Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Dallas to make the case for continued US aid to Ukraine to the heavily republican crowd.
“I urge all of you to follow it. It’s going to repay in the long term, he said rightly.
Johnson’s speech contrasted not only with the views of two GOP presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but in addition with those of Viktor Orbán.
The Hungarian prime minister has grow to be the model of a recent right-wing politics that breaks with the standard conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher, not to say the spongy center-right politics of the massive European Christian Democratic parties.
Nonetheless, Johnson’s sentiments towards Ukraine and Russia are much more representative of the insurgent populist right in Europe than Orbán’s – notwithstanding the large role the latter plays within the conservative imagination in america, due to his links with Tucker Carlson and the large involvement of the Hungarian government . investing in conservative outreach in America through scholarships, study programs, and the organization of the CPAC conference in Budapest.
As for Ukraine, Orbán has grow to be an increasingly isolated actor, straining ties along with his former political allies across the continent, refusing to take any steps to counter Russian aggression.
For years, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – equally against immigration and even has a large contingent of Catholic integralists – was seen as a mirror image of Orbán’s Fidesz party.
Ten years ago, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński even promised to “construct Budapest in Warsaw.”
Those days are over.
While Orbán ruled out any military aid to Ukraine and sought to weaken European Union sanctions against Russia, the PiS government was a European leader in each helping Ukraine and hosting thousands and thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
In relative terms, Poland provided aid to Ukraine greater than twice as much as america (0.9% against 0.4% of gross domestic product).
An analogous story will be told of the right-wing populist insurgents within the Nordic countries who pioneered the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic policies so attractive to today’s Republican Party: the Finns Party of Finland, the Danish People’s Party and the Sweden Democrats.
All of them condemned the Russian invasion and pushed for more military and financial aid to Ukraine.
Furthermore, the Sweden Democrats are a part of the ruling coalition searching for to bring Sweden into NATO, breaking a long time of comfortable neutrality and turning the country right into a US treaty ally.
Enter Italy, where the conflict is just not seen through the identical existential prism as in Poland, and its fiery prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
Previously, left-wing critics described her Brothers of Italy party as neo-fascist.
Meloni is, as she says herself, a defender of “God, homeland and family” and a critic of same-sex marriage, euthanasia and the European Union.
In February 2022, she was enthusiastically received on the CPAC conference in Florida.
Meloni’s approach to war is straightforward.
Ukraine is the “security outpost of the European continent” and must receive all the assistance it needs.
Not only this ought to be brought into the EU: “The neatest approach to thank Ukrainians for what they do is to hurry up the chance for them to grow to be a part of the European institutions.”
Republicans should be aware of this.
There may be nothing conservative a couple of shilling for Russian President Vladimir Putin as he wages war on a sovereign nation in Russia’s neighborhood.
Except for the strongman kinship, Orbán’s behavior could have complex historical reasons – primarily his delusions of rebuilding a greater pre-1920 Hungary – but they have little to do with the essence of the brand new right-wing politics.
More importantly, they have absolutely nothing to do with the interest of america and our allies in keeping Russia and China at bay.
Johnson’s trip to Texas was a terrific start, but way more must be done to interrupt the appeal of Orbán and his idiosyncrasies amongst American conservatives who’re on the lookout for a way forward after 2016, each in foreign and domestic policy.
Working with a wider spectrum of right-wing leaders from Europe who share the identical cultural sensibilities but in addition see clearly what’s at war in Ukraine could be a superb next step, each for the GOP presidential candidates and for the complete party elite.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute.
Twitter: @DaliborRohac