Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is jeopardizing Hungary’s position as a reliable NATO ally, the US ambassador to Budapest warned on Thursday, with “its close and expanding relationship with Russia” and with “dangerously unabashed anti-American messaging” on state-controlled media.
The ambassador, David Pressman, has criticized Mr. Orban for months for essentially siding with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the war in Ukraine, but his latest remarks sharply heightened tensions and showed that trust in Hungary among NATO allies had collapsed.
Hungary is “an ally that behaves differently” and is “alone on the defining European security issue of the last quarter century, Russia’s war in Ukraine,” Mr Pressman said in a speech in Budapest marking the 25th anniversary of the acceptance of Hungary. in the Western military alliance.
“We will have to decide how best to protect our security interests, which, as allies, should be our collective security interests,” he added.
The speech followed a visit last week by Mr Orban, a favorite of MAGA Republicans in the United States, to Donald J Trump at the former president’s home and members-only club in Florida. After their meeting, Mr Orban claimed in an interview on Hungarian state television that Mr Trump had outlined to him a “pretty detailed plan” to end the war in Ukraine, which would involve an abrupt end to US aid to Russia’s neighbor.
Such a plan closely parallels what Mr. Orban has advocated for the European Union — a suspension of all economic and military support for Ukraine and a policy of pushing the Kiev government into direct peace negotiations with Moscow.
This, Mr. Pressman said, “is not a proposal for peace. it is capitulation”.
The ambassador presented a list of complaints about the ways in which Hungary had not lived up to its obligations as an ally. These included, he said, a refusal by Mr Orbán’s government to let US soldiers stationed in Hungary get license plates for their family cars, in breach of a defense cooperation agreement between the two countries.
“Of course, this speech is not about license plates, but this issue is indicative of the current one, in terms of the state of Hungary’s relationship with its allies,” he said. “This is an administration that characterizes and treats the United States as an adversary while making policy choices that increasingly isolate it from friends and allies.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Sweden to abandon generations of non-aligned status and apply to join NATO in 2022, which required unanimous approval from member states. Hungary and Turkey, the only holdouts, held off Sweden’s membership until this year.
On a visit to Iran last month, Hungary’s increasingly anti-American foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, denounced Mr. Pressman as “the leader of the Hungarian opposition” in an interview with the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
Attacking Mr. Pressman and the Biden administration in general has become a regular feature of Hungary’s relations with Washington, which has often accused Mr. Orbán of backing away from democracy and ignoring the concerns of its allies.
“We must take security concerns expressed by allies seriously, not use them as leverage to secure irrelevant and local political goals,” Mr. Pressman said at the Central European University in Budapest, an institution that carried most of his teaching in Vienna in neighboring Austria in 2018 under pressure from Hungarian authorities.
NATO’s founding treaty of 1949 does not include a mechanism for expelling a member and leaves the decision to join or leave up to each member state. Polls show strong support among Hungarians for staying in the alliance and Mr Orban has insisted he does not want to leave.
Some officials in the Baltic states, among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, have raised questions about whether Hungary should be forced out of NATO, but U.S. officials and diplomats have never publicly raised that possibility.
Mr Pressman said “legitimate security concerns — shared by Hungary’s 31 Allies — cannot be ignored”, but stopped short of calling for Hungary’s withdrawal.
Responding to repeated accusations from Hungary of President Biden and Mr Orban’s fellow EU leaders as “warriors” because of their support for Ukraine, Mr Pressman said: “Hungarian policy is based on a fantasy that the disarmament of Ukraine will stop Putin. History shows it would do the opposite.”
While Hungary’s ties with Washington and most European capitals have frayed, the country has cultivated warm relations not only with Russia, which it relies on for gas supplies and help building a new nuclear power plant, but also with a number of from other authoritarian countries including Belarus, China and Iran.
Hungary’s ties to Iran and China could undermine the calculation that underpins its embattled relations with the Biden administration — that Mr. Trump will win in November and usher in a new era of hostility toward Ukraine and friendship with Mr. Orban.
“There is no better, smarter or better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Mr. Trump said last week.
Mr Orban was equally full of praise for Mr Trump. “It’s time for another ‘Make America Great Again’ presidency in the United States,” he said last month in his annual State of the Nation address in Budapest.
Mr. Pressman insisted that United States politics transcended partisan politics, noting that the Trump administration had also questioned Hungary’s outreach to Moscow, particularly its decision to allow a shadowy Russian financial institution, the International Investment Bank, to open in Budapest with sweeping diplomatic immunity.
Western security officials say the move enabled Russian espionage and money laundering. Hungary withdrew its support for the bank after the Biden administration imposed sanctions on it.
“While the Orbán government may want to wait for the United States government, the United States will certainly not wait for the Orbán government,” Mr. Pressman said, “While Hungary waits, we will act.”
