Viktor and Vlad
decades in the making
Vlad the Impaler hosted the current head of the European Union yesterday, despite the multiple sanctions imposed on Russia by that very Union and the United States. Mixed messaging indeed by Viktor Orban, the current EU chair, but what else is new?
Orban is a harsh, anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister, well into his fourteenth year in power. He is anti-immigrant, brash in condemning social equality in his country, and an overall thorn in the side of many Europeans. Former president Trump frequently cites his admiration for the Hungarian’s ‘strength’ to curtail undesirable views through curbing press freedoms, ‘reforming’ the multi-party parliament to make participation harder, and advocating strong arm tactics against those opposing him. Most of Europe recoils at the actions instead.
Hungary, under this leader, remains a member of NATO and the European Union. Turkey’s autocrat Recep Tayyan Erdoǧan received most of the blame for delaying Sweden’s entry into Europe from 2022 until earlier this year but Orban similarly opposed Sweden without suffering as much political heat.
I raise these points to remind us all that conditions never remain static. The atmosphere was heady following the November 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall, freeing Hungary and other states from their Soviet bonds'; disappearance of the Soviet Union itself ensued three years later. Americans rushed to expand NATO while Europe welcomed these former satellites who often clamored to meet EU accession conditions. Advocates assumed these moves would buttress the new world order under U.S. unilateralism. The momentum for these actions was swift and overpowering, not least of which to improve the confidence and status of populations which had suffered under Soviet dominance for more than forty years.
Some voices argued that NATO expansion could inflame nationalist anxieties in Russia by putting troops near the border of a contracting paranoid nation but those voices got little traction, instead often being the brunt of belittling attacks at home. Europe, with its own project of implementing the ultimate steps of Union while addressing the implications of a reunited Germany, assumed the divisions and wars of the past could never occur again in this post-Cold War environment, even as Yugoslavia dissolved before our eyes into brutal nationalist entities determined to promote religious and ethnic apartheid.
Those heady days of lauding the new Europe and the expanded NATO are long behind us yet the consequences today are real. Completely unsurprisingly, the naïvete of ignoring the many possibilities of democracy leaves us in an awkward position as we now confront an avowedly ‘illiberal democracy’ not only within NATO (it’s not the only one, of course) but also sitting in the rotating chair of the EU. Further, Orban happily traipses to Kyiv, then Moscow, directly contradicting that organization’s position on Vlad’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. OH, my.
The day-to-day effect of Orban is probably fairly limited as Hungary is merely one of almost thirty NATO members. The United States likely never entrusted its deepest secrets to the Hungarian military, though mil-to-mil ties remain vital to NATO membership.
It’s the political impact of Orban’s unwillingness to reinforce EU and western messaging to the Kremlin that is discouraging. None of us ever know for certain what Vlad discusses behind closed doors as he sits across his vast table with any foreign visitor but one doesn’t get the impression Orban likely lectured Vlad about mending his threatening ways or suing for peace in Ukraine as he decimates the young male population of an already shaky Russia and its western neighbor. Instead, it seems far more likely that Orban and Vlad shared authoritarian musings on how they best can oust detractors each sees as threatening their visions of ‘Christianity’ in the contemporary world. In other words, it was mildly disturbing to see their handshakes.
Europe is far more concerned, of course, as it’s their Union and they share the continent with these two guys; we are not nor have ever been a member of that organization. We have close ties with Europeans but their choices on running the continent are beyond our role, as if we don’t have enough to address at home.
The lesson is that it is both supremely dangerous and hubristic to assume democracy will always result in regimes favourable to our preferences. We made that mistake thirty years ago. We mistook the Soviet collapse as validation of U.S.-style democracy as the foregone conclusion, an opening for all people, despite creed or color or gender, to live in societies welcoming them. Instead, we see a system in Hungary and Russia closing the door on anyone assumed to be ‘different’ from a narrow vision of the norm. Nationalist tendencies of a bygone era have reemerged, often celebrating tried and true fixations and lies about minorities even in regimes fueled by democratic—and erroenously presumed more tolerant—voters.
Assumptions are often wrong. We may still want to proceed on something like NATO expansion, despite the possible dangers, but recognize that alternate outcomes exist. Actions definitely create consequences. Perhaps major cataclysmic ideological forces are at play in 2024 or small-minded, vicious pretenders are working their wiles but we see a world unfolding in ways which continue, it seems, to surprise us unnecessarily. The bad old days seem to return, sadly rather like cancer resurfacing after a surgeon extracted it in a localized spot.
Does this mean the EU is doomed? Of course not. Am I saying I expect Orban’s embrace of Vlad to lead others to do the same? Not likely but possibly. We must recognize we see things as a snapshot in time but that frame is part of a much longer movie about any society, trends, or the world. Get yourself some more popcorn or Milk Duds as we don’t know the ending.
I welcome your memories of the early 1990s or your rebuttals on today. I welcome any and all thoughts in this era of upheaval and technological change. Thank you for reading the column today or any other day as I want to expand our discussion on issues we confront. Thanks especially to those who subscribe as you are my heroines and heroes.
mother Nature’s oven is on high again so be safe and be well. FIN