Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has made a name for himself as a so called sovereigntist that he restored to Hungarians in Budapest’s relationship with the European Union. So-called sovereignty that, according to the legend created by Budapest’s propaganda machine claims that the Hungarian leader fights hard to give back ‘sovereignty’ to other nations on the continent.
How does he do it? Systematic sabotage from within against common policies designed to weaken the bloc into irrelevance.
Like any ferocious opportunist, however, Orban expects Brussels and partner states to accept his failure to comply with EU rules without, in return, Brussels freezing or cutting off Hungary’s access to vital European funds.
And yet, when it comes to boldness, even the Hungarian prime minister has his “natural’ limits. He’s a strutting cockerel among Europeans and a mouse in front of Putin, Xi and, of course, Trump.
He’s unconditionally available whenever summoned by Moscow and Beijing, and is one of the world’s top flatterers of the leader in the White House. In the end Viktor Orban could not avoid the most thankless posture of the career traitor: that of being, at a certain moment, crushed precisely by the inflexible interests of those for whose benefit he betrays.
- Russia is pressuring Orban not to diversify Hungary’s energy sources, for multiple reasons the Kremlin is strategically interested in Budapest’s total dependence on Russian fuel.
- China which is interested in Russia not losing in Ukraine, is pressuring Orban in the same direction.
- And the US, exasperated on the one hand by the defiance of Russia, and on the other by the threat of China, has been pressuring Orban for some time to jeopardise, even partially, his privileged relationship with Moscow and Beijing, because Washington’s calculations have undergone some changes, and the ‘traitor’ must make sacrifices and become selective in the act of treason.
The crisis of which position to take in which Viktor Orban finds himself recently was more than evident in the agenda which took him to Washington on Friday.
With the right words, prepared carefully in advance, and with his freshly made hat doffed, little Orban went to the court of the great Trump to fervently beg him to plug the hole he had dug himself.
Lately, the American president has implausibly and insistently asked the Hungarian prime minister to conclude the chapter on the purchase of Russian oil and he has insisted as never before on the topic, even after Budapest had told Washington on all channels that Russian oil would be a matter of life and death for the Hungarians.
Trump, however, knows three things very well:
- That the situation in which he himself is involved in the Ukraine peace dossier imperatively demands that every drop of Russian oil stop flowing to any reservoir in Europe.
- That once he insists on something, and his insistence remains ignored even by a single actor, the Trumpian projection of virility suffers irreparable damage. And the smaller the actor is (in this case Hungary), the greater the damage. As such, any momentary concession Trump would have tempted to make in the Orban case will certainly cost the American leader and it will cost him in the medium and long term.
- Finally, the excuse invoked by the Orban regime, according to which Russian oil is a matter of life and death for Hungary, simply does not hold, and Trump is well informed enough to be aware that Orban is telling him this simply to manipulate him. On the one hand, because Hungary has alternatives, but accessing them would irritate Putin (something he had time to solve but his vassalage to Putin worked against it). On the other hand, because Russian oil is not something of life and death for Hungary, but only for the Orban regime, which is under threat just a few months before crucial elections that could send it to the graveyard. It seems to me that, by invoking this kind of justification before the White House, Viktor Orban took a risk that will be difficult for him to assume. Because Trump loves pulling the strings as long as he is not the one being strung along.
The special Trump-Orban relationship is one from which both Trump and MAGA have a lot to gain. Politically and ideologically, Budapest represents for today’s Washington a precious lever in the clash between the US and the European Union.
For this reason, Trump has every interest in further cultivating the Orban regime and, implicitly, not making any gesture that would jeopardize his continuity at the buttons of power in Budapest.
But it is equally true that, from Trump’s perspective, Putina’s attitude on the Ukrainian file, corroborated with the developments in the Russia-China relationship, creates pressures that tend to become unbearable and that call for extreme solutions, no matter how indigestible they may seem.
Hungary, as I have already indicated in this editorial space, is a hard nut, but it can easily become small and insignificant.
Drunk on the disproportionate stature he has acquired internationally, over time Viktor Orban has come to no longer perceive reality as it is.
He was glad to be called to the heavyweights’ table from time to time. But it’s a famous saying: at the heavyweights’ table, the minnows don’t make the menu, they’re on the menu.
- PS: Viktor Orban alienated himself
- t the collective ally that, in the end, pays its bills – in this case, the European Union. And it allied itself, instead, with titans who, until now and from now on, had and cannot have any other objective than to extort Hungary.
