Soros: A Partnership with China to Avoid World War

Photo: AP/Scanpix

To avoid a third world war and a Russian threat, the US should aim for a partnership with China, advises financier and philanthropist George Soros in an essay published in the New York Review of Books.

In the essay George argues that President Obama should «make President Xi a genuine offer of a strategic partnership with China when he visits Washington in September.» He should do so, Soros writes, to «prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict,» especially to avoid a geopolitical situation wherein Russia and China join hands against the US and a potential third world war.

He goes on to describe an alarming trend of global disorder. He writes: «Since the Western powers are the mainstay of the prevailing world order, their declining influence has created a power vacuum in international governance. Aspiring regional powers and nonstate actors, which are willing to use military force, have rushed to fill the vacuum.»

Soros sees Putin's Russia as a destabilizing force in the world: «The severity of the Russian threat is directly correlated with the weakness of the European Union,» he says.

Soros sees cooperation rather than competition with China as the key to promoting global stability, «Whether the two camps will be able to keep their rivalry within bounds will depend on how China manages its economic transition and on how the US reacts to it,» he says.