Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States has seriously weakened authoritarian and populist governments around the world. For independent global powers like Russia, Brazil and Turkey, Donald Trump’s departure need not amount to a complete tragedy. But for the governments of Poland, Hungary and Serbia—and perhaps Boris Johnson’s United Kingdom, too—it is a veritable disaster.
Not surprisingly, each of these smaller players has greeted Biden’s election with fear and loathing. Putting it most bluntly, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has already complained that, ‘I did not get along with Biden when he came to Serbia [as Barack Obama’s vice president]. I can’t get along with him now. I congratulated him and that’s it.’ Clearly, Russia, not America, will remain Vucic’s pole star.
For his part, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has long made it clear that his ‘Plan A’ was for a Trump victory, reflecting how close the two have become. Like Vucic, the Hungarian government harbors resentments for things Biden said back in the Obama era, when, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, Hungary was the subject of ‘continuous lecturing, accusations and attacks’.
To be sure, before Trump came to power, Orban was practically persona non grata in Washington. The last US president to visit Hungary was George W. Bush in 2006, when Orban was out of power. After Orban took office in 2010, the Obama administration repeatedly criticised him for its authoritarian tendencies, clampdown on public and private media, and kleptocracy. In return, Hungary introduced sanctions against several high-level US officials, and—following Trump’s arrival in the White House—kicked the US-accredited Central European University out of the country.
Read the article by Slawomir Sierakowski in The Strategist.