—Gabor Halmai, emeritus professor, ELTE University, Budapest and European University Institute (EUI), Florence, visiting professor, LUISS Guido Carli in Rome; and Andrew Ryder, Director, Institute for Political and International Studes, ELTE University, Budapest
In December, the administration of President Trump issued one of the most important, and in the opinion of some observers, alarming statements on security ever. The new National Security Strategy document reveals deep insights into US perceptions of Europe with claims that Europe in terms of civilizational values, democracy, and the free market is experiencing decline. It is claimed that Europe and its leaders are weak. It is reported that an expanded version of the security document urges the US administration to ally itself more deeply to nationalist populist governments in Europe like Italy and Hungary who are said to place a strong emphasis on sovereignty.
It was little surprise to see Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán echoing this worldview by claiming the Trump administration was reflecting sentiments that he had been voicing for years. Indeed, Orbán has been a major internal critic of the European Union, and the direction Europe is taking and has systemically broken EU values and laws to the degree that some question whether Hungary is now fit to be an EU member.
Why are the claims in the security document alarming? The Trump administration is in effect aligning itself with a number of reactive values that are counter to Enlightenment and progressive conceptions of Europe which, in response to the devastation fascism unleashed in Europe in World War II, tried to establish a new postwar order, where the United Nations, NATO and the European Union acted to bolster the chances of a free Europe that could resist the advance of Soviet totalitarianism but also not return to the fascism of the interwar years. This postwar order placed an important emphasis on the Rule of Law, democracy and free markets that have crystallized into core principles of the EU. Some would say these had some success but are now under serious threat, especially because the last two decades have witnessed an increasing contestation of liberal democracy within the EU.
It isn’t only Hungary and Viktor Orbán, his followers in Central and Eastern Europe such as Kaczyński, Fico and Babiš but also the growing number of Western European nationalist populist parties have been vociferous in dissent over the core values of Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union: Rule of Law, democracy, and fundamental rights. The current state of the European Union as a ‘value’ community with its ‘democratic deficit’ is weaker now than it used to be in 2005 when the constitutional project failed because of the lack of the ‘European people’ as a joint subject of a constitution. It was Dieter Grimm, the former judge of the German Federal Constitutional Court who argued that without the existence of the European people, a European constitution is not possible and not needed either. And it was Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher, who in reply to Grimm argued that a European constitution would help to establish the European people with a common constitutional identity. Today, the same Jürgen Habermas sadly adds that, while claiming that further political integration at least of the core of the European Union has never been as vital for the survival of Europe, such integration has also never been as improbable to achieve as today.
If the EU ceases to exist as a value community, and is unable to achieve solidarity within, it will be even more vulnerable to reactive forces and governance styles as espoused by Putin, Orbán and Trump, who do not represent the genuine national interest of their countries, but rather that of kleptocracy where abuse of power leads to corruption and greed. Putin and Orbán’s associates including family members have become fabulously rich. In the US the business interests of Trump and his oligarchs seem to determine the fate of the two largest wars in the current world in Ukraine and Gaza with Trump eyeing up the potential for real estate development in Gaza and being fixated on mineral rights deals in the Ukraine giving the US preferential rights to mineral extraction. In its current shape, the EU looks like President Zelensky did during his February visit in the White House, when the host, the supposed ally, blamed him for not having cards to play. (It’s a small sign of the changed situation that the most recent EU Horizon project calls, which used to emphasize democracy and Rule of Law, now emphasize borders, security and terrorism.)
The Trump administration is obviously not playing the role of a fair mediator in the Ukraine conflict and is pushing for a peace agreement that will not only favor Putin’s Russia but ultimately embolden Putin to come back for more, probably much more, placing European security at deep risk and violating the principle promoted in the postwar order that aggression should not be rewarded, acting as a bulwark against future manifestations of fascism and illiberalism. These are principles that Trump and Orbán are now eroding.
Orbán has done his utmost to support the interests of Putin in the Ukraine conflict, seeking to thwart European sanctions and aid and support for Ukraine and being one of the only leaders in Europe willing to play court to Putin. Tellingly Orbán, together with his Slovakian and Czech friends in illiberal principles opposed not only the finally abandoned use of the frozen Russian assets, but also the European Council’s decision of December 18 to provide a loan to Ukraine of EUR 90 billion for the years 2026-2027 secured by joint borrowing, which is an important step forward by the EU against the aggressor. Such is Orbán’s sycophancy to Russian interests that he declared on December 19 that it was unclear who started the Russia-Ukraine war, choosing to ignore Russia’s clear act of aggression and territorial seizure of Ukrainian territories. This happened the same day that Putin stated that “we weren’t the ones who started the war”. Orbán said that “taking the money of one side and giving it to the other would drag the EU into the conflict. It’s marching into the war.”
Perhaps the Orbán regime showed its true colors when a key adviser to Orbán claimed that Hungary would be foolish to follow the actions of Ukraine, namely resisting, if invaded by Russia. According to many, this statement implies that the Hungarian resistance against the Soviet invasion in 1956 was futile. Such comments reveal the lack of value the governing party of Hungary, Fidesz, has for the international Rule of Law and standing up to Putin by openly turning its back on the principles and values of what had been one of the proudest moments in Hungarian history and identity, the Hungarian uprising.
However, not only are Trump and Orbán playing the role of enablers for Putin’s expansionist dreams to restore Russia’s prestige to levels enjoyed under the Soviet Union, but they are also content to promote Putin’s racist and reactionary world view. Putin has long held contempt for Western liberalism. In 2019 he stated in an interview with the Financial Times that liberalism, the ideology that has underpinned Western democracies for decades, had “outlived its purpose”. Hence, Putin – like Orbán and Trump – has attacked the central foundations of liberalism namely the Rule of Law, civil society, free speech and academic freedom. In the United States, ‘Orbánism’ is lauded as a model and template in a programme of reactive change, the scale, speed and audacity of which has taken many by surprise.
Putin has also praised the rise of nationalist populism in Europe and America, saying ideas like multiculturalism were “no longer tenable”. Putin has frequently claimed identity politics, migration, social spending, and alignment to a “globalist agenda” are dragging Europe down. Such views resonate with Orban’s support for the ‘replacement theory’, a conspiracy theory that claims shadowy liberal elites want to flood Europe with migrants to fragment national identities and facilitate the erosion of national sovereignties. Trump’s nativism and orchestrated campaigns of demonization against migrants have been most sharply seen with the recent ICE roundups. Such actions, together with the three leaders’ attacks on notions of equality towards women and the LGBTQI community, provide dark insights into the nature of the national chauvinism espoused by Putin, Orbán and Trump.
In 2022 a video was aired on Russian television and was heavily circulated on social media which depicted a Russian couple emigrating from Russia to the United States. The flow of Russians fleeing the country accelerated around this time with the start of the war in Ukraine. The video contains scenes filled with racist and homophobic stereotypes and anti-American propaganda. In one scene the Russian couple meet a woman who tells them that America is the freest country in the world, before introducing them to another woman, whom she describes as her husband. The video ends on a frame showing the couple jumping out of the plane wearing parachutes, having apparently regretted their decision to leave Russia. The video gives some insight into the reactionary views actively promoted by Putin in Russia, which are mirrored in the so-called anti-woke agendas of Trump and Orbán who seem to share Putin’s moral conservatism. Orbán’s ban on the Budapest pride march in the summer of 2025 and threat to use biometric information to prosecute those attending with fines was strongly denounced by public intellectuals in Hungary as a serious attack on freedom of assembly that was steered by homophobic tropes and attempts to create culture war divides.
Rather than being weak, as the security strategy document suggests, European leaders, namely Starmer, Macron and Merz, whom the security document seems to hold in contempt, are displaying real leadership in defense of European values. Their effort to give support to Ukraine by leading the ‘coalition of the willing’ and their insistence that there must be a just and long-lasting peace agreement have sought to fill the political and moral space vacated by the United States, which is not standing up to Putin.
Ultimately the panacea to this civilizational clash between liberalism and authoritarianism is the rekindling of the European project and liberal democracy. This warrants change, with fundamental innovations in dialogue, decision making and the role of civil society to address the democratic deficit and sense of disconnection in modern-day democracies. Markets, while needing to be free, also must be regulated with a new social contract that reduces economic and social vulnerabilities, which have been one of the biggest drivers of the populist phenomenon, certainly since the global financial crisis of 2008. A de-feudalized, free and open public sphere, including protection for the autonomy of universities, may allow us to have honest discussions about the deep crises or polycrisis the world faces, namely environmental catastrophe, growing economic precarity, demagoguery and a public sphere increasingly dominated by fake news, tropes and orchestrated public hysteria that distracts us from talking about the real rather than imaginary challenges facing the world.
Europe however also needs to speak directly to the Russian people, and assure them that if they reject Putin, the politics of demagoguery, and the corruption of oligarchs, while seeking to return to a transition to liberal democracy, they will be rewarded with closer ties and partnership with Europe, perhaps ultimately fulfilling De Gaulle’s vision of a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.
Regarding the chances to reverse democratic decline in the U.S. and its dependent democracies in the world, three American political scientists warn of the dangers of complacency and fatalism, on the one hand underestimating the threat posed to democracy, on the other hand overestimating the impact of authoritarianism, believing America has reached a point of no return and discouraging the citizen actions required to defeat autocrats at the ballot box.
Here in Hungary, taking into account the country’s history of authoritarianism with a short period of liberal democracy from 1990 to 2010 prior to Viktor Orbán’s one-and-a-half decades of autocratic rule, provide good reasons for pessimism. This was also reflected in the first sentence of the Nobel Prize lecture of László Krasznahorkai held on December 7, 2025: “On receiving the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, I originally wished to share my thoughts with you on the subject of hope, but as my stores of hope have definitively come to an end.” Four days later in his acceptance speech at the award ceremony he slightly changed his mind by stating: “It doesn’t seem like all hope is lost in this dark world. It’s just that we don’t know how or when it will emerge.” As we come into 2026, a new year, the civilizational choice facing Europe is profound and it is not clear where the path for hope lays. We will need to reflect on the lessons of history which tell us that appeasing and rewarding dictators has deeply tragic consequences. Let us hope that the upcoming election in Hungary, expected in April 2026, and the mid-term elections in the US in November 2026 will be important indicators as to whether the world drifts further into authoritarianism or turns a page on the present dark chapter.
Suggested citation: Gabor Halmai and Andrew Ryder, A Civilizational Battle for Reversing Democratic Decline Worldwide: A View from Hungary, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Dec. 30, 2025, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/a-civilizational-battle-for-reversing-democratic-decline-worldwide-a-view-from-hungary/