Orbán endangers Hungary’s status as an ally, says the American diplomat

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is endangering Hungary’s position as a trusted NATO ally, the US ambassador in Budapest warned on Thursday, with “its close and growing relationship with Russia” and with “dangerously unhinged anti-American messages” in state-controlled media .

The ambassador, David Persman, has criticized Mr. Orbán for months for effectively siding with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over the war in Ukraine, but his latest comments have sharply raised tensions and signaled a collapse in confidence in Hungary among NATO allies.

Hungary is “an ally that behaves like no other” and stands “alone when it comes to the defining issue of European security of the past quarter century, the Russian war in Ukraine,” Mr Pressman said in a speech in Budapest at occasion of the 25th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to 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 darling 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 with Hungarian state television that Mr. Trump had outlined to him a “fairly detailed plan” for ending the war in Ukraine, which would include an abrupt halt to U.S. aid to the embattled neighbor of Russia would entail.

Such a plan is closely aligned with what Mr Orban has advocated for the European Union – a suspension of all financial and military aid to Ukraine, and a policy of forcing the government in Kiev into immediate peace negotiations with Moscow.

That, Mr. Pressman said, “is not a proposal for peace; it is capitulation.”

The ambassador provided a detailed catalog of complaints about the ways in which Hungary had failed to fulfill its obligations as an ally. These include what he says is a refusal by Mr Orbán’s government to let American soldiers stationed in Hungary get license plates for their family cars, in violation of a defense cooperation agreement between the two countries.

“This speech is obviously not about license plates, but this issue is indicative of the current state of Hungary’s relations with its allies,” he said. “It’s about an administration that labels and treats the United States as an adversary while making policy choices that increasingly isolate it from friends and allies.”

During 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.

Bashing Mr. Pressman and the Biden administration in general has become a fixture of Hungary’s relations with Washington, which has repeatedly accused Mr. Orbán of backsliding on democracy and the concerns of his allies to ignore.

“We must take seriously the security concerns raised by allies, and not use them as leverage to secure unrelated and parochial political objectives,” Mr. Pressman said at the Central European University in Budapest, an institution that moved most of his education to Vienna in neighboring Austria in 2018 under pressure from the Hungarian authorities.

NATO’s 1949 founding treaty contains no mechanism for expelling a member, leaving the decision on whether to join up to each member state. Opinion polls show strong support among Hungarians for joining the alliance, and Mr Orbán has insisted he has no desire to withdraw.

Some officials in the Baltic states, among Ukraine’s most ardent 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 “the legitimate security concerns – shared by Hungary’s 31 allies – cannot be ignored,” but he did not call for Hungary’s departure.

Responding to repeated Hungarian denunciations of President Biden and Mr Orban’s EU leaders as “warmongers” over their support for Ukraine, Mr Pressman said: “Hungarian policy is based on the fantasy that disarming Ukraine will stop Putin . History shows that this would do the opposite.”

While Hungary’s ties with Washington and most European capitals have frayed, the country has maintained warm relations not only with Russia, on which it depends for supplies of natural gas and help building a new nuclear power plant, but also with a major number of other authoritarian countries. including Belarus, China and Iran.

Hungary’s ties with Iran and China could undermine the calculation underlying its combative 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 usher in.

“There is no one better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s fantastic,” Trump said last week.

Mr Orban has been equally effusive in his praise for Mr Trump. “It is time for a new ‘Make America Great Again’ presidency in the United States,” he said said in his annual State of the Nation address last month in Budapest.

Mr. Pressman emphasized that United States policy transcends partisan politics, noting that the Trump administration had also objected to Hungary’s support for Moscow, especially its decision to admit an obscure Russian financial institution to stand, the International Investment Bank, which opens in Budapest with far-reaching 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 the bank.

“While the Orban government may want to wait for the United States government, the United States will certainly not wait for the Orban government,” Mr. Pressman said. “While Hungary waits, we will act.”