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Notes for Davos: “Expecting the Unexpected”

English Pages, 20. 1. 2025

Many thanks for the invitation to this already traditional dinner organized by Shafik Gabr on the occasion of the Davos Economic Forum. The participants of this dinner are either regular guests of the Davos Forum or friends of Shafik. I belong to the second group. After welcoming me at his Davos Forum seventeen times (for the first time in January 1990), Mr. Schwab started to consider me – some fifteen years ago – as one of his fundamental ideological opponents. He was right. I am a fundamental opponent of Mr. Schwab and his way of thinking about our world.

Reacting to the title of this dinner Expecting the Unexpected, I have to admit that I have increasing problems to differentiate the expected from the unexpected these days – and this year particularly. Let me be specific. The dominant trends and tendencies are in my eyes more or less expectable. To my great dissatisfaction, I see almost all of them moving in the wrong direction now. Individual events seem to be unexpected but are – undoubtedly – part of the whole.

When it comes to trends and tendencies, I find it difficult to remain optimistic, especially when my look is inevitably focused on Europe and the Western world. In our institute, we have recently published a collection of essays with the title “The Self-Destruction of the West”. The word “self” should be stressed. My West has not been endangered by the East or by the South. The West has been steadily but surely destructing itself for decades.

When looking at the important individual events, it is impossible to be optimistic either. I live in Central Europe. This part of the world has been visibly changed by the war in Ukraine. The political freedom and the freedom of the press (and all other media) has been curtailed, the public discourse has been fundamentally changed. With the disappearing opposition, the EU centralistic tendencies have dramatically increased. Long-refuted ideas have reappeared. It confirms the old saying that the first victim of war is the truth.

I don’t exaggerate when I say that telling the truth becomes almost as difficult now as it used to be in the late Communist era. The black-and-white interpretation of the war blurs all other relevant topics – especially the harmful defects of the European centralization (disguised as European integration), the huge economic costs connected with the implementation of the ideology of the Green Deal, the prolonged secular stagnation of European countries, including my own. For me, all of this was, however, expected.

Much farther away from us, but also clearly seen, is Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and the entire Middle East. It is much closer to Shafik’s Egypt. I dare say, I understand his despair and his feeling of powerlessness. He witnesses, and we all with him, the growing disregard for history, context, facts and widely accepted norms and rules, the deafness to arguments as well as the ostentatious immunity to evidence. All of that is beyond my comprehension. The violation of elementary human modes of behaviour and the loss of common decency are unjustifiable.

We meet here in the moment of President Trump’s inauguration. His election victory was for me unexpected. I know many people who say that this was expected, but I am not sure about it. In any case, his election – which I applauded – positively shattered not only the United States of America, but the whole world. It proved that it is possible to fight for something seemingly impossible. Something unexpected happened. This turned out to be a great impetus for many of us.

Since the 4th November, I have been publicly stressing my satisfaction with this result over and over again. In spite of that, I have repeatedly warned against the cheap and irresponsible triumphalism of many even serious people around me. We shouldn’t forget the reality. There are so many deeply ingrained features of the contemporary world, which are in my eyes constants, not variables. There are also some undisputable “constants” in the personality of Trump himself which make any forecast uncertain. One man cannot change the world. He just opened a window of opportunity for the rest of us. To change the world is a task for all of us, not only for an American President.

The well-known British author Anthony Daniels made a good point by saying: “It is easy for a conservative like me to feel pessimistic about the many pathologies of today’s world” (The European Conservative, Fall 2023). I try not to fall into this trap, but it’s difficult to be optimistic. As I see it, we will be facing the most significant test of our democracy since the fall of Communism in the coming years. Let’s be active realists, not passive naivists or negativists.

Václav Klaus at the annual dinner hosted by Shafik Gabr, Central Sporthotel, Davos, 20th January, 2025.