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Notes -
Dreher apparently wrote an article that too specifically quoted Orbans thoughts. Supposedly it’s a bigger deal in Hungary but I believe there’s a few money quotes to discuss.
On Ukraine:
“To be clear, Viktor Orban doesn’t want the West to be in a war with Russia. But he says that far too many Westerners are deluding themselves about what’s really happening—and what could happen. . . .
Orban said that the West needs to understand that Putin cannot afford to lose, and will not lose, because he’s up for re-election next year, and he cannot run as the president who lost a war. What’s more, he said, Russia cannot allow NATO to establish a presence in Ukraine. The time has long passed when Russia might have been able to conquer Ukraine, or install a friendly regime. Had Russia won a quick victory, that might have been possible, but it’s hopeless now. Therefore, said Orban, Russia’s goal is to make Ukraine an ungovernable wreck, so the West cannot claim it as a prize. At this, they have already succeeded.”
On Ukraine I 100% the west, specifically NATO and the US, is at war with Russia. I often see the criticism from critics of the war that we do not understand this point. We do. It’s just in the modern world country’s don’t officially declare war. Russia did not. Nato did not. Perhaps it gives you cover for peace or something to not say it directly, but for whatever reason war is not called war. I agree Putin probably can’t lose the war or he’s out of office and perhaps a sacrificial lamb for the next dude. Disagree Russia had any strategic fear of NATO. 100% agree a fear of EU in Russia was justified as the western cultural umbrella would spread easier which he didn’t mention but culture war I’ve always believed was far stronger than any military war. Think Putin could have won the war earlier with better planning by crushing the military in the east first. But they had bad intel. Now the west is invested so theirs no way for Putin to win so his only play I guess is to make Ukraine in the east depopulated. Perhaps that’s not losing at a high costs.
On EU:
“Someone asked the prime minister if he wanted Hungary to stay in the EU. “Definitely not!” he said, adding that Hungary has no choice, because 85 percent of its exports are within the EU.”
This is true everywhere. Our wealth is thru trade. The old meme - the right can just invent their own twitter, their own internet, their own payment system…….Everything is interconnected and dependent on others. Centralized services have better economies of scale. Hungary due to geography can only be wealthy by becoming interconnected in the EU. Some businesses more constant costs businesses do not have these factors - farming, light manufacturing, etc (mostly right dominated industries). The lefts conquered all the industries that scale or have strong network effects. And that’s where the culture war fight has come from of trying to not be dominated.
https://www.thebulwark.com/how-rod-dreher-caused-an-international-scandal-in-eastern-europe/
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.
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.
If Brexit is painful, it is because the British public made the demand that it be so - repeatedly. The EU has done remarkably little to make Brexit 'painful', and any pain the Brits suffer is somewhere between an unforced error and a deliberate choice. The EU very much could have done more to put on the screws, and didn't. The obvious consequences of leaving the EU market are not, in fact, some shadowy Franco-German plot to hurt those who leave.
Well, besides refusing to consider ultimately-accepted Irish border inspection measures for several years, selective laxening of migrant enforcement across the channel, coordinated media campaigns, grouping in various European projects the British were already paying members of that don't require EU membership to renegotiation as part of the broader trade deal negotiations, immediate objection on safety grounds of standards that were still in alignment at arbitrary cutoff dates, and deliberate demands for politically unviable demands that led to the collapse of the entire pro-EU British establishment when they tried to actually deliver a Brexit-in-name-only but which were dropped afterwards.
As a project to actually keep Britain in the European orbit, as was initially attempted by trying to offer an exceptional number of 'you can change your mind' avenues and the May BINO terms while heightening the prospects of departure with numerous techhniques, the EU position was a bumbling failure of trying to not-lose one of their most significant strategic-relevance contributors, and ended up in the impressive result of starting with a Parliamentary practical-majority of Remainers to negotiate with at the start changing to a hard-Brexit wave. As a secondary effort to try and keep the EU together, it was a decent success, albeit missing the obvious third order effects for how Euroskeptical states would adjust policy on the expectation of staying in the EU.
That there were options the EU could have done and didn't does not mean that they weren't also options that the Europeans didn't have to do, but did.
Of course not. It was just formal policy by various European leaders to show that exiting the EU would hurt anyone more than staying in, while taking multiple efforts to undermine confidence in the departed member's business environment, maintaining various European Union media campaigns continuing cultivate Brexit messaging themes years after macro-economic trends surpassed it, and post-Brexit attempts by the German and French governments to try to centralize power in European institutions they collectively dominated in the absence of British obstruction.
Things do not need to be shadowy plots to be confluence of interests between parties. 'Soft Brexit' was never going to be an option due to interests, not technical impossiblity.
Yes, the EU could've gone out of its way to offer favorable stuff to a nation leaving the union. For no reason, nor any gain to itself. A painful Brexit could well have gone further than close existing deals and have the EU dip out, which (again!) is precisely what the British public voter repeatedly asked for. I will not blame the EU for giving the Brits what they asked for, nor will I blame them for failing to go out of their way to put on the kid gloves. 'Not maximally lenient' does not painful equate.
Yes, the EU did not go out of its way to be maximally lenient. I don't want it to become a second Canada, where the Quebecois can extract cash and prizes by holding the rest of the nation hostage - I would much prefer the Brits don't get theirs either. This doesn't require hurting them, which the EU still didn't do. It just requires you don't let them keep the spoils while shedding the burdens, which still isn't putting on the hurt. Any whinging on the Brits' part they got no special concessions is just that - whinging.
This doesn't read as a strong condemnation to me. An organisation... Wants to convince people they're better off with than without? Don't want those inside to leave? Want not to be the single most centralised monstrosity int he world?
If this is the EU working to hurt Britain, it is the most benign institution known to man; the very weakest level of wrath ever conceived of. If this is the EU being evil, eurosceptics are the most ornery of men for finding the absolute horror that is an organisation not caving for defectors intolerable in the face of generations-spanning peace.
Or maybe, this one time, we needn't treat the EU as a big boogeyman. The British asked for something, did it again, had years to figure out themselves, and got what they wanted. Good and hard, as they saying goes. I wish them good luck, I sincerely hope they do well for themselves, but speaking ill of the EU for not giving them more than they got and calling it hardball is silly as silly gets.
That is because it is not a condemnation, and suggests to me that you are mis-interpreting the position.
As @Harlequin5942 stated, I am not condemning. I maintain the EU made Brexit more painful than it had to be. Making things more painful than necessary is only a condemnation if you believe the point of geopolitics and diplomatic negotiations with allies is to minimize harm to all parties involved.
In so much as I condemn the EU's handling of Brexit, it is on grounds of competence in pursuit of what I view was their desired results of the negotiation strategy.
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Britain gets hurt leaving the EU simply by trade distance. They really never had a choice about being in the EU. Replacing more trade with America was never possible. The distances are too far. And I don’t mean actual physical trade. Like a merchant banker in the UK would never be financing a factory at the same ability in North Carolina as he would in Southern France.
Geography binds them to Europe. And while certain things on a lot fronts need standardized to reduce all sorts of trade frictions there’s also a desire to not have to take on all European cultural demands.
And part of Brexxit was not just cultural but a realization EU had bad policy. Monetary was far too tight leading to bad growth and then Syria happened because we fucked up Syria and a bunch of poor brown people invaded Europe that no one really wanted.
Yes, and they did this to themselves. You need no malice, not a shred, to explain this. Merely an absence of saintliness for not extending to the British all the benefits that come with the EU anyway.
Yes, the EU has poor policy along with good policy - so it goes. Not really relevant to the meme of someone shoving a stick up their bicycle's stake and crying why the EU would do this.
Who is attributing malice? The initial topic of your debate was whether EU actions had made Brexit more or less painful than it had to be.
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