Budapest Views America as a Top Adversary, Leaked Intel Shows

Short of a new James Bond movie or a White House sex scandal, there is little that can jazz up Washingtonian water cooler chat like spilled intel. First came the minutely parsed divulgations about the fragility of Ukraine’s air defenses and the Pentagon’s doubts about a spring counteroffensive that now looks likely to be pushed out to summer. Thinly veiled acknowledgments by government brass of the authenticity of leaks that show America’s putative Middle East allies like Egypt and the UAE being up to no good followed. But no sparks are flying over the Budapest leak — yet.That could change as the 2024 election draws nearer, because if an important European country like Hungary views America as one of its top adversaries — there is now evidence that this is the view from Budapest — then the White House must inevitably shoulder some of the blame. The ramifications of President Biden’s flailing foreign policy affect not only the course of the war in Ukraine but the role of NATO in safeguarding Europe’s and America’s security. What, then, is Hungary’s primary beef?It is no secret that its nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, has long equivocated on sanctioning Russia, failing to follow virtually every other member of the EU in doing so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Hungary has often had a fraught relationship with Ukraine, largely because of historical differences stemming from long dormant territorial disputes, and Mr. Orban’s relationship with President Putin is among the closest of any European leader today. Now one of the leaked documents, reportedly a bona fide CIA analysis, indicates that Mr. Orban casts Washington as among the top three adversaries of his governing Fidesz Party. That should make President Biden squirm, and not only because he is doggy paddling his way through an era when, as the New York Times observed, more treaties are being broken than brokered.It is largely on account of Russian aggression in Europe, which exploded under Mr. Biden’s watch, that NATO recently welcomed its 31st member — but guess who is holding up the admission of the 32nd? That’s right, Hungary. True, Turkey is as well, but Ankara is arguably more malleable, as demonstrated by its eventual accord on the admission of Finland to the military alliance. The reason for Hungary’s fence-sitting over Sweden’s accession to NATO is only indirectly related to Russia and Ukraine. It has more to do with what a Hungarian government representative recently described as Stockholm’s sitting on a “crumbling throne of moral superiority.”Mr. Orban increasingly finds himself at odds with his erstwhile European partners over what they perceive as authoritarian drift and what he perceives as their enslavement to the kind of woke ideology whose principle source is arguably America’s Democratic Party, at least in its current iteration. As if to throw salt in the wounded relations, last year the scandal-ridden European Parliament approved a proposal that deemed Hungary “to be no longer a true democracy,” but rather a “hybrid regime of parliamentary autocracy.” The European Commission has already suspended billions of dollars in funding for Hungary over charges that Budapest considers spurious. Much of the invective flowing from Brussels overland to Budapest has to do with the one of the most hot-button issues in the woke agenda, which is to say transgender rights. Many Europeans have conflated Hungarian legislation that is designed to protect minors from involuntary exposure to teachings about gender reassignment with laws against gay rights, which is not the case. Budapest is among the most cosmopolitan of European capitals. What the conservative Fidesz Party will not brook is what its adherents view as Western attempts to impose transgender indoctrination from the top down. It is clear from both hearing Mr. Orban’s views and from a review of Hungarian media that Hungary is not about to give ground on what is seen, in that country at least, as a fight to protect children from “over-sexualized LGBTQ+ trends.”If Hungary’s standing its ground on moral issues makes it something of an outlier in a Europe that from Scotland to Scandinavia is going for woke, what has that got to do with NATO? On the surface very little, but below it there is a choppy realignment of values at work that, culturally speaking, tilts Budapest more in the direction of Moscow than Washington. Vladimir Putin, in his infrequent rational moments, is given to taking aim at the West’s woke culture. Given the highly divisive nature of woke ideology in America right now, that has to be seen as more than just a facile post-Soviet transmutation of what the Bolsheviks used to decry as Western decadence.While there may be little actual danger of Hungary leaving NATO, as a full member it can certainly throw cold water on the bloc’s enlargement. As far as Mr. Orban’s ambiguous commitment to the defense of Ukraine, it is worth recalling something about European history as Mr. Biden gets in touch with his Irish roots this week. Ireland, which is not a part of NATO, remained neutral throughout World War II. That is something for this president to chew on along with a slice of chocolate cake should he ever find himself at Budapest’s Cafe New York — or just more in touch with some new if uncomfortable Continental realities.

Budapest Views America as a Top Adversary, Leaked Intel Shows

Budapest Views America as a Top Adversary, Leaked Intel Shows

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