Since 1990, the newly independent Hungary’s domestic and foreign policies have been the epitome of inexhaustible incompetence, sheer stupidity, and additionally, after 2010, when the Alliance of Young Democrats (Hungarian acronyms FIDESZ) came to power with a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian unicameral Parliament (in Hungarian: Orszaghaz), no holds barred corruption as well as no strings attached gangsterism.
Domestically, having used real and fallacious “crises,” the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has practically established a permanent state of emergency. His primitive language has been full of war rhetoric against his imagined domestic as well as foreign enemies. Illustrating his mental sickness, he has waged wars intermittently against NATO, the European Union, money hungry financiers, illegal immigrants, his former mentor George Soros and the latter’s Central European University, NGOs that, according to him surreptitiously have been loaded with foreign agents and spies, unnamed terrorists, COVID-19, and most recently against Ukraine, the country that allegedly oppresses its Hungarian minority, provoked Putin’s peace loving Russia into war, and hell-bent to wipe his beloved Hungary off the map.
Professing undying fidelity to his newly minted “illiberal democracy,” Viktor Orban unashamedly claims that Hungary is a more developed “democracy” than any other one in the Free World, because Hungary’s progressive constitution of 2011, which has been amended no less than eleven times, is adorned with moral clarity, perfect sense of social justice and unassailable equality. When the various governing bodies of the European Union have pointed to the almost total lack of the rule of law, the shameless stealing and embezzlement of European monies by him and his puppets, the inconsistencies of Hungary’s behavior internationally, the frequent abuse of Hungary’s veto powers, the absolute rejection of joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) to combat corruption, and his cozying up to dictators, autocrats as well as tyrants, his regime has indignantly rejected interference in Hungary’s domestic affairs.
In all these cases, his pathetically cretin foreign minister plays the eternal victimhood card by crying like a child about the tragic history of Hungary, in which colonial powers wrongly dictated to the poor but brilliantly cultured people of Saint Stephen.
The end result is that no one in Hungary, including Viktor Orban and his puppets, really know what the present regime is all about and what domestic and foreign policies they would likely pursue in the future. The helter-skelter third rate quality of the Orban regime’s domestic and foreign policies must be mainly rooted in the immoral Communist beliefs of the individuals who lead both the FIDESZ and the government. In addition to their collective yearning for the old Soviet Union and the current Russian state, they feel rejected by, and therefore, out of place in the developed Western World that have shown no respect for their autocratic duplicity and disloyalty to NATO and the European Union. Having learned the hard lessons of their insane “strategic ambiguity,” Viktor Orban and his puppets still want to have it both ways. Yet, being kept above water by the United States of America and the rich states of the European Union, while playing the legendary “Trojan Horse” for Russia and China within both organizations is not an option anymore. To continue pursuing such an immoral strategy and believing in its success is nothing short of idiotic fantasy.
However, this acute Hungarian schizophrenia entails a larger lesson for all the failed and failing states in the world as well as the United States of America and its allies. For the former, the same “strategic ambiguity” has been a trap that has led all of them into the cul-de-sac of hopeless indebtedness vis-a-vis the imperialistic People’s Republic of China and the good for nothing Russia. Moreover, not wanting to be kept outside President Xi’s and President Putin’s promised ephemeral “new world order,” they have been paralyzed by their indecision between the superior West and the struggling People’s Republic of China as well as the Russian Federation. Finally, these forces that move in fundamentally different directions have pushed these states into a vacuum that is full of lies, corruption and tyranny. Although they all believe, and perhaps with a certain degree of sincere conviction that they are outside the present great power rivalry, in actuality, they are parts of it and surely will suffer the most. As the well-known African proverb goes, “when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
The same wisdom should be a catalyst for the United States of America and its allies to rethink their policies toward the developing world. First, failure is not an option. Second, unity of purpose in showing the way for all the people who desire freedom is a must in keeping their hopes alive for a better future. Third, “strategic ambiguity” is a political act of “smudging” that has its dangerous limitations concerning setting and executing domestic as well as foreign policy objectives. Fourth, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation in their old fogey incarnations will definitely collapse, leaving two large marauding states ready to destabilize entire continents.
Finally, the world must remember that real clear-sightedness presupposes the naming of things what they really are. Weaponization of lies has always led to catastrophes. Thus, it is time for the United States of America to start curing this political schizophrenia so prevalent in more than half of the countries of the world.