Understanding the Hungarian Election

On Sunday, the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán clinched a landslide victory in his fourth consecutive election; Fidesz, his party, maintained its control of two-thirds of Hungary’s parliament. As David Harsanyi writes, in recent years Orbán has been presented as the “bugbear of the American left, and [the] false savior of national conservatives.” But in painting Orbán as either a ruthless authoritarian or the West’s last best hope, Harsanyi argues, both the left and right fail to account for the broadly illiberal standards of modern Europe. He goes on to note that while commentators on the left vastly overstate their case when, for example, comparing Hungary to North Korea, many on the right fail to understand or acknowledge Hungary’s shortcomings—particularly as they relate to the country’s demographic and economic challenges.

There is the United States, where courts (for now) often protect ideals of liberalism and democracy embedded in the U.S. Constitution, and then there is Western Europe, where liberal ideals, self-determination, and minority rights are protected only to varying degrees, as convenience and fashion dictate. Right now, for example, Germany is considering prosecuting people who show support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unneutral treatment of speech may not bother progressives, or they may even advocate it, but it is not a “liberal” position.

The truth is, Hungary is illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of modern Europe. And that’s bad enough. Hungary is singled out for ridicule mainly because it declines to share the cultural values of the European Union or the progressive left, especially pertaining to social policies and to the flow of Middle Eastern migrants into the European Union. These positions, in the parlance of modern debate, are “anti-democratic.”

Hungary is a beautiful country. People aren’t suffering. An average household in Hungary makes around $10,000 less than average Mississippians, the poorest group in the United States. The average Hungarian is far less religious than the average American. The replacement birthrate in the United States is at historic lows, and yet still higher than the rate in Hungary.

Hungary isn’t North Korea or Russia. Neither is it a place Americans should aspire to emulate.

Read more at National Review

More about: European Union, Hungary, Liberalism, Viktor Orban

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF