Alwaght- The American billionaire and political lobbyist, George Soros says western democracies, the US and the EU in particular, will face hard times in coming years.
86-year-old Hungarian Jew, who is known as hidden hand behind many color revolutions across the world, was a prominent promoter of democrat Hillary Clinton during the recent US presidential elections. After the victory of republican Donald Trump, he was reported to be conspiring against future Trump’s cabinet.
In a recent article in the Project Syndicate website, he anticipated hard times ahead of the western democracies after the Brexit and election of Trump, who he calls a “con artist and would-be dictator”.
“Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. His cabinet comprises incompetent extremists and retired generals,” the Jewish tycoon writes.
He goes on to elaborate reasons behind his anticipation of such dark days, saying globalization “increased inequality within both poor and rich countries”.
“In the developed world, the benefits accrued mainly to large owners of financial capital, who constitute less than 1% of the population. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction” he adds.
The Hungarian mogul says the unfair treatment of wealthy countries against those in trouble was a major factor in development of dissatisfaction in EU countries and says “after the Crash of 2008, a voluntary association of equals was transformed into a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations and the creditors set the conditions the debtors had to obey. That relationship has been neither voluntary nor equal”.
“Germany emerged as the hegemonic power in Europe, but it failed to live up to the obligations that successful hegemons must fulfill, namely looking beyond their narrow self-interest to the interests of the people who depend on them,” he added.
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel, correctly reading the wishes of her electorate, declared that each member state should look after its own institutions. That was the start of a process of disintegration,” Soros belives.
Mentioning that “after the Crash of 2008, the EU and the Eurozone became increasingly dysfunctional” Soros goes on to say “these forces of disintegration received a powerful boost in 2016, first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters’ rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms”.
Foretelling bleak future for democracy, the American billionaire predicts that “the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future…will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world”.
“I am particularly worried about the fate of the EU, which is in danger of coming under the influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” founding father of color revolution says, and goes on to accuse Russia of exploiting "social media companies’ business model to spread misinformation and fake news, disorienting electorates and destabilizing democracies" to help Trump get elected.
“The same is likely to happen in the European election season in 2017 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. In France, the two leading contenders are close to Putin and eager to appease him. If either wins, Putin’s dominance of Europe will become a fait accompli,” he writes.
The US billionaire concludes his article with a horrible anticipation for the EU, writing “with economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome”.
