Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn believes that due to the crisis of the Western-centric order, which was allegedly highlighted by Russia’s war against Ukraine, the West has started a new Cold War, in which Budapest should stand aside, maintain relations with Western competitors and claim the role of regional leader.
As Censor.NET reports with reference to European Pravda, Orbán said this in a speech at the Christmas dinner of the Cella Kalman Foundation (Hungarian political figure of the late 19th and early 20th centuries), the thesis of which was presented by his political advisor Baláš Orbán in an article for Mandiner .
“Currently, it is clear that the biggest strategic challenge facing Hungary in the next decade is leaving the group of middle-income countries and catching up with developed countries, as well as achieving the status of a regional middle power in Central Europe,” the article says.
According to the Hungarian prime minister, the neoliberal model of globalization is becoming a thing of the past, and as a result, the United States has new rivals – partly because the liberal model has allowed such states as China to strengthen.
Among the events that lead to the crisis of the neoliberal order, Orbán cites the migration crisis, Brexit, the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections and the coronavirus pandemic.
“The beginning of the Ukrainian-Russian war in 2022, which made it clear that the current Western centrism cannot hold its ground, because the West’s competitors have strengthened, not least because of the liberalization of trade and the economy,” writes Balash Orban in the article .
In response, the West, led by the USA, according to the Prime Minister of Hungary, started a new “cold war” – a bloc confrontation between the West and its rivals. “It seems that the international blocs of the Cold War era are being revived”, – this is how his adviser describes it.
The new world order in Orbán’s view can be represented as a system of hierarchical networks in which all economic, political and cultural interactions pass through the leading states of the formed blocs. And this, he believes, is especially bad for Hungary, which has a negative historical experience of existence in the bloc confrontation.
“Therefore, the initial step of the Hungarian strategy of catch-up development is the development of a country-specific logic of globalization to overcome the negative consequences,” Orbán claims, believing that such a strategy should be mediation between the West and the East and non-participation in a new “cold war”.
In practice, this means that Budapest (within the system of hierarchical networks) should be in good relations with the states that are competitors of the West, dominated by the USA – because this way the marginalization of the country can be avoided.
As you know, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, Hungary has continued to maintain close ties with Russia and openly called for the review and relaxation of the European Union’s sanctions against it, as well as developing relations with China and Iran, which the United States considers to be part of the “axis of evil.”
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