Putin is disintegrating Europe, he is a ‘bigger threat to its existence than Isis’

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putin  euBy: George Soros

The leaders of the US and the EU are making a grievous error in thinking that president Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State. The evidence contradicts them. Putin’s aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood Europe with Syrian refugees.

Russian planes have been bombing the civilian population in southern Syria forcing them to flee to Jordan and Lebanon. There are now 20,000 Syrian refugees camped out in the desert awaiting admission to Jordan. A smaller number are waiting to enter Lebanon. Both groups are growing.

Russia has also launched a large-scale air attack against civilians in northern Syria. This was followed by a ground assault by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s army against Aleppo, a city that used to have 2 million inhabitants. The barrel bombs caused 70,000 civilians to flee to Turkey; the ground offensive could uproot many more.

The families on the move may not stop in Turkey. German chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Ankara this week to make last-minute arrangements with the Turkish government to induce the refugees already in Turkey to prolong their stay there. She offered to airlift 200,000-300,000 Syrian refugees annually directly to Europe on the condition that Turkey will prevent them from going to Greece and will accept them back if they do so.

Putin is a gifted tactician, but not a strategic thinker. There is no reason to believe he intervened in Syria in order to aggravate the European refugee crisis. Indeed, his intervention was a strategic blunder because it embroiled him in a conflict with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has hurt the interests of both.

But once Putin saw the opportunity to hasten the EU’s disintegration, he seized it. He has obfuscated his actions by talking of cooperating against a common enemy, Isis. He has followed a similar approach in Ukraine, signing the Minsk agreementbut failing to carry out its provisions.

It is hard to understand why US and EU leaders take Putin at his word rather than judging him by his behaviour. The only explanation I can find is that democratic politicians seek to reassure their publics by painting a more favourable picture than reality justifies. The fact is that Putin’s Russia and the EU are engaged in a race against time: the question is which one will collapse first.

The Putin regime faces bankruptcy in 2017, when a large part of its foreign debt matures, and political turmoil may erupt sooner than that. The president’s popularity, which remains high, rests on a social compact requiring the government to deliver financial stability and a slowly but steadily rising standard of living. Western sanctions, coupled with the sharp decline in the price of oil, will force the regime to fail on both counts.

Russia’s budget deficit is running at 7% of GDP, and the government will have to cut it to 3% in order to prevent inflation from spiralling out of control. Russia’s social security fund is running out of money and has to be merged with the government’s infrastructure fund in order to be replenished. These and other developments will have a negative effect on living standards and opinions of the electorate before the parliamentary elections this autumn.

The most effective way Putin’s regime can avoid collapse is by causing the EU to collapse sooner. An EU that is coming apart at the seams will not be able to maintain the sanctions it imposed on Russia following its incursion into Ukraine. On the contrary, Putin will be able to gain considerable economic benefits from dividing Europe and exploiting the connections with commercial interests and anti-European parties that he has carefully cultivated.

As matters stand, the EU is set to disintegrate. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent rescue packages for Greece, the EU has learned how to muddle through one crisis after another. But today it is confronted by five or six crises at the same time, which may prove to be too much. As Merkel correctly foresaw, the migration crisis has the potential to destroy it.

When a state or association of states is in mortal danger, it is better for its leaders to confront harsh reality than to ignore it. The race for survival pits the EU against Putin’s Russia. Isis poses a threat to both, but it should not be overestimated. Attacks mounted by jihadi terrorists, however terrifying, do not compare with the threat emanating from Russia.

Isis (and al-Qaida before it) has recognised the achilles heel of western civilisation – the fear of death – and learned how to exploit it. By arousing latent Islamophobia in the west and inducing the public and governments to treat Muslims with suspicion, it hopes to convince young Muslims that there is no alternative to terrorism. Once this strategy is understood, there is a simple antidote: refuse to behave the way your enemies want you to.

The threat emanating from Putin’s Russia will be difficult to counter. Failure to recognise it will make the task even more difficult.

*George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Foundations. He is author of The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.

The Guardian

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44 responses to “Putin is disintegrating Europe, he is a ‘bigger threat to its existence than Isis’”

  1. 5thDrawer Avatar

    That parts of Ukraine now look like Syrian cities should have given people great pause to consider, but their ‘News’ doesn’t reflect the realities of situations. Taking down a passenger plane was a signal, and what has come out of that incident?? Who has been charged?
    And is the ‘West’ really afraid of death?? That seems far-fetched … What it doesn’t want is another WW. But when push comes to shove, evidenced by the past, people step up for their freedoms and democracies. They know how hard it was to attain those. They just don’t understand how easy it can be to lose them.

    1. Hind Abyad Avatar

      Foreign fighters join Syria’s rebels Video
      Syrians battling government forces in Aleppo express disappointment more local residents have not joined their cause.

      http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/201282345719523948.html

      1. 5thDrawer Avatar

        I’d venture to say most of the dead over 5 years were not warriors.

        1. Hind Abyad Avatar

          First dead 5 years ago were Christians .. raped, beheaded or crucified

    2. Hind Abyad Avatar

      Feb.12, 2016
      ‘US A-10s Bombed City of Aleppo, Shifted Blame onto Moscow Russian Military’
      http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-a-10s-bombed-city-of-aleppo-shifted-blame-onto-moscow-russian-military/5507323?platform=hootsuite

      1. 5thDrawer Avatar

        Ah yes, down to the ‘word-wars’ of ‘he said – she said’ … and so who can be believed any more?
        This statement is also unbelievable … considering the uses of barrel-bombs.
        ““They know for sure that neither the Russian Air Force nor the Syrian government troops ever deliver strikes on non-combatants,” Konashenkov said.”

        1. Hind Abyad Avatar

          You know it has been like this since WW1. US-Russia
          Reading Western media lies about the Middle East & Saudi Arabia sharia US allies. Sorry i don’t trust them.

          1. 5thDrawer Avatar

            What is at least as interesting are the ‘comments’ below the articles …. I rather like the last one from fellows at a Tech school ….
            “We do not claim to know who was actually behind the attack of 21 August in Damascus. But we can say for sure that neither do the people who claim to have clear evidence that it was the Syrian government. The mainstream American media have done a disservice to the public by allowing politically motivated individuals, governments, and non-government organisations to misrepresent facts that clearly point to serious breaches of the truth by the White House.”

          2. Hind Abyad Avatar

            I saw it when it happened, they were Allawite children who’s familles supported Assad, pre shool children still with they mothers at home. Kidnapped by “Rebels in August 4, they were gassed on August 24 there were no parents in site.
            http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Latakia_Massacres

          3. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Were Victims Alawite Children Kidnapped from Latakia in Early August, Then Used as Grisly Props for War Provocation?

            http://tarpley.net/2013/09/16/sister-agnes-mariam-of-syria-analyzes-goutha-videos-touted-by-obama-white-house-finds-overwhelming-evidence-of-fabrication-and-fakery/

          4. 5thDrawer Avatar

            Atrocities still in question …. but atrocities nevertheless.

          5. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Atrocities still classified. ‘The Mukhtar’s sworn testimony- more on the 1948 Dawaymeh Massacre after the truce. (People forget and die)
            http://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/the-mukhtars-sworn-testimony-more-on-the-dawaymeh-massacre/?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_

          6. 5thDrawer Avatar

            I read it all, like you do. I’m sure we are not the only ones who do. The questions will keep coming up … and one day the answers will surface too. And as with all previous war-atrocities the answers will be written in books and put aside onto library shelves, and little will be done beyond occasional discussions by the ones interested in history. Nothing can bring back the dead. The Human Condition may not change much, even when the ‘Killing Fields’ are brought to light.

          7. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Your post is exactly about Human condition.
            The “chosen” are now the Zionists..and they will use Antisemitism until the planet belongs to the “Chosen”.
            I have Egyptian guests for the weekend, we don’t talk about the Middle East.. it’s like talking about a person that passed away.

          8. 5thDrawer Avatar

            Understand that. Politics and Religion don’t create friends. 😉
            And there is SO much more in life.

          9. 5thDrawer Avatar

            Yes, fine … but I hope we don’t become California trying to run a country with half a Mil. reactive folks signing, who understand nothing of a problem beyond their own pet peeves.
            You could end up with some weird things .. like cutting off the lively-hood of a few folks and even stopping the huge population of seals and bears from being farmed.
            (Oh, yah .. they did that .. Cod stocks are gone, and bears ramble the neighbourhood.)

          10. Hind Abyad Avatar

            What’s California has to do with that …..

            http://linkis.com/www.thenational.scot/y1aAe

          11. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Latakia region children have fair skin. Study the videos.
            http://www.pd.infn.it/~pascolin/pace/STUDY_THE_VIDEOS_ABOUT_CHEMICALS_BETA_VERSION.pdf

          12. Hind Abyad Avatar

            OK. Did you know the children who died in Ghouta Damascus are children kidnapped 3 weeks before from rural Latakia, the children of pro- Bashar al-Assad Alawite families? Can US government tell parents where the children are buried?

          13. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Diplomatic shit!

          14. Patience2 Avatar

            As is everything surrounding Putin. He’s learned everything he knows from the ‘old farts’ (er… the ‘oligarchs’ who are his surrogate daddys.)

          15. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Western ‘oligarchs’ parasites are todays new Feudal and the people are their peasants..
            US trying to rekindle new Cold War with Russia: Analyst
            http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/12/449973/US–new-Cold-War-with-Russia

          16. Hind Abyad Avatar

            How about US ‘diplomacy’.. dictated by Israel.
            http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/13/450086/US-Syria-policy-hypocrisy

          17. Hind Abyad Avatar

            Written by an Israeli diplomate…

        2. Hind Abyad Avatar

          This is a Canadian site

  2. Drug Dealer Avatar
    Drug Dealer

    This article is full of shit.

    1. Hind Abyad Avatar

      Thank you Yalibnan for such corruption experts connoisseur

      Hacked Emails Expose George Soros As Ukraine Puppet-Master
      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-01/hacked-emails-expose-george-soros-ukraine-puppet-master

  3. Adam Yonatan Ben Yoel Avatar
    Adam Yonatan Ben Yoel

    Is the writer high?

  4. Moscow threat of World War and the eyewash to a “ceasefire” in Syria.

    Putin’s aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood Europe with Syrian refugees.

    Asad use some barrel bombs while the Russian planes have been havely bombing the civilian population in southern Syria forcing them to flee to Jordan and Lebanon .

    And what Putin thinks about the Islamists on the Russian side?

    At the same time sends the “warning” against a “world war” a signal in the Western public, which is likely to stoke the fears of war and thus increase the pressure on Western governments not to advance the war axis Moscow-Tehran-Damascus in Syria company.
    With the same arrogance of the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has already stated yesterday an agreement on a cease-fire in Syria will Russia not prevent to continue its airstrikes against IS and Islamist terrorists such as al-Nusra – which means in plain language that Moscow still intends to do everything what suits him. but Islamic terrorists are after Moscow reading all those who he arbitrarily defined as such, including the allied with the West rebels.
    That on its own, the Russian side the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia fighting, which is in turn is a fanatical Islamist militia, disappears under the hypocritical rhetoric of the view from Kremlin.

    Isis (as well as al-Qaida) has recognised the achilles heel of the western civilisation – the fear of death – and learned how to exploit it.
    Fatalism is the middlename of Isis (as well as al-Qaida), they are naturally fatalists…..

  5. DaveTheRave Avatar
    DaveTheRave

    Wow this article really is as full of it as it can get. Way to talk up the war rhetoric against the Russians there George. That’s a real smart move.
    Sorry to say but many European folks are waking up to the fact the EU is a monster of bureaucracy and social manipulation they would feel better off without. If the fabric of the EU is under threat, it is
    not as a direct consequence of Syrian refugees or even Russian involvement in Syria but is more about national sovereignty vs. federalist diktat emanating from Brussels.

    The EU has morphed over the years from it’s original trans-national workers co-operative beginnings to it’s current attempts at becoming the Communist Empire 2.0 or even the Fourth Reich. The ‘blessings’ bestowed by the EU are being reduced to the lowest denominator of it’s poorest performing members The better
    performing members are looking to get out or halt any further integration.
    The bullying carrot and stick approach has left many EU members with a bad taste in their mouths. The Greeks are effectively held in thrall to this system forever as there is no way out except through defaulting on their loans and bowing out whilst they can still salvage their national integrity (they should have done this at the referendum, I suppose the bribes were just too good).
    This article is pure NATO inspired fearmongering at best. It is devious and only really worthy of the intended target audience of the sheeple reading the Guardian.

  6. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
    Michaelinlondon1234

    Soros is hard core Jewish American mafia. He has been organising the slaughter of east European countries for decades.

    1. Yep, everyone knows that ever since Soros arrived, the Eastern Europe has known nothing but slaughter. The corpses are literally piling up – all the way from Tallinn to Bucharest.

  7. “his (Putin) intervention was a strategic blunder because it embroiled him in a conflict with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has hurt the interests of both.”

    The writer of this article must of had prior knowledge of Turkey’s downing of a Russian plane. Hind sight is always 20/20.

  8. Hind Abyad Avatar

    Turkey shelling Kurdish posts in northern Syria for second day, monitor says – Middle East News http://ln.is/www.haaretz.com/midd/EONfn

  9. Hind Abyad Avatar

    ME going down the shishma..End
    Israeli Defense Minister Ya’alon: The Israeli government is making secret deals with officials from Gulf regimes http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      “We’re sorry, we seem to have lost this page.
      We don’t want to lose you, though”

      1. Hind Abyad Avatar

        Middle East allied with Gulf regimes.
        http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-1.703206

        1. 5thDrawer Avatar

          Oh. They want $ to read their stuff. Too bad I don’t have any.

          1. Hind Abyad Avatar

            “A speech by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon at the Munich Security Conference in Germany turned into a confrontation between the Israeli minister and former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal. After Ya’alon claimed that Israel was carrying out secret contacts with Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi prince took him to task saying that handshakes with Israelis have never helped the Palestinians.

            In the course of Ya’alon’s speech, the defense minister noted channels of communication that Israelis have with neighboring Sunni Arab countries. “Not only Jordan and Egypt,” he noted. “I speak about the Gulf states and North African states too. Unfortunately they are not here to listen. For them, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are the enemy…. Iran is the bad guy for us and for the Sunni regimes. They are not shaking hands [with Israelis] in public, but we meet in closed rooms.”

            After the Israeli defense minister concluded his remarks, Saudi

            read more: http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-1.703206

          2. 5thDrawer Avatar

            Silly to say there is no connection … because people with a ‘mission’ in anything make connections to anything else which they think backs them up to use for ‘examples’.
            It’s like saying ‘The West’ when they don’t know us. ;-))

          3. Hind Abyad Avatar

            That’s the arrogance of the chosen, the refugee tragedy flooding Europe was totally planned… now Turkey is bombarding Syria and blaming Russia: Western media

          4. Hind Abyad Avatar

            How come i don’t pay?
            “A speech by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon at the Munich Security Conference in Germany turned into a confrontation between the Israeli minister and former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal. After Ya’alon claimed that Israel was carrying out secret contacts with Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi prince took him to task saying that handshakes with Israelis have never helped the Palestinians.

            In the course of Ya’alon’s speech, the defense minister noted channels of communication that Israelis have with neighboring Sunni Arab countries. “Not only Jordan and Egypt,” he noted. “I speak about the Gulf states and North African states too. Unfortunately they are not here to listen. For them, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are the enemy…. Iran is the bad guy for us and for the Sunni regimes. They are not shaking hands [with Israelis] in public, but we meet in closed rooms.”

            Israeli minister and former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal. After Ya’alon claimed that Israel was carrying out secret contacts with Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi prince took him to task saying that handshakes with Israelis have never helped the Palestinians.

            In the course of Ya’alon’s speech, the defense minister noted channels of communication that Israelis have with neighboring Sunni Arab countries. “Not only Jordan and Egypt,” he noted. “I speak about the Gulf states and North African states too. Unfortunately they are not here to listen. For them, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are the enemy…. Iran is the bad guy for us and for the Sunni regimes. They are not shaking hands [with Israelis] in public, but we meet in closed rooms.”

            , Saudi that Israel was carrying out secret contacts with Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi prince took him to task saying that handshakes with Israelis have never helped the Palestinians.

            In the course of Ya’alon’s speech, the defense minister noted channels of communication that Israelis have with neighboring Sunni Arab countries. “Not only Jordan and Egypt,” he noted. “I speak about the Gulf states and North African states too. Unfortunately they are not here to listen. For them, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are the enemy…. Iran is the bad guy for us and for the Sunni regimes. They are not shaking hands [with Israelis] in public, but we meet in closed rooms.”

  10. Sharp analysis, albeit by a generally rather unpalatable person. No wonder Putin’s thugocracy has designated Soros public enemy nomber one.

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