Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros used his platform at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week to
repeat warnings that tensions with China and Russia could erupt into a third world war.
Soros said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have already started the war and that the West should act to decisively defeat Russia now to prevent further bloodshed later.
“The invasion [of Ukraine] may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it,” he said.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement and that Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people located in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Ukraine and its Western allies reject such claims as a baseless pretext to invade and conquer, as Ukraine wasn’t under consideration for NATO membership and couldn’t qualify for membership because of the fact that it doesn’t control its easternmost territories in the Donbas and Crimea.
Soros’s comments demonstrated a commitment to the latter view and a doubling down on the position being
espoused by some that Russia must suffer a humiliating defeat in order to be dissuaded from further conquest.
“The best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible,” Soros said. “That’s the bottom line.”
‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ Societies in a New World War
The comments echoed similar statements Soros
made in a March op-ed. This time, he framed the deepening partnership between Russia and China against the West as a battle between authoritarianism and open democracy, saying the world was locked in a war between democratic “open societies” and authoritarian “closed societies.”
“Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege,” he said. “Today, China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society.”
Soros’s comments focused on the partnership between the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has grown since February, when Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping
announced a “no limits” agreement between their respective countries.
Since that time, the CCP has
drawn international condemnation for its refusal to condemn the war in Ukraine, as well as its refusal to accept multilateral financial sanctions against Russia as legitimate. The CCP also doesn’t refer to the war in Ukraine as an “invasion” and heavily censors negative talking points about Russia within the Chinese mainland.
There have also been reports that China
conducted a cyberattack on Ukraine the day before Russia’s invasion and that it was
considering sending military support to Russia, although it’s unclear what the initial sources for such intelligence were.
To that end, intelligence leaders in the United States have
expressed the belief that the partnership between the Kremlin and the CCP will only deepen over the next decade.
A Good War?
To that end, Soros said he believed that Putin would soon attempt to negotiate a ceasefire, although Putin has previously
stated that the war, which he refers to as a “special military operation,” is going according to plan.
However, Soros suggested that the West should reject such a peace.
“But the ceasefire is unattainable because he [Putin] cannot be trusted,” he said. “The weaker Putin gets, the more unpredictable he becomes.”
Soros’s comments go against the Biden administration’s apparent
search for ways to give Russia an off-ramp to end the war quickly and without risking further escalation or needless blood and death.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed support for such a search earlier this week during his own speech at Davos.
He
said Ukraine should cede its lost territory in the east to Russia in order to bring about a swift end to the war. If the West were to seek a crushing or humiliating defeat of Russia at all costs, Putin would become more likely to engage in extreme or desperate acts, such as the use of a
tactical nuclear weapon, according to Kissinger.
“Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” he said. “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
Rise of the ‘Dragonbear’?
Soros’s suggestion that the world was locked into a new world war and Kissinger’s rebuke of the idea demonstrates the contentious arguments currently in play as to how to best prevent the rise of what some experts refer to as the “
Dragonbear“—that is, an economically and militarily united China and Russia that could present the United States with a security crisis the likes of which has
never been seen.
At the heart of the issue is how the West might prevent such a situation from occurring. Some people, such as Soros, say the complete and early defeat of Russia is key. Others, such as Kissinger, lend credence to the idea that the West’s current efforts to wholly
excise Russia from the international order will only push it further into China’s open arms.
For Soros, the problem isn’t complex. The “Dragonbear” already exists and can’t be prevented.
“The two dictators, Putin and Xi, [are] now tied together in an alliance,” Soros
said, noting that the two were “bound to fail.”
