Hungary's Viktor Orban: "The Frogmouth" Redux!

It's a case of life imitating art!

"The Flintstones," an American cartoon series from the 1960's featured an episode titled "The Frogmouth."

"The Frogmouth" was a stage play was about an unimportant, obnoxious, abrasive, loudmouth, and the director of the play felt that Fred Flintstone was a natural for the role.

Fast forward to the 21st century, to real life in the real world.

Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has become "The Frogmouth!"

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of frogmouths in the world of politics, especially among populists.

US President Trump and Russia's President Putin are two such examples on the world stage.

Along with China's President Xi, they are the three most powerful men in the world.

They can afford to be rude, crude, abrasive and aggressive because there is nobody out there powerful enough to stop them or even effectively resist them.

And then there's Viktor Orban, whose pretensions at being a global leader and intimate of the powerful "Big Three" would be laughable, if they weren't so annoying?

He is merely a big frog from a small pond, pretending that by kissing the asses of Trump, Putin and Xi that somehow elevates his status in the world.

Trump and Putin are delighted and amused by Orban's kissing up to them but aren't offering him anything approaching a place in their inner circles or counsels.

Trump is withdrawing from Europe and has no interest in Orban or Hungary, so Orban's flattery of Trump is getting him nowhere.

Putin only needs Orban to create division in the European Union and NATO, which reflects both the disunity and lack of effective leadership in those two bodies preventing them from opposing Russia in her aggressive endeavors.

While acting as Putin's stooge might have elevated Orban's belief in his own importance, it has not made him a major player in global politics, no matter what he tells his own people.

Nothing drives this fact home more than the fact that only Trump and Putin's envoys are conferring in Saudi Arabia to settle the war in Ukraine. The EU, Ukraine, Turkey AND Hungary were not invited to participate, despite the fact that Orban has been pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian through Putin's war of aggression there.

They simply have no need for Orban to be there.

Nor was Orban invited to President Trump's inauguration, despite his fulsome praise of the US President.

Trump didn't need or want him there. There was only room for one frogmouth at his inauguration, and it wasn't going to be Orban.

To save face, Orban claimed that he had other pressing matters on his plate that prevented him from attending Trump's inauguration.

So how is this truly unimportant politician, irrelevant on the global stage and from one of the smaller nations in Europe able to exact such attention from both the European Union and NATO?

It's simple: Both of those bodies require absolute unanimity to accomplish anything.

One vote can stop anything either the EU or NATO plans to do, whether it be the war in Ukraine, organizing a European army or even instituting a EU-wide tax system, like the liberum veto of the old Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

And Orban has become that one dissenting vote.

It appeals to his ego that they must come begging and pleading for him to approve any measures they propose.

At the same time Orban keeps shouting that the EU and NATO are on its last legs.

They are, and Viktor Orban is one of the causes.

So why doesn't Orban simply pull out of the EU and of NATO if they offend him so much?

The answer is simple: Without Hungary's membership in those two bodies, Hungary and Orban would be nothing, a small nation with no connections or influence in European politics, to say nothing of the global stage.

Orban's questionable value to Putin would vanish overnight, and Trump never needed him in the first place.

Orban's presence in the European Union and NATO allows him to be all that he can be: The Frogmouth.

He'll end up staying until they kick him out, but there is no really effective way for either of those two bodies to do that.

It is by that series of levers and pulleys that Orban has allowed himself the luxury of playing a greater role in Europe than he would ordinarily be entitled to do.