Europe Is Far Too Small for Viktor Orbán

For some time, there has been a cult of personality around Viktor Orbán among right-wing Americans, especially on the far right. The Hungarian prime minister is pleased.

The Heritage Foundation — the largest think tank in the U.S., which supports Donald Trump and maintains a close relationship with the Hungarian prime minister — promotes Viktor Orbán’s system as a model of conservative administration that should be followed. Orbanism is widely admired for its political stances on globalization, the EU and migration, among other topics.

However, American fans of Orbán have recently been attacked from a completely unexpected side, in what was no small surprise. Marc A. Thiessen, the deeply conservative in-house columnist with The Washington Post, had had enough. The title alone makes one sit up and take notice: “Hungary’s leader should be radioactive to the right. “ What has made the Conservative Political Action Conference so crazy about Orbán? Based on some of his statements — for instance, that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” — Thiessen writes, one could even dub Orbán the David Duke of Hungary, in reference to the former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Above all, however, the well-known columnist is attacking the American right because its blind enthusiasm for Orbán is causing it to overlook the Hungarian’s starkly anti-American foreign policy. In particular, it is the fact that Budapest, as an ally of the U.S., has extremely close relations to the two nations, China and Russia, that, in addition to being governed by authoritarian regimes, pose an existential threat to the U.S. With respect to China, the author lists the significant loans to Hungary from China, including strategic partnership agreements with telecommunications giant Huawei, which is considered a security threat in Washington. Thiessen’s summary: “Orban [is] turning his nation into an outpost for Chinese intelligence” and economic influence in Hungary, and that has damaging consequences for the West and for America’s national security interests.

Orbán Aspires to Power on the World Stage

But Thiessen does not, unfortunately, identify the primary motivation behind Hungary’s growing friendship with Eastern dictatorships: namely, Orbán’s personal, ambitious aim for power on the world stage. Even Europe is too small for him. He wants to be nothing less than a big international player, whether as a black sheep or as an enfant terrible. As just one example, in the last six years, Hungary has issued 60% of vetoes in the EU regarding foreign policy or security, even though the country represents just 2% of the total EU population and 1% of its GDP.

Orbán’s special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, too, functions above all to compensate for his isolation within the EU. The recent visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Budapest made clear that Orbán, unlike any other leader in the EU, has managed to build up a special relationship with Beijing and thus to elicit the disapproval of its allies. It looks very much like the call by Orbán, who is not exactly a born diplomat, for an “Eastern Opening,” really means a closing to the West.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, the Hungarian prime minister received the admiration that he craved from Washington, too. It is no wonder that Orbán, in contrast to other EU leaders, publicly supports Trump returning to the White House and is even getting involved in American domestic politics. There is a clear path from there to a hubris mentality: arrogance and overestimation of his own power, not to mention his often undiplomatic behavior. For example, he believes that he can afford to let relations cool with the U.S., the most important ally and main guarantor of Hungarian national security. Orbán and his foreign minister are essentially personae non gratae in Washington at this point. That is much more than the temporary diplomatic ice age that has previously set in between democratic administrations in the U.S. and Hungary. It is almost scandalous that the Hungarian prime minister has had no time to meet with American ambassador David Pressman, who has been in Budapest for almost two years now, even though there is much for them to discuss.

The Hungarian people, not the elites in power, are paying the price for this disastrous foreign policy. It is about time for Orbán’s rampage under the megalomanic doctrine of “dare to be Hungarian” to end. It is, in fact, just as dangerous as radioactivity.