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Notes for Shafik’s Davos: Expecting the Unexpected in 2026

English Pages, 19. 1. 2026

Our host, Shafik Gabr offered me to address four topics this evening:

1) Will there be peace between Ukraine and Russia in 2026?
2) Will there be a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine in 2026?
3) Will the EU strengthen or weaken in 2026?
4) Will the advancement of AI change political governance?

I will not speak about the Middle East, because I can’t afford to discuss this topic in the presence of Shafik, who lives nearby and understands it much better than I do. Nor am I as intelligent as the AI, so I can’t discuss this issue in any meaningful way either. I am, nevertheless, satisfied to live without being artificially intelligent. 

I will therefore stay with two – for me crucial – topics: Ukraine and Russia and the future of the European Union. 

I don’t expect peace between Ukraine and Russia in 2026. The war on the territory of Ukraine, and recently increasingly also in Russia, is not a war between Ukraine and Russia. I have stressed that point here, in the previous Shafik’s dinners, many times. It is a war between the West and Russia. The tragically afflicted Ukraine is just a victim in this war, even though Ukraine has played, and continues to play, a non-zero role in it. But Ukraine can’t make peace. The West and Russia can. 

The West, however, is divided. I believe the U.S. (and especially President Trump) wants peace, but I am not sure about the American political establishment as a whole. Trump has to manoeuvre, which leads to frequent, if not chaotic changes of his position. 

A similar problem exists in Europe. A European “coalition of the willing” – Merz, Macron and Starmer – wants to continue the war for their own domestic political reasons. They do so in opposition to many other government leaders in the EU and to the European still relatively silent public. 

I hope the new Czech government will be cautious about becoming part of this coalition, but it is too early to say that with certainty. The new coalition government succeeded in getting a vote of confidence in parliament only three days ago. I hope they will be ready to support the positions of Hungary and Slovakia. Much in Europe, of course, depends on the continuation of Orbán at the helm of Hungary after the April parliamentary elections there. I am very much in favour of that. 

Shafik also asks whether the EU will strengthen or weaken in 2026, as a result of the changing positions of the U.S., Russia and China. I don’t think so. The EU has no real authentic substance and coherent, authoritative policy logically arising from it. The EU, by which I mean the EU authorities with their infamous democratic deficit, has just a large ego and an unjustified self-confidence. They don’t listen. They are persuaded of their own greatness and uniqueness. Most of them still believe that they are the centre of the universe. The EU’s decline will, therefore, inevitably continue. 

The EU’s power structure and its non-democratic legislative process make genuine change impossible. Their leaders behave like leaders of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Like Gorbatschev, they want a perestroika, which means, they want a change without changing the substance. This approach totally failed in the 1980s. It will fail again. 

To summarize, I don’t expect 2026 to be much different from 2025. But the mills of God grind slowly, and in the end they will prevail.