Filenews 26 January 2024 - by Marc Champion
The thesis that Hungary has become a cuckoo in the nest of the West is growing stronger by the day. Not only has Prime Minister Viktor Orbán successfully destroyed his country's democratic institutions, but it also stands as the only obstacle to both the European Union's substantial aid to Ukraine and Sweden's accession to NATO. So it's tempting to want to throw the country out of Western institutions and recognize Orban's Hungary as what it has become — that is, as an adversary.
The cost of tolerating the Hungarian prime minister's antics is certainly rising. Although Orbán allowed the EU to offer Ukraine the start of accession negotiations in November, leaving the room rather than exercising his veto, he will have many more opportunities to stand in the way of adding Ukraine to the decade or more it is likely to take before the country joins the 27-nation bloc. A proposal to lift his veto on a €50 billion aid package for Kiev, if it is broken into smaller annual tranches, looks like a plan to extract a price from Orbán to get his approval each time.
And in Sweden, Orban's approach seems clear. On Tuesday, the same day Turkey's parliament ratified the Nordic country's NATO membership, Orbán said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had sent a letter to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson inviting him to Budapest "to negotiate." Understandably, the Swedes replied that there was nothing to negotiate. Accepting new members into NATO should be based on collective security calculations, not blackmail.
"Be careful what you wish for"
And yet, here we have a classic example of the need to "be careful what you wish for." To begin with, the obstacles posed by Orbán are indeed transactional in nature. It is possible that either a deal or a solution will soon be found for Ukraine, and he has said he will try to persuade Hungary's parliament to approve Sweden's NATO membership. This is disingenuous, given the cosmetic role that the legislature has come to play in Hungary, but it also suggests that this problem will be rather temporary in nature.
More than that, however, neither the EU nor NATO have a mechanism for expelling a member state once it is accepted – nor should they wish to have. Orban's flirtations with Moscow and Beijing are irritating, but they could have been much worse. Geography plays a role in security calculations, and it is wiser to have Hungary inside our camp than outside it.
One reason for the appeal of Orban's nationalist populism since he took power in 2010 is the still strong sense of loss felt by many Hungarians over the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which crippled Hungary after its defeat as part of Austria-Hungary, in alliance with Germany, in World War I. The treaty, which required the demilitarization of the country, was Versailles, Hungary or worse. It instilled in the Hungarians a distrust of the great powers responsible for drafting the treaty.
Like Yugoslavia in 1990 or the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse in 1991, Hungary was actually a multi-ethnic empire, with internal borders of limited importance. In Trianon, this empire lost more than two-thirds of its territory. The new borders also left many millions of Hungarians living outside their newly reduced territorial state, mainly in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and present-day Ukraine.
Nationalist conflicts
It is no coincidence that some of Orban's most important speeches have not been made in Hungary, but in a part of Romania that was lost in 1920. He has not invaded any country or called for the "reclaim" of former imperial territories, as Vladimir Putin has done on behalf of Russia, but Orbán has offered protection and citizenship to expatriate Hungarians across the region and sees his country as extending beyond state borders wherever Hungarians live. So does Hungary's post-communist constitution.
But Orban's rhetoric has at times made his neighbours nervous. Until Hungary and the rest of Central Europe and the Western Balkans joined the EU and NATO, there was a clear potential for conflict. In Targu Mures, Romania, in March 1990, I watched thousands of ethnic Romanians being bussed from surrounding villages to fight the Hungarians who had gathered in the city centre, as unfounded rumours of Hungarian separatism spread. This was followed by a medieval scuffle with forks, iron bars and torn down pavement slabs, in which five people were killed and hundreds injured.
Avoiding such a conflict is reason enough for Hungary to remain within the EU and NATO. The transatlantic alliance has similarly served to make war between Turkey and Greece less likely—though not impossible. Both of these countries were authoritarian regimes when they first joined NATO. So is Portugal.
The irony, of course, is that the best way to ensure Hungarians' rights across national borders would be for Orbán to push for more EU integration, steadily pulling both Serbia and Ukraine into the European community and market, and again diminishing the importance of national borders in Europe. This idea, however, seems to have been abandoned. Orbán has compared Hungary's EU membership to decades of Soviet occupation and has defended national sovereignty against "interference" from Brussels.
Reach and management
The EU and NATO must recognise the internal strength of Orban's position in his country. His Trumpian brand of nationalism and right-wing cultural populism resonate. Moreover, his country is quite simply part of Europe in economic and security terms, which is one reason why he never campaigned to leave either institution.
At the same time, both organizations must draw clear red lines around the issues that are existential to them, including the basic functions of electoral democracy and containing a vengeful and predatory Russia. More Viktor Orbán is getting closer to power in Europe now – perhaps even in the US. Orbán gained an ally with the return of Robert Fico as prime minister in neighbouring Slovakia after the latter's party won elections in September.
An anti-immigrant party won the most votes in the Netherlands in November, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leads in some German states and the European Parliament is expected to gain a more sizable far-right wing after European Parliament elections this year. As these parties gain strength, the core values that the EU and NATO were built to promote and protect after World War II will be jeopardised. These values must be clearly defined and strictly protected.
Neither the EU nor NATO should be afraid to punish Hungary when it crosses these lines. Any EU attempt to strip the country of the country's vote is likely to fail, but the bloc should continue to deprive Orbán of billions of euros owed from European funds to Hungary until it actually repeals legislation that sterilizes the Hungarian judiciary.
A victim of its own legal framework, the bloc has muddied the issue by releasing about a third of funds in exchange for complying with demands for justice reform, while holding back money for failures in some policy areas that the EU should be leaving in the hands of nation-states.
Similarly, if Orbán undermines NATO's security on Russia's behalf, he must isolate himself. Hungary's leader will exploit any weakness, but it is a problem that must be managed, not solved once and for all.
Performance – Editing – Text Selection (2019-2024): G.D. Pavlopoulos
