The West is in a crisis and there are no indications it is going to end any time soon.
A few unsystematic comments on the contemporary geopolitical situation
Introduction
Many thanks for the invitation. Nevertheless, I am not sure I am the right person to speak at the panel called “Geopolitical challenges”. I know and I do not hesitate to admit openly that my comparative advantage isn´t in the field of geopolitics. This is, in my view, a field without a coherent theoretical structure, without well-defined hypotheses, which makes it difficult to say anything meaningful, strong and resolute. My main topic these days is Europe, perhaps the future of Europe, or better to say the future of us, Europeans. It is also a topic without any theoretical underpinning, but it is, at least, interesting and relevant. It is a part of our life. It is not just a topic of our doctoral disertations.
Something has changed in international politics recently. I feel it very strongly. This is my third trip to Budapest in the last four months. This frequency is unusual. It used to be, in the last thirty years, in the whole era after the fall of communism, three trips in a decade. Why is it so different now? I don´t think the reason can be found in geopolitics, even though there has been important developments there. Something has happened here, here in Europe, here in Central Europe, here in our societies.
As I see it, the main issue has to do with the fact that one medium-sized country ceased to be a passive object of geopolitics, and of the games which the Euroelites try to play with us. This country started to behave actively. This country is Hungary. To my great regret only Hungary. In the preparatory documents of our today´s conference, the organizers write that the Visegrad Four countries, I quote, “are seeking new answers to the challenges” of our era. This is a very friendly, polite but undeserved statement. I am not sure it is true.
I regret being forced to say that my own country, the Czech Republic, is “not seeking” anything these days. We have neither a government, nor a political leadership. Some of the Czechs, perhaps, individually, try to do something. They seek to keep the very weakened and heavily endangered identity of the Czech state in the nation-states liquidating European Union alive but there is no government policy in this respect – neither explicit, nor implicit.
I don´t have any mandate to speak on behalf of Slovakia but it seems to me that the situation there is very similar. Especially after the fall of Prime Minister Fico, after the recent events there, which reminded us of a sort of from above organized coup. Poland deserves attention because it is an entity with a specific way of looking at the world and with specific policies in some fields which is very refreshing for all of us. To my great regret, I find, however, some Polish stances rather ambivalent in their geopolitical ambitions and consequences. Summing up, I do not see the Visegrad Four countries to have enough courage, enough strength and enough determination to pursue a common, independent policy. It may have looked like a policy in the autumn of 2015, but I hadn´t seen it before and I don´t see it now.
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