Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Mihály Orbán, recently called for the European Union to terminate the war effort. It is one of the first politicians at the head of a European state to voice his unequivocal opposition to the Ukrainian war effort, despite being at the head of a thoroughly reactionary regime.
Orbán’s position, however, is motivated not out of a concern for Ukrainian lives, the fate of Ukraine or its war effort but out of fear. Orbán’s position is a response to the current state of the market in regards to Hungary. Inflation in Hungary reached double digits, degrading the standard of living for many Hungarians.
Although elected for fourth term, Orbán’s right-wing party, Fidesz, faces serious challenge, as Hungarian working people begin to protest, demonstrate or strike against the precipitous fall in their standard of living, which is a result of the market’s reaction, on the one hand, to the Ukrainian war, while, on the other hand, by his own party’s reaction to not only the market but the European Union’s own dissatisfaction with Hungary’s failure to conform to its edits.
Unwilling to support the European Union’s embargoes against Russian gas, coal, or oil, Hungary’s economy dictates that Orbán, who is responsible for ensuring that Russia continue to supply no less than 85% of its energy, refrain from any attempt to align itself with Germany’s bellicosity. Lamenting on days past, Orbán claimed the “war would never have broken out if Donald Trump were still head of the United States and Angela Merkel were the German Chancellor.”
A shameless racist, Orbán warns against mixing with “non-Europeans,” the language of bigotry for refugees from Africa or the Middle East. “But we don’t want to be a mixed race.” In accordance with his “defense of a Christian Europe,” the Hungarian premier targets migrants from Africa and the Middle East, or the NGOs that support their plight as refugees. He restrict their right to seek asylum. In a manner similar to Donald J. Trump, he erected multiple barriers to thwart refugees on their way into or through Hungary.
Although motivated purely by his own political aspirations, Viktor Mihály Orbán’s description of the effect of the Western supply of weapons on the Ukrainian war, nonetheless, brings into sharp relief its futility. He said: “The more the West sends powerful weapons, the more the war drags on.” The longer the war drags on, the more difficult Orbán’s regime of reaction is capable of maintaining itself.
Orbán’s recommendation to terminate the war effort comes on the heels of a major dispute within Germany in regards to the fascistic anti-Semite Stepan Bandera in the eyes of Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnyk. Previously a guest of honor for Chancellor Scholz at the Bundestag in February for his support of German rearmament, Melnyk recently became the subject of a recall for praising the Ukrainian “Providnik” (leader) in numerous articles.
In response to his description of Bandera, the Israeli embassy in Berlin tweeted: “The statements of the Ukrainian ambassador are a distortion of the historical facts, a trivialisation of the Holocaust and an insult to those murdered by Bandera and his people.” The Polish Foreign Ministry described Melnyk’s remarks as “absolutely unacceptable.”
While these nations condemned Melnyk, German politicians, whose policies encourage Germany to take the forefront in the Ukrainian war through the supply of heavy weaponry or support for NATO, have come out in droves to support Melnyk.
Kai Küstner, for instance, writes in Die Zeit the following about Melnyk: “It was Andrij Melnyk who warned the Grand Coalition led by Angela Merkel against the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2 as consistently as it was in vain. It was Andrij Melnyk who reminded the Social Democrats of the historical errors of their pro-Russian policy. It was Andrij Melnyk who, after the start of Putin’s war of aggression, vehemently criticised the traffic light coalition and also the chancellor for his reluctance to provide his attacked country with heavy weapons.”
The Ukrainian war effort does not fall clearly along a line of right wing reaction. Whereas Orbán’s party’s reaction to the Ukrainian war effort differs sharply from that of Germany, the contradictions between political proponents of policies proscribed to the right such as anti-immigrant bigotry or Russian oil, gas, or coal do not necessarily amount to solidarity among politically aligned forces.
The Ukrainian war effort is therefore the driving a force of division among ruling elites in Europe. As the European ruling elites continue to appraise the war’s effect on their economies, the efficacy of their sanctions against Russia, or their ever deepening unbreakable dependence upon Russian energy supplies, the Ukrainian war’s continuation demonstrates the degree to which the system of independent nation states puts a strain on the vast majority of the relations within the global economy.
In his famous pamphlet The War and the International, published in November 1914, Trotsky wrote: “What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development. The present war is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit.” [1]
Orbán’s regime fears most of all the fall of his nation-state and its further entanglement within the contradictions of imperialism as the highest level of capitalism. As the Ukrainian war continues to draw Europe deeper into the conflict, the effect of its involvement deepens and the consequences of the market’s effects on that deepened involvement intensify the contradiction between the European nation-states, as is undeniably obvious from the vast differences of opinion on how to relate to the differing nation-state’s need for gas, coal, or oil from Russia.
What Orbán’s regime appears to be aware, however, that these events–“the more the West sends powerful weapons” or the failure of the Ukrainian military forces to transform the merely the technical knowledge of weaponry on an individual or group level to advance with those weapons in terms of strategy–advance the intensification of divisive relations among European states.
[1] Trotsky, The War and the International, p. vii