Address by the President at the Bled Strategic Forum 2010

Bled, 29.8.2010  |  speech

Address by Dr Danilo Türk, President of the Republic of Slovenia, at the Bled Strategic Forum 2010 – Global Outlook for the Next Decade
Bled, 29 August 2010


Dragi prijatelji,
spoıtovani gostje,

v veliko veselje mi je, da lahko spregovorim nekaj besed ob otvoritvi tega pomembnega sreèanja.

Dear friends,
Distinguished visitors and guests,

It’s a great privilege and honour to say a few words and express a few thoughts at the opening of this important gathering. Bled Strategic Forum is a special event in Slovenia. It is probably the only event which brings together thinkers, decision-makers from Slovenia and from the world far and wide, to discuss some of the most important and most pressing issues of today.

The title of the forum this year is the "Global Outlook for the Next Decade". The formulation of that title suggests that the authors were hesitating, that in fact they wanted to leave the space for discussion wide open and to allow everybody to come up with fresh, innovative ideas. There is no command in this title, there is no direction suggested, it is only an invitation, an invitation to thought and reflection.

Let me try together with you to reflect upon some of the themes, which might be of interest to the participants at this forum. Last year, when we met at the end of August, the topic was "The Politics of the Crisis". At that time the crisis was still a phenomenon which needed to be overcome and where the questions of politics of the crisis, the options, dilemmas were at the centre of our deliberations.

At that time we were also hopeful, we were optimistic in some ways. We believed that crisis brings opportunities. And among the optimistic thoughts at that time was also the thought of the then nearing summit on global warming in Copenhagen and the expectations which were spread about the changes, reforms of the international financial system.

If we look from today’s perspective to what happened between the end of August of 2009 and today, we can clearly see that many of those expectations have not materialised. Copenhagen summit was a partial success at best. Financial reforms, including the reform of the quota system of the International Monetary Fund, have not yet materialised and the progress towards those ends remains painfully slow.

Here we have a problem, something that constitutes an important part of the outlook for the next decade. How is the world going to cope with this? What kind of answers should be given today and how to make sure that those answers are credible and that they are realistic?

In three weeks from now New York will witness one of its summits, a summit on the Millennium Development Goals, and another one on biodiversity. I remain hopeful. I hope that both summits will produce agreements which will generate real progress. I remain hopeful, but I am not certain, as certainty would require a very high degree of realistic analysis and honest assessment of the situation in which the world is finding itself. Honesty and realistic assessment is something that we need most. And honesty begins with intellectual honesty.

So today, at the beginning of this forum, I place a great deal of hope in the collective brainpower of people gathered in this hall and in your intellectual honesty, because that’s the starting point in any discussion about the global outlook for the next decade. But I would also like to draw your attention to another quality which is needed, which is really seriously needed at this point in history. And that is imagination.

We have to be imaginative in thinking about solutions for the future. A couple of weeks ago I read an interesting article by an Oxford professor, of Timothy Williams, who teaches logic at Oxford University. Professor Williams explains how imagination represents an important ingredient of scientific and every other thinking. He emphasises that imagination is not daydreaming and it is not only there to help generating new ideas. It can be and it very often is reality-directed, it is directed towards changing the reality and towards preservation of humankind.

And that is the kind of imagination that we need today. Professor Williams also explains that in the scientific process imagination is needed not only to generate the idea of direction of change, but also in testing the results, in finding out whether the ideas under observation are justified and right. That too requires imagination.

And finally, imagination helps us to move from the realm of past and present reality towards the new complex reality, a reality defined by legitimate expectations that we have. This is all important in thinking about the role of imagination and about its importance today and in our thought about the global outlook for the coming decade.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I know that what I have said may sound very abstract, but abstractions are something we have to start with and then make them much more specific in the process. If one thinks about imagination in the context of diplomacy, one doesn’t have to reach too far to see that imaginative ideas do exist.

Let me only choose one example: the initiative of Brazil and Turkey to deal with the nuclear issue of Iran. That initiative, which was made visible in early June this year, gave rise to hope. That hope has been met with realistic and well-meaning challenges. But hope is still there and imagination is still there. I hope that in the area of nuclear weapons and in the specific question of Iranian nuclear programme we shall have enough diplomatic imagination to find the way forward, a way beyond sanctions, a way beyond threats to the peace.

This is just one example. One can think about many other examples, some of which will require a collective effort, an effort of a large number of countries and an effort of a large number of thinkers. Let us take a moment or two to reflect upon Afghanistan, the crisis situation, which probably attracts more attention today than any other crisis anywhere else in the world.

Any military analyst will tell you that when moving a military force to a distant country, it becomes clear - at the time before deployment - that there is no strategy without exit, that a strategist has to have an idea, has to have a vision of how to enter and how to exit a situation. But then towards the end of that situation any diplomat will tell you that without strategy there is no exit, because leaving a country or a situation in shambles, leaving it in chaos is not an exit and certainly is not a strategy.

So how does one deal with situations like this? How does one engage a sufficient intellectual energy and sufficient imagination to find proper responses? Today I believe it is high time to think seriously about the exit strategy for Afghanistan.

Exit, of course, doesn’t mean immediate ending of all military presence. Exit means a carefully thought-through system of measures, which the international community may deploy to assist the political forces of Afghanistan and the countries in the region so as to ensure that the ultimate result is stable and sustainable. This is the challenge before us today.

And how do we deal with that challenge? Certainly, part of the answer lies within the frontiers of Afghanistan. There has to be an internal process and every effort has to be made to help the forthcoming parliamentary elections. But, even more important, it is clear that without an effective regional agreement, peace and stability in Afghanistan cannot be ensured. And I repeat, an effective regional agreement, involving all neighbour states and some other players.

Are we sure that enough work has been done already that such an agreement might be possible in the foreseeable future? Here is a challenge, a challenge for intellectuals like you, policy-makers like you and for all of us who would like to make a contribution in this long and arduous search for the solution to the situation in Afghanistan. There is no doubt that the legitimate expectations about the complex future will require imaginative solutions, among which the regional agreement will be paramount.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I could go on discussing this kind of questions where honest analysis, realistic assessment and imagination need to work together. There are many other challenges which require precisely such a combination of qualities. But on the other hand, time is short and you certainly do not expect from me to spend the rest of the afternoon ruminating about my ideas on these matters.

So, I will mention only one further example, and that is the challenge for the European Union as a global player, something that this forum will discuss in some detail later on. Here, again, imagination will be required. And I would suggest that that be focused on a single concept, the concept of partnerships. In the European Union wishes to be an effective, significant global player, it has to develop its partnerships with other players properly – with India, China, very importantly with United States as a partner, with which the European Union has been working for a long time, but where new, fresh ideas are needed, and perhaps most importantly with Russia, with a major actor of the Eurasian area and of global affairs, which is more open today than it was in any preceding period of history, with a possible exception of the period of Peter the Great.

Russia has declared its policy of modernisation. That policy has not been formulated to the finest detail and there is a need for partnership both in formulation of that policy and in the development of the role of the European Union in that context. Some of these discussions will require addressing very fundamental, very serious questions, such as security or energy, but also very practical issues, such as visa regime and liberalisation needed to expand human contact and to provide a sufficiently broad and sufficiently populous basis for policy-making in the future. Without that this partnership will not be completed.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These are some of the thoughts I wish to bring before you at the beginning of this meeting and, again, I would like to emphasise how very much I and many others expect from the collective brain power of this room. I have ended my remarks with the European Union because that is where much of our thinking in Slovenia is today and I hope that this fifth meeting of the Bled Strategic Forum will make a contribution.

In fact I don’t only hope, I have no doubt.

Thank you.