My new piece for RT.com OpEdge on the bullying of Hungary.
25 years ago, Hungary was being toasted in the West for opening its border with Austria to East Germans, in a move which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the Western elites are not happy with Budapest which they consider far too independent.
The refusal of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party to join the new US and EU Cold War against Russia, which has seen the Hungarian parliament approving a law to build the South Stream gas pipeline without the approval of the European Union, in addition to the populist economic policies Fidesz has adopted against the largely foreign owned banks and energy companies, has been met with an angry response from Washington and Brussels.
The whole of the piece can be read here.
1 comment:
And Russia is at #127 on Transparency Intl's list, while Hungary is at 47, Latvia at 49. If nationalism and fascism are on the rise in Hungary, the fact that Orban's govt is popular doesn't mean that the west should wait for it to get worse. Putin may be willing to support the redrawing of Ukraine's western border to Hungary's advantage if it helped him in some way. This, or energy independence, or more broadly, a 'go-at-it-alone' approach, may be Orban's ultimate goal, but is it worth leading the nation down the road again to fascism?
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