Orban's make-believe 'I'm the EU president' act is a gamble on a Trump win

Viktor Orbán's alleged "peace diplomacy" campaign, which unfolded during the first 12 days of Hungary's EU presidency, has shocked and surprised Budapest's EU and Nato partners.

Not only were the snap visits to Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump not coordinated with allies, but most importantly, Orbán's travel plans to Moscow were actively kept secret from them and Ukraine. 

Orbán not only parroted Russian and Chinese talking points, violated the principle of not negotiating about Ukraine without Ukraine, but generally tried to wreak havoc on EU foreign policy and position himself in the power quadrant of Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Mostly revealed and reported by the international media, on his way from Moscow to Beijing Orbán also attended the informal summit of the Organization of Turkic States in Azerbaijan, where representatives of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus were also present.

This also raises some questions about Orbán's commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cyprus and how far he is willing to go with symbolic gestures to Erdogan and Turkey. Around the Nato summit in Washington, Orbán's only full-fledged bilateral took place again, with Erdogan.       

While the intensity of the Hungarian diplomatic offensive is truly astonishing, its substance — cozying up to authoritarian strongmen around the globe — seems more familiar.

Same, but different this time

However, there are at least two qualitatively new features of the unfolding events of the Hungarian EU presidency that may fundamentally influence its endgame. 

While the setup seems very familiar — Hungary versus the EU — the structure and dynamics of this conflict are fundamentally different from anything we have seen in the past 14 years of Hungary's autocratisation saga.

This time, the Hungarian government is not confronting the European Parliament or the Commission, but rather all the other member states.

At the 10 July 10 Coreper II meeting, where the member states confronted Hungary with their disapproval, 25 EU members took the floor and spoke out against the foreign policy moves of the Orbán regime.

The only country that did not participate in the debate was Slovakia, but the government of Robert Fico did not actively protect Orbán either.

In a thinly-veiled way, Fico even actively distanced himself from Orbán when he announced the next day that his Smer party was out of the question to join Orbán and Le Pen's new Patriots for Europe parliamentary grouping.

The fact that Hungary's conflict this time is actually with all the other member states and not with the supranational EU institutions was further emphasized by the opinion of the Council's legal service, which argued that Orbán's trip to Moscow was a clear violation of the principle of sincere cooperation and the EU treaties.

Among the legal services of the main EU institutions, the Council's legal service is actually the most conservative one, which usually interprets EU law according to the political interest of the sovereignty of the member states. The fact that this time even they consider Hungary to be in violation of EU law speaks for itself.

While experts and the media have repeatedly criticized the slowness and timidity of the EU's reactions, the opposite is actually the case.

All the main EU leaders reacted to the Moscow and Azerbaijan trips within 24 hours, the Council discussed the events in COREPER II format within four working days (!) after the Putin-Orbán meeting, and member states started spontaneously boycotting various formats of the Hungarian presidency almost immediately.

This is an extraordinarily fast pace of events. Especially if we consider that the member states are already thinking about further, more formal sanctions, including cutting the rotating presidency. Of course, these are being kept as measures of last resort, but it shows that EU members are ready to escalate if Budapest continues on its course.

Miscalculation or gamble?

There is also something new not only in the shape of the political battle lines, but also in the strategy pursued by the Hungarian leader.

Over the past 14 years, Orbán, like a true semi-autocrat, has always played the long game. This time he is not. Expanding his political autonomy and room for maneuver is obviously the strategic foreign policy goal behind the campaign, but judging by its intensity and the reactions it has provoked, it seems to be backfiring.  

There are two logical explanations for the Hungarian diplomatic offensive, which appears to have been planned in detail well in advance.

Either it represents a serious miscalculation on the part of the Hungarian regime as to how far — and how fast — it can go, or it is designed to achieve its goals in a short period of time, until 5 November.

But even if one of the main goals of the diplomatic offensive is to place Orbán in the middle of the above-mentioned power quadrant of Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump and Erdogan, which apparently is the new geopolitical coordinate system after November according to Orbán, a striking characteristic of the strategy is that it hardly allows for a plan B and thus represents a very risky gamble for the Hungarian leader.

Obviously, he is putting all his eggs in one basket, the return of Trump, the alternative being a humiliated, ridiculed, weakened and sanctioned Hungary if his bet doesn't pay off.

Whether Orbán has miscalculated or is making a spectacular gamble will have to be seen in the coming weeks.

If he backtracks and de-escalates, the show of the last ten days could be a product of miscalculation.

If he continues trolling and provoking, it is by design and may only intensify between now and 5 November.

If this happens, the member states must be prepared to end the Hungarian presidency before the elections in Georgia, Moldova and the United States in the fall, in order to avoid a fundamental perception crisis of the EU's foreign policy.