“The Hungarian Way of Strategy” Book Launch at the New York Young Republican Club & Liszt Institute New York’s Event

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!

It is a real privilege for me to speak to you at this event generously hosted by the New York Young Republican Club and the Liszt Institute.

I can remember the first time I visited New York City, we were just talking about it, it was in the beginning of 2000, all I could read about was how the city was struggling with dirty streets, drug use, and high crime rates. This was during Giuliani’s and then Bloomberg’s term as mayor, and I had been prepared for the worst really when I first came to New York. But when I visited, all I saw instead was a city that was clean, prosperous, vibrant, and full of life.

I drew three lessons from this:

One is that political leadership does matter. The second:  you cannot trust the mainstream media. And the third and most important, if you want to know something, you should go and see it for yourself.

So this is the reason why I’m really grateful to be with you today, here, in New York, joined by my friends, Heather, Sohrab, Gladden, and Will to have this discussion on how things are in Hungary and in the United States.

The organizers asked me to talk briefly about the book “The Hungarian way of strategy”. ‘That’s nice of you,’ you might say, but why on Earth would be The Hungarian Way of Strategy relevant to us, Americans? We need an American Way of Strategy, so return when you have something to say about that. We, Americans prefer to not let strategic issues go away from our hands.”  And this of course, makes sense.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we really do face similar problems. And therefore, there are overlapping points between Hungarian and American strategies. Today, I’ll be talking about these issues.

Before we dive in, the first question we have to answer is of course is ‘What is a strategy? Why do we need it? And how does it help us?

In my book, I use a joke to illustrate my point: (this is a joke) a group of mice go to the owl, who’s a well-known strategic expert in the animal kingdom.

‘Hey Owl, we’ve got a problem! Everyone’s picking on us, and we can’t defend ourselves. We’ve had enough. What should we do?’ The owl responds, ‘Well, why don’t you turn into hedgehogs? No one messes with them!’ ‘Uh, okay, that’s interesting, but how do we become hedgehogs?’ The mice ask. The owl replies, ‘How should I know? I only deal with strategy”.

I like this joke because it shows that just having an idea is not a strategy. It has to be relevant. It has to be applicable.

In recent years, the word “strategy” has been overused. It is used to describe everything from a vague intention to a mere set of values. We see examples of absurd ways in which strategy has been used, such as “hairstyle strategy” or “tooth brushing strategy,” leading to confusion and a lack of clarity in decision-making.

The word strategy is often used when the content is not a strategy at all. In my book, I take a more conservative approach to the term, defining it as a set of concrete goals and a detailed plan of action to achieve them.

I examined Hungarian history and focused on when we, Hungarians are as a nation, were successful. I extracted the motives and principles that played a key role in that kind of success. Times are of course changing, new technologies arise, but some things remain constant.

Our identity and the main principles that guide our actions don’t change. We need to know why we were successful in the past and then reinforce them. We should not forget, but rather reinforce it. The book tries to highlight these and strengthen that if we want to be successful and move things in the right direction, we need to hold on to these stories and experiences.

So, when I finished, I distilled 6 main traits of the Hungarian people and 19 principles we should always keep in mind when making decisions and strategies. But really don’t worry, I won’t list all of them. It doesn’t take much insight to know that the internal dynamism of the Carpathian Basin is obviously not very relevant in the American context.

But there are four principles that might interest you as well, which could help us navigate in contemporary ideological battles.

First principle: an individual can only exist as a member of a community. The individual helps the community and gets support from it in difficult times. Being part of a community is essential for human existence. Communities make nations and states strong from the bottom up. They support their members, who also help and complement each other.

Second principle: family is the smallest natural community. In the Western Civilization, Christianity brought us the idea of equality between men and women, which does not mean that men and women are the same. Family life is a part of private life, so it’s not the government’s job to interfere in family matters. But the government should protect important institutions, like marriage between a man and a woman, and a child’s right to have a mother and a father. The government should incentivize those who raise children, which is also the principle that the successful Hungarian family policy is based on.

These principles, extracted from Hungarian history, play an important role in today’s political debates in the entire Western Civilization. Unfortunately, we see today, that both sides of the Atlantic, that the institution of the family is under attack. The progressive forces they want to undermine the institution of the family by emptying family roles, deconstruction the concept of family, and spreading LGBTQ what so ever propaganda aimed to children. If you want your nation to strive and for the US and Hungary to be successful, you have to take a joint stance against these progressive ideologies.

Third principle: the nation is the largest natural community, based on shared identity. This identity is based on personal and family connections, as well as a common history, culture, and country. National identity can come from common ancestry, cultural ties, or citizenship. The nation is the highest level of natural and political community that an individual can experience as a member of the group with its own identity.

Today we see that the idea of a nation is under attack from at least two sides. Probably it’s even more, but we experienced two. First, by mass illegal immigration that threaten our common identity, history, and culture from the outside. Secondly, by the means of identity politics, namely, as you call it a woke movement from the inside, which actually wants to dismember the common identity of a nation, eliminating solidarity between the members of our nation. Actually we don’t have a word in Hungarian, so we also use the word ‘woke’, which is probably the only English based political word we have right now, but it shows clearly the resistance of the Hungarian language on that issue. This whole woke movement leads to the disappearance and disintegration of the nation as a political community. Conservative forces must do whatever they can to fight these phenomena. Otherwise, the nation we live in will be lost. That is why Hungary opposes illegal immigration from the beginning and combat identity politics on national and international level.

The fourth principle is that it’s the responsibility of states to serve and represent the interests of communities, including the nation and the family, both in domestic and foreign policy. Today, we see the rise of voices in international politics that argue that nation-states should be integrated into a supranational, global, or even international block-based governance. As Hungarians, we believe that this is a flawed idea and leads to dangerous trends shifting the focus of foreign policy from representing the national interest to representing some liberal interventionist idea.

This is the phenomenon that we often face pushed by the American current administration and the Ambassador in Budapest. Instead of building bridges, he comments on Hungary’s domestic policy on a regular basis, criticizes the government, and promotes LGTBQ activism. A few months ago (this is a very interesting story) the Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Zsolt Semjén said that in his view the duty of universities should be to seek, discover, and convey truth, adding that this is particularly important when – looking at universities in the United States – a neo-pagan and barbaric ideology is getting more and more popular, denying the values that humanity was created.

This quote might be a controversial claim and we can of course have a debate about it. But I’m turning to you know – please raise your hands if you think there is something in it. Is there something in it, in that kind of quote?

I think there is. You may like it or not, it is undeniable that a large part or at least a kind of majority of Americans would agree with the Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister’s claim that the duty of the university should be to seek, discover, and convey truth, not doing something else.

And you know what the US Ambassador and the US administration has to say about it? Who did he compare the Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister on the Twitter video published on the official account of the US Embassy?

You guessed it: Vladimir Putin.

We see that the United States as our friend. Friends do not have to agree on everything, but a good friendship is always based on mutual respect.  With this foreign policy and confrontative strategy the United States will not be able to keep and strengthen relations with other countries. On the contrary.

OK, but what can be the solution? It’s easy. Ditch this liberal ideology. Represent your national interest. And the most effective way to do this is by pursuing to base the international order on the voluntary cooperation of free and independent nations. We must not allow the world to be divided into hostile blocs of dependent nations, as it threatens today. This goes against the interests of Western civilization. The West continues to take the military lead, which gives us confidence. But non-western countries are already in competition with us in terms of technology and economy, and already has an advantage in demography and natural resources. If the Western world closes itself to a bloc formation, it will isolate itself and harm its own chances of success. The cooperation of free nations has made the West great. We should continue to stick to it in the future!

Dear friends,

people say, that there are two rules of success. First: don’t tell all you know. And I won’t tell you the second.

Well, it seems I failed in the sense by writing a book. But I don’t mind because at least it gave us the opportunity to come together today and have such a wonderful event.

I would like to thank again the Liszt Institute, as well as the oldest and largest republican club in the United States and a great friend of Hungary, the New York Young Republican Club for putting together this event.

I am humbled by so many of you joining us tonight instead of enjoying this wonderful spring weather in New York.

Thank you very much to all of you, I really look forward to the discussion.