Orbán: Europe will be left alone to handle the war if it does not come to its senses

Europe will be left alone to handle the war in Ukraine if it does not ditch its pro-war stance, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in his address at the Balvanyos Summer University in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on Saturday, adding that the “pro-peace position” was “fermenting”.

The prime minister said changes in the global system were under way and Asia would be at its centre, so a “Hungarian grand strategy” was both needed and in the pipeline.

Noting his recent meeting with Romanian counterpart Marcel Ciolacu in Bucharest, Orban said: “We are making progress.” Romania is Hungary’s third most important economic partner, with economic and trade relations breaking new records, he added.

He said Hungary’s EU presidency will put the issue of Romania’s accession to Schengen on the agenda in October.

The two leaders also discussed the Bucharest-Budapest high-speed rail link, Orban noted.

The prime minister said that this year the Romanians had not tried to dictate what could be discussed at Tusvanyos. He added that many people in Brussels, however, had condemned Hungary’s peace mission, even though the bloc’s founding treaty stated that “the Union’s aim is to promote peace”.

Orban said: “Time is on the side of the politics of peace.”

Referring to the upcoming US presidential election, he declared: “Trump ante portas.” If Europe did not shift to a “peace policy” by the time of the November election, it would have to do so after Trump’s victory, “admitting defeat” and bearing the political consequences alone, he said.

He said Brussels “doesn’t like it when we call what they do a pro-war policy, because they think they’re supporting the war in the interest of peace.”

He added that since the start of the Hungarian “peace mission”, the US secretary of state had spoken with Russia’s foreign minister, and the Swiss foreign minister had also held talks with him.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he noted, had called Donald Trump, the former US president and Republican presidential candidate, and the Ukrainian foreign minister had visited Beijing.

“Albeit slowly, we’re moving away from a European pro-war policy in the direction of a pro-peace policy,” Orban said. “In other words, the fermentation has begun.”

If it were up to Ukraine and Russia, there would never be peace, so peace can only come from the outside, Orban said.

Both sides, he added, were taking “brutal” losses, “yet neither wants to reach a settlement”, Orban said, explaining that this was because both Ukraine and Russia believed that they could win and were fuelled by their own “perceived or real truth”.

Orban said the Ukrainians saw the war as a Russian invasion that violated international law and their territorial sovereignty, and that they were defending themselves and fighting a war of independence.

The Russians, on the other hand, believed that there had been “serious NATO military developments in Ukraine”, that the country had been promised NATO membership, and they did not want to see either NATO troops or the alliance’s weapons on the Russia-Ukraine border, he said. Russia therefore believed it had a right to self-defence and that the war had been provoked.

“So everyone has some kind of perceived or real truth, and neither side will give up the war,” the prime minister said.

“This is a straight path to escalation,” he said, stressing that there would be no peace if it were left up to the two warring sides. “Peace can only come from the outside,” Orban said.

Ruthless war provided a vantage point on “true reality”, he said. The true reality, he declared, cast a cold light on “ideologies, statistical manipulations, media distortions and tactical eavesdropping by politicians losing their power, their delusions and conspiracy theories”, which no longer had relevance. “What remains is the dust of brutal reality.”

He said that while in recent years the US had declared China to be its main challenger and opponent, “we’re still seeing that it’s fighting a proxy war against Russia and constantly accusing China of covertly supporting Russia.”

“If that’s true, then it begs the question as to why it’s rational to put two such large countries in the same enemy camp,” he said.

Orban also emphasised Ukraine’s defiance of expectations in terms of its reslilence, which he attributed to Ukraine getting “a flash of the perspective of belonging to the West” instead of being a buffer state.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said Russia “isn’t the firm neo-Stalinist autacracy the Brussels leaders trying to bring it to its knees with sanctions are trying to make it out to be, either”. Rather, he said, it was a country that was showing technical and economic, “and eventually, perhaps, social” flexibility.

Orban said European politics “has collapsed”, arguing that Europe had relinquished the protection of its own interests.

“Europe is currently following the politics of the US Democratic Party unconditionally, even at the cost of self-destruction,” he said, adding that sanctions imposed on Russia were hurting European interests, raising energy prices and making the European economy uncompetitive.

Orban said the European system of powers had so far been based on a “Paris-Berlin axis”, but this no longer existed, or had at least “become irrelevant and evadable” compared with the “new power centre” comprising London, Warsaw, Kyiv and the Baltic and Scandinavian states.

He said the idea of replacing the Paris-Berlin axis was not a new one but rather “an old Polish plan” that involved Poland becoming the continent’s main American base. This, he added, required “calling the Americans in there, between the Germans and the Russians”. But this, he added, could only be made a reality owing to the current war.

“This is an old plan: weaken Russia and surpass Germany,” Orban said, insisting that Poland was pursuing the “most deceitful politics” in Europe, arguing that “they’re obliviously doing business with the Russians while morally lecturing us for doing the same thing”.

He said Poland had abandoned the Visegrad cooperation in order to pursue this strategy as the V4, besides accepting the Paris-Berlin axis, acknowledged that “Germany is strong, Russia is strong, and between the two, in cooperation with the central European states, we form a third component”.

Orban also noted that Poland’s army is the second largest in Europe after France, with the country spending 5 percent of its GDP on defence.

The prime minister said Hungary’s “peace mission”, besides aiming for peace, was also about urging Europe to “finally pursue a policy of its own”.

Orban said the West had drifted into “intellectual loneliness”, arguing that until now it had seen itself as a point of reference, or a global standard, because it had been the one to contribute the values such as liberal democracy and the green transition, which the world had to accept.

“But this situation has taken a 180-degree turn over the last two years” Orban said, arguing that although the West had once again told the world to take a more determined stance against Russia, the reality was that “slowly everyone is supporting Russia”.

He said it was unsurprising that countries like North Korea and China were backing Russia, but Iran, India and even NATO-member Turkiye had joined them, and the Muslim world also saw Russia as a partner.

Orban said the biggest problem in the world was “the weakness and disintegration of the West”, as well as the Western media narrative that Russia was the biggest danger for the world.

“This is a mistake,” he said, arguing that Russia’s leadership was “hyper-rational, comprehendible and predictable”, unlike the West’s “irrational and unpredictable” actions.

He said Hungary’s task was to try to understand the West again. Central Europe’s worldview lay in the idea of nation states, while the West “believes that they no longer exist”, he added.

Also, the West, he said, thought differently about issues such as migration. While hundreds of thousands of Christians were killing each other in Europe’s east, hundreds of thousands of people from “foreign civilisations” were being allowed into the western parts of the continent.

He said the EU “not only thinks this way, but also declares it”, and their objective was to “transcend nations” and transpose their sovereignty to Brussels.

A similar battle was taking place in the United States, he said, so the stakes in the US presidential election “are enormous”.

Orban said Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, wanted to bring the American people back from the “post-national liberal condition” to the “national condition”.

Opposition to this endeavour was behind moves to thwart Trump’s candidacy, he said.

“This is why they want to put him in prison, why they’re stripping him of his wealth, and if that doesn’t work, this is why they wanted to kill him,” Orban said.

Orban said the “dramatic, democracy-shaking” political consequence of the post-national condition was the political problem of elitism and populism.

He said the elites “condemn the people for drifting towards the right” and labelled the people’s feelings and thoughts “xenophobic, homophobic and nationalistic”. Meanwhile, “the people”, he said, suspected the elite of “sinking into some mindless globalism” instead of caring about what mattered to them.

He said this raised the problem of representative democracy: the elite, “even quite proudly”, did not want to represent the people, leaving the people effectively disenfranchised.

Orban said the elites “only find the values held by degree-holders acceptable”. This, he added, resulted in Brussels remaining “occupied by a liberal oligarchy”. “This left-liberal elite is actually organising the Transatlantic elite, which isn’t European but global, isn’t made up of nation-states but is federal, and isn’t democratic but political,” the prime minister said.

In the next decades Asia will be at the centre of the global system, Orban said.

“Europe can then decide whether it wants to be an open-air museum or a part of global competition,” he said, adding that changes were now afoot that had not been seen in the past 500 years.

Leading powers had come from the West over the past 150 years while change was now coming from Asia, he declared, citing Asia’s “demographic, technological and capital” advantage in more and more areas.

Orban referred to Asia’s military power and financial prowess, saying “the world’s biggest companies will be Asian” and the best universities and research institutes and largest stock exchanges would be based there.

Orban said former US president Donald Trump was seeking an American response to this state of affairs, and this represented America’s “last chance” to remain as a world leader.

The prime minister said that Europe had two options: to become an open-air museum in a “subordinated role to the US” or to follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to achieve strategic autonomy and “enter the competition for changing the global system”.

Orban insisted that it was feasible to recover Europe’s ability to attract capital and implement big infrastructure developments, “especially in central Europe”.

“We need a European military alliance with strong European military industry,” he said, adding that Europe must also be self-sufficient in terms of energy, for which nuclear power was indispensable. All this, he added, must be concluded after a post-war agreement with Russia is forged.

Orban said changes in the current global system presented more of an opportunity than a danger, “and our room for manoeuver is broader than at any time in the last 500 years”.

Orban said that 500 years ago Europe had been a winner, while Hungary had been a loser of the previous global paradigm shift, arguing that whereas a new economic space had opened up for the western part of the continent, the Muslim conquests had turned Hungary into a war zone for a long period, which afterwards had been forced to integrate into a German-Habsburg world.

He said developments in the United States “are going favourably for us”, adding, however, that he did not believe that the US could give Hungary “a better economic-political offer” than European Union membership could. “But if they can, we must take it into consideration,” he said.

Orban said China had given Hungary “the maximum it can offer” and considered Hungary’s EU membership an asset, “unlike the Americans, who always imply that we should leave [the EU].” China’s offer, he said, was that “we should participate in each other’s modernisation”, even if the differences in size should be kept in mind.

The prime minister said the western part of the EU “won’t ever return to the nation-state form”, adding that the bloc’s eastern half could protect nation states.

He said the EU had “lost the ongoing war” and would be abandoned by the US, adding that Brussels would not be able to finance the war in Ukraine or the country’s operations. This, he said, meant that “the European Union will have to pay the price of the war escapade, which will be high and will affect us unfavourably.”

Orban said it followed from this that the EU accepted that “central European countries will remain in the European Union” and they would remain nation states “pursuing their own foreign policy”.

“They don’t like it, but they’ll have to put up with it,” he said, adding that the number of such countries would only increase.

Given fundamental changes in the global system, a “Hungarian grand strategy” is needed, Orban said.

Policies for the period between 2010 and 2030 “will be carried out and completed”, he said. “But given [epochal] changes in the global system, these won’t be enough,” he said, explaining that connectivity was key to Hungary’s “grand strategy”.

He said Hungary must not find itself locked into either of the emerging Western or Eastern economies. “We must be present in both,” he said.

“We won’t enter into a war against the East or into technical and commercial blockades,” he added.

Also, the strategy encompassed sovereignty rooted in economic foundations, he said, adding that this meant fostering domestic national champions, competitive medium-sized firms, companies producing for the domestic market, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Orban said several Hungarian national champions were competitive abroad in the banking sector, the energy sector, the food industry, the production of agricultural raw materials, IT, telecommunications, the media, the construction industry, real estate development, the pharmaceutical industry, military industry, logistics, and also “somewhat” in the knowledge industry via universities.

He said the medium-sized enterprise sector was also competitive, and the Hungarian government will launch a large programme for SMEs in the 2025 “peace budget”.

Orban said bolstering Hungary’s financial independence, reducing the debt stock to 30 percent, and turning the country into a regional creditor were key goals.

This meant retaining the country’s production capacities rather than turning into a service-centred economy, Orban said. “We mustn’t make the same mistake as the West of outsourcing manufacturing jobs to guest workers … as this would lead to a barely stoppable social breakdown,” he said.

He emphasised the importance of Hungarian society’s “solid and flexible social structure”, and halting demographic decline.

“We got off to a good start, but now we’re stuck,” he said. New momentum was needed, he said, and by 2035 “Hungary has to be demographically self-sustaining so that any idea of the population being replaced by migrants would be out of the question”.

He said it was likely that tax discounts for children in 2025 would have to be doubled in a single year so as to regain demographic momentum.

Orban highlighted the importance of creating wealth and the financial independence of the middle class and preserving full employment, “and the key to this is maintaining the current relationship between work and Gypsies”.

“Work is available, but to live you need to work,” he said.

Orban said the Hungarian grand strategy would take another six months to ripen and evolve.

The strategy “must be based on national foundations” and should include all Hungarians around the world, Orban said.

Support systems which underpin the stability and flexibility of Hungarian society, such as family support, must be spread out to all areas inhabited by Hungarians beyond the borders within the foreseeable future.

He said Hungarian villages must be maintained. “The village is not a symbol of backwardness; city-level services must also be provided in villages, and cities must bear the financial burden of this,” he said.

On the topic of protecting sovereignty, Orban said it was important to protect national diversity, and as well as preserving the language it was vital to preserve religion, too, as without Christianity there would be no moral compass or guidance.

Politics, he said, must be adapted to “our national character”. Freedom, he added, must be built internally. The personal freedom of Hungarians must be built as well as the freedom of the nation, he said. Order, he added, was not an intrinsic value but a condition for freedom.

“Our opponents will say that instead of an independent national grand strategy, integration is needed. So they’ll attack constantly… They’ll question not only the grand strategy’s content but its necessity, too. This fight must be taken up.”

Orban said the strategy’s success also depended on people in their twenties and thirties. “[We] must find brave, young fighters with the sentiment of the nation,” he said.

Answering a question about “the insanity of Europe”, Orban said Western Europeans had a totally different interpretation of the world, and this “appears to us as deranged or irrational” whereas it wasn’t. “[T]hey will be our partners in this deranged state, in the European Union,” he said.

The prime minister said he enjoyed European Council meetings in a way, explaining that as a central European leader, he had to keep in mind his and their “matrices”, and the complex system of relationships between the two had to be translated constantly.

“This is the most beautiful part of politics in an intellectual sense,” he said.

Read also:

• Orbán: European politics collapsed, Asia to be centre of the world in new global system
• Orbán: Peace won’t be achieved by Ukraine or Russia; it has to come from outside