A recent interview with George Soros on The Future of Europe was conducted by Spiegel correspondent Gregor Peter Schmitz. Parts of it appear in their book, The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?, just published by PublicAffairs.
At the interview, Soros discussed the Ukrianian crisis at length. He reckons that Putin's aggressiveness is really a sign of weakness, due to less than apparently solid popular support at home and vulnerability of the Russian economy. Nevertheless, he suggests that it would serve no useful purpose in pushing the impasse over the precipice. The question is how to resolve the situation hopefully safeguarding the West's advantage.
While agreeing that financial sanctions could work if properly targetted at financial inflows into Russia, Soros thinks that the West should put greater store in shoring up the finances of Ukraine and integrating it more vigorously into the economies of the European Union. This can be achieved in concert with an adequate IMF financial package as well as much closer economic, trade and investment links with the EU.
Soros also thinks that the EU doesn't have to have a confrontational relationship with Russia. Now with massive mutual investment and trade flows having become a reality, both the EU and Russia stand to benefit from a more benigh yet balanced relationship.
Click here for the full text of the Spiegel interview.
Soro's idea to achieve a more stable Europe tallies with Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Strategic Vision" for the United States to re-shape the global order, involving a re-balance of a "Complex East" and creation of a "Larger West", hoping to bring Russia (along with Turkey) into a Europe more amenable to Western norms. Click here
However, reality seems to dim the hope for a U.S.-led European order. One of Putin's closest advisors, Professor Aleksandr Dugin, a geostrategic and ideological theorist, recently published his visualization of three possible scenarios over the Ukrainian crisis, all interwined with the global order. One of these assumed Russia buckling under Western pressure, the second, armed conflict spiralling into global Armageddon, and the third, which he dubs “the Russian Spring,” featuring Russia leading a peaceful revolution across Europe, freeing the continent from alleged America-led Atlanticism, liberalist hegemony and Western financial oligarchy supported by dollar supremacy. Click here
Putin's latest aggression over Ukraine underlines the resurgence of Russian revanchism. In the circumstances, it seems that Brzezinski's America-led European vision is becoming even more difficult, if not totally unreal.
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