US presidential elections: Ambassador Pressman slams PM Orbán, says he does not have a B plan and is cozy with Putin

Here is Ambassador David Pressman’s kyenote speech as it was delivered (save for the subheadings) at the Budapest Forum.

Watching what PM Orbán does

“Good afternoon.  It’s really a privilege to be here.  Excellencies and distinguished guests. I‘d like to thank Mayor Karácsony, CEU’s Democracy Institute, and Political Capital for your work organizing this forum – and to congratulate you on bringing it into its fourth year. It’s a privilege to be here. 

When I was preparing for my assignment in Hungary, I received lots of advice.  I was told never to forget to admire Budapest’s beauty (particularly when it’s lit up at night); to watch out for the lángos (addictive and unforgiving); to try to learn the language (accompanied by a knowing eyeroll signaling futility).  And another piece of advice was oft repeated: 

watch what the government does, not what it says.  

So before proffering this last piece of advice, my colleagues would usually tell a story that began with a “colorful” comment made by a Hungarian official and ended with agreement to go along with a policy consensus.  So no matter how unrecognizable the words may be from a NATO Ally, the actions – or so the theory went – would tell a different story.   

Hungarians have a history with this kind of dualism – life under communism, I needn’t tell this crowd, was riddled with it.  Words that signified the opposite of their meaning.  Holding two contradictory views simultaneously.  Hungarians bravely brought down communism.  But the legacy of double-speak left its mark.  

The country of 1956 cozy with Putin

How can the country of 1956 also be so cozy with Putin’s Russia?  How can a country be both a member of the European Union and also at war with “Brussels?”  How can an Ally of the United States also, in the Prime Minister’s words, be its “adversary?”  How can a repeated victim of Russian aggression also obstruct efforts to respond to it?   

When it comes to foreign policy-making, viewing Hungary’s statements as “just words” is understandably convenient.  It provides any bureaucracy in any capital the salve that bureaucracies naturally seek: to not act. 

Billboards of bombs from “Brussels” raining down on Hungary are met with eyerolls as opposed to responses – just another manifestation of zany Hungarian communications strategy.    

Yet limited engagement by both Europe and the United States over the past 14 years has not led to a communications crisis in Hungary, but a democratic one. To recognize this is not judgment; it is an unavoidable fact for any country that for nearly a decade has been under a continuous “state of emergency” allowing its government to enact laws by edict bypassing parliament. 

Hungary says one thing and does another

U.S. policy used to accept the idea that Hungary says one thing and does another.  And we now see the two – saying and doing – increasingly and concerningly merged.  Hungary’s billboards, headlines, and

words are no longer – if they ever were – mere words, political rhetoric, communications ploys. They are an arm of state power. 

They have an impact, a purpose, a goal.  In short, they are policy, and they are impacting our Alliance, and they merit our attention. 

In 2014 when Prime Minister Orbán delivered a speech outlining his vision of an illiberal state within the EU, some may have written it off as rhetorical “red meat” for a political base.  We now see clearly that this was not mere rhetoric.  We have reached a point where today, at a conference on democracy in Budapest – much like at a summit of democracies at the White House – more and more people are asking whether Hungary is still a democracy.  That’s a question that should, for an EU member and a NATO Ally, be easy to answer. 

A democracy scholar might begin to answer this question by examining two pillars that are essential to a democracy:  a free media and functioning civil society.   

In Hungary, we find an unironically named “Sovereignty Protection Office” that has publicly announced three investigations.  It’s first: into the threat to Hungary’s sovereignty posed by… Transparency International (which has for two years in a row ranked Hungary as the most corrupt country in Europe).  Its second investigation: into the threat to Hungary’s sovereignty posed by …  Átlátszó, an independent media outlet, whose name means “transparency,” focused on exposing corruption – including through articles on the extraordinary wealth acquired by the Prime Minister’s 38-year-old son-in-law.  And its third investigation: the threat to Hungary’s sovereignty posed by… an environmental citizen’s group raising questions about the safety implications of a battery plan.   

It’s not hard to detect a pattern in what the “Sovereignty Protection Office” sees as threats to Hungary’s sovereignty.  Just as it’s not hard to see echoes of the double speak we discussed earlier in the leader of the Sovereignty Protection Office’s recent assertion that non-governmental organizations can’t fight government corruption, only governments can do that.  The “Sovereignty Protection Office” is trying to protect something, but it is not Hungary’s sovereignty.

Orbán’s choices impacting US-Hungary alliance

I am not a democracy scholar.  There are others gathered here today who can describe how democracies are supposed to work and analyze how Hungary is doing along various benchmarks.  But what I’d like to focus on are the choices made available to Hungarians today, and how this reality is impacting our alliance.    

If democracy requires that citizens be comfortable openly supporting or opposing the policies proposed by their political leaders, then these deliberate actions have put Hungary on a path toward a democratic crisis.  The governing party’s control of the media and its attacks on civil society have created an atmosphere of fear.  In Hungary, the choice of whether to engage in political debate, especially of whether to publicly oppose the ruling party, has increasingly become existential.  It’s not a question of being “afraid” of what might happen if you speak up – it’s knowing the real, lived costs of doing so.   

These aggressive attacks of the government-controlled media are not “just words.”  The government writes them, weaponizes them, and manages them to have a dramatic effect on people’s choices, on their lives.  When the depth of that control extends not just to the words but to the very mediums through which the words flow, then those words have control over people’s lives.  There’s no need for physical manifestations of state coercion when “just words” alone, thusly amplified, are capable of achieving the same result.    

Because if you speak up, you will likely become a target.  You can be smothered with lies, splashed on the front pages, subjected to online smear campaigns, and made famous by Megafon.  These government products – mere words – render victims professionally radioactive, socially untouchable, and even commercially unemployable.  They make the victims dangerous to associate with – lest you too attract attention.  “Just words” are signals about who you can do business with, who you can meet , who you can interact with – and who you cannot.   

Blasting simple words through a supercharged propaganda machine renders them fatal, much like harmless water, compressed and propelled, can cut steel. 

Who would willingly choose such a path?  To be subjected not just to humiliation but also isolation and irrelevance? It takes an exceptional commitment to conscience, to ideals, to values.  But in a democratic society, speaking one’s mind freely should not be exceptional. 

You can go, as is the case with Pastor Gábor Iványi, from being the pastor chosen to preside over the Prime Minister’s wedding and baptize his children to having your church deprived of its financial viability because you spoke your mind about what is happening in your own country.  And the attacks he has faced – rhetorical, administrative, and legal – have also harmed the many vulnerable people he and his organizations have helped.  It doesn’t take a tax expert to see that this iconic Hungarian leader would not be targeted in the way he has but for his political dissent.

Judges in fear?

Soon after I arrived in Hungary, I endeavored to meet with leaders of Hungary’s judicial institutions.  My meetings with the head of the bar association, the head of the National Judicial Office, the head of the Constitutional Court, and the head of the Supreme Court were all viewed as normal diplomatic business.  But one meeting, with the leadership of the National Judicial Council, resulted in one of the government’s most vitriolic campaigns, targeting the judges, labeling them as traitors… for meeting with the United States Ambassador.  The campaign waged against these judges was pervasive.  It was in every outlet, in every county, every day, for almost three consecutive months.   

There are nearly 3,000 judges in Hungary.  You can rest assured every single one of them saw what happened to those two judges.  Every judge in Hungary understood the lesson: even apolitical criticism from within the system was an unacceptable betrayal and that there would be consequences.   The campaign made two respected judges famous – as alleged traitors – and warned all others that they could be next.  No one wants to be next.  And there is one way to avoid that fate: to be quiet.   

Fear and silence are the consequences of the effort to marginalize or eliminate independent voices in the media and civil society.  Not only to increase the cost of dissent.  But also to increase the benefits of conformity.  It is in this kind of environment that corruption –can equip a state with tools to ruin its opponents and reward its allies.  The atmosphere of fear allows corruption to flourish, and influences the government’s choice of its partners, not only at home, but also abroad.    

The consequences of these actions are not limited to Hungarians themselves.  Hungary’s government has been signaling – and signaling loudly – distance from its Allies, distance from Europe, and distance from the United States – all while enjoying the benefits of proximity, and trumpeting the benefits of “connectivity” with others.  Hungary criticizes NATO from within the comfort of the NATO security umbrella, and Hungary criticizes the EU under subsidy of the EU’s economic umbrella.  Other democratic governments whose people have sworn to defend Hungary are subject to the Hungarian government’s consistent and enthusiastic disparagement.  Yet Russia and China – two authoritarian states – seem exempt from it. 

Putin understandable and predictable?

At Tusványos, Prime Minister Orbán praised what he called Russia’s “hyper-rational leadership” as “understandable and predictable” – despite launching the largest war in Europe since the Second World War.  In this same speech, Prime Minister Orbán criticized the democratic West for what he called an unreliable, confusing focus on partnerships based on shared values – which he described as “not rational”.   

But alignment on values and principles is precisely the basis for the United States’ strongest partnerships, including the Transatlantic Alliance.  When the Prime Minister was performing “peacemaker” with Putin in July, the United States and a dozen of our allies and partners were working vigorously behind the scenes to free people unjustly imprisoned in Russia.  The day after the Prime Minister went wheels up from his “peace mission,” Putin launched missiles into Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.  In contrast, when the United States worked with our partners, 16 innocent people were freed from the hell of captivity.   

Our values are not just pious rhetorical projections; they are not just words.  They are the cement that binds together the most powerful and successful security alliance in history.  The Hungarian government understood that years ago when they joined partnerships based on shared values like the EU.  Like NATO.  And I challenge anyone to identify stronger or more important partnerships in the world today.   

Democracies understand this.  As has been said, we meet against the backdrop of an election in the United States.  I’ll leave the commentary on U.S. domestic politics to others, including the many active participants in the Hungarian government.  Prime Minister Orbán has made no secret of who he would like to win.  I don’t think actions that risk reducing a security alliance between two great nations into a political alliance between two big personalities services any democratic, allied relationship, anywhere.  The United States has alliances with countries, not personalities within them.  That’s true whether the President of the United States is a Republican or a Democrat.  It is also true and has been true when Viktor Orbán has been in power and when he has not.  And it will remain true.  Alliances don’t hinge on “just words” between political allies. 

But for all its talk of hyper-rationality and strategic thinking, Fidesz continues to seemingly stake its relationship with the United States on the outcome of one election.  And if that election doesn’t go the way they hope, their strategy is … to wait.  In the words of one senior official, “There is no Plan B.”  A lot of words come to mind when I think about that kind of approach to our relationship, but “rational” and “strategic” aren’t among them.  

Continued recklessness with our bilateral relationship will unavoidably change that relationship, just as what may have been considered “just words” have changed Hungary.   

Exactly six months ago in this very room, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to the NATO Alliance, I gave a keynote address in which I said that the United States wants a close relationship with Hungary based on “transparency, dialogue, nonpartisanship, and a commitment to democracy.”  Six months later, this government’s words and policies have made clear its choice.  And it is not transparency, dialogue, nonpartisanship, and a commitment to democracy. 

Not “just words”

Virtually everything I have described in this speech – from the Sovereignty Protection Office’s investigations targeting transparency; to the performative “peace mission” visit to Putin ahead of Hungary’s Allies in Washington; to the shutting down of Pastor Iványi’s schools – has all transpired in the same period of time: the last six months.  This is not a survey of the past decade.  It is a survey of this past summer. 

One needn’t look further than the past six months to recognize that the alibi of “just words” is no longer adequate in the face of the apparent divergences in Hungary’s relationship with the rest of Europe and the Transatlantic Alliance.   

In that same speech in this same room, I said that we would continue to reach out to the government of this country for pragmatic discussions about how to normalize this relationship, and that we would speak clearly about what is happening and what we are seeing, and do so unflinchingly.  For Hungarians, speaking with similar candor increasingly comes with real costs.   

But so too must there be a reckoning for Hungary’s Allies and partners.  We too have to recognize that what we used to dismiss with an eyeroll requires us to look at it directly, and respond to it unflinchingly.   

It turns out that the advice I received about Budapest’s beauty at night, and lángos, and the Hungarian language, was spot on.  However, the conventional wisdom that the Hungarian government’s communications were “just words” was just wrong.   

These words are policy.  And they are changing Hungary.  We owe it to our Ally Hungary – and to our Alliance – to treat Hungary’s words as such, and to respond accordingly.  That may well mean a different kind of relationship, and I continue to hope that the relationship will be a closer, more honest, and candid one.  Not the kind this government seems to want today.  But the kind the American and Hungarian people certainly deserve.   

Thank you very much for your time.”

Source: the official website of the embassy.

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