The Trap of Wish Fulfillment: Orbán’s Gamble in the Trump Era

It is widely agreed that when it comes to European foreign policy in current history, there is a before and an after, divided by February 24, 2022. This also applies to Hungarian foreign policy, though for the opposite reason. Whereas the launching of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on that date brought about an almost immediate epochal turn (or Zeitenwende, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it) in the EU, at least in terms of perceptions and expectations, the Hungarian regime has essentially refused to turn, contradicting the foreign policy orientation of mainstream political forces within the EU on a basic level.

With Hungary in the middle of an election campaign in February 2022 and heavily dependent on imported Russian resources, especially natural gas, oil, and nuclear fuel, Orbán and Fidesz decided to continue with a thoroughly ambiguous policy in an age of moral clarity. Though it has gone along with other EU member states on numerous foreign policy issues, including the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia (despite making attempts to water down certain measures and grant exemptions), the Orbán government has also sought to maintain direct channels to, and even significant bilateral cooperation with, the Putin regime.

Although this might be viewed as an attempt on Hungary’s part to pursue what had been a widely shared, if problematic, European policy of equivocation on Russia until early 2022 (for which Germany in particular has received much justified criticism, especially in retrospect), the Orbán regime went further than that. Not only has it failed to condemn Russia’s unprovoked aggression, but it has also sought to complicate or even block EU support for Ukraine’s war of independence. Facing EU efforts to withhold financial resources from Hungary in response to the government’s problematic record on democracy and the rule of law, Hungarian representatives began to leverage their veto rights over aid to Ukraine in order to extract concessions. This maneuvering contradicts the principle of honest cooperation that the EU is meant to be based on—and may soon trigger a revision of the existing, overly generous rules governing such veto rights.

The reasons behind the Orbán regime’s eagerness to deepen its ties to Putin’s Russia in the 2010s, and then to largely preserve them in the early 2020s, remain somewhat unclear, though the matter has given rise to much speculation. This affinity is among the most surprising—and most worrying—developments of the past decade and a half. After all, Fidesz was known as a pro-Western party in the early years of the twenty-first century, and the right-leaning and nationalistic parts of society that support it used to harbor marked anti-Russian sentiments.

It has often been suggested that the Orbán regime at first simply wanted to diversify its foreign policy options and develop alternatives to what it perceived as Hungary’s one-sided dependence on European and Western structures. Although such an ambition was indeed formulated into official policy as the “Eastern opening” in the early 2010s, it has not yielded—and arguably never could have yielded—a realistic alternative to the country’s profound embeddedness in the EU economy.

In 2023, China climbed to second among the countries that Hungary imports from—far behind Germany—and Russia ranked ninth. But the top eight destinations for Hungarian exports all continued to be other EU countries. Nor are there any partners in sight from outside the EU that would be willing to provide subsidies comparable to those Hungary has been receiving from Brussels.

Given these economic realities, the connections to Putin’s Russia appear to matter more for political and ideological reasons. It would be an exaggeration to call Putinism a role model for Orbán’s regime, but there have been notable learning processes and even convergences on the policy level. Russia also provides much of the illiberal script, including propagandistic denunciations of the contemporary West, that the Hungarian ruling party has been so keen to adopt. Recent speculation has focused on how the Russian regime may be putting covert pressure on the Hungarian leadership, though it seems to me that the avowed strategy of the Orbán regime would make such coercion supplementary rather than decisive.

The most influential ideas regarding this “grand strategy” are sketched rather elaborately in a recent book by the prime minister’s political director Balázs Orbán (no relation), Hussar Cut: The Hungarian Strategy for Connectivity. The book revolves around “the national interest” and yearnings to become a “middle power on the regional scale.” It also discusses expectations concerning the spectacular rise of a vaguely defined “East”—and the accompanying, relative decline of the West—in the coming decades. The author expresses opposition to the ongoing “bloc formation” that many have labeled a new Cold War. According to his perspective, this threatens to turn Hungary’s strategic location into its opposite, essentially condemning it to remain on the West’s periphery. He states an explicit preference for “geoeconomic neutrality,” a form of political nonalignment via connections in numerous directions.

Notwithstanding some relevant insights, Balázs Orbán’s book might dangerously overestimate the country’s potential to maneuver independently—and underestimate its painful vulnerability in a new world (dis)order in which Germany and the EU would become much less significant players and Hungary would no longer act like a full member of the latter. But the bold strategic vision laid out in Hussar Cut has already had important implications. Indeed, it could be viewed as an attempt to justify policies that have already been launched. Hungary has begun to leverage its membership in Western organizations to offer special opportunities to interested outsiders, including—most importantly—Chinese and Russian actors. This has made the regime’s peculiar balancing act even more dubious—and much riskier.

If the incoming Trump administration is likely to be uninterested in democratic norms and values, and may also be much more forgiving than its predecessor when it comes to Hungary’s ties to Russia, it should be expected to be less cavalier about deepening Hungarian connections to China. In other words, Trump’s return to the White House—a long-standing, explicit wish of representatives of the Orbán regime, including the prime minister himself—may give them a freer hand when it comes to their project of de-democratization, but it may not improve their chances of realizing their strategic vision of geoeconomic neutrality.

A major risk for Orbán is that he could become convinced that his wildest wishes concerning global politics have now been fulfilled. That conviction could entrap him in a radically illiberal position within an EU in which the contest over illiberalism, and the struggle against it, is likely to sharpen in the coming years. During this period, the EU will probably see a need to meaningfully distance itself from the United States under Trump. In such a context, not even major political gains such as Trump’s return to power would make Orbán’s bold international strategy less risky.

Unusually enough, we can date the beginning of the meteoric rise of the most promising challenger to Orbán’s regime rather precisely. On February 11, 2024, Péter Magyar—ex-husband of former Minister of Justice Judit Varga, who had announced her resignation just a couple of days earlier—went to the studio of Partizán, a YouTube channel that has become the most influential independent media outlet in Hungary. A critically minded and visibly confident former regime insider and official, Magyar was ready to discuss the highly problematic ways in which power has been exercised and concentrated in the country.

His interview with host Márton Gulyás became an instant sensation. The size of its audience soon surpassed even that of the channel’s program on election night. The extended conversation has been viewed an unprecedented 2.6 million times on YouTube during the first nine months of its release.

It was not yet clear on the day of the interview whether Magyar planned to run for office. But it was immediately evident that his sharply formulated exposé, and what it suggested about how much more he would be ready to reveal, could pose an unexpected threat to Orbán’s seemingly deeply entrenched regime.

Magyar had evidently become disgruntled with Orbán’s corrupt rule and crude manipulations. This photogenic son of a conservative elite family—his great-uncle, Ferenc Mádl, was president of the republic in the early years of the twenty-first century—was soon able to launch a spectacular political career based on his charismatic appeal and clever use of social media. As sociologist András Bozóki insightfully remarked in a recent conversation, Magyar, who was born in 1981, might be called a 2006er, one of a generational cohort who had high hopes when Hungary joined the EU in 2004 but became sourly disappointed afterward. Many members of this generation profoundly distrusted the post-communist left, which was making a mess of governing around 2006. They strongly believed that a right-leaning democratic movement should sweep away the country’s ossified structures—and that such a movement could bring about a genuine national revival.

Such 2006ers constitute the middle generation these days, and many of them are still waiting for their moment to accomplish that radical feat. But they have determined that their envisioned movement now needs to be directed against their former idol, Viktor Orbán.

In the spring of 2024, the Respect and Freedom Party (Tisza), which Magyar had just begun to lead, took only months to attract masses of disaffected voters, especially younger ones, and outgrow all other oppositional forces by a wide margin. This was remarkable for a country that has had a largely immobile party-political landscape for over a decade, resulting in four consecutive national elections with remarkably similar outcomes. By the time of the European Parliament elections in June, Tisza had emerged as Fidesz’s main competitor. Its popularity has only grown since; according to polls conducted toward the end of 2024, Magyar’s party can count on slightly more voters than the ruling party. No other party had polled ahead of Fidesz for nearly two decades.

Beyond shining a harsh light on the ineffectiveness of other opposition leaders, who have proved better at critiquing Fidesz’s rule than at mobilizing people in favor of an alternative, Magyar’s rise has also led to debates about the meaning and prospects of his brand of personality-led populism pitted against an illiberal state. It should have become clear by now that the Orbán regime’s extended, vicious campaign of character assassination is not able to alienate from Magyar those who see a genuine alternative in him. From the very beginning, Magyar’s verbal attacks on the regime have focused on its crude use of state propaganda, so more of that same propaganda is unlikely to be effective among his supporters.

The main open questions instead concern how durable his rapidly rising popularity—and the moment of hope it has brought about—will prove. What difference can Magyar and his new party make in the coming years? Will he be able to build Tisza into a well-functioning and competent organization that could renew the political system?

It might be too early for informed speculation on those key questions. But it is already evident that Tisza’s foreign policy choices would be different from Fidesz’s. Although Magyar also prioritizes the national interest and wants Hungary to remain assertive on the international stage, he would prefer much less contentious relations with its European and Western allies.

A debate has already been raging over the domestic political repercussions of Magyar’s rise. Given that Magyar himself comes from a conservative, even rather nationalistic milieu and has attracted mostly opposition voters until now, luring relatively few from Fidesz, some analysts have warned that his party’s rapid ascent is shifting Hungary’s political culture even further to the right. Tisza’s massive early successes in 2024 have indeed done much to marginalize liberal and leftist parties. An alternative interpretation, however, focuses on the potential of Tisza to generate positive outcomes. Magyar’s ideologically underdefined but broadly based centrist formation could return the country to a basic liberal consensus—even if that is obviously much easier said than done.

The massive gap between the value system propagated and enforced by the Orbán regime and the more liberal and pro-democratic values of substantial segments of Hungarian society has often been remarked upon. Considered in this light, Tisza’s rise should be viewed as a success unmatched since 2010 in exposing that gap. After all, authoritarian actors tend to succeed not when they deliver on their promises and become truly popular, but when they find effective ways to hinder and disable potential competitors. The hope that the sudden rise of Péter Magyar has generated is ultimately rooted in the recognition that such a strategy may no longer be working.

Any attempt to restore liberal democracy in Hungary in the coming years will inevitably face major difficulties, though. Poland’s turn away from illiberal rule since the narrow defeat of the Law and Justice party at the polls in October 2023, and the ensuing attempt by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s current coalition government to restore the rule of law, provide important sources of inspiration. But it seems doubtful that the ongoing changes in Warsaw could guide the Hungarian opposition. Fidesz has transformed the Hungarian political system in such a thorough manner since 2010, and centralized control to such a degree, that a change of government may prove insufficient to ensure an actual transfer of power—even if the opposition led by Magyar defeats Orbán’s party in a free but unfair election, and Fidesz concedes.

Fidesz has single-handedly rewritten Hungary’s constitution and the electoral law, and repeatedly challenged the rule of law, not least by weakening the critical functions of the Constitutional Court. Its methodical and rather comprehensive approach has turned Hungary into a curious hybrid of a multiparty system and something resembling a party-state. This hybrid has fostered a new economic elite, including a cohort of exceptionally wealthy oligarchs closely connected to the state. Moreover, the regime has taken control of a dominant share of the media landscape and converted significant parts of it into propaganda outlets. It has also done much to reshape the realm of civil society, both attacking critical NGOs and establishing so-called GONGOs (which may look much like nongovernmental organizations but are actually set up and often primarily sponsored by state authorities).

In such a context, the “Polish recipe” may certainly prove useful. But given the depth of regime change under Orbán, it can provide no more than a partial solution for those determined to rebuild liberal democracy in Hungary—and especially for those who are intent on building it back better.

The big open question is how leading representatives of the Orbán regime will react to their popularity and power slipping away. In 2024, Fidesz started to lose public support in more obvious ways than at any moment since 2010. Some regime insiders might decide to jump ship before it is too late and help to arrange a smooth political transition of the kind that the country experienced back in 1989. But some of the most influential might choose the opposite path of doubling down to defend their positions with harsher measures. The latter scenario is unfortunately quite realistic, since many of these figures have been personally implicated not only in building up the current regime, but also in using and abusing state power for personal gain.

Even if the much preferable scenario of a relatively smooth and essentially peaceful return to liberal democracy were to materialize in the coming years, the battle against surviving Orbánian structures would still raise numerous thorny questions. Perhaps the most difficult could concern the future of what I would label, for lack of a better term, politically connected private wealth that has been accumulated under the current regime. It is worth noting that Magyar’s sensational February 11 interview was titled “A Few Families Own Half of the Country.”

How could the country be effectively governed in the face of such an immense, unfair concentration of resources? Conversely, to what extent can extraordinary measures be justified in the name of restoring the rule of law and a sense of basic justice? What appears clear is that undoing the self-interested changes and all the damage that the Orbán regime has inflicted on Hungarian democracy, and reestablishing a level playing field, will require a comprehensive approach, much ingenuity, not a little patience—and probably more controversial policies than those currently being deployed in Warsaw.

To have a fair chance of success in reaching these goals will also require an earnest accounting, which in my view has only just begun, of how and why Hungary’s previous experiment with liberal democracy—the one conducted between 1989–90 and 2010, the most serious and enduring attempt at developing such a regime in the country’s history—ultimately failed. This accounting must in turn lead to a substantial diagnosis of what could and should be done differently next time around.

How was it that Hungary’s seemingly successful political transformation into a liberal democracy could be reversed so effectively and with such limited opposition? The moment of political liberation and the gaining of new freedoms went hand in hand with a severe economic downturn and a prolonged social crisis for many Hungarians, which was not compensated in any major way by a flourishing culture of democracy. Multiparty democracy was introduced in 1989–90 without sustainable, well-organized mass parties emerging. And the introduction of a highly transnational form of capitalism and the ambition to integrate into NATO and the EU were accompanied by an increasing renationalization of political horizons and discourses.

In such a context, the emancipatory potential of liberal democracy proved limited, yielding what was essentially a status quo conservative regime. In the twenty years of relative democratic stability between 1990 and 2010, only a single new party—which was actually a national populist splinter group whose leader, István Csurka, used to belong to the governing Hungarian Democratic Forum in the early 1990s—managed to pass the admittedly high electoral threshold for entering Parliament.

Widespread acceptance of the post-1989 belief that democracies could be “consolidated” did not help, either. What the current history of Hungary shows is that democracies in fact need continuous investment and renewal.

To the ambiguities, paradoxes, and misconceptions inherent in the country’s first major liberal democratic experiment must be added the failure of the Hungarian right to de-radicalize after the country’s twentieth-century experience of right-wing authoritarianism, fascism, and Soviet communist suppression. With that, we begin to understand why the dominant party has ridden the contemporary wave of illiberalism so eagerly and so successfully over the past decade and a half.

If that diagnosis is at least halfway correct, it might enable us to sketch a package of useful prescriptions for the future. For a liberal democracy to succeed in the longer term in Hungary, it would need to be based, first of all, on much higher levels of citizen engagement and participation. Democracy would also need to be combined with economic success, along with not only the material compensation but also the cultural inclusion of those who would still struggle. That could be achieved via substantial and sustained investment in public forums and civic education. Re-democratization would also need to be combined with a de-radicalization of the right and an opening of intellectual horizons that would help Hungarian citizens place their country in broader continental and global frames.

Such a program, if implemented through a major common effort, would build liberal democracy back better. If this sounds like a dauntingly ambitious task given the circumstances, the good news is that there are relevant models to draw on—whether welfare states focused on labor market “flexicurity” as in Denmark, substantial programs of civic education as in Germany, or new experiments with citizens’ assemblies as in Canada, Belgium, and a host of other countries.

Since 2010, the Orbán regime has reshaped Hungary’s political institutions and centralized power. This has created notable gaps between its illiberal project and the preferences of large segments of Hungarian society, as well as between Hungary’s current arrangements and expectations for EU member states. On top of that, the regime’s ambiguous foreign policy orientation has done much to alienate many of the country’s formal allies in recent years.

Trump’s return to the White House offers an opportunity for Orbán’s regime to propagate its right-wing illiberalism on a larger stage. In this context, the regime is likely to make even bolder bets on a post-liberal future while doubling down on its strategy of “geoeconomic neutrality.” Ironically, it might soon be trapped by the fulfillment of its wish to see Trump back in power. Its wagers could easily backfire in an age of growing geopolitical tensions.

In this moment of heightened uncertainty, the emergence of Péter Magyar’s ideologically underdefined opposition party has fostered new hopes that Hungary could return to a basic liberal consensus. But to truly succeed at that momentous task in the coming years will require building liberal democracy back better.