Horváth Gábor: Great wars both make and ruin alliances

15.06.2023 0 By Writer.NS

Horváth Gábor

The Russian invasion of Ukraine contributed to the creation or, on the contrary, to the destruction of certain alliances. Newssky asked Horváth Gábor, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Hungarian newspaper «Népszava» to share his vision of the state of the Visegrád Group and the likely change in the format of this association.

Great wars both make and ruin alliances. It happened again and will continue to happen in case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. First, Russia lost some friends in the former Soviet Union — President Tokayev of Kazakhstan opted out of the St-Petersburg forum, for one loud example. Other historical allies like Armenia also drew lessons about the new realities of the world. A multipolar world looks great in theory, but in real life, when things come to fight, nobody wants to face the bear alone. Russia’s longstanding friendship with India has seen better days, too: the largest importer of Russian arms is turning elsewhere for new generations of defense equipment.

China, who has never been a true friend, but whose goodwill matters a lot in the current situation — is far too cautious to fully support Putin’s war.

South Africa and Brazil, with all their regional clout, are no world powers yet. Neither is Iran, Russia’s only reliable ally and provider of drones and missiles, also buyers of Sukhoy planes — if any surplus remained.
NATO, instead of withdrawing from its 1997 borders, now includes Finland and Sweden is practically also in. Legally, it will probably join soon, while Japan is having strange thoughts about the whereabouts of the Northern Atlantic. Ukraine will probably get encouragement at the coming Summit of the alliance that it might become a member, if not now, then in the foreseeable future. European members of NATO have become more united than ever—maybe with one single exception, Viktor Orbán’s government, which is a wild outlier not just in case of the war but in countless other ways as well.

One casualty of the war was the Visegrád Group. The reason behind its creation was the joint aim of Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join the EU and NATO. After the completion of these goals, the V4 struggled to find common ground in an increasing number of issues, which shouldn’t surprise anybody. These countries share a long history of not being free from conflicts and often view each other as competitors in both economy and geopolitics. One example from the past was the race to get visa-waiver status from the US. Poland and Hungary behaved in Washington as ruthless competitors — instead of keeping a joint front as expected from such good friends, they were ready to accept one-sided American favors. Interests and friendly worlds are two completely different stories.

Still, it would be a surprise to see the V4 getting dissolved or dramatically reshaped. Instead, I expect new alliances to emerge, especially with Romania and the Baltic countries gaining in both geopolitical and military importance. One can only imagine that European — and American — diplomacy also encourages the efforts of these countries to distance themselves from the toxic pro-Russian government in Budapest. As for Ukraine, there are opportunities opening left and right. If bilateral relations with Hungary are as they are now, there is no reason to speak about joining the V4, which is in many respects a thing of the past anyway. The Bucharest9 format has more promise in both in the short and long run, but one should not exclude the possibility of the emergence of completely new alliances including, for example, Georgia, Armenia, and, who knows, maybe Kazakhstan. And we didn’t even mention the theoretical possibility of some territories of the Russian Federation becoming independent states in the future.

Українською