Is this the end of the Soros empire?

Plus: the US deep state's role in the Chilean coup; NATO chief admits Russia invaded because of NATO expansion; billionaire admits governments are waging class war on workers; China's economic model.

Hi all, I’ve got two new pieces out. In my first article, for UnHerd, I unpick the announcement made by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Soros’ powerful philanthropic organisation (now run by his son Alex), that it will be largely withdrawing from Europe. Why is the OSF moving out of the EU? What’s the future of the OSF? What is the organisation’s legacy? And, most importantly, why do we allow billionaires like Soros to use their (or in Soros Jr’s case, their dad’s) wealth and influence to shape the politics of entire nations? As I write in the piece:

Whether Soros sincerely believes in the righteousness of the causes that he sponsors or whether he thinks they serve his material interests is, ultimately, beside the point. For at its heart, “philanthropy”, when it comes to exercise such a massive influence over governments and societies, is intrinsically anti-democratic — and should be opposed first and foremost on such grounds. In this sense, for all its controversial aspects, the pushback against “Sorosism” in Europe and elsewhere should be seen as a democratic reaction by a body politic that feels increasingly disenfranchised by global elites. If it is to be effective, however, it also needs to tackle the economic and institutional system, of which the EU is part, that gives rise to oligarchs such as Soros in the first place.

In my second article of the week, published on the 50th anniversary of the bloody coup in Chile, which occurred on September 11, 1973, I review the US deep state’s crucial role in those events — and their continued relevance to the present. Some of the points I cover in the article: how Kissinger and Nixon made the decision to overthrow Allende just a few days after his election; how the CIA almost immediately put in motion a covert operation to destabilise and overthrow Allende, which involved identifying, recruiting, and supporting military officers willing to back a coup; how, even before Allende took office, the CIA oversaw a plot (which result in the general’s murder) to kidnap Gen. René Schneider, the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces, because he opposed military interference in the election; and how the US supported for years Pinochet’s regime, which went on to murder or “disappear” thousands of political opponents. As I conclude: “This history has special relevance today, as governments throughout the Global South begin to mount new challenges to the US-led global order”.

And now, for paying subscribers only, here’s a selection — with my comments — of some of most interesting articles and news pieces I’ve come across during the past week. The topics include: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg admits Russia invaded because of NATO expansion; billionaire admits governments are deliberately increasing unemployment to crush workers; why the US attempt to derail China is bound to fail; why China shouldn’t abandon investment-driven growth in favour of consumption-driven growth.

I hope you enjoy the article, and as usual any feedback is welcome. If you enjoy my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid. Plus, you’ll also get access to my newsletter with the top reads of the week and other exclusive stuff.

I’d start with a story I broke on Twitter last week: the rather astonishing admission, made by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, during a speech at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine — far from being an irrational, unprovoked act animated by a paranoid dictator’s Hitlerian thirst for annexing territory, as Western leaders have ben claiming for the past 19 months — was in fact a rational reaction to what Russia plausibly viewed as a very serious threat to its national security: Ukraine’s de facto integration into NATO, which had been underway and escalating since 2014. In the words of Stoltenberg himself:

President Putin in the autumn of 2021 sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that. ... So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

In other words, Stoltenberg confirmed what some of us have been saying for a long time — only to be accused of putting out “Russian propaganda”. As Caitlin Johnstone wrote in a piece commenting Stoltenberg’s speech:

Stoltenberg’s remarks would probably have been classified as Russian propaganda by plutocrat-funded “disinformation experts” and imperial “fact-checkers” if it had been said online by someone like you or me, but because it came from the head of NATO as part of a screed against the Russian president it’s been allowed to pass through without objection. In reality Stoltenberg is just stating a well-established fact: contrary to the official western narrative, Putin invaded Ukraine not because he is evil and hates freedom but because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders  —  including the United States.

Indeed. As I wrote a few months ago in a much-discussed piece for Compact:

One may very well consider [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] morally reprehensible, but in light of the events that led to that decision, it can’t be considered unprovoked. On the contrary, it was a rational reaction to what Russians plausibly saw as an existential threat—and the same course of action Americans would have taken if they had been put in a similar position. To be clear, what may be justifiable from a realist national-security perspective isn’t necessarily justified from a moral standpoint. But the Western narrative on Ukraine [that the invasion was irrational and unprovoked], aside from being incorrect, represents an insurmountable obstacle to any diplomatic solution insofar as it depicts Russia, and its leader, as agents of evil who can’t be reasoned with. This narrative empowers the military-industrial complex and the most jingoistic factions in the West, which evidently want the proxy war against Russia to go on for as long as possible. Understanding how we got into this mess is the only way of getting out of it. That means grasping the motivations that drove Russia to invade, and acknowledging the responsibility of all the parties involved, including the West. These are basic preconditions for putting an end to the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine.

Interestingly, I recently came across a 2022 study by historian Geoffrey Roberts published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies — a peer-reviewed academic journal (published by Routledge) which certainly can’t be accused of being a Russian propaganda outlet — which comes to exactly the same conclusions. As Roberts writes: