Where did the turn occur?
But in my opinion, these phantasmagorias were not discussed at all. The deviation from Trump can have one cause: the prime minister went to negotiate on trade, investments, “nuclear power”. And he received no, no promise at all.
Let’s remember how the prime minister convinced us that the small fifteen billion won’t come from the pockets of Slovak citizens; that investors will jump on this mega-project, of course with a vision of future profits. And that this megaproject will become Fico’s long-term monument and memorial.
Let’s also remember that Robert Fico clearly feels that his four-time premiership left nothing that the Slovak and our history would inherently associate only with himself. And he certainly remembered in his mind that the most positive thing that Slovaks associate with him – the Fico one, the coalition one, but also the liberal, opposition one – was his effort to be “at the core of the European Union”.
In addition, at that time he also had a high credit in European politics, he was reliable, and I often heard praise from the mouth of the then head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker: Robert, that is the European counterweight to Viktor Orbán and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the V4. And Juncker was grateful, let’s remember that he assigned the first post-Brexit summit, which was supposed to determine the EU’s future paths, to Bratislava.
Russian scarecrow and realpolitik
That is, to the “scaredness”. If anyone was and still is scared, it’s the Slovaks who were scared that Fico could somehow integrate us into the Russian sphere of influence. In practice, it is quite difficult to imagine, but the Prime Minister was sufficiently supportive of it. Basically, he approved of Russian ambitions to bring Ukraine under Moscow’s control, shook hands with Putin, gave pretexts for conspiracies by concealing the content of the negotiations.
The same with Chinese President Xi Jinping, until President Peter Pellegrini had to remind him that the West also belongs to the four world sides. But on the other hand, apart from dramatic statements at home, demonstrative spitting on politics and EU politicians, he really deviated little from the EU line when making concrete decisions. Milan Uhrík, Republika or Štefan Harabin beat him over the head.
We experienced countless such dances and pirouettes, but I noticed that something was happening before Fico’s meeting with Donald Trump. Above all, we approved MERCOSUR, the free trade agreement with Latin American countries, without a murmur: no one stopped at the impact on our farmers – and this card could be used or abused.
But the realism is that it opens up a new space for Slovakia to export cars: and just like that, quietly, behind the boos, the government recognized that factory employment, income from exports are more than the eternal complaints of our farmers. Then our “capricious” at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly opposed the American plans and clearly supported Danish sovereignty, including over Greenland…
Of course, our sovereignty must be hammered into the heads of voters and the fact that the world has four world parties, rhetorically, our Prime Minister will not back down from this: but it must be seen that the real trade with Russia and China together does not even make up ten percent of our trade exchange with the EU – but what is more important, if the government also wanted it, Russia has nothing more to do, and for China we are a negligible “pinch”, and where we are not, that is, in the automobile industry, we are competitors.
In European arms
So what was left for our inventive prime minister: to return nicely to the arms of the EU. This is where a new industrial policy is being born today, a new division of labor, from which if Slovakia were to drop out, it would definitely be in a “black hole”.
There are essentially unlimited resources, the EU will turn into a great power, both commercial and military: I remind you of the “Mother of all treaties” concluded a few days ago between India and the EU; two billion market. Here – unlike Fico – our European Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič erected a lifelong monument.
Well, a lesson for our simplistic “nationalists”: nationalism as an idea is certainly common to nations, but as a practice it naturally leads to war between them. Sovereignty is right, but as readiness for cooperation and reciprocity, otherwise it leads to isolation and submission to the superpower.
Well, the conservatism that leads the Smerás and many other Slovaks along the paths of “traditionalism” is not a return to proven values: it is a trap that leads to the subjugation of the church and nationalism, to the rule of the phenomenon I called theo-nationalism.
Our Slovak clerical fascism was one of its historical forms: it is time to wake up and break free from this romance of the past. And step on the path of Europeanism. Nowhere else will “Slovakism” be so successful.
