Orban’s Hungary is a problem NATO can manage

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. (Source: Bloomberg)

The case that Hungary has become a cuckoo in the Western nest gets stronger by the day. Not only has Prime Minister Viktor Orban successfully destroyed his nation’s democratic institutions, but he also now stands alone in blocking both the European Union’s provision of essential aid to Ukraine, and Sweden’s accession to NATO. So, it’s tempting to want to cut the country loose and recognise Orban’s Hungary for what it has become — an opponent.

The costs of tolerating the prime minister’s antics are certainly growing. Although Orban allowed the EU to offer Ukraine membership talks in November by walking out of the room rather than wield his veto, he’ll have many more opportunities to obstruct Ukraine’s addition in the decade or more that’s likely to take. A proposal to lift his block on a €50 billion ($54.5 billion) aid package for Kyiv, so long as it’s split into smaller annual tranches, looks like a plan to extract a price for his approval every time.

On Sweden, too, Orban’s approach seems clear. On  Tuesday, the same day Turkey’s parliament ratified the Nordic country’s NATO bid, Orban said on X, formerly Twitter, that he’d sent a letter to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, inviting him to Budapest “to negotiate.” Understandably, the Swedes responded that there was nothing to negotiate; accepting new members to NATO should be based on collective security calculations, not extortion.

And yet this is a classic example of the need to be careful what you wish for. To begin with, Orban’s obstructions are indeed transactional. It’s likely either a deal or a workaround will soon be found on Ukraine, while he has said he will try to persuade Hungary’s parliament to approve Sweden’s NATO bid. That’s disingenuous, given the rubber-stamp institution that the legislature has become, but it also suggests a temporary problem.

More than that, though, neither the EU nor NATO have any mechanism for ejecting a member state, once accepted — and neither should want to. Orban’s flirtations with Moscow and Beijing are an irritant, but they could be far worse. Geography matters in security calculations, and it’s wiser to have Hungary inside the tent than out.

One reason for the traction of Orban’s nationalist populism since he came to power in 2010 is the still-powerful sense of loss many Hungarians feel over the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which dismembered Hungary in the wake of its defeat, with Germany, in World War I. The treaty, which also required the country’s demilitarisation, was Hungary’s Versailles or worse. It embedded a distrust of the great powers responsible.

Like Yugoslavia in 1990, or the Soviet Union at the moment of its collapse in 1991, Hungary had been in reality a multinational empire, with internal borders of limited importance. At Trianon, that empire lost more than two-thirds of its territory. The new borders also left several million ethnic Hungarians living outside the newly reduced state, primarily in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and today’s Ukraine.

It’s no coincidence that some of Orban’s most important speeches have been made not in Hungary, but in a part of Romania that was lost in 1920. He hasn’t invaded anyone or called for the “regathering” of former imperial lands, the way Vladimir Putin has in Russia, but he has offered protection and citizenship to expatriate Hungarians across the region and treats the nation as extending beyond the state to wherever Hungarians live. So does Hungary’s post-Communist constitution.

Orban’s rhetoric has nevertheless made neighbors nervous at times. Until Hungary and the rest of central Europe and the Western Balkans joined the EU and NATO, there had been clear potential for conflict. In Targu Mures, Romania, in March 1990, I watched as thousands of ethnic Romanians were bused in from surrounding villages to fight Hungarians gathered in the town center, as unfounded rumors of Hungarian separatism spread. A medieval melee of pitchforks, iron bars and torn-up paving stones followed, in which five people were killed and hundreds wounded.

Avoiding such conflict is reason enough to keep Hungary inside the EU and NATO. The trans-Atlantic alliance has in a similar way served to make war less likely — though far from impossible — between Turkey and Greece. Both of those countries were dictatorships when they first were brought into NATO. So, too, was Portugal.

The irony, of course, is that the best way to ensure the rights of ethnic Hungarians beyond national borders would be for Orban to press for more EU integration, pulling both Serbia and Ukraine firmly into the European community and market, and reducing again the importance of Europe’s national borders. But that idea’s time seems to have passed. Orban has instead compared Hungary’s EU membership to its decades of Soviet occupation, and has championed national sovereignty against “interference” from Brussels.

The EU and NATO need to recognise the strength of Orban’s domestic position. His Trumpian brand of nationalism and right-wing cultural populism resonates. Moreover, his country simply is a part of Europe in economic and security terms, which is one reason he has never campaigned to leave either body.

At the same time, both organisations need to draw clear red lines around the issues that are existential for them, including the basic functions of electoral democracy, and keeping a vengeful and predatory Russia at bay. More Viktor Orbans are likely on the way in Europe now, and perhaps the US. Orban gained an ally with the return of Robert Fico as prime minister in neighboring Slovakia, after his party won elections in September. An anti-immigrant party won most votes in the Netherlands in November, while Germany’s AfD is polling top in some states, and the European Parliament is expected to get a far-right makeover in elections this year. As these parties gain power, the core values that the EU and NATO were built to promote and protect after World War II will be at risk. Those values need to be narrowly defined and fiercely protected.

Neither the EU nor NATO should be afraid to punish Hungary when it crosses those lines. Any EU attempt to take away the country’s vote is likely to fail, but the bloc should go on starving Orban of the billions of euros Hungary is due until he truly rolls back legislation that neutered the judiciary. A victim of its own legal box-ticking, the bloc has muddied the issue by releasing about a third of the funds in return for on-paper compliance with judicial reform demands, while holding money back for failings in some policy areas the EU should be leaving to nation-states. Equally, should Orban undermine NATO’s security on Russia’s behalf, he must be isolated. Hungary’s leader will exploit any weakness, but he is a problem to be managed, rather than solved.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication.

Credit: Bloomberg