It has been two weeks since Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán caught the Atlanticists off guard, by landing in Kyiv on July 2, on what would be the first of five trips on his “peace mission.” It was followed by meetings in Moscow, Beijing, Washington and Mar-a-Lago. Apparently unfazed by the screams and howls of Brussels bureaucrats, yesterday he submitted his summary to Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. The message was clear. After warning that, left alone, “the intensity of the military conflict will radically intensify in the near future,” he proposed the EU get together with China about a peace conference.
On one level, China has already presented to the EU and others their 12-point peace proposal, so what is new about the proposal of the prime minister of Hungary? How much difference can it make for one member of the EU, and of NATO, to break ranks and second China’s initiative?
Beyond Orbán’s specific actions the last two weeks, what torments the Atlanticists is that Orbán knows that there will be screams of outrage and, apparently, he’s already taken that into account. He remains on point, unflappable. In that regard, he shares an approach with China’s Xi Jinping. They both know they are talking with Western leaders that have, to be diplomatic, a passing familiarity with craziness; yet, they calmly, relentlessly proceed, as if everyone is completely intelligent and of good will.
It is worth mentioning that Orbán is not pushing a geopolitical scheme whereby the West pivots away from Russia, only to re-tool for a grand showdown with China. Orbán and Hungary want to be part of the grand infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road. The addiction in the West to a series of Ponzi schemes has been the driver of militaristic geopolitical schemes; but it’s not normal.
China just reported a record trade surplus last month of $99 billion. Last year China exported $3.38 trillion in manufactured goods. Of special note, in the four quarters ending March 2024, net new bank loans to industrial borrowers reached six times its previous peak, up to $614 billion. As the New York Times put it, “lending to industries has almost exactly replaced the loans that previously went to the real estate sector.” That is, faced with the massive Evergrande speculative real estate bubble, China stepped in, de-leveraged the speculation, and channeled credit to industry. One can trace that to Alexander Hamilton’s National Bank strategy, to a Confucian moral code or to China’s version of socialism—regardless, they did what any normal country would do.
Today, China’s semi-official Global Times featured an extensive interview with the independent candidate for U.S. Congress from the Bronx (CD15), Jose Vega, a proponent of the economist and philosopher Lyndon LaRouche, who means to rebuild the Bronx with Hamiltonian methods. Global Times highlighted the courage and morality of Vega and two collaborators—Simon Miller and Robert Castle—in publicly calling out those, such as neo-con Matthew Pottinger, who, as Vega explained, “spreads lies and is paid to confuse the American public. He is trying to get us into wars and a nuclear confrontation, not just with China, but with Russia as well. His job is to make sure that the American public has some kind of hatred that’s unfounded and irrational toward China.…” There’re a lot of Chinese who would enjoy learning that some normal Americans exist.
China’s Xi Jinping has put on the world’s table the very American model that poverty can be eliminated and middle classes be created with properly-chosen great infrastructure projects, and the protection for long-term capital formation practices to aid and abet those projects. Orbán has put on the world’s table that a leader of a Western nation can hear that, both as it applies to economics and to peaceful collaboration amongst nations.
It makes all the difference in the world that patriots in each of their countries, as they break free from the fantasy that NATO will get their Ukraine proxy to militarily defeat Russia, to learn Orbán’s or Xi’s patient, relentless optimism, based upon the Belt and Road approach. That process of, call it, “intelligent nationalism” must not only proceed forward, but it must outpace the expected assassinations and terror from the nasties amongst the Atlanticist “permanent war” crowd. The Schiller Institute’s July 10 webcast “Orbán Tries Diplomacy While NATO Plans More War” should help accelerate the good guys forward!
