Once again, Senator Mitch McConnell issues a warning about the Hungarian leader
Mitch McConnell may not be at the center of the Republican Party anymore (Republican leader in the Senate though he is, for a few more months). But he is doing his best to warn Republicans, and the American Right, about their embrace of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian leader.
On September 25, he took to the Senate floor, saying,
I’ve spoken before about Hungary’s decade-long drift into the orbit of the West’s most determined adversaries. It’s an alarming trend. And nobody — certainly not the American conservatives who increasingly form a cult of personality around Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — can pretend not to see it.
I disagree with McConnell. They can pretend. Also, I would dispute that these American fans of Orbán are “conservatives,” as that term has been traditionally understood in our country. At any rate, McConnell went on to say,
Hungary’s leaders aren’t cozying up to Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran in private. They’re doing it publicly and vocally as well.
He then took those three dictatorships in turn, starting with China’s:
The Orbán government has welcomed China’s view of a “European bridgehead” in Hungary as the perfect complement to its own declared policy of an “opening to the East.” And it hasn’t been shy about turning words into actions.
When Chinese state enterprise has said, “Jump,” Hungarian officials have asked, “How high?”
In former days, McConnell noted, Hungary was a “vassal of Russian Communism.” But now, the Hungarian leader has “nothing but praise for the neo-Soviet imperialist responsible for the first major land war in Europe since 1945.” That would be Putin.
Furthermore, said McConnell,
this NATO prime minister doesn’t just admire Putin, he helps him. His government runs interference for Moscow, gumming up European and trans-Atlantic efforts to combat Russia’s unlawful aggression at every turn.
European allies are providing more assistance to Ukraine than the U.S. is, but Americans who complain the EU isn’t doing more to help Ukraine should look no further than to Budapest’s efforts to block additional EU assistance for the answer.
Yes, well said.
Then that third dictatorship, Iran’s:
Hungary’s foreign minister has bemoaned that ongoing international sanctions make it “really challenging to build effective economic and trade cooperation” with the world’s most active state sponsor of terror.
I have little sympathy for Hungarian companies that struggle to profit from their ties to the genocidal regime in Tehran.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Hungarian firms from committing tens of millions of dollars to financing joint nuclear projects with Iran.
Senator McConnell concluded,
Hungary’s leaders have made no secret of their conviction that the future is one of American decline. They’re not hiding the ways they’re preparing for American weakness and betting on our failure.
There’s nothing tough about bowing to autocrats. And there’s nothing for America’s leaders to gain by praising those who do.
Subservience to revanchist powers is not an American value. But far more importantly, it is not in America’s interests.
McConnell’s words may fall on deaf ears. But all honor to him for saying them. All one can do is try.
• Above, I said that Senator McConnell is no longer “at the center of the Republican Party.” Who is? Why, the GOP ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance. They are ardent admirers of Orbán, as they have expressed repeatedly. Also, you could say that the Heritage Foundation is at the center of the American Right. Like the Right in general, Heritage has undergone a transformation. It is now a thoroughly Buchananite, or Orbánite, or Trumpite, organization.
Its president has just received a state award from Orbán. (Go here or here.)
• Yet, there are “outliers” in the GOP — men and women such as McConnell. Five Republican senators just went to Hungary, meeting with government officials and civil-society people, too. Those five were Moran, Collins, Cornyn, Boozman, and Hoeven.
Senator Moran made this statement:
Our delegation and many of our congressional colleagues are increasingly concerned by Hungary’s deepening and expanding relationship with Russia and the continued erosion of its democratic institutions. Hungary also continues to disregard the concerns raised by its allies and partners about deepening its ties with China. It is in our shared interest for our countries to work closely together. We urge Hungary to listen to the concerns of its allies and to act on them.
That truly is newsworthy.
• Viktor Orbán is a close ally of Matteo Salvini, who is the deputy prime minister of Italy. Salvini is one of the foremost Putinists in Europe. He has gone so far as to wear a Putin T-shirt, in Red Square and at the European Parliament. He is undisguised and gung-ho.
Rallying with Salvini in Italy, Orbán said, “The Italian and Hungarian peoples are freedom fighters who will never surrender their countries to foreigners!” Peter Buda made a poignant observation: “Then why does he expect Ukraine to do the opposite?”
• An article from Politico begins,
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is preparing to serve up a major policy gift for his best friend across the Atlantic, former United States president Donald Trump.
He’s concocted a way to let Trump, if he successfully makes it to the White House for a second term come November, wriggle out of a $50 billion loan the U.S., the European Union, and leaders of the G7 offered to Ukraine to back its fight for survival against Russia. That would let Trump off the hook, allowing him to tell Republican voters that, if elected, he won’t give Ukraine another cent.
Hungary says it won’t consent to a change in rules that would allow Washington to play a major role in the loan until after the U.S. election.
• I know many people who are relaxed about Orbán’s relationship with Putin. They sympathize with Putin, if not outright admire him. They say he is “a defender of Christian civilization” and so forth. He is “strong,” not “weak,” like the girly-men in the democracies. You know how it goes.
Yet these people, for the most part, profess antipathy to the regimes in China and Iran. They tend to recognize them as enemies of the United States. How do they account for Orbán’s relations with Beijing and Tehran? From what I can tell, they cough and look away.
Kamilla Marton has written an article that tells you a lot: “How China’s United Front extends its influence in Hungary.” That article is here. We are talking about a very serious issue.
• A report in VSquare tells us this:
Breaking NATO informal diplomatic protocol, Hungary’s senior army chief engaged in a conversation with Russia’s military attaché at a Chinese diplomatic event, surprising Western allies. While Bratislava, Prague, and Warsaw have all expelled Russia’s GRU-linked military attachés for espionage, Budapest continues to host them. The number of Russian diplomats in Hungary is nearly equal to the total in the other Visegrád countries combined.
• About Orbán and the Hungarian media — their independence or the lack of it — I have written many times. Here is a bulletin from the Associated Press:
Thousands of protesters gathered outside the headquarters of Hungary’s public media corporation on Saturday to demonstrate against what they say is an entrenched propaganda network operated by the nationalist government at taxpayer expense.
(For the article in full, go here.)
I have written an unhappy column today. No fun in it. But I think these issues are highly important, and I’m glad to have touched on them, if only because people on the right “increasingly form a cult of personality around Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” as Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said.