Viktor Orbán has dedicated enormous financial resources to developing international soft power networks with the purpose of influencing politics in Western Europe and the United States. A few examples include Matthias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a non-degree granting “university” with campuses in Brussels and Vienna, which was granted a $1.7 billion endowment by the Orbán government and which offers generous international visiting fellowships to conservative public intellectuals, including Americans like Rod Dreher and Gladden Pappin; the Budapest based Danube Institute, funded by Orbán’s government but headed by John O’Sullivan, which recently established a cooperative agreement with the Washington based Heritage Foundation; appearances by Viktor Orbán and other members of the Hungarian government at National Conservatism conferences organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation; and Hungary’s hosting of two CPAC meetings.
These large investments have yielded dividends. Tucker Carlson has visited the country at least twice and featured the country prominently in 2021 on his show on Fox Network. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, was recently awarded a high state honor by Orbán’s government. Vice-president elect J.D. Vance has praised the Orbán government for its traditionalist policy decisions and has suggested that the government has made some “smart decisions that we could learn from in the United States.” Perhaps most significantly, Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 means Orbán will have a key ally in the U.S. Administration.
Hungary offers a clear illustration of how to use soft power to gain outsized influence. The country attracts far more interest and admiration (in some circles) than it deserves based on its size and significance. For Orbán, this is a clear foreign policy success. That doesn’t mean Orbán’s entire foreign policy agenda will succeed, but he has had more success, and he has a more coherent foreign policy vision, than his critics often acknowledge.
Viktor Orbán’s foreign policy
Viktor Orbán has laid out his foreign policy vision in programmatic speeches that, if somewhat rambling, are coherent at their core. Orbán also has a political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), who has been working on articulating Hungary’s foreign policy agenda for several years. Balázs Orbán has been interviewed at length by Tucker Carlson, was involved in organizing CPAC – Hungary, and traveled with Viktor Orbán to Mar-a-Lago in 2024 to meet Trump and visit the Heritage Foundation. In 2021, he published a book, translated into English and available on Amazon, titled The Hungarian Way of Strategy. In 2024 he published another book that outlines specific foreign policy ideas, titled Hussar Cut: The Hungarian Strategy of Connectivity. Both books were published by MCC press; in other words, by Viktor Orbán’s heavily endowed university/think tank. In fact, Balázs Orbán is chair of the Board of Trustees of MCC and appears to supervise directly its work. He also supervises the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs where Gladdin Pappen, a far-right American Catholic, acts as president.
Balázs Orbán’s books are both an attempt to articulate Hungary’s foreign policy and also part of an international influence campaign. Hussar Cut, in particular, lays out elements of a vision that Viktor Orbán has repeated in his speeches. A central element in this foreign policy is the pursuit of a Sonderweg, a kind of Third Way between “East” and “West.” The success of Hungary’s Sonderweg depends on changes to the geopolitical environment, but the aim of Viktor Orbán’s soft-power initiatives is to make those geopolitical changes more likely.
The so-called Hussar Cut
In Hussar Cut, Balázs Orbán devotes a lot of attention so-called connectivity. Connectivity is a way to describe the network of international relationships that emerge as a consequence of globalization. One might expect the political director of a regime that places a premium on national sovereignty to look askance at globalization, but B. Orbán actually thinks connectivity is a good thing. The problem, in his view, is not connectivity but bloc formation. Bloc formation represents a return to Cold War patterns of alignment, one in which countries organize themselves into enemy camps which leads to decoupling and the end of connectivity.
Bloc formation would also make it harder for Hungary to maintain relationships with both Russia and China, on the one hand, and the European Union and the United States, on the other. However, B. Orbán needs a generalizable argument to show that bloc formation would be bad not just for Hungary, but for everyone. Thus, he asserts that the “West” is weak and will inevitably lose in a contest with the “East,” stating, “it would be self-evidently suicidal for the entire Western world to narrow its scope and arbitrarily divide the world into blocs.” (Hussar Cut, 19).
There are at least two problems with B. Orbán’s line of argument. First, he never defines “West” and “East.” He clearly equates the West with the United States, but he never explains who belongs to the “East.” Does the “East” refer to China, or to China and Russia, or to China, Russia and Eastern Europe? And where should India, Africa, and South America be placed? Second, B. Orbán’s claim that the “West” is seeking to return the world to a Cold War formation is—at the very least—highly contentious. He simply passes over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its geopolitical implications for Europe, and never mentions Chinese ambitions in Taiwan and the Eastern Pacific. Russia and China are presented as largely passive, reacting defensively to aggressive moves from the “West” (i.e., the United States).
The argument about Western decline provides ideological justification for things Viktor Orbán wants to do anyway. Because the Hungarian regime wants to preserve connectivity with Russia and China, it is already committed a priori to assertions that the West is weaker than the East. Indeed, just last year Viktor Orbán delivered a speech in Romania in which he claimed the world is on the threshold of a new geopolitical order that will be dominated by China for at least several hundred years. This prophecy is largely a projection of Orbán’s desires. If his foreign policy is to succeed, it must be true that the West is declining and that China will dominate a new emerging international order.
Hungarian strategy aims to maintain connectivity with both East and West in the face of increasing conflict and opposition between those camps. To maintain connectivity in such an environment depends, in Balázs Orbán’s words, on “the ability to seize opportunities—and at the same time to recognize dangers.” (Hussar Cut, page 213). Balázs Orbán invokes the tradition of Hungary’s cavalry, the Hussars, who would “strike first, typically against a much larger enemy, using speed and initiative to constantly disrupt the enemy’s ranks.” (Hussar Cut, page 10). In the context of connectivity, employing the Hussar cut means cutting deals that maximize the benefits and minimize the risks inherent in international relationships. “In a globalized world,” he writes, “interdependencies necessarily develop to such a degree that states must manage them. The principle underlying this process is that the relative advantages of each dependency must outweigh the relative disadvantages.” (Hussar Cut, page 20)
In practice this boils down to improvised decision-making. The clever Hungarian Hussar is constantly negotiating, securing an advantage here, conceding when necessary there, but always in a way such that he comes out ahead. “There is a need for a decision-maker—for ‘enhanced leadership’—to override automatic processes when the need arises.” (Hussar Cut, page 218). In order to succeed, this strategy needs a great and able leader, a kind of Hungarian Otto von Bismarck, or the next best thing, a Viktor Orbán.
Critical observations
I suggest the so-called Hussar cut strategy is a variation on an older Sonderweg, or Third Way thinking, that was common in Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Third Way thinking is often associated with Germany, and the idea that European lands descended from the Holy Roman Empire faced developmental challenges that separated them from the nations of both Western and Eastern Europe. However, Third Way thinking also has a strong history in Hungary. It is largely associated with Hungary’s 20th century népi (folk) movement, or what in German would probably be called a völkisch movement.
Népi writers were focused on the economic problems of Hungary’s rural population. They wanted to pursue a path of development that avoided the evils of liberalism and communism, and they were concerned about preserving Hungary’s distinct national identity. According to the sympathetic historian Gyula Borbándi, népi writers believed that, “leaning on foreign power never led to the satisfaction of the country’s needs and delayed national development, expansion and growth. It was preferable for the Hungarian people to rely on their own strength and follow their own interests, because when they fell under the pull of a great power, the interests of the great power were placed first.” (Borbándi, 505).
The Hussar cut, at least according to its self-presentation, is about maintaining Hungarian independence from great powers to pursue distinct Hungarian interests. Setting aside questions about whether Third Way strategies have tended to succeed for Hungary, the approach is clearly at odds with Hungary’s membership in the European Union and NATO. The European Union is premised on European integration. It seeks to bring the nations of Europe together to overcome the kind of developmental differences that once made Third Way thinking attractive and plausible. Meanwhile, NATO is a military alliance intended to protect Europe from the sort of military aggression we are currently witnessing in Ukraine. Orbán’s commitment to Third Way thinking means he is only transactionally committed to these relationships. Hungarian foreign policy aims to secure maximum advantage from its alliances while making minimal commitments to them. This kind of double dealing is the heart and soul of the so-called Hussar Cut.
Another dimension of Hungarian foreign policy is an ambition to develop Hungary into what Balázs Orbán calls a “keystone state”—another word for regional power. According to him, keystone states exert outsized influence in their regions by maximizing on connectivity. Like everything else, this requires negotiating cleverly between competing blocs and powers.
A keystone state strategy informs Viktor Orbán’s approach to the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland), to the Balkans (particularly Serbia, but also North Macedonia and Slovenia), and increasingly toward Austria. Viktor Orbán hopes to build alliances with enough of these countries to create a bloc within the EU large enough to counterbalance and neutralize Western European influence. Although he presents himself as an EU skeptic, Viktor Orbán supports extending EU membership to Balkan states because he’s looking for allies. He thinks a bloc of central and eastern European countries led by Hungary could undermine rule of law mechanisms directed against him and reduce the number of EU infringement procedures against Hungary. A sufficiently large bloc of autocratic countries within the EU, or countries with governments sympathetic to autocracy, would create more freedom of action for Orbán to strengthen his authoritarian regime at home without facing external pressure (The fact that forming a central European bloc would seem to contradict Balázs Orbán’s admonitions against bloc formation is a symptom of the purely ideological function of the so-called Hussar Cut).
Returning to the issue of soft-power, one can see that Viktor Orbán’s aim with soft power initiatives is to change the domestic policies of Western countries, particularly the United States, such that the geopolitical environment becomes more friendly to his Sonderweg. The clearest and most successful example of Hungarian soft power has been Orbán’s influence campaign with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. By courting favor with Republicans, Orbán hopes to change US policy not only toward Hungary, but also toward Ukraine. Orbán believes that an end to the war in Ukraine would alleviate a lot of the pressure he is currently feeling from the EU. Moreover, he hopes that an isolationist American foreign policy would weaken the transatlantic alliance and strengthen forces of illiberalism in Western Europe. This in turn would make it easier for Orbán to continue his autocratic rule in Hungary.
In sum, Orbán’s foreign policy seeks to make the world safe for illiberalism. The so-called Hussar cut, and the search for a Third Way, are not the signs of an independent and sovereign Hungarian foreign policy. Rather they are marks of Hungary’s alignment with Russia and China, and its collaboration with those regimes in the effort to destroy the liberal world order.
H. David Baer is a professor of theology and philosophy at Texas Lutheran University. He has written two books on Hungary and writes frequently on Hungarian politics.
Image made by John Chrobak using “Berlaymont building (DSCF7542-DSCF7548)” by Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) licensed under CC BY 4.0; “Hungary-02281 – Hussar” by Dennis Jarvis licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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