It’s Hungary’s Birthday! Prime Minister Viktor Orban throws a party. The guests included: : the heads of Turkey, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Qatar. It looks like an informal summit of like-minded illiberal leaders. For a member of both the European Union and NATO, it was an unusual invitation list. It didn’t include France’s President Emmanuel Macron or Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Not one serving EU leader came to the party or the subsequent diplomatic meetings – and the only NATO member was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What’s going in Hungary? And why does Orban have the friends that he does? I think the government has an extreme ideological foreign policy, where he [Orban] selects his allies on the basis of ideological proximity and that’s a world where Georgia Meloni or Donald Trump can be good friends but someone like Ursula von der Leyen cannot. And they express it openly. He has more to talk about with authoritarian leaders, such as Aliyev the Azerbaijani president than with for example the German chancellor. So he feels more this shared ideology but he also thinks that pragmatically this is the right thing to do. This is laid out in Orban’s “Eastern Opening Strategy”. It’s a blend of pragmatism - seeing powers like T urkey, Russia, and China, as useful and reliable partners, for example buying energy. And shared ideological disdain for European liberal democracy. We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy, which guarantees people's dignity, freedom and security.” Hungary remains a member of two major western alliances – the EU and NATO – but has often departed from the majority view of its partners. Within NATO, Hungary joined Turkey in refusing to ratify Sweden’s accession. Turkey portrayed its position as a principled one connected to Koran-burnings in Sweden. Hungary had a couple of other, unspoken reasons. Viktor Orban used the Swedish and Finish NATO membership as a negotiation potential in order to pressurize the EU to provide funds to Hungary. And this is definitely something new. This attitude that in one organisation we use pressure for another organization, that is very unusual in the Western political culture and I think this is very telling about how Orban is exercising power in Hungary for many years. It is not new to us. the new logic of foreign policy is a rogue diplomacy, if you don’t treat me well, I will hurt you immediately and this what we can see these days with the NO ratification of Sweden’s NATO accession. The Hungarian government openly says, that because Sweden criticised Hungary so many times, they are still reluctant And within the EU, following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hungary refused to join efforts to reduce imports of Russian gas. Instead, Hungary signed NEW deals and now gets around 80 percent of its gas from Russia. That makes Hungary an extreme outlier in terms of its unitary dependence on Russian imports of gas, oil and nuclear fuel for the nuclear power plant. They look at Russia as a trusted partner, also with these countries it is much easier to have a less accountable, less transparent relationship. If you are trading with more established democracies, it is more likely what you are doing will be more out in the open, it is difficult to hide things. And what kind of things might Hungary want to keep out of sight? Transparency International latest ranking puts it at the bottom in the EU for perceived corruption. This has long been a point of friction between Hungary and the EU. Orban’s approach to migration has also been out of tune with his western partners. He has spent a decade issuing anti-immigration rhetoric and claiming to “defend Christianity”. 2015 saw huge numbers of people passing through Hungary towards Western Europe. Hungary responded with a razor-wire fence to keep them out. More recently Hungary seemed to copy Belarus with a tactic seemingly aimed at putting pressure on western neighbours. I think open black mailing and open obstruction is more and more part of the Hungarian foreign policy playbook to an extent where Hungary arrived to a point where a few months ago that Hungarian authorities released more than 1000 human smugglers, telling that if you Brussels complain about Hungarian prisons are overcrowded, this is what you get. What is it? It is the open weaponization of migration, something that Lukashenko is usually doing. Within the European Union it is taken as a highly hostile attitude. This kind of attitude - one that puts Hungary first, and rejects the sensibilities of allies - appeals to more than Orban’s voter base at home. He has become something of a hero to a certain group of American conservatives. That kind of narrative means Orban can portray his meeting with Putin in October 2023 – with the war in Ukraine still raging - as an act of pragmatic national interest I come from a thousand-year-old country with rich history, but let’s be honest: Hungary is far from being a Global Superpower. The U.S. is a Global Superpower. Your leaders should give an opening speech at our conferences in Hungary. They did. Hungary has hosted CPAC in Budapest twice since 2022 nurturing the links and exchange of ideas. Orbán’s government is investing in homegrown conservative think tanks too. Rod Dreher is a fellow of one of them, the Danube Institute in Hungary. He describes himself as “Conservative, Orthodox Christian” and approves of political involvement in academia. The key thing about Orban for American conservatives is he seems to understand that culture is a room of political battle, this is something that Republican and standard Conservative thinkers in the US don’t understand. It is like they see the Universities, see the media, all of that to the left. Orban doesn’t do that - I think, he understood something, that we American conservatives really should learn, if we are going to prevail Rod Dreher was on the guest list of that Hungarian birthday party. His thinking fits with Orban’s – they and many other conservatives subscribe to a specific counter-narrative. I think the counter- narrative should be, nations have a right to be sovereign to look out for their own interest. We should cooperate among nations but it is not the right of Washington or Brussels to force our own national ideology on other nations. For example Viktor Orban always says, ‘leave us Hungarians alone on family policy’. We don’t want Sweden to be Hungary, we don’t want Belgium to be Hungary but let us do things according to our own traditions. Many like-minded thinkers met up here at Hungary’s demographic conference. They rejected non-traditional forms of family, along with many other progressive social ideas. The star of the event this year: Georgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister. Put the family at the heart of development policies. And these are clearly influenced by national culture, identity, customs and traditions. However there are many experiences that have worked, that are important to share, the experiences that we see here in Hungary” 00:19 The speakers include Jordan Peterson, a well-known figure on the alt-right, who talks about people who don’t have children being mentally unwell. Orban takes the personal and turns it political – Europe-wide – in his speech. We need a change of course, we have to accomplish that family-friendly, conservative powers regain governing power in more and more European countries. On top there are European elections, everything is given that with an all embracing operation we can turn the power balance to our favour Orban’s critics say he focusses on such divisive, personal issues to divert attention from other policies and questions. Orban wants always to talk about ideology, He wants us to talk his gender policy, his migration policy. He does not want us to talk about his corruption issues and to talk about his rogue foreign policy that can undermine from inside the security of the European Union. Angry demonstrations on Hungarian streets show that domestically, there are problems Orban’s policies are not fixing: in particular: soaring inflation and an education system in dire need of reform. Students and their teachers have been marching for nearly a year – against a law which they say will strip teachers of protections granted to public employees. They see it as a way for the government to control public education. For us it is really important to be here because without people, who are able to choose their own future, and decide for themselves, which is obviously learned at school, we cannot build a democracy upon that Hungarians are also frustrated by everyday corruption, and years of Orban’s government effectively eroding the independence of judges and courts. Orban seems to care little for Hungary’s actual alliances in the EU and NATO. He has been failing to cure Hungary of its domestic problems. And yet – he’s in his fourth elected term in office since 2010. How does he – and his Fidesz party - keep winning over Hungarian voters? Fidesz has a very mixed but seemingly unified ideology. This ideology is based on the concept of a strong, big state, which has the responsibility and the power to rule the country basically without other actors, such as civil society or citizen participation and this strong state idea is a very strong base for the government which is different from the European norm. It’s an ideology that resonates in Hungary. Some also say Orban knows very well how his people tick. He can turn what others might describe as repression and ultra-conservatism into a heroic story. Orban clearly reads well the Hungarian psyche and Hungarian mentality, and he resurrects the archetype of the freedom fighter from the Hungarian collective psyche and the most important aspect of this freedom fighter narrative is that you have to fight against the oppressors and even if you fail you are morally superior That kind of narrative means Orban can portray his meeting with Putin in October 2023 , as an act of pragmatic national interest. Orban’s approach to foreign policy is very clearly out of step with the majority of Hungary’s partners in the EU and NATO. His approach is seen by many as counterproductive to their collective aims. He built these strategies with the belief that the west is declining and the geopolitical shifts will put Europe into a minority position so he also wants to build leverage on putting Hungary in the centre and opening to the East No surprise then, that western governments are asking how they might bring him back into line. It’s the EU which has had the greatest tool to use in trying to influence Hungary – financial transfers. It’s been holding back billions of Euros over concern for Hungarian rule of law and fundamental civil rights. But securing Hungary’s backing for continued extensive aid for Ukraine is the greater goal. It’s a tug-of-war between the EU and its member Hungary, involving massive sums of money over domestic and foreign policy. He may be happy to be the black sheep, but some suggest Orban wants to remain in the herd – that he’s more wedded to the EU and NATO than his attitude might suggest. Viktor Orban takes huge risk at least on two levels, one is that: With this confrontative position we are risking trust with our current allies, within the European Union and NATO. And it is very important to know that Hungary does never want to leave the EU or the NATO. This is a critical relationship. No relationship with Turkey; Uzbekistan or whoever could replace the relationship for us within the European Union. Orban continues to pursue these other friendships, signalling to the West that he has other options. And yet, his western partners like Germany’s chancellor still want democratic groupings to demonstrate strength through unity to actors like Russia and China. So they’ll be keen to rein him in or find a way to work around his attitude. He will become more obstructive, more combatant, he will become more dangerous to the European Union and NATO if there are no good ways to circumvent his decisions. 16:38 CUT 16:58 And I think what would be rather good and it is on the table of EU constantly is get rid of the unanimous decision making in foreign policy issues and have rather a qualified majority” But people with insider understanding of Fidesz suggest those western powers are playing a more complicated game – that they may even privately welcome what they publicly disdain. Zsuzsanna Szelényi, former member of Fidesz He is often playing the useful idiot for many other countries, for Germany, for Austria. He speaks openly about Ukraine should not be NATO-member, when he says that, it means a lot of countries also think this but don’t say. I think it is leverage building activity from his side, that he makes favours to other politicians by being so outspoken and radical. What Orban does, is to expose the divisions and the weaknesses of the EU and NATO. Many would argue the EU has long needed to reform – there are 27 members – swollen after the 2004 expansion when ten countries joined in one go. NATO too, is facing new challenges, including the cold hard truth that the US can no longer do everything for Europe. Perhaps this could be Orban’s contribution to the evolution of these partnerships – if the EU and NATO react to Hungary’s obstruction by making themselves fit for the future – which may include new members such as Ukraine.