Okay. So, George, the Munich Security Conference this year, which you spoke at, had the title 'Global Disorder.' Is that right? Are we living in a particularly disordered time? That's one of your areas of expertise. What's going on?
No, I agree with that because the global governance is failing and you have all kinds of crises all over the world. Instead of being solvable by themselves, they fester, they don't get solved, and they accumulate. They are all interconnected in a reflexive fashion, affecting the others and being affected by them. The losers in a particular crisis become spoilers in the other crisis, and that's what makes it so difficult to resolve them. So the world is becoming extremely complicated. Until a few months ago, I thought I could sort of follow most of the crises in the world. But it has become practically impossible, particularly in the Middle East, because there the enemies of your enemies used to be your friend, but that's no longer true, and that makes things extremely complicated.
Okay. So crisis, let's move and focus specifically on Europe where we are. You have spoken often and written about the power of the European idea as a very inspiring idea. You've even talked about it as a fantastical object for you. That seems quite distant from Europe today, but talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Well, I wrote a book, 'The Tragedy of the European Union.' And to sum it up, the European Union was a very inspiring idea for people like me. I considered it the embodiment of the idea of an open society. Like-minded countries getting together, sacrificing part of their sovereignty for the common good. It was meant to be a voluntary association of equals. And because of the Euro crisis, it has already been transformed into something radically different, because the Euro crisis created a difference between creditors and debtors. So those are two different classes. The debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations, and that put the creditors in charge. They set the rules, and the rules they set made it very difficult for the debtors to exit their inferior status. So this voluntary association of equals turned into an involuntary association of unequals. For people under 50 today, for me, for the older generation, Europe was an inspiring idea. But for the young people, particularly in the heavily indebted countries, the European Union seems to be the enemy because it has made their future uncertain and not very appealing. So, the European Union is currently in deep trouble.
Is there a way out? Can this fantastical object be saved? Or is the European Union now, as you've written, as you just said, a foreign oppressor for young Europeans?
Basically, the Euro is here to stay because Draghi has said 'do whatever it takes' to make it work, and he had the backing of Angela Merkel in doing that. So he had the ability to deliver on that. But the financial crisis has largely transformed into an emerging and developing political crisis. Europe has been very good at muddling through. But now you have two existential crises, Greece and Ukraine, and two crises at the same time. Maybe a little bit too much. So there's a danger that this time the muddling through won't work.
So let's talk about those crises. Maybe start with Greece. You've described it as an existential crisis.
Well, Ukraine was mishandled from the beginning by all parties concerned. It got worse and worse. So actually now the most constructive outcome is muddling through. But Ukraine is very different, and unfortunately the European Union treats Ukraine as yet another Greece, and that is absolutely the wrong approach.
Why is it so wrong? I mean from a distance you could see a lot of similarities, right? You know, both countries celebrating Easter this weekend. They have oligarchs. They have kind of crumbling governments. Don't they have a lot in common?
Well, Ukraine was very much like Greece with oligarchs, non-functioning government, a bureaucracy that was in many ways using its position for private gain rather than to serve the people. Greece has many similarities to the old Ukraine. But there is what I call a new Ukraine which is determined to get rid of all the rottenness of the old Ukraine. And that's the new Ukraine that Europe has difficulty in recognizing. And so that's why they treat Ukraine like the old Ukraine, like Greece.
And what's the difference? I mean, what makes the new Ukraine new?
Well, it's really basically the rise of civil society that spontaneously rebelled against a continuation when the association agreement was offered and then Putin outbid the European Union, which wasn't very difficult, and offered $15 billion. And Yanukovych then made a deal with Putin and the people then rebelled. They went to Maidan and they protested. And Putin said to Yanukovych, before you get your first three billion, you've got to get rid of those people in Maidan. Basically ordered Yanukovych to use force, and this was a fatal mistake on the part of Putin that he's now trying to remedy as best he can because it's not within his view of the world to believe that people will actually act spontaneously and risk their lives for a political cause. So when they wanted to clear the square, people instead of running away ran to Maidan, and that was the first time that Yanukovych actually was forced out of power. And then when he was already out of power, Putin was in Sochi and had Yanukovych brought to him and ordered him to use live ammunition, which was in February of 2014. Again, the people instead of running away actually attacked the snipers and chased them away. And that was sort of a very remarkable event, and that was the birth of the new Ukraine.
Is that, was that, George, civil society in action? You've been working on helping to build civil society, trying to build it, often frustrated in the former Soviet Union. I know you started, I first met you in Ukraine in 1990 when you began those efforts. There were many years I think when it seemed it was all useless. Does it say something to you? Teach you something about open society, civil society building?
Well, yes, because basically in many ways I set up the foundation in Ukraine in 1990, which is two years before the independence of Ukraine. It was an offshoot of the foundation in Russia. I set up a cultural initiative foundation in the Soviet Union in 1987, and then we built this branch in Ukraine in 1990. And the foundation, one of the things that the foundation did, gave a lot of scholarships and supported civil society. And the maturity of civil society 25 years later is to a large extent the work of the foundation.
Yeah. And I will just offer my own personal testimony here. It's actually amazing in Ukraine, the new Ukrainian government, the new Ukrainian leadership, everyone who I know in that group has been touched somehow by Open Society and by George. Like literally either people personally got a scholarship or someone, you know, their wife got a scholarship. It's a really remarkable thing. This is for me quite an experience to see this, and I didn't realize how much, how big an effect it has had over a 25-year period because those who were students 25 years later, they were leaders.
So George, the way you describe Ukraine, and you know that's where my own sympathies lie also, is incredibly appealing. It maybe is another one of these fantastical objects, but not all Europeans agree with us. The leader of your own homeland, Hungary, has described Putin as a model, as a role model. We have political leaders across Europe. We have the Greeks right now making trips to Moscow. We have in France Marine Le Pen having close contacts with Putin. How do you explain this influence, this appeal that Putin has in Europe?
Well, I think I can take a historical perspective because I was very much involved in the collapse of the Soviet system. That was my debut as what I call myself a political philanthropist. And this is déjà vu for me. But there are some fundamental differences between now and then, because then it was a collapsing, moribund Soviet Union that really collapsed of its own weight. And you had the European Union emerging. It was, as you call it, a fantastic object that was very, very attractive. I was really, and I still am, a great believer in that idea. So that's the big difference, because now you have a resurgent Russia, a country that has gone through a great deal. We had basically a revolution and a restoration, and the restoration brought about a new form of more or less the same kind of regime. But instead of a kind of an international, universal thing, it's based on nationalism. And in fact it's sort of two roots. One is sort of ethnic, the exceptionalism of the Slavic race and Holy Russia. So this is a new ideology and very effective, and it's based on a lot of resentment. In that respect, it's resembling interwar Germany, basically the Nazi regime, which was also nationalistic and also based on resentment. And it's got considerable vigor.
