Speech delivered by George Soros, May 27, 1999

       A commencement speech is meant to be inspirational and I am 
     not sure whether I can deliver such a speech because 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. I feel 
     obliged to reconsider some of my own 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 distressed 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.

[[Page 13496]]

     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 necessarily believe in democracy 
     as an 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 re 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.
       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 
     are not ruled by an indicted war criminal, 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 exactly because it can act either within or without 
     the UN. 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 or universal principles but we are 
     unwilling to accept any infringement of our town 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 like minded 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 body bags. I hate to 
     end on such a somber note, but that is where we are right 
     now.

     

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