I do not intend to analyse and critically assess the details of Trump's policies announced or even already in place in the first days and weeks of his presidency. What is and will be much more important is their overall impact and their implicit side effects. Because Trump is doing this in his specific style, his style is receiving undue attention, to the detriment of the content. His way of implementing policy would be unimaginable in Europe, but we do not have American traditions or a majority voting system. Trump seems to have ushered in a new era of international politics, which is extremely important.
Some commentators see this as a return to the "concert of the great powers", but this is a mistake. Trump has "merely" returned national interests to the heart of politics. He doesn't like empty moralizing. As a businessman, he prefers negotiating and making deals to proclaiming good intentions. His approach is not - since the Wilsonian era that began a century ago - the way international politics has been done. But that era is over.
This change was much needed and I believe it will have huge consequences. It will undoubtedly sharpen the disingenuous way in which 'we are all friends' style politics is done in the world. It may also increase the number of conflicts and strengthen the risks of new ones. However, after decades of an empty collective security ideology based on an ineffective UN style of dealing with the world's problems, change was necessary. However, I do not want to dwell at length here on the criticisms of the past.
I am much more interested in discussing what this will mean for us, for our destinies, for our chances of making the necessary changes here in Europe and especially in our Central Europe. That should interest us more than anything else. We should analyse our situation boldly and sharply, which, unfortunately, our politicians are not doing.
I said "we." But we need to be clear about what we mean by the pronoun "we". I am here as a Czech at an event organised by a Hungarian think tank in Slovakia. Both countries - Hungary and Slovakia - are on an upward trajectory, unlike us, and both have leaders who know that they were elected to serve their countries, not Brussels. They refuse to accept the various absurdities of progressivism, multiculturalism, environmentalism and globalism. They feel obliged to make policy in the interests of the citizens of their countries, not the Brussels bureaucracy, the Soros-type NGOs, the UN apparatchiks and the internationalist universalist media, which speak to people who belong somewhere but do not understand that we, some of us, belong somewhere. I belong to the Czech Republic.
I am partly hampered in my statements here today because I fundamentally disagree with making politics from abroad - instead of at home. Unfortunately, this has become a fashionable but counterproductive practice these days. However, I want to say quite openly that Czech politicians do not behave in the same way as their Slovak and Hungarian colleagues. For me, this narrows the boundaries of my discussion of the relevant issues of today's world.
Trump's election victory and his decisive ascension to office have shaken the world. He has attacked many long-established customs, traditions and patterns of behaviour, thereby threatening the comfortable existence of many politicians, particularly in Europe, who have lived in a world of irresponsibility and inefficiency, which was made possible by the relatively peaceful development after the fall of communism in our part of the world. By returning to national interests, Trump has challenged globalism and the major global institutions and organisations that have long opposed the idea of the nation state and the sovereignty of its politics. He has attacked several almost sacred ideas in the currently dominant progressivist doctrines. His electoral victory showed that something seemingly impossible is possible.
The usually very vocal and confident defenders and apologists of the pre-Trump world are now silent. But that will not last long. We must take advantage of their temporary chaos, confusion and shock. We must seize today's opportunity to start making decisive changes - decisive changes if we are in government, and active preparations for elections if we are not. Europe, or rather the European Union, has so far done nothing worth mentioning. Its politicians are hesitating. They think they might return to their old ways of political behaviour when the storm is over. That is exactly what Czech politicians are doing.
That will end fairly quickly when Trump starts moving beyond mere rhetoric when it comes to the war in Ukraine. His direct talks with Putin have made European politicians nervous. They have invested - quite irrationally - so much in supporting Ukraine that they need to get tangible results and, not least, some benefits for themselves. This will be difficult to achieve. When Trump hinted that he wanted to lick all the cream, as we say in the Czech Republic (and maybe Slovakia too), European politicians despaired. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the end of the war in Ukraine will bring a return of a certain degree of freedom and democracy, which have been greatly weakened by the war in Europe. This will give us a chance to be more active, more open and more courageous.
Let me return to the implicit message I put in the title of my speech, "Can we avoid missing the opportunity of a Trump presidency?" Much to my regret, I must admit that I am not very optimistic on this point:
1. We are indecisive, we have little courage, and we are spoiled by years of inactivity and comfortable living;
2. We are divided (both between countries and within countries);
3. As states, we have already lost a significant part of our sovereignty (by handing it over to Brussels with the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties);
4. We do not have a meaningful political party system. The existing parties are inconsistent in their thinking and behaviour. They are not ideologically clearly defined. Their members are motivated to be in power rather than to lead the country politically;
5. All political parties more or less accept the basic principles of the current dominant ideologies of environmentalism, multiculturalism, genderism, progressivism and globalism, and are therefore almost indistinguishable from one another. They are all green, even if they do not have this adjective explicitly engraved in their names. We are returning to something that resembles the way politics was done during the National Front period.
These only sketched, not fully developed "characteristics" of our situation suggest that Europe, and especially Central Europe, could very easily miss the opportunity offered by Trump's victory and the revolutionary way in which his term has begun in many ways. I fear that we will remain divided, unwilling to oppose Brussels' decisions and directives, and that our political parties will continue to cater mainly to their deserving members and functionaries, rather than to push for the long-needed changes that our countries need. (Political parties should stop functioning as quasi-social agencies and instead become vehicles for new political ideas.)
We should be prepared for desperate attempts by old political entities to turn the world back to before Trump's victory. I expect an intensification of efforts and activities by the EU politicians and bureaucracy (and nomenklatura), by the long-standing politicians in the various European states with their almost fraternal relations with each other, by influential personalities of well-known political NGOs, by corporatist bosses of large companies that have long lived off government benefits, and by global media leaders. They will all work to turn back the course of history.
It is up to us whether we passively accept this sad fate or whether we decide to move on. I wish the Hungarian and Slovak organisers of this meeting that they will be able to continue to move their countries in the right direction. In this respect, Donald Trump is a great source of inspiration.
Vaclav Klaus
Václav Klaus at the Istropolis Summit in Bratislava, 7 March 2025. Translation into English by an English translator.
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