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Václav Klaus for the Budapest Global Dialogue: Positively Towards a New Geopolitical Reality

English Pages, 17. 6. 2025

Many thanks for the invitation to participate in the Budapest Global Dialogue conference and to share a panel with distinguished and internationally respected political leaders. I am always glad to be in Hungary, in a country that plays a unique and irreplaceable role in Europe now. And – what is quite visible – whose role is visibly increasing.

Prime Minister Orbán is succeeding in expanding the frontiers of the possible in European debates and disputes. It took him decades to reach such a position, but his efforts paid off. His last week’s speech at the Patriots’ conference in France was an excellent example of that. He is a solitary political figure in today’s Europe, but not in his country. He could not do what he does without the broad domestic support, which he has managed to create and maintain.

I always pay careful attention to the titles of conferences and panels I participate in. I fully agree with the organizers of today’s event that we are moving “towards a new geopolitical reality” and that we should stop using old stereotypes and arguments based on already non-relevant views and stances. Everyone with open eyes sees that the substance of the world has been rapidly changing in recent years and decades.

We no longer live in a unipolar world of U.S. hegemony, as it was the case in the first quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union and of communism. The total dominance of one superpower and its decisive role in the world is no longer reality. I had a chance to address a distinguished American audience last week. They – to my surprise – did not protest when I said this.

We also do not live in the bipolar world of the Cold War era which was dominated by two powerful hegemons. As I see it, we are moving toward a world of very unstable multipolarity.

It may be helpful to recall some of the elementary economic concepts. We are neither in the world of perfect competition among tens or hundreds of small countries, nor in the world of monopolistic competition. We live in a very peculiar form of oligopolistic configuration now. Economic theory convincingly tells us that this is the most unstable market arrangement. And the same is true in the field of international politics.

The new multipolar system has not yet been fully established. We are in a transitional phase, somewhere in-between the two systems. The hegemon of the previous era does not want to lose its past extraordinary position, while the other big players still hesitate to openly oppose his position.

Many current events, last but not least the tragic, more than three years lasting Ukraine war, are for me just a prelude, an interim stage, during which new structures and new forms of conduct are being established. Old habits and styles of behaviour still exist, but new approaches are emerging. Functioning multilateralism requires strong players and generally accepted rules of the game. This is not yet the case. China, India and some other BRICS countries are already aware of this, other countries still hesitate or don’t feel strong enough to do the same.

There is one missing link, which weakens today’s stage of multilateralism. This is the absence of the voice of Europe. Former European powers have lost their significance and, at the same time, the attempt to politically unify Europe in the EU style has failed. To my great satisfaction. The current European Union is not an authentic institution. It is an artificial entity, which can not truly represent the people of the European continent. That makes it impossible for Europe to play any significant and meaningful geopolitical role. The contemporary EU leaders just pretend to play such a role. They, perhaps, even believe in their authenticity and significance.

The second part of the title of this panel says: “Navigating the Aftermath of the Liberal World Order”. I find this phrasing somewhat unclear. As I understand the English term “navigate”, it has at least two basic meanings. First, it means to guide or to steer. Second, it means to understand or to make sense of a complex situation. I hope the organizers of our conference don’t want to steer the current world. I myself don’t have the slightest ambition to aim at anything like that. However, there is no doubt that progressivists of all kinds who have constructivist ambitions in their blood want to do this. Let’s not make the same mistake. My life under communism taught me that anything like that is impossible and that any attempt to do it leads to tragic consequences.

Let’s therefore try, at the very least, to correctly interpret the current world. What is meant when people around us repeatedly use the phrase “liberal world order”? The current world order is not, and has not been, liberal in the original sense of the word. The now-fashionable phrase “liberal democracy” is entirely misleading. It is neither liberal nor democracy. Sadly, we have to admit that even some of our friends and collaborators have been confused by the positive connotations of these two words and are using this phrase without fully understanding its meaning and implications.

The ideologues of the so-called liberal democracy similarly misuse the term globalization. Instead of correctly speaking about the ongoing internationalization of human activities of all kinds, especially the economic ones, they speak about globalization. Not accidentally. They have in mind globalism, the ideological doctrine which advocates the role of global elites in masterminding the whole world (and all of us). Let’s stay with geopolitics, not descend into geo-ideology.

All of that needs serious discussions and many gatherings like this one. I don’t dare to speculate about the future. The future will be more polycentric, more regional and the role of global supranational institutions will decline. At least, I hope. That would be a step toward a better world.

Václav Klaus, 14. 6. 2025