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One could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the European Union when Péter Magyar’s opposition party won a resounding victory and incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Sunday’s crucial elections in Hungary. The election was critically important to the people of that country,  but it had also become a battleground for Russian disinformation, anti-Ukrainian messaging, amateur false flag claims of terrorist threats from Serbia, and the injection of American MAGA-right wing nationalism, which itself has been very much inspired by the illiberalism of Orbán’s 16 years in power. 

The congratulations are rolling in from leaders from across the European Union. Experience and the mindset of the Brussels technocratic machinery suggest that the EU will view this as a reset signaling that everything has turned for the better in Hungary and that everyone can return to business as usual. However, this moment should be seized as an opportunity for renewal and reflection. It should inform current and future policymaking by the EU, EU member states, and the broader democratic community.

Orbán’s loss and Magyar’s win is yet another important bellwether for understanding the rise of Hungary’s illiberal state model, while also now pointing to techniques for resistance to and reversal of such antidemocratic trends. 

A first step

For the people of Hungary, this is an important step – but only the first – in rolling back the political, social, and economic damage of the past 16 years. The experience of Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) suggests that it’s far easier to break institutional systems and trust than to (re)build them.

It is heartening that Magyar has noted his commitment in restoring relations with the EU and NATO; this in itself will be a great asset in removing what had often become a weight on these institutions. But it bears repeating that Magyar himself comes from Fidesz and is part of the center-right mainstream. There is no reason to think that culture war issues will simply go away. In fact, it’s very important to remember that there is now a global network of wealthy and connected people who have demonstrated they are willing to spend money and political capital supporting the Orbán vision. Magyar will face numerous challenges as he seeks to rebuild institutions and employ judges and other civil servants who are committed to the country rather than just a party or an individual. Constitutional reform needs to be part of this rebuilding. Throughout the process, Magyar’s government will need to learn how to explain what they are doing and why to the people of Hungary, who have grown accustomed to rhetoric from a state machinery retrofitted to suit Fidesz – what has been termed a “competitive authoritarian regime.” The media machine that has been created over the years by Orbán’s cronies, who together with the state control an estimated 85% of the media, will in particular be difficult to dismantle and rebuild.

Clean-up job

A lot now depends on how Magyar works to clean up Hungary’s systems, as he and his team dig-out a decade and a half of corruption and self-dealing. It’s important to remember that it was the shared frustration with endemic corruption that enabled a unified opposition and brought 77% of the people out to vote. This shameless and widespread corruption (described as a “post-Communist mafia state” as early as 2016)  naturally accompanied the building of a state based on power, self-dealing and patronage, and which enabled the erosion of governance and services that ensues when bureaucrats and independent experts are bullied and replaced with loyalists and sycophants.  It took people getting fed up with this corruption to lead to this opposition victory. It will be interesting to see what connections, European and beyond, will be exposed in the coming weeks and months. The recent revelations of Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s reporting to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, from EU meetings on sanctions like a control officer, foreshadow more such linkages.

Soul-searching in Brussels – and beyond?

At the level of the European Union and its machinery in Brussels, this development should prompt some soul-searching on how certain aspects of the EU itself enabled Orbán’s long hold on power. Let’s not forget how long it took to get Fidesz out of the center-right pan-European EPP; Fidesz finally left on its own in 2021 – Orbán’s 11^th year in power – following suspension in 2019, but remaining in the EPP European Parliamentary group for another two years.  This network has a lot to answer for in nurturing Fidesz (and other reactionary “national conservatives”). It will be interesting to see if they maintain public and friendly links with politicians and other reactionary figures coming over from the other side of the Atlantic. Closer to home, it’s important to remember that the EPP is still “investigating” Serbia’s ruling SNS following the numerous abuses of power by the party and President Aleksandar Vučić. 

In fact, the frustrations that finally hit a boiling point among people in Hungary will sound extremely familiar to citizens throughout the Western Balkans, who similarly feel that they have lost a generation to the same corrosive political and economic trends, following wider hope a generation ago in most of these countries. They have all experienced a different flavor of kleptocratic self-dealing and poor governance for much of the past three decades,  layered on top of the trauma and dislocation of the violence that accompanied the destruction of Yugoslavia. 

These trends also are becoming increasingly familiar to citizens of the US who have seen an even more rapid-fire dismantling of checks and balances and expertise over the past 16 months. 

Defending democracy

The EU (and the broader set of democratic countries that have been described by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney as “middle powers” and by DPC as “Europe+”) would do well to learn from this and other cases to better formulate and message their own policies and remind their citizens of why democratic values and human rights are not just some lofty ideal but are inextricably related to governance success, broad-based and shared prosperity, and comprehensive security. 

Hungarians have demonstrated that democracy can and must be defended from below – and that it helps to have convincing, inspirational leadership which recognizes that need for a broad popular coalition in favor of a governance system based on rules, not connections or loyalty.

The EU should also consider the lesson that should be learned in terms of its enlargement agenda. Corruption and political and social control are not bugs in the system of countries struggling to move towards healthier democratic systems and ultimately EU membership. Rather, they are the feature of authoritarian and kleptocratic regimes that have as their bottom line consolidating and staying in power.

No business as usual

Tisza’s overwhelming victory cannot be an excuse for the EU simply breathing a sigh of relief, then coasting or returning to business as usual. The Union and its member states failed the diagnostic test that 16 years of Orbán’s increasingly disruptive rule – and his now demonstrated service to Moscow (and Trump’s MAGA movement) – posed to the EU as a community of rules and values. This needs to be remediated, including through developing EU-wide popular democratic defense and resilience. The influence of malign actors in Europe’s neighborhood and in the EU itself will only become more sophisticated and targeted. Finding ways to inoculate themselves from these infections will be critical and will include efforts to identify and counter disinformation, but also to find ways to maintain digital sovereignty over their information space. This will be needed to counter not only Russia but a United States under Trump and with its own emboldened and increasingly unaccountable Silicon Valley class. This class has weaponized US state power against the EU’s ability to defend the privacy and interests of its own citizens. 

However, for now, before sitting down to understand what happened to bring about this result and what could happen next at a time of global uncertainty and risk, one can be forgiven for wanting to exhale – and celebrate. But it should be taken not as a signal that everyone can relax, but as a moment that should be seized to regain the progress, momentum, and values-based self-confidence that the democratic world has allowed to shrivel during a period in which antidemocratic forces have shown increased swagger.

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The discussion can be viewed here.

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The new US National Security Strategy is a troubling document, but at least provides total clarity into the way Donald Trump and his team think and intend to act. It should dispel any wishful thinking by European or other democratic governments that they can somehow ride out this challenge and hope that things will someday snap back to normal. Following months of “business as usual” after the first salvos in Munich and the berating of Zelenskyy in February, this complacency needs to be abandoned .

The strategy, which in large parts reads more as a manifesto, is not only a confirmation that the trans-Atlantic partnership and alliance is functionally over – including NATO’s Article 5 – but also sounds a clarion call to other reactionary, right-leaning thinkers and anti-democratic leaders that the US is embracing a foreign policy based on transactional self-dealing and the active undermining of democratic governments and open societies. It must be taken both literally and seriously.

From the perspective of Europe, a number of points have already raised alarms. This document is firmly closing the book on the notion that comprehensive security can be best ensured by providing support for functional, rights-based and rule of law-based democracies. However, while it is bad enough that venal transactionalism and swagger is replacing a values-based approach that has served the US quite well for over three quarters of a century, the one time that values (other than power and money) is raised in the strategy is within the context of Europe. This context is focused not on a vision of a democratic and mutually reinforcing alliance, but on  pulling Europe itself further to the illiberal right (a la Orbán’s Hungary) on issues related to migration and economic development, but also presumably big tech and the climate. We see that the Great Replacement Theory, which was once relegated to the far-right margins of politics, is an active thought system for Trump and his coterie – as it is in reactionary circles in Europe. This will boost regressive and anti-democratic elites and stoke grassroots-level polarization. The US is now seeking to export, as a matter of policy, the same polarity and domestic political dysfunction that has brought it to this point. The paragraphs referencing Ukraine, alone and in the context of the broader document, have already been enthusiastically embraced by  Moscow.

The references to the Monroe Doctrine and what they are branding the “Trump Corollary” are another sign of the US narrowing the full spectrum of its global engagement to focus on its hemisphere. This administration prefers the visions of centuries past over those of the 20th and the 21st, and is blind to the way that the 19^th century paved the way for the tragedies of World War I and World War II which ushered in the world order now being aggressively deconstructed. It is worth remembering that the Monroe Doctrine was aimed at asserting that the US would not interfere in Europe’s affairs, and similarly Europe would not interfere in the affairs in the western hemisphere. Yet taken together with the jettisoning of values, it sends a signal that while the US intends to support its ideological allies in Europe, it expects Europe to stay out of the way.

This view of geopolitics raises the question of what other spheres would exist, and reinforces the sense that Trump and Co would like to pursue a modern “three-way Yalta” of the world with Russia and China.

China is viewed as both an adversary and serious competitor, and one can wonder whether Trump envisions some new form of containment within these new spheres of influence.  Russia, perversely, is not even mentioned as a nuclear adversary, let alone a systemic or values rival. The vision for relations with the Middle East and Africa is a mix of values-free transactionalism with the potential for self-dealing among the well-connected elites; the final paragraph of the document on Africa refers to business opportunities and return on investment while noting extraction opportunities that are sure to raise concerns about a new form of colonial exploitation.

At no point in the 29 pages is popular agency mentioned at all; democratic accountability as an underpinning of security, prosperity, and dignity is relegated to the rubbish bin. Trump is attacking Europe precisely because it represents the values that he is actively discarding home and abroad; one can hear echoes of Putin’s invasion of westward-facing Ukraine.

As always, when playing this real-life version of Risk and drawing lines on the global game board a big question will be what Europe looks like without the US in its camp, and with a predatory Russia on its eastern flank. It is critical that Europe does not view this document either as something to be ignored, or as sketching out new rules of the game that it will figure out how to play.

Europe and other democratic allies – Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and others (what could be termed “Europe Plus”) – will only be able to fight against these anti-democratic and frequently kleptocratic trends if they work together and offer a new vision for the democratic world. While EU enlargement continues to be a policy that has both energized and exasperated the continent, the fact that there are candidate countries that see the value of joining (Ukraine is fighting and dying for this right) shows that there are still citizens who recognize that their future would be better with this democratic orientation.

It is easy to turn fatalistic in the face of autocratic momentum; however, given the chance, people choose a life of opportunity and dignity over closed and repressive systems. Europe has an opportunity and an obligation to push back by recognizing its role in consolidating a democratic “Europe Plus” and immediately developing active strategies to counter the new threat that its erstwhile ally has become.

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In her remarks (available for viewing here), Dr. Perry tried to emphasize that the best way to protect against hybrid threats is through a recommitment to the principle of comprehensive security, grounded not solely in defense and warfare, but in accountable good governance, human rights, and the values that have been at the core of the transatlantic relationship for decades.

It’s becoming worrisome clear that in the face of rising authoritarian threats and an erosion of norms in many consolidated democracies, the notion of comprehensive security and the liberal/democratic peace is often forgotten. The sooner that the democratic world recognizes this, the sooner much needed momentum in support of values-based alliances can be enhanced.

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As if there were any more need for evidence that the second Trump administration aims to throw the international liberal order game board off the table, taking the money and game pieces with them as they leave the wreckage, we are again seeing examples of what this could mean. Trump’s transactional, bullying, mafia politics on the international stage, combined with his zero-sum real estate mentality, brings a dangerous mix to complicated and sensitive regions around the world that have existed in a sort of geopolitical suspended animation for decades or in some cases generations.

We are seeing him seek credit for a “peace deal” between Armenia and Azerbaijan that is less a peace deal and more of a framework primarily aimed at securing a US role in a regional energy hub; an economic transaction taking advantage of Armenia’s weakened posture following Azerbaijan’s autumn 2023 offensive to remove Armenians who had lived in what was known as Nagorno-Karabakh for centuries. It also fully ignores the work Armenia and Azerbaijan have done themselves to get to this point. Yet this in many ways neatly encapsulated his view of geopolitics, and it’s difficult to avoid visions of Sharpie-fueled fever dreams inspired by the likes of Mountbatten and Radcliffe and the mapmaking  prior to the India – Pakistan partition; or talks between Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tudjman at Karadjordjevo in 1991 as they sketched options for carving up Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Trump has been gearing up for a Friday meeting with Putin in Alaska and has already used the phrase “land swap,” with regard to the war in Ukraine, which must be music to Putin’s ears. (His erratic performance at the August 11 press conference where he noted his plans to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement to Washington, DC, as well as referencing his upcoming plan to go to “Russia,” by which he presumably meant Alaska, must have also delighted the Kremlin.)  It is worth noting that the phrase “land swap” was heard during the first Trump administration when it was used to refer to the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, and the notion of “solving” it by trading pieces of land. While the notion of a “swap” generally means some sort of like for like exchange, on Ukraine it is clear that Putin has not retreated from his aims to internationalize Russia’s territorial claims to occupied territory, deny Kyiv security guarantees, and ensure an open playing field for ongoing interference in and control over Ukraine’s destiny.

However, whether or not Trump is fully aware of the meaning and symbolism of this phrase, this language fits in with the image he holds of himself as a “dealmaker”. At the same time, it feeds into his preference for big-man politics, and short-term decision-making and pronouncements without regard for the long-term impact or consequence. From the perspective of a real estate agent, property has clear ownership. It’s mine; it’s yours. There is little patience for ambiguity. However, there are many places around the world that have occupied a sort of grey zone aimed at enabling a limbo status quo in the interest of avoiding heightened or even violent conflict.

Right now, Nagorno-Karabakh is on his mind, as is Ukraine and the current Thailand-Cambodia border conflict. While Trump’s views of maps may lead him to see these as real estate disputes, this kind of simplification ignores cultural, demographic and human experience. It also favors the appetites of the big man politics to which he is attracted.

Simplistic nationalist and irredentist ideologies sell the false narrative that some group of people cannot be secure and thrive unless they are the sole occupiers of some bit of land. Places that complicate simple lines and maps, and that challenge this mindset, need to be destroyed or oppressed. It is in the pursuit of this simplistic vision that we see yet another attack on the notion of the liberal international order.

Following decades of horrifying human tragedy in which people have been killed or forcibly moved in the pursuit of geopolitical sorting (the 1915 Armenian genocide; the swapping of millions between Greece and Turkey in 1922; the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon; the generational tragedy of Israel/Palestine), for a now seemingly short period of time there was the imperfect ideal that places of diversity and political “ambiguity” could be differently managed. The idea was that people living in places with a history of political and demographic contestation should not need to fear being forcibly moved, killed or subjugated, but should be able to enjoy rights as a minority or a majority in that space under the umbrella of the basket of human rights ushered into the post-World War II and post-Cold War orders that would guarantee minority rights and participation, and the basic right to exist.

This led to a number of ambiguous situations. Some were termed “frozen conflicts,” particularly in the former Soviet Union in places such as Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova – places that have often been a part of Moscow’s irredentist appetites. (The Baltic countries with significant Russian populations, were lucky to solidify their relationships with the EU and NATO during the period of what could be considered from today’s vantage point “peak liberal democracy”.) Beyond the former USSR, this phenomenon has been seen in other places where the political status is somehow contested or believed by some polities to be up for grabs, such as Kosovo, Kashmir and Taiwan.

While realpolitik geopolitics increasingly seems to be ascendent, it’s worth remembering that practical ambiguity served multiple purposes. Perhaps most importantly it enabled human beings to stay in their homes and communities, turning the page on a history in which population expulsions were acceptable. It created political space for a process of political and economic normalization that, ideally over time (though imperfectly pursued), would eclipse narrow self-interest focused on bits of land. And it helped to minimize big power appetites for their own irredentist territorial expansion and renewed empire building that could potentially set off new geopolitical competition.

Were these ambiguous arrangements ideal? No. Critics will claim that these political conflicts were not definitively settled, arguing that that proves that this theory was flawed. What they fail to appreciate is the historically short period of time in which the liberal approach as even tried – decades of experience in which human rights were at least aspirationally a priority, compared to centuries and millennia of brute force regardless of the consequences.

The language that we are hearing now from the Trump administration is in line with his apparent agenda of wanting to erase (“cancel”) all liberalizing trends of the 20th century, whether domestic or global. And his singular psychological framing capacity as a real estate agent means that he has no cognitive space to understand the benefits of ambiguous solutions for diverse and complex places. In his worldview, only one person can control a plot or a building; while this may make sense in real estate sales, this creates a basis for complete zero-sum geopolitics.

These issues need to be kept in mind as there will be a very disruptive period ahead. Talk of land swaps impacts people, leads to a radicalized political environment and can lead to resistance and violence. While the people of Ukraine are certainly following this news with a sense of forboding, people in places including Kosovo, Taiwan, Palestine, Bosnia, Burma and beyond have reason to worry.

At a time in which the illiberals and far-right seem ever more ascendant and confident, it can be easy to lose hope and perspective. It has been in particular disappointing to see that the European Union has been unable to reorient itself in a way that reaffirms their values such as those outlined in both founding and enlargement documents, norms and policies;  it is rare to hear mention let alone embrace of the Copenhagen criteria.

Decision makers in the member states and Brussels have been ready to shift their own centers to the right rather than to recognize that their competitive advantage is in fact the support for open societies and the rule of law rather than the rule by law. As in the US, this shift has been accompanied by a narrative focused on the issue of migration. However, the perceived risks of migration and people on the move seeking safety would only increase in a renewed era of population transfers, expulsion, or endemic oppression. And people are not seeking to migrate to Russia, China or other autocratic states. 

In the short term the EU and its democratic allies around the world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea etc.) need to recognize that they will never thrive in a world with a new geopolitical map in which illiberal autocracy is the dominant business model. Appreciating the extent of the threat and doubling down on the attraction of the liberal model to people who have lived under and fled from the alternatives needs to be at the heart of their reorientation to the world Trump is enabling.

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