Guest Post - By George Friedman
I am writing this from Budapest, the city in which I was born. I went
to the United States so young that all my memories of Hungary were
acquired later in life or through my family, whose memories bridged both
world wars and the Cold War, all with their attendant horrors. My own
deepest memory of Hungary comes from my parents' living room in the
Bronx. My older sister was married in November 1956. There was an
uprising against the Soviets at the same time, and many of our family
members were still there. After the wedding, we returned home and saw
the early newspapers and reports on television. My parents discovered
that some of the heaviest fighting between the revolutionaries and
Soviets had taken place on the street where my aunts lived. A joyous
marriage, followed by another catastrophe -- the contrast between
America and Hungary. That night, my father asked no one in particular,
"Does it ever end?" The answer is no, not here. Which is why I am back
in Budapest.
For me, Hungarian was my native language. Stickball was my culture.
For my parents, Hungarian was their culture. Hungary was the place where
they were young, and their youth was torn away from them. My family was
crushed by the Holocaust in Hungary, but my parents never quite blamed
the Hungarians as much as they did the Germans. For them, it was always
the Germans who were guilty for unleashing the brutishness in the
Hungarians. This kitchen table discussion, an obsessive feature of my
home life, was an attempt to measure and allocate evil. Others did it
differently. This was my parents' view: Except for the Germans, the
vastness of evil could not have existed. I was in no position to debate
them.
This debate has re-entered history through Hungarian politics. Some
have accused Prime Minister Viktor Orban of trying to emulate a man
named Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary before and during World War II.
This is meant as an indictment. If so, at the university of our kitchen
table, the lesson of Horthy is more complex and may have some bearing on
present-day Hungary. It has become a metaphor for the country today,
and Hungarians are divided with earnest passion on an old man long dead.
A Lesson From History
Adm. Miklos Horthy, a regent to a non-existent king and an admiral in
the forgotten Austro-Hungarian navy, governed Hungary between 1920 and
1944. Horthy ruled a country that was small and weak. Its population was
9.3 million in 1940. Horthy's goal was to preserve its sovereignty in
the face of the rising power of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Caught
between the two -- and by this I mean that both prized Hungary for its
strategic position in the Carpathian Basin -- Hungary had few options.
Horthy's strategy was to give what he must and as little as he had to in
order to retain Hungary's sovereignty. Over time, he had to give more
and more as the Germans became more desperate and as the Soviets drew
nearer. He did not surrender his room to maneuver; it was taken from
him. His experience is one that Hungary's current leadership appears to
have studied.
Horthy's strategy meant a great deal to the Jews. He was likely no
more anti-Semitic than any member of his class had to be. He might not
hire a Jew, but he wasn't going to kill one. This was different from the
new style of anti-Semitism introduced by Hitler, which required mass
murder. A sneer would no longer do. In Poland and in other countries
under German sway, the mass killings started early. In Hungary, Horthy's
policy kept them at bay. Not perfectly, of course. Thousands were
killed early on, and anti-Jewish laws were passed. But thousands are not
hundreds of thousands or millions, and in that time and place it was a
huge distinction. Hungary did not join Germany's invasion of the Soviet
Union until months after it had started, and Jews, including my father
and uncles, were organized in labor battalions, where casualties were
appalling. But their wives and children remained home, had food and
lived. Horthy conceded no more than he had to, but what he had to do he
did. Some say it was opportunism, others mere cowardice of chance.
Whatever it was, while it lasted, Hungary was not like Poland or even
France. The Jews were not handed over to the Germans.
Horthy fell from his tightrope on March 19, 1944. Realizing Germany
was losing the war, Horthy made peace overtures to the Soviets. They
were coming anyway, so he might as well welcome them. Hitler, of course,
discovered this and occupied Hungary, which was essential to the
defense of Austria. In a complex maneuver involving kidnapping and
blackmail -- even kidnapping one of Horthy's sons -- Hitler forced the
Hungarian leader to form a new government consisting of Hungary's
homegrown Nazis, the Arrow Cross Party. As with Vidkun Quisling in
Norway and Philippe Petain in France, Hitler installed his eager
puppets.
Horthy signed off on this. But that signature, as he pointed out, was
meaningless. The Germans were there, they could do as they wanted, and
his signature was a meaningless act that spared his sons' lives. My
father said he understood him. He had no more power, except saving his
sons. Without the power to control events, saving those lives cost
nothing and gained something precious. In no way did it change what was
going to happen during the next year in Hungary: the murder of more than
half a million Jews and a bloodbath throughout the country as Soviet
forces advanced and surrounded Budapest and as the Germans fought to
their deaths.
My parents were grateful to Horthy. For them, without him, the
Holocaust would have come to Hungary years earlier. He did not crush the
Hungarian Nazis, but he kept them at bay. He did not turn on Hitler,
but he kept him at bay. What Horthy did was the dirty work of decency.
He made deals with devils to keep the worst things from happening. By
March 1944, Horthy could no longer play the game. Hitler had ended it.
His choice was between dead sons and the horror of the following year,
or living sons and that same horror. From my parents' view, there was
nothing more he could do, so he saved his sons. They believed Horthy's
critics were unable to comprehend the choices he had.
It was the Germans they blamed for what happened. Hungarian fascists
cooperated enthusiastically in the killings, but Horthy had been able to
control them to some extent before the German occupation. Hungary had a
strong anti-Semitic strain but not so strong it could sweep Horthy from
power. Once the Wehrmacht, the SS and Adolf Eichmann, the chief
organizer of the Holocaust, were in Budapest, they found the Arrow Cross
Party to be populated by eager collaborators.
Parallels in Hungary Today
Hungary is in a very different position today, but its circumstances
still bear similarities to Horthy's time. The country has a
right-wing party, the Jobbik party,
which is unofficially anti-Semitic. It earned 20 percent of the vote in
the most recent election. Hungary also has a prime minister, Viktor
Orban, who is the leader of a right-of-center Fidesz party and is quite
popular. There is a question of why anti-Semitism is so strong in
Hungary. Right-wing parties, most of which are anti-immigrant and
particularly anti-Muslim and anti-Roma, are sweeping Europe. Hungary's
far right goes for more traditional hatreds.
Orban's enemies argue that he is using Jobbik to strengthen his
political position. What Orban is really doing is containing the party;
without the policies he is pursuing, Jobbik might simply take power.
This is the old argument about Horthy, and in fact, in Hungary there is a
raging argument about Horthy's role that is really about Orban. Is
Orban, like Horthy, doing the least he can to avoid a worse catastrophe,
or is he secretly encouraging Jobbik and hastening disaster?
Hungary in a Broader Regional Context
This discussion, like all discussions regarding Budapest, is framed
by the tenuous position of Hungary in the world. Orban sees the European
Union as a massive failure. The great depression in Mediterranean
Europe, contrasted with German prosperity, is simply the repeat of an
old game. Hungary is in the east,
in the borderland
between the European Peninsula and Russia. The Ukrainian crisis
indicates that the tension in the region is nearing a flashpoint. He
must guide Hungary somewhere.
There is
little support from Hungary's west,
other than mostly hollow warnings. He knows that the Germans will not
risk their prosperity to help stabilize the Hungarian economy or its
strategic position. Nor does he expect the Americans to arrive suddenly
and save the day. So he faces a crisis across his border in Ukraine,
which may or may not draw Russian forces back to the Hungarian frontier.
He does not want to continue playing the German game in the European
Union because he can't. As with many European countries, the social
fabric of Hungary is under great tension.
The Ukrainian crisis can only be understood in terms of the failure
of the European Union. Germany is doing well, but it isn't particularly
willing to take risks. The rest of northern Europe has experienced
significant unemployment, but it is Mediterranean Europe that has been
devastated by unemployment. The European financial crisis has morphed
into the European social crisis, and that social crisis has political
consequences.
The middle class, and those who thought they would rise to the middle
class, have been most affected. The contrast between the euphoric
promises of the European Union and the more meager realities has created
movements that are challenging not only membership in the European
Union but also the principle of the bloc: a shared fate in which a
European identity transcends other loyalties and carries with it the
benefits of peace and prosperity. If that prosperity is a myth, and if
it is every nation for itself, then parties emerge extolling
nationalism. Nationalism in a continent of vast disparities carries with
it deep mistrust. Thus the principle of open borders, the idea that
everyone can work anywhere, and above all, the idea that the nation is
not meaningful is challenged. The deeper the crisis, the deeper and more
legitimate the fear.
Compound this with the re-emergence of a Russian threat to the east,
and everyone on Ukraine's border begins asking who is coming to help
them. The fragmentation of Europe nationally and socially weakens Europe
to the point of irrelevance. This is where the failure of the European
Union and
the hollowing out of NATO
become important. Europe has failed economically. If it also fails
militarily, then what does it all matter? Europe is back where it
started, and so is Hungary.
Orban's Role
Orban is a rare political leader in Europe. He is quite popular, but
he is in a balancing act. To his left are the Europeanists, who see all
his actions as a repudiation of liberal democracy. On the right is a
fascist party that won 20 percent in the last election. Between these
two forces, Hungary could tear itself apart. It is in precisely this
situation that Weimar Germany failed. Caught between left and right, the
center was too weak to hold. Orban is trying to do what Horthy did:
strengthen his power over the state and the state's power over society.
He is attacked from the left for violating the principles of liberal
democracy and Europe. He is attacked from the right for remaining a tool
of the European Union and the Jews. The left believes he is secretly of
the right and his protestations are simply a cover. The right believes
he is secretly a Europeanist and that his protestations are simply a
cover.
Now we add to this the fact that Hungary must make decisions
concerning Ukraine. Orban knows that Hungary is not in a position to
make decisions by itself. He has therefore made a range of statements,
including condemning Russia, opposing sanctions and proposing that the
Ukrainian region directly east of Hungary, and once Hungarian, be
granted more autonomy. In the end, these statements are unimportant.
They do not affect the international system but allow him to balance a
bit.
Orban knows what Horthy did as well. Hungary, going up against both
Germany and Russia, needs to be very subtle. Hungary is already facing
Germany's policy toward liberal integration within the European Union,
which fundamentally contradicts Hungary's concept of an independent
state economy. Hungary is already facing Germany's policies that
undermine Hungary's economic and social well-being. Orban's strategy is
to create an economy with maximum distance from Europe without breaking
with it, and one in which the state exerts its power. This is not what
the Germans want to see.
Now, Hungary is also facing a Germany that is not in a position to
support Hungary against Russia. He is potentially facing a Russia that
will return to Hungary's eastern border. He is also faced with a growing
domestic right wing and a declining but vocal left. It is much like
Horthy's problem. Domestically, he has strong support and powerful
institutions. He can exercise power domestically. But Hungary has only 9
million people, and external forces can easily overwhelm it. His room
for maneuvering is limited.
I think Orban anticipated this as he saw the European Union flounder
earlier in the decade. He saw the fragmentation and the rise of
bitterness on all sides. He constructed a regime that appalled the left,
which thought that without Orban, it would all return to the way it was
before, rather than realizing that it might open the door to the
further right. He constructed a regime that would limit the right's
sense of exclusion without giving it real power.
Russia's re-emergence followed from this. Here, Orban has no neat
solution. Even if Hungary were to join a Polish-Romanian alliance, he
would have no confidence that this could block Russian power. For that
to happen, a major power must lend its support. With Germany out of the
game, that leaves the United States. But if the United States enters the
fray, it will not happen soon, and it will be even later before its
role is decisive. Therefore he must be flexible. And the more
international flexibility he must show, the more internal pressures
there will be.
For Horthy, the international pressure finally overwhelmed him, and
the German occupation led to a catastrophe that unleashed the right,
devastated the Jews and led to a Russian invasion and occupation that
lasted half a century. But how many lives did Horthy save by
collaborating with Germany? He bought time, if nothing else.
Hungarian history is marked by heroic disasters. The liberal
revolutions that failed across Europe in 1848 and failed in Hungary in
1956 were glorious and pointless. Horthy was unwilling to make pointless
gestures. The international situation at the moment is far from
defined, and the threat to Hungary is unclear, but Orban clearly has no
desire to make heroic gestures. Internally he is increasing his power
constantly, and that gives him freedom to act internationally. But the
one thing he will not grant is clarity. Clarity ties you down, and
Hungary has learned to keep its options open.
Orban isn't Horthy by any means, but their situations are similar.
Hungary is a country of enormous cultivation and fury. It is surrounded
by disappointments that can become dangers. Europe is not what it
promised it would be. Russia is not what Europeans expected it to be.
Within and without the country, the best Orban can do is balance, and
those who balance survive but are frequently reviled. What Hungary could
be in 2005 is not the Hungary it can be today. Any Hungarian leader who
wished to avoid disaster would have to face this. Indeed, Europeans
across the continent are facing the fact that the world they expected to
live in is gone and what has replaced it, inside and outside of their
countries, is different and dangerous.
is republished with permission of Stratfor.