The Missing Scale: “Eastern Europe” in Hungary’s Geostrategic Representations

Abstract

Since 2010, with Viktor Orbán’s return to power, Hungary has progressively turned into an antidemocratic regime through a well-thought process of state and democracy capture. This slide has come along with chimeric narratives about national identity. Consecutive narratives about the nation and the country’s sense of belonging have given the impression that Hungary is moving on the map, as the Orbán regime has been locating itself more and more explicitly against the West. During the migration crisis, ‘Central Europe’ was at the centre of Orbán’s cultural map, as he extrapolated his ideology to the East-Central European macro-region, hoping to turn it into a region against the European establishment. Budapest’s tactical moves in the Western Balkans have gained importance as Orbán is increasingly isolated in the EU community. On the global scale, the regime has mixed trade and diplomacy with tying political alliances in Central Asia and beyond. These narratives do not result in a system. However, there is a common denominator in Orbán’s consecutive discourses on Hungary’s geopolitical place and role: anti-Western and anti-EU convictions flow through the opportunistic contradictions of national propaganda. In a contradictory way, only an EU member state could proceed to state and democracy capture and become famous for it, giving the impression that the small, peripherical Eastern European state is more important than it is. It is an EU member that has fallen into Russia’s arms to propagate pro-Kremlin narratives in and outside the EU. In this paper, I will examine the geopolitical narratives used by the Orbán regime and show how Budapest’s very sense of scale has got lost in the process. Indeed, it is Hungary’s precarious location on the map that the regime seems to have forgotten about and has reached this point at the time of renewed Russian aggression in Hungary’s direct neighbourhood.

Keywords

Orbán regime Russia provincialism revisionism the power of weakness

Introduction

‘The sanctions are destroying us’; ‘National consultation: 97% of Hungarians say no to sanctions’. On the streets of Budapest, governmental billboards give the impression that Hungary is at war with the West. The European Union’s (EU) sanctions would target Hungary, while the government wants ‘peace’ in Europe. The country’s regional partners, the other members of the Visegrad Group (V4), have chosen ‘the path of war’ and aligned with the West. Poland’s standpoint is ‘comprehensible’; it has historical reasons to worry about Russia. The Russian aggression of Ukraine is ‘a war between Slavic nations’ and a ‘local conflict’, but the EU and the United States (U.S.) ‘have decided’ to make a more significant clash out of it (HVG, 2023). For Ukraine and the West, ‘there is no chance to win this war,’ – concludes Viktor Orbán to dissimulate his regime’s pro-Russian standpoint with vague and questionable geopolitical considerations (Bloomberg, 2023).

The Orbán regime’s communication is indeed an adaptation of Russian propaganda to the context of a minor, Eastern European ally of Moscow that pretends to ‘stay out of the conflict’ while intoxicating the population and mongering anti-Western hatred. An EU member state denounces the sanctions it has itself voted for. The prime minister of a country protected by the NATO shield (and nothing else) highlights his still-lasting support for the previous U.S. president. For an unaware visitor, it would probably be hard to guess where such a country is on the map: certainly not on ‘the eastern edge of the Western world’, as Orbán stressed in his recent State of the Nation Address (HVG, 2023), between two lines of pro-Russian storytelling.

In the last 13 years, the construction regime has disregarded the country’s location on the map. Following domestic political priorities, official Hungary praised Central Europe’s regional culture in contrast with Western Europe’s multicultural decline. When he started losing political latitude in the EU, Orbán engaged in suspicious solidarity with Western Balkan EU candidate countries, supporting Serbia’s European integration but, in reality, using Belgrade as a platform to send anti-EU messages. Again, the loss of political latitude in Europe motivated the Hungarian leader to tie purportedly closer friendships in Central Asia and beyond.

A Mitteleuropean narrative, Balkan solidarity, and a puzzling ‘back-to-the-roots’ exploration of the magical Orient are, first of all, narrative balloons. A sober appreciation of Hungary’s geographical and geopolitical location on the map is missing from the picture. Hungary, the country kidnapped by Orbán through state and democracy capture, happens to be in Eastern Europe. A weak and problematic link of the European construction, it also happens to have a neighbour called Ukraine, whose population includes a small Hungarian-speaking community, a country at war, resisting the renewed Russian aggression.

Once these narrative balloons burst, what remains of Hungary from a geopolitical point of view is a small Eastern European country despising its most reliable European and American allies, fracturing regional cooperation, and at odds with a neighbouring nation at war against the Northern Asian invader. In short, Orbán’s geostrategic bubbles might have seemed to fly during purportedly ideal times of peace but have gushed as soon as History interfered in Budapest’s nonchalantly irresponsible ways and plans – a bitter realization, and unfortunately, not the first time in the country’s modern history.

In this paper, I will first examine how Hungary has used its EU membership to build up an antidemocratic regime close to Russia. Second, I will deconstruct the Central European narrative in Orbán’s communication about the V4. Third, I will highlight the counterproductive outcomes of Budapest’s Western Balkan strategy. Finally, I will zoom out on the global scale and show that despite sound premises, Orbán misunderstands his country’s priorities in the ongoing global transformation. Along these four points, I will reflect on the key role of revisionism in pro-Russian standpoints and temptations and put the notion of the periphery into perspective. Finally, I will elaborate on the concept of weakness to put a name on Orbán’s power of annoyance within the Euro-Atlantic system of alliances – a ‘power’ that has shown its limits.

Hungary and the European Union

Hungary has abused the very opportunities of its EU membership to build up an antidemocratic and antiliberal regime based on state and democracy capture. The regime used at least four tactics to take profit from the EU. These reveal why and how Hungary appears nowadays as more important on a European and more global scale than it is. These tactics also indicate that Hungary has lost its accurate geopolitical sense of scale.

The first one is well-known: Orbán’s regime has been using EU funds to finance its oligarchs. Usually, criticism focuses on this double theft: the EU funds stolen from European taxpayers and Hungarian citizens who would need them significantly.

The second tactic is evident as well. The regime has profited from the high mobility provided by EU membership: those Hungarian citizens who could not identify with Orbán’s ethnicist hatred and patriotic pulp have been most welcome to leave the country, find a job, and settle in brighter corners of Europe without significant administrative difficulties. This perfectly legal use of the European space might have contributed to blurring the regime’s geopolitical sobriety. Indeed, the privileged free movement coming along with EU membership can almost make one forget about the essentially peripherical location of Hungary.

Third, the regime has also abused the unanimity rule in EU decision-making. Instead of playing the established game of consensus, Orbán hijacked the European set of rules like he captured the state and democracy at home: he played it against the agreed game. In this practice, he could count on another veto player: Poland. In other words, two East-Central European countries seized the EU’s mechanisms to trump the complex decision-making system, if not other EU members. What matters here is that thanks to his participation in European decision-making as a veto player, Orbán might have felt more robust than he is.

Fourth, the Hungarian leader has used the EU’s platforms to advertise his political views. A small Eastern European country outside the EU could not get such publicity. It was first the attention of EU partners that echoed the Hungarian leader’s voice. The American press has also closely covered the Hungarian case since Orbán’s return to power in 2010. Still, it is first as an EU member state and not as a small peripherical case that Hungary got that interesting.¹

The interest was more than just Western. In these times of global transformation, the reluctant EU member state also triggered the interest of Russia. Hungary only has such assets within the EU to seduce global players. As a result, again, the EU has made Orbán and his antidemocratic achievements look more impressive than they were. The recurring question was: How could an EU member take such an illiberal path? The answer might add insult to injury: only an EU member state could build up an antidemocratic and antiliberal regime on the outskirts of Europe and look appealing to global players such as Russia and China. However, this process has significantly impacted neighbouring East-Central and Southeast European countries.

An event before Orbán’s return to power in 2010 is worth mentioning here, despite the lack of documentation that would be required for factual analysis. András Rácz brought attention to the Putin-Orbán meeting in Saint Petersburg in November 2009 (Szeged, 2021). That is when Orbán’s rather harshly critical standpoint on Russian influence (the 2008 war in Georgia, energy dependence) changed into the opposite. Without access to documents, we can only guess, through comparisons, for instance, with Nicolas Sarkozy’s encounter with Putin in June 2007, the type of exchange that took place. As a result, Orbán radically changed his discourse and approach, exposing Hungary to Moscow’s influence. Without considering this obscure yet spectacular turning point, the ‘magnetism’ that attracts Orbán to Putin (Sz. Bíró, 2023a) would be occult, if not irrational.

Orbán is ‘pro-Russian’ in the sense that he is visibly more afraid of Putin than any of his EU counterparts. At this stage, we can follow the consecutive steps of that magnetic attraction through Orbán’s strategy to radicalize the V4 against the EU, his irresponsible abuse of the Balkan SAP countries’ situation, and the geopolitical fiction at work in his ‘Eastern Opening’. That leads to certain outcomes, though an important key is still missing to get the complete picture. This key, underlying the Hungarian regime’s often hazardous and ridiculous geostrategic moves, is a lack of courage - the exact opposite of healthy fear in front of existential threats.

The Mitteleuropean Deadlock: Hungary and the Visegrad Group

Has the Visegrad Group (V4) been falling apart since the beginning of the Russian aggression of Ukraine? The ongoing war is undoubtedly a landmark in the East-Central European (ECE) region’s history since the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, and almost following the rules of physics rather than politics, it is only a cohesive group that can fall apart. Unfortunately, in the case of the V4, the last year has undermined the possibility of cohesive regional unity.

Mitteleuropean Revival

The evolution of Central Europe as a political concept since the late 1970s has led to a political deadlock and a correlated geopolitical threat. Throughout the last decade of the Eastern block, the idea was to make Central Europe political again, to show that a historical area got lost in the split between East and West.² Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was a decisive event first of all for the Eastern European countries, and upstream the Euro-Atlantic integration, regional cooperation in ECE, motivated by the European Community, was meant to be exemplary for the whole area.

Successful emergence from the shadows of the Soviet-Russian past was the leading motive. But, of course, such a politically oriented revival was only possible with a particular cultural record. Nonetheless, regional cooperation has not managed, since 1989–1990, to go beyond coincidental solidarities exposed to changes in ECE countries’ domestic politics.

The V4: Suspicion and Potential Alternatives

Indeed, the V4 is a loose association, atypically with less cohesion than the EU on the continental scale, by contrast with other macro-regions like Scandinavia or the Benelux. It is loose on purpose: its four members lack the required mutual trust to substantially join forces to deepen European cohesion on the regional scale. Since the consolidation of Orbán’s regime and in the wake of the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have sought other possibilities on the regional scale. Whether the trilateral Slavkov Group has good perspectives (the group not being more than a declaration, depending mainly on the actual governments in place, like the V4), its formal existence shows the lack of unity in the region. It might shed some retrospective light on how fracturing the Russian case already was in the previous stage of the aggression, in 2014.

Two countries without a common border spoke in the name of ‘Central European’ values against the ‘liberal West’. The Polish-Hungarian friendship might have deep historical roots. However, the duo could hardly represent a success story of regional cohesion.³ The result was regional cooperation with draught, a regional identity based on extrapolations of national specificities, and a still uncertain game of proximities and distances driven by national electoral agendas. Prague celebrates the short-sighted symbol of a freshly elected president. At the same time, clouds gather above Bratislava, facing early elections and the shadows of the recent past that might drag Slovakia closer to the Hungarian mindset and model.

According to Richard Swartz, the V4 was ‘born dead’. Even if united, the four countries would be weak, but, more importantly, they lack common interests (Welt, 2023). The region might have shown inglorious unity during a large-scale influx of asylum-seekers to the EU’s borders (Tamás, 2015a). However, the different strategies between East and West still fracture the region. The group was created to provide the regional ‘no man’s land between the Russians and the Germans with political and economic sovereignty’ (Swartz emphasizes ‘no man’s land’ in reaction to Orbán recently labelling Ukraine as such). The Central European idea blurs that the ‘no man’s land’ status might easily be expanded again to the whole Eastern European area, especially if regional cooperation means avoiding all the topics on which regional partners disagree, that is, the most pressing challenges, including Russia.

Regionalism, Provincialism, and Periphery

In the medium term, ‘Central Europe’ has revealed a provincial mindset rather than the political will for macro-regional cooperation. If regionalism today might sound like a promise to override national shortcomings on a larger scale, the provincial attitude remains dangerous in the East-Central region. The territorialization of culture and identity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980, pp. 132–133),⁴ the identification of Mitteleuropean culture with ‘high culture’, the conviction of being more European than the West of the continent, and the denial of the region’s peripheric location in the name of this culture muddy the waters regarding the precarious geopolitical situation of a country like Hungary.

If regionalism can be thought of as a process of decentralization (Hueglin, 1986, pp. 445–446), the East-Central European case calls instead for an approach based on the ‘tension and disparity between the centre and periphery’ (Cabada, 2020, p. 34; Knight, 1982, pp. 514–531). The periphery is a geopolitical notion but also a mental one. It is a reflection on the very idea of the periphery that might improve East-Central European relations by reflecting on the different meanings and connotations in the lexicon of the province and the outskirts. It is vital to upgrade the notion of the periphery to overcome the provincial mindset of the region.

Orbán’s regime is provincial in the sense that it needs, ideologically, a hostile centre to attack – in words – and accuse it of Budapest’s lack of autonomy – and responsibility when it comes to assuming the duties of national sovereignty, including genuine care for Hungarian minorities abroad, nowadays first of all in Ukraine. In the regime’s propaganda, ‘Brussels’ is the hostile centre. In reality, the centre against which the Hungarian leader could act like a brave ‘freedom fighter’ (About Hungary, 2022), as he calls himself, is Moscow.

Daydreaming on the map might be a genuine Mitteleuropean hobby (Hobsbawm, 2014 [2013], pp. 84–95). Instead of dreaming of Hungary becoming a ‘middle power’, the country’s leaders could more carefully consider where it is located: in the middle of the way between East and West. Hungary today is not a figurative bridge between East and West but a clashing point, where some of the most blinded pro-Russian and some of the most uncritical pro-European views coexist, for apparent reasons without dialogue. The case is unique in the EU, for the regime propagates the pro-Russian narrative.

The Ukrainian situation shows the limits of official Hungary’s concern for Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring countries. Budapest supports ‘peace’, which means letting Russia take what it wants to have rest and cheap energy prices again. Budapest supports a country that has invaded a neighbour where Hungarian-speaking (Ukrainian) citizens fight for their freedom. Orbán’s gambling with Hungarian citizenship since 2010 has turned into a stalemate: it has poisoned neighbourhood relations and has not resisted the first shakes of the Russian war.⁵

In a sense, Orbán’s East-Central European construction is genuinely ‘European’: Like the EU, the masterplan was made for ideal times of peace; unlike the EU, Hungary is now isolated on every scale, from the close neighbourhood to the macro-regional and the continental scale, not to mention the explicit tension with the United States (Higgins, 2023) where Orbán supports the previous president and participates to far-right events⁶ instead of strengthening diplomatic relations with Washington, the guarantor of security at the borders of the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

Geopolitically, regional projects sketched in and for more peaceful periods are not doomed to fail in times of bellicose escalation. The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) contains in germ the premises of likely cooperation to come on the Eastern borders of NATO between Finland (not included in the 3SI), the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania, along with Ukraine – cooperation between macro-regions where Hungary is not likely to take its part (Jeszenszky, 2023).

Hungary and the Western Balkans’ European Integration: Mafia-Like, Pro-Russian Solidarities

Macro-regional cohesion would be vital to consolidating the East-Central European periphery. Likewise, interregional cooperation could bridge the gap between the Western European centre and the Balkan periphery through the mediation of the East-Central semi-periphery.⁷ Was it not part of the V4’s vocation to serve as a model for neighbouring regions on the path of their European integration? Is not Hungary’s active support for Serbia joining the EU the constructive approach expected in the Eastern European area?

Selective Interest in the Western Balkans

Hungary’s economic interest in Southeast Europe is evident. With limited economic maneuvering space, nothing is surprising in Hungary’s substantial investments in the Balkan region (Reményi et al., 2021). However, these evident economic ties between Hungary and the WB do not justify how Orbán has used Belgrade as a comfortable political platform to provoke Hungary’s prominent Western allies overtly. Islamophobia, short-sighted minority strategies, and, overall, fracturing the already fragile post-Yugoslav space becomes the Russian strategy of weakening its enemies by using weak links such as the WB countries.

Budapest’s Western Balkan policy is, politically speaking, highly selective. Orbán shows solidarity with the neighbouring region to the limited extent such generosity can be combined with his regime’s overt Islamophobia. Orbán supports Serbia and has surprisingly positive ties with the Serbian entity of Bosnia and Hercegovina and its de facto leader, Milorad Dodik. In December 2021, Orbán said that the central question in Bosnia was how to guarantee the security of a country where two million Muslims live. Orbán’s spokesman put forward even more explicitly that the ‘challenge with Bosnia is how to integrate a country with two million muslims (sic)’ (Szabad Európa, 2021). The Hungarian regime radicalizes the cold civil war in Bosnia between the two entities.

Orbán might also have been involved in the ‘non-paper’ that leaked a couple of months before his anti-Muslim comments, a plan to considerably redraw the political map of the post-Yugoslav area (Balkan Insight, 2021). The firm opponent of migration, that is, movement, the ‘strongman’ of the barbed wire fence between Hungary and Serbia, does not seem worried about borders changing in the direct south-eastern neighbourhood.

Besides islamophobia, a significant component of the regime’s ideology – which, as we will see, is anti-Western and Eurocentric at the same time – Budapest focuses first on its minority issues, opting, like in the Ukrainian case, for a precarious script. The good relations between Budapest and Belgrade are based on personal sympathy and favours between Orbán and the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić. Orbán encourages the Hungarian minority living in the North of Serbia (Vojvodina) to vote for Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). In exchange, Belgrade does not instrumentalize the Hungarian minority. To be more precise, Belgrade and Budapest instrumentalize this minority together.

In other words, Orbán has bet on the sustainability of Vučić’s stabilitocracy (Fruscione, 2020, pp. 13–16) and does not consider the context to come after his ally’s leave from office. Though good personal relations foster constructive international relations, reducing these to personal sympathy might quickly turn counterproductive. Moreover, Orbán’s mafia-like solidarity with Vučić fractures the Balkan group of SAP countries, the Hungarian leader’s support working at the expense of Serbia’s neighbours. More important, Hungary’s support undermines Serbia’s European perspectives as well. Given what Hungary represents in the EU, Orbán’s support for a candidate country following the Hungarian model should not motivate other European leaders.⁸

Revisionism is more folkloric in Hungary than in Serbia due to the proximity in time of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia compared to the century-old story of the 1920 Trianon Treaty. What is less folkloric on the Hungarian side is the deliberate financial, political, and moral corruption of Hungarian minorities living in neighbouring countries. If Orbán’s support for Serbia focuses on the Hungarian minority of Vojvodina, the strategy is less evident in the case of the Republika Srpska. Nevertheless, and beyond the compulsory Islamophobic mantra, the solidarity with the Serbian entity of Bosnia might be related to Hungary’s minority issues.

Minority Strategies: A Priority at the Expense of International Relations

The formula is simple: Bosnian Serbs identify as Serbs rather than citizens of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Belgrade feels closer to Banja Luka than Sarajevo. As a result, the Bosnian Serb entity feels more connected to neighbouring Serbia than the country where it is located, with no interest of any kind in overcoming the cold civil war since the Dayton Agreement. Orbán might see this ethnicist bubble as a model to follow by ethnic Hungarians.

However, considering the Republika Srpska as such a model does not explain the substantial financial support for the Bosnian entity (Kovács, 2022) nor the presumed interest in redrawing the map of the Western Balkans. Whether folkloric or active, revisionism is a state of mind that blurs the interests and priorities of foreign policy and international relations. By mongering resentment towards the ‘West’ with his mafia-like solidarity with separatist leaders like Dodik, who awarded Putin his entity’s medal of honour in January 2023 (AP News, 2023), Orbán seeks allies among leaders with a similar mindset based on nostalgia, the denial of established state sovereignty in neighbouring countries, and the nonchalant ignorance of the very duties of a sovereign state. His policy towards ethnic Hungarians in and outside the EU is emblematic of this lack of experience in international relations based on sovereignty. ‘Sovereignist’ as a far-right label might ironically put a name on the ignorance of this political concept and the lack of substantial experiences of sovereignty.

Orbán’s Western Balkan policy is correlated to his provincial ‘freedom fighter’ role (About Hungary, 2022) in East-Central Europe. Mitteleuropean daydreaming on the map, the seclusion of Hungarian communities around Hungary, and irresponsible political and financial gambles in the neighbouring Southeast European region are practices favoured by Moscow. Fractured regions, failing states (or entities, like in the case of the Republika Srpska), ideological tensions in the name of purported ethnic differences, and bitter disappointment in the West are the ingredients that bring countries and entities closer to Putin’s Russia. Fracturing the Balkan region is in Moscow’s interest: the more WB countries weaken, the easier they are to infiltrate.

It is as an EU member that Orbán’s Hungary gives credit to pro-Russian conceptions in Southeast Europe. Hungary in itself is a small and primarily insignificant Eastern European country. Nevertheless, Orbán has turned the country’s structural weakness into a power of annoyance, imitating the Russian model. The opinion that the ‘model’ will not turn into a threat⁹ to the EU’s weak and isolated link in exchange for promoting its ideology and geopolitical strategy is an assumption that will sooner or later call for accountability.

Hungary’s Global Views: Sound Premises, Toxic, and Useless Conclusions

As the Hungarian exile Sándor Márai put it, the most dangerous liar is the one ‘who lies the truth’. ‘Facts are appropriate in his discourse, but the discourse itself is a lie’ (Márai, 2012, p. 245). The emblematic writer of Hungarian emigration in the 20th century, a witness of the country’s Interwar shortcomings and Soviet kidnapping after the war, with his great nostalgia for bygone Central Europe,¹⁰ could not have better anticipated Hungary’s early 21st-century positioning on the global map. Orbán – or some of his advisors – does have the suitable premises to seize the global picture. Indeed, since 2010, the regime has been into Hungary’s ‘noisy geopolitization’ on the global map (Balogh et al., 2022). However, the ‘big picture’ is undermined by Orbán’s anti-Western and anti-EU politics of annoyance, joining Moscow’s narrative about the end of the Western world order. Orbán might misunderstand that Putin has no means to replace the existing order: he can only aim at destroying the establishment that guarantees Hungary’s security.

Global Thinking: Theoretically Sound Premises

Orbán’s premises could be accurate. A closer look at his 2022 Bálványos summer camp speech should be helpful (Miniszterelnok, 2022b). Indeed, the vast majority of the global world is now modern, in Orbán’s words: ‘The other civilizations have been modernized too […]. The Chinese, the Indian, the Russian – that we can call Orthodox, and even Islam’. Except for the pejorative emphasis on Islam, stemming from a loosely Huntingtonian reading of the global map,¹¹ the observation is valid. Modernity is not Western copyright anymore, a scientific and political infrastructure the West could export to the outside world for its own use, as in the time of European empires.

‘The rival civilizations have appropriated Western technology, learned how the Western financial system works, but they have not taken the Western values, and certainly do not plan to do so’ (Miniszterelnok, 2022b). Again, the idea that the globalization of modernity means first the share of science and technology, yet without a (democratic) uniformization of political systems, is a fact upon which Western countries must reflect. Modernity and liberal democracy are not synonyms. Otherwise, Hungary would have already joined the sadly shrinking group of non-modern tribes and turned into a thrilling ethnological curiosity.

‘Despite this, the West wants to propagate its values, and the others find it humiliating, and we understand that sometimes that is how we feel about it too’ (Miniszterelnok, 2022b). Dismantling Eurocentric views, understanding what Europe and/or the West mean in the eyes of others is indeed a key, self-critical task. To understand China, it is crucial to think through the country’s experience of the so-called ‘Unequal Treaties’ imposed by Europeans and Americans in the 19^th century to get in command of China’s economy without colonizing it (Boniface & Védrine, 2020, p. 120).¹² Thinking through the different forms of Unequal Treaties than imperialism – among which colonialism was a specifically violent form – is essential to grasp what ‘Europe’ means for the outside world and what the Old Continent’s heritage is, at home and abroad (in both cases, a patchwork of imperial legacies).

Basically, Orbán combines two elements in a contradictory way: a Global South sensitive approach (perhaps inspired by the former Yugoslavia)¹³ and overt Eurocentrism. On the one hand, he criticizes the West as if he was the leader of a former colony; on the other, he shows contempt for the diversity of the non-European world. Mitteleuropean provincialism and the romantic freedom fighter come, again, hand in hand.

‘According to data, the world has become a better place, but we feel about it oppositely. […] what we see today is the retreat of Western welfare and power’ (Miniszterelnok, 2022b). The fear and anxiety related to globalization and the end of the Western monopoly on power (Mahbubani, 2018) is a set of political realities Europe cannot ignore (Védrine, 2021, p. 266). After all, it is one of the European Enlightenment’s own teachings (Kant) that one should be able to look at their thoughts from the outside. The problem is that Orbán is not precisely an 18^th-century Prussian philosopher, and his interest lies in mongering those fears.

Geopolitically, the idea that the world is transitioning from the Cold War’s bipolar order to a ‘multipolar’ one (HVG, 2023) is partially accurate. However, the transition might involve wishful thinking. In multipolar order, there is order, and the declining power that most actively tries to achieve this transition, namely, Russia, does not have the means to establish a new order. ‘Multipolar’ might sound progressive, egalitarian, and fancy, but it does not guarantee the emergence of a secure global system at the end of the tumultuous transformation. In this context, Orbán’s mistake is Putin’s: the misbelief that Russia has the means to become one of those poles. Preventing Russia from falling apart is a priority for global security because Russia is weak; to play a leading role in a hypothetic multipolar world to come, the Northern Asian country would need more than a power of annoyance and blackmailing based on (failed) interdependence (Védrine, 2021, pp. 241–242).¹⁴

The assumption that the ongoing transformation is an opportunity for a small peripheric country like Hungary is erroneous. All the points addressed above deserve reflection, but certainly not in an anti-Western or Eurosceptic way unless Hungary comes out as the periphery of another centre. It is vital to consider why so many countries have abstained from the UN resolutions since March 2^nd, 2022.¹⁵ What pressure or resentment towards a Western actor (the U.S., NATO, the EU, a former European colonizer, etc.) has driven important parts of Africa and Asia to keep their distance from the Western standpoint? How to proceed to make them opt for a more supportive approach? How to prevent other countries from abstaining in the future? In the context of the ongoing war, these are Eurocritical rather than Eurosceptic questions. They aim to strengthen Europe through a more critical approach to the Old Continent’s place and role in the contemporary global world, certainly not undermining these. Orbán has the proper premises for a constructive Eurocritical approach. This would be in the interest of Europe’s periphery and centre(s). Unfortunately, Orbán’s often praised ‘talent’ has hardly ever been invested in substantial constructions.

The ‘Eastern Opening’ and the Central Asian Case: Narratives and Ideologies

The so-called ‘Eastern Opening’ shows the limits of the Orbán regime’s understanding of global processes. Friendly ties and trade with Caucasian and Central Asian countries are most welcome (Bernek, 2018). Multilateralism is a praiseworthy effort to achieve a multipolar order (Védrine, 2021, p.242). Economically speaking, Hungary was certainly not alone or isolated in Europe, with its interest in Central and Eastern Asia. Compared to Western European countries, Hungary and the ECE’s globally unique dependence on mostly Western foreign direct investment (Gál & Schmidt, 2017; Nölke & Vliegenthart, 2009) explains the increase of more global trade perspectives. Other ECE countries have comparable trade strategies with Eastern Asian partners. Hungarian isolation has other reasons. Like in the Western Balkans, Hungary mixes trade partners with political allies. The regime’s propaganda also mixes geopolitics and loose historical fiction, making the official narrative more and more contradictory. Let’s focus on the Central Asian case to grasp this narrative deadlock. This case will lead us back to the main issue, namely, Orbán’s delusional approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trade partners do not replace allies. A peripheric country cannot develop such ties at the expense of its alliances without significant security risks. Hungary’s prime minister participates in the Turkic Council almost instead of the European one. This personal preference could be laughable in ideal times of peace but certainly is most hazardous in a time of war in the immediate neighbourhood of Hungary. The problem is not with diplomatic or convivial relations with Central Asia, mocked by the Hungarian opposition as a synonym of backwardness – one of those points where the regime’s opposition has nothing to envy from its theoretical archenemy. The problem is with the order of priorities and the ‘Eastern Opening’ being a loophole for a leader who is increasingly isolated at home – in the Carpathian Basin, East-Central Europe, the EU, and the Western system of alliances.

Besides, Central Asian hosts might get offended by a visitor who perceives them as his own joyfully pagan ancestors from archaic times before the EU and Christianity, when riding and shooting arrows across the steppes were not yet regulated by international conventions. How does this ‘magical Orient’, praised by Hungarian Orientalists in the time of the dual monarchy and the Interwar period (Germanus, 1975), get along with the regime’s propaganda of Hungary being Christianity’s Eastern bulwark? Like in the Western Balkans, Orbán does use friendly trade relations to profit from political platforms, that is, international visibility. However, unlike in Hungary’s south-eastern neighbourhood, trade figures are shallow and could not justify the explicit interest in the region. The emphasis is elsewhere.

According to Balogh (2022), Hungary has shaped a problematic identity where seemingly contradictory self-images coexist: the ‘Christian bulwark’ narrative and Turanism. At first sight, we have clashing narratives: a defender of the – medieval – West and a mythological approach to the nation’s Eurasian origins, closer to peoples against whom the Christian bulwark is supposed to stand. Balogh gives this contradiction a second thought: these two narratives join forces within an ideology that overrides their polarity to feed national imaginary against an enemy the two have in common: the West, its cosmopolitanism, and its disregard for Hungarian uniqueness – purportedly residing in the genuine combination of Christian and pagan elements of self-definition, resulting in a ‘self-image of a bridgehead linking East and West’, and in an ideology where defending Europe against Europe does not seem delusional.

Both narratives emerge in the modern nation-building process of Hungary. Despite loosely evoking dim medieval memories, both traditions can be considered modern inventions in the constructivist sense (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 2012 [1983], Hobsbawm, 2012 [1990]), with faint objects located in the distant past yet enrooted in the 19^th century, at the romantic borders of history and fiction. The ‘pagan bulwark’, as we might call it, is structurally different from other ECE ‘Eastern and Western geopolitical identities’ (Balogh, 2022). It is not a narrative but an ideological combination of clashing narratives, or, as Balogh puts it, ‘geopolitical ideologies [that] have served to legitimize Hungary’s illiberal turn’. The narratives call for 19^th-century archaeology; their ideological combination is even more recent and shows how the imaginary layer of the nation-building process has been appropriated and instrumentalized again to arbitrarily support the ‘noisy geopoliticization’ of a country located on the Eastern periphery of the West – and contribute to losing sight of Hungary’s objective geopolitical situation.

The Central Asian case is emblematic of how the Hungarian operetta struggles to be audible within the massive cacophony of global geopolitics. First, to carry the metaphor further, this ideological operetta denotes from the Euro-Atlantic symphony, that is, the Western standpoint on Russia’s brutal aggression of Ukraine, instead of providing the ‘West’ and the latent ‘clash of civilizations’ narrative of its partition with constructive criticism. The theoretical premises of Orbán’s hazardous geopolitical discourse do not serve such a purpose. The accurate elements that make the false narrative sound true to supporters and confusing enough for its opponents do not contribute to framing much-needed Eurocritical reflection. This potential reflection is more of an alibi to justify Budapest’s self-contradictory discourse on Ukraine.

Second, the contradiction, dissolved by the ideological nature of the ‘bridgehead linking East and West’ discourse, fails to convince allies on the geopolitical ground: in times of war, the self-image of a defender of Europe against Europe, or that of an overtly pro-Russian defender of European security is a double discourse that isolates Hungary and gets lost in insignificance.

Third, the ‘pagan bulwark’ is an operetta that not only questions the level of taste of the Hungarian regime but also highlights the specific ‘power of the weak’ it has been using. Central Asia as a promising region for investment: we are talking about the Russian sphere of influence. Lately, parts of the region have been said to take their distances from Moscow. In Kazakhstan, for instance, China's political progress is palpable (Sz. Bíró, 2023b, p.218). In terms of trade relations, Russia is still, along with the EU, in a prominent position. The overestimated player in the country, though taking up the challenge of ‘balancing regionalism’ (Tskhay & Costa Buranelli, 2020, p. 1033), is Turkey (Gusseinov, 2023).

The ‘Power of the Weak’: Annoyance as a Geopolitical Weapon

The Turkish-Hungarian parallel is relevant to mention. Both Ankara and Budapest use a power of annoyance in the Euro-Atlantic system of alliances. Dreams of bygone grandeur undermine their relations with neighbouring countries. Both seek answers for the present in the perceived past. Annoyance (in NATO and the EU) is a form of ‘power’ mobilized by the weak in attempts to hijack and blackmail international organizations in which their integration and hence role have turned problematic (Badie, 2018, p.232). The change of the two countries’ official name (Türkiye, ‘Hungary’ instead of the Republic of Hungary) might be symptomatic of the gap between effective weight on the international scene and the illusion of a greater destiny. The hole is filled with delusional narratives, and the only means to bridge the unbridgeable is annoying noise on international platforms.

Türkiye is the name we can put on the Turkish precedent when it comes to the European integration of the Western Balkans: the rise of Erdoğan to power is due, among other reasons, to the empty promises made by the European Community to Turkey. While pretending to support the WB, Hungary confirms this inglorious tradition of promises that only mean a commitment for those who believe in them and certainly not for those who make them. Hungary positions itself on the side of weakened powers¹⁶ who compensate for their losses with anti-Western resentment.

In the aforementioned global patchwork of imperial legacies, Orbán’s Occidentophobia (Balogh, 2022) is not an isolated case. Nevertheless, Hungary’s peripheral location, size, and weight are given. The power of weakness is a common denominator for Russia, Turkey, and Hungary and a promising geopolitical concept to explore for a better understanding of the ongoing global transformation.

Yet the fact that the peripheral Eastern European country is not as unavoidable as the two regional powers in the Eastern/South-eastern neighbourhood of the EU shows the missing scale in Orbán’s ideological and geopolitical flight forward. The Hungarian leader might identify with the ‘illiberal’ leaders of a major nuclear power and the second biggest army of NATO. However, his power of annoyance is closer to that of Balkan and Sahel countries regarding impact decision-making on a visible level. In times of real emergency, when the crisis is not constructed by those who hope for political profit in mongering it, as was the case with the 2015 migration crisis, the power of annoyance of a veto player like Hungary shows its limits. As András Rácz put it, the EU and NATO have now learned how to dismantle this power, or at least bypass it on an intergovernmental level (Rácz, 2023).

Conclusion: The Missing Sense of Scale

Since 2010, Orbán has built up a regime that owes everything to the European Union but has turned into a satellite of Putin’s Russia. In the large Eastern European area, the peripheric status is given. The historically recurring question is: what is the centre where this peripheric entity belongs? The Hungarian deadlock consists of a double dependency between East and West: it is an EU member state, protected by the NATO shield that cannot say no to Moscow. Double dependence has led to multiscale isolation of the country. Distanced by its regional partners (the rest of the V4) and continental allies (the EU), playing a dangerous Moscow-promoting game in the Western Balkans, and supporting Russia against Ukraine, Budapest is reaching the limits of the provincial establishment it has nonchalantly shaped without thinking through how exposed a small peripheric country might become, and how quickly.

Orbán plays in small with what Putin struggles in big: the power of the weak. It is one of the weakest links of the EU that blackmails the community. Orbán’s power of annoyance (vetoing, saying out loud what he believes the whole continent will think in the next chapter, instrumentalizing SAP countries to play hide and seek with EU partners, making insignificant trade deals with Central Asian countries to advertise his multilateral open-mindedness) is based on weakness. The ‘power of the weak’ is an existing concept in decolonial studies (Badie, 2018). It should make sense to apply the concept to Hungary, declining powers like Russia, but also the whole post-war European construction for a new reading grid of power relations where weakness is not merely the counterpart of power but an autonomous global concept.

In the case of the Eastern European area, the weakness of peripheries and half-peripheries will deserve more attention. Based on the Hungarian example, a significant source of failure is the inability to locate oneself on the map, understand the limits of a country’s geopolitical location, and sketch the potential degree of latitude based on such sober estimation. Like weakness, the notion of the periphery would be worth a debate to better distinguish between the sound political limits it imposes and its negative ring. Region and province are not interchangeable words; the latter is a trap for the former. The given country’s sense of scale gets damaged in this trap.

Revisionism, like nostalgia, is a political disease. At first look, the case of a country like Serbia, where the wounds of History are recent, is quite different from others like Bulgaria and Hungary, where the century-old resentment has a structural impact on political psychology but does not represent a physical threat to neighbouring countries – who might overestimate, at least in the case of Hungary, the deeds that are unlikely to follow daring words regarding lost territories. However, the war in Ukraine has brought to the limelight the latent potential of revisionist folklore. It takes a power in decline (Russia) to build up a strategy based on weak allies (with revisionist rhetorics, porous borders, borders that can change or are perceived as such) to squeeze geopolitical capital out of them. This is not enough to establish a new world order or become a significant pole. However, it might be sufficient to harm the existing order seriously. Based on its geopolitical location, limits, and priorities, Hungary has no interest in contributing to weakening the Western alliance system. It is certainly not in the interest of ethnic Hungarians either, in and outside of the EU. ‘Greater Hungary’, despite being larger than contemporary Hungary, is, in reality, the symbol of how Budapest’s foreign affairs have got narrowed down to a biased conception of the macro-regional scale at the very expense of genuine international strategies.

A deadlock is a path where it seems a good idea to engage; when we realize it is not, it is already too late (Loraux, 2006). However, unfortunately, it would not be the first time in its modern history (Ungváry, 2022) that Hungarian leadership failed to realize how late it is, even though all the pipedream balloons have been burst by reality – the sense of realities being one of the most important allies the Hungarian regime seems to have lost, again.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Adam Bence Balazs

Notes

Author Biography

Adam Bence Balazs is a fellow researcher at the LCSP (Centre for Social and Political Change), Université de Paris (Paris 7 – Denis-Diderot University). Formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Sofia University St. Kliment ‘Ohridski’ and a visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute (IHEID) in Geneva, he is currently a lecturer at the German Andrássy University in Budapest and the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Central European University, Budapest, and a PhD in Political Philosophy from LCSP, Paris 7. His current research focuses on new political perspectives for Europe, between geopolitics and culture. Besides exploring the historiography of the European present, he works as an editor committed to the European integration of the Western Balkans. After co-editing a volume on regional identities in the V4 and the WB with Christina Griessler (Nomos Verlag, 2020), and editing a volume on the Europeanization of Montenegro (Nomos, 2022), he is currently building up a longer-term programme on ‘Proximity and Neighbourhood’ in the Balkans and beyond.

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