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What is that supposed to mean? He doesn't want to be in the EU but he "has no choice" because being in the EU is good for Hungary? He always has the option to pull a UK and tank the country's economy in exchange for "sovereignty" if that's what he wants. It seems that he realizes that leaving the EU would be a monumentally stupid decision, and is just using "the EU" as some kind of vague bogeyman.
I'm just going to be honest and say, I think Dreher got Orban's actual views down, and since he's a commentator, author, and columnist, not a reporter, he wasn't aware that wasn't supposed to be shared outside of that interview room and the "of course we want to be in the EU" is typical political CYA.
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It means the Germans and the French successfully incentivized Orban to wreck the EU from the inside rather than leave it in a parting way of vision.
The 'you could always tank your economy and leave the EU if you wanted to' links two competing interests- not-tanking the EU, and leaving the EU. If not-tanking the economy trumps, it doesn't mean you like the EU, it just means you dislike it less than tanking your economy. You can absolutely recognize that you are dependent on something you don't like- it's not some paradox, and is a common point when you can't change circumstances you would have avoided or changed if you could have without
What this means in practical terms, however, is that if you can't leave the current environment you don't like- and the French and Germans made a very deliberate policy choice of making Brexit, and implicitly any other exit, as painful as possible- then you have no reason not to reshape it from the inside. The EU ceased to be credibly based on a common commitment to liberal values after Brexit, when a country significantly more liberal than much of Europe left, and the primary objections to it's departer- and examples made of it- were economic in nature.
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Thought that comment was as interesting as the war comments but no one said anything.
I’ve studied trade economics well one course and trade is dominated inversely by distance for obvious reasons. Which means economically they need to be aligned with Europe but they also don’t want to give in to cultural hegemony etc. Which I think plays into a lot of political arrangements. The land in California is very red but dominated by the populace in a few small areas. Same thing with the broader US. They all need to be integrated even blue population need the red land to feed them. So we have this conundrum of necessary political integration with much different cultural values.
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