Orban jubilant, the American ambassador settles his scores | EUROtoday

Oopened a amount of bottles of tokay in Budapest on Wednesday, when Donald Trump’s clear victory was identified. Viktor Orban, who was betting the whole lot on the Republican candidate’s return to the White House, praised the American’s resilience. ” I see […] the greatest comeback in Western political history »he enthuses, recalling that this man withstood all the tests: a criminal conviction, the confiscation of his property, the assassination attempt and “all American media […] against him.” A eulogy like a game of mirrors between the two men who spoke on the phone afterwards.

The coincidence of the calendar also allows Viktor Orban to receive in majesty, in Budapest, all the elites of the European continent, Thursday, for the European Political Community, and, Friday, during the informal summit of his presidency of the EU devoted to the competitiveness with, in guest star, Mario Draghi for his famous report.

“We are going to let him triumph for 48 hours,” grumbled a European diplomat since no capital has considered boycotting Budapest. Charles Michel, the President of the Council, had even theorized the importance of going to the Hungarian capital despite the expected ranting from Orban. “An empty seat is not what we need,” he said. We must meet. We must exchange. We must all make decisions together. » And this will be the case: the 27 have negotiated and drafted a “declaration on European competitiveness” which is undoubtedly the best possible response to a new surge in American isolationism.

Hopes for a “return to the golden age”

The Hungarian Prime Minister, for his part, presents Donald Trump as “the man of peace” who will pacify Russian-Ukrainian relations and revitalize American-Hungarian economic relations, thus returning to a “golden age”. It is true that the Biden administration has been fining Hungary for several years. No doubt Viktor Orban is hoping for preferential treatment from Donald Trump who would exclude his country from the customs surcharges with which the new American president threatened the European Union during his campaign. But this would then mean that Hungary would leave the framework of the Customs Union…

ALSO READ Enrico Letta’s recipes so that the EU does not collapse in the face of China and the United StatesPerhaps – but no one knows yet – that, in fact, the American president hopes to break European trade policy by granting privileges to certain governments. We think of Meloni’s Italy, the Netherlands with the populist Wilders, the Baltic countries with strong transatlantic convictions. In 2018, when Donald Trump launched the first trade war, the EU reacted in unity. This will be put to the test again.

Budapest’s great strategic gap

Viktor Orban and Donald Trump share, in fact, the same conservative vision of society: reluctance against women’s right to abortion, return to Christian family values ​​and rejection of LGBT demands… But Orban is not totally aligned on Trump. Unlike the American president, the Hungarian does not make China a systemic adversary. On the contrary, he has opened the doors of his country widely to the interests of Beijing and intends to play on all fronts: Putin’s Russia for energy (nuclear, gas and oil), Xi Jinping’s China for industry ( electric vehicles, in particular), the Americans for trade and defense via NATO, and the European Union for cohesion funds and the contribution of subsidiaries of German industry (as long as it is still standing) established in his country.

Opportunism? Yes, but we do not understand Hungarian strategy if we do not look at its history. This is a country that was tossed around during the 20th^e century for having regularly made the wrong choices of alliance. Carved up in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon, reduced to the rank of a Soviet colony (with reparations to pay) at the end of the Second World War, Hungary paid for its mistakes. Viktor Orban draws a geopolitical lesson from this: never again antagonize the powerful. The only “power” that it allows itself to mistreat is the European Union, or rather the “Brussels bureaucrats” (in its glossary), because it has no army capable of attacking it. invade.

David Pressman’s final indictment

Joe Biden will leave office in January. Viktor Orban also hopes to get rid of the current American ambassador in Budapest. David Pressman, appointed by the Democratic administration in 2022, has never passed anything to the Hungarian Prime Minister and his regime. On Wednesday, it was a message with the accents of a diplomatic testament that the American ambassador delivered during election night at the embassy residence. Knowing his days were numbered in Budapest after Donald Trump’s victory, the American ambassador delivered his final truths to the Hungarian government.

“Prime Minister Orban treated these elections like a game of cards at the casino,” he said with his usual frankness. The outgoing ambassador warns against a transactional vision of alliances, transformed into chips on a poker table. He made his final indictment by listing the blows given by the Hungarian government in its relationship with Washington. For example, Budapest’s refusal to receive eight American senators, the absence from crucial NATO meetings, the preference displayed for relations with Moscow.

“Democracy must be protected”

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More than only a settling of scores, David Pressman’s message feels like a warning for the longer term. “The damage done is deeper than a four-year term of a president,” he warns, suggesting that Trump’s victory is not going to be sufficient to erase the collected tensions. A barely veiled warning addressed to Budapest: the arrogance of American establishments in Hungary has been completely shaken.

ALSO READ The head-on conflict between von der Leyen and Orban within the European ParliamentIn the identical room the place, thirty-five years earlier, a younger Viktor Orban met President George HW Bush, David Pressman recollects what unites – or united – the 2 nations: “Democracy must be protected, by our leaders and by our peoples, because it is sacred, fragile. » “Such small games are unworthy of a great country,” additional criticizes David Pressman, who sees in Orban’s technique a broader hazard for the cohesion of the Atlantic alliance. One final lesson in diplomacy, earlier than the waltz of ambassadors begins in Washington.