Hungary is a little country of about 10 million people. While in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it, along with Austria, was at the center of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, those days are long gone. Instead, notwithstanding some of the glories of their lingering legacies, Budapest and Vienna are enormously diminished, capitols of Central European countries that are small in their land mass, small in the size of their populations, and small in their impact on global politics.
To this last line there is, however, one exception. The exception is the leader of Hungary – the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, who for years has punched above his weight. Not because he is in any way exceptionally smart or gifted. Rather because he has a sixth sense for how to be exceptionally disruptive. It is this that bestows on him a big stick. That makes it possible for him to have an impact that extends well beyond his otherwise ordinary persona, and his otherwise unimpressive political perch.
Such influence as Orban has in the United States is solely because of his connection to Donald Trump. Whatever the impression Americans have of Orban, if any, it is through the lens of Trump. Trump greatly admires Orban and repeatedly, pointedly, praises him. Trump sees in Orban – who over the years has become increasingly autocratic – the strongman that Trump himself wants badly to be. Orban, in turn, strokes Trump, feeds his bottomless pit of an ego, all the while playing footsies with another Trump fave, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. In a speech delivered a few days ago in New Hampshire, Trump approvingly quoted the autocrat Putin, and described the autocrat Orban as “highly respected.” Trump welcomed his description of him as “the man who can save the Western World.”
But, if Orban’s impact on American politics is for now at least tangential, not so in Europe. In Europe he is having a direct impact on the governance of the European Union. For years he has been an EU obstructionist, a thorn in its side. But this week he wielded his big stick in a new way, a way so exceedingly disruptive it has for now at least blocked the EU’s ability to provide Ukraine with aid it desperately needs – especially since the US is currently blocked by Congress from helping one of its most important allies.
A few days ago Orban managed single-handedly to torpedo the proposed EU-to- Ukraine aid package – which is strongly supported by much larger EU countries including Germany, France, and Poland – by invoking the veto. He skillfully seized on a weakness in the EU’s governance structure, which currently requires unanimity on all key decisions relating to foreign policy and to spending.
Orban has led Hungary for 17 of the last 25 years. He has proved himself a survivor at home – and a striver abroad. For years he has made clear his intention not necessarily to play nicely with his colleagues in the EU. And now he is making clear his intention to try at least to bend them to his will. As he recently put it to members of the Hungarian media, “Our plan is not to leave Brussels but to take it over.”
So far Orban has been, as the title of this post suggests, a little leader with a big stick. Whether he and, or his stick will grow in 2024 remains of course to be seen. What is clear is that his future depends less on his own preternaturally strong sixth sense and more on outside events. Such as, for example, the Ukrainian war and, oh yes, the American election.