Sometime during the late 1800s, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire still stretched from the Adriatic Sea to modern-day Ukraine, a Hungarian entered a bookstore in Vienna and asked the clerk, “Can you sell me a globe of Hungary?” By so perfectly capturing the hubris of a people who feel their nation is the world, the story has become apocryphal. Of course, within a generation, Hungary would be stripped of two-thirds of its territory by the Treaty of Trianon, making the globe-buyer’s pride seem less farcical and almost tragic in retrospect.
But the story takes on yet another meaning today because, in the wake of the April 12 parliamentary elections in Hungary, it has been non-Hungarians who have been asking to see the globe of Hungary. Moderate and liberal political observers not only in Vienna but also in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and New York see the crushing defeat of strongman Viktor Orban as signaling the ebbing of global illiberalism. The hope is that where Hungary goes, the world will follow: far-right candidates such as Marine Le Pen, for instance, will not win in France, and the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) will not triumph in Germany.
But just like the perspective of the original globe-buyer, this view is far from reality. Peter Magyar, the new prime minister of Hungary, won because of a wave of antiestablishment energy that can just as easily benefit populist contenders in other countries. In the recent Bulgarian elections, for instance, the political party of the former president, Rumen Radev, whom Western media describe as a Russophile and Euroskeptic, ran and won on an anticorruption campaign similar to Magyar’s in Hungary—proving that powerful anticorruption rhetoric can bring to power not only Orban’s opponents but also the kinds of political leaders usually seen as his allies.
If anything, once elected to power, national populists in Europe will continue looking for ways to remake liberal democratic regimes, and Orban’s playbook will still be viewed as extremely valuable. Indeed, his defeat does not signal the end of far-right politics in Europe but rather an end to the illusion that Trumpism is a global movement. By accepting defeat and not challenging the outcome, as Trump did in 2020 and has promised to do again, Orban reaffirmed the democratic credentials of Europe’s new right. And as a fellow conservative, Magyar represents not a repudiation of Orban-style nationalism but its evolution.
His victory signals a new era for European politics. By distancing itself from Trump, the far right in Europe may actually push the continent toward a new consensus—one in which pro-European elites are ready to accept the centrality of the nation-states in the future of European integration while far-right parties accept that Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, not Brussels, are the real threat to their national sovereignties. Europe, in other words, might finally become more European.
How Orban Lost Hungary
In many ways, Orban, Europe’s longest-serving prime minister, had become for the political right what, decades ago, Fidel Castro was for the political left: a leader of a small, relatively unimportant nation who nonetheless captured the world’s imagination. He made Hungary the intellectual, institutional, and financial hub of Europe’s new right. If you were a far-right intellectual, Budapest would treat you like a king. If you were a far-right party, Hungarian banks would gladly help you with a loan. If you were a Polish former right-wing minister (such as Zbigniew Ziobro) or a former North Macedonian prime minister hiding from justice (such as Nikola Gruevski), Budapest would grant you political asylum.
Orban’s original electoral revolution, in 2010, was mostly a revolt against the corruption of the previous socialist government. But it was his fierce opposition to Angela Merkel’s plan to open the borders of the EU for the refugees coming from the Syrian war that made him a player in European politics. His revolt against Berlin and Brussels was read as an attempt to upend the role of midsize European nation-states in global politics. He positioned himself as the indispensable middleman: he became Trump’s ideological ally, but also Vladimir Putin’s closest geopolitical friend and China’s most reliable economic partner within the EU. In the age of Trump—when politics and diplomacy increasingly revolved around personal relationships between leaders rather than shared interests between states—this positioning seemed to offer Hungary extraordinary leverage. Budapest continued buying cheap Russian gas, and Chinese investment in Hungary was higher than in Germany and France. Budapest was even discussed as the setting for a meeting between Trump and Putin that was meant to end the war in Ukraine.
For Trump, Orban was the face of the Trumpian revolution in Europe.
Indeed, understanding Orban’s importance in European politics requires understanding the sources of the unprecedented support he received from Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. For Trump, Orban was the face of the Trumpian revolution in Europe. He served, in effect, as the White House’s chief adviser on European politics. And in the same way that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Trump that Iran’s regime was fragile, Orban convinced MAGA leaders that eastern Europe shared the sensibilities of America’s red states, and that the continent was merely one electoral cycle behind the United States. For Moscow, Orban served as both informer in chief about the EU and propagandist in chief by spreading Moscow’s talking points about the war in Ukraine. Orban attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky relentlessly, plastering the country with anti-Zelensky placards, and openly sided with Russia in its war in Europe. In return, Putin sent the Kremlin’s political technologists to help Orban’s election campaign.
But perhaps the greatest irony is that, with all these moves, Orban became the very thing he initially tried to destroy: the globalist. In his most recent campaign, foreign policy—not Hungary’s domestic issues—was the focus, and he hosted foreign leaders such as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and secured the endorsement of Argentine President Javier Milei in an attempt to show Hungary’s global significance. But in Orban’s Hungary, as he discovered, globalism is a losing proposition. Magyar’s campaign, by contrast, centered standard-of-living issues and consciously avoided global politics.
When explaining his earlier electoral victories, Orban used to joke that his name was literally “Viktor.” This time, he was defeated by someone whose surname is “Magyar,” which literally translates as “Hungarian.”
How Trump Lost the European Right
Orban aside, it took time for European leaders to understand that Trump’s second presidency is neither merely transactional nor unpredictable when it comes to Europe. Brussels had prepared for a trade war; what it encountered instead was ideological warfare. The hope that the American president would come to appreciate the usefulness of allies proved misplaced.
For Trump, the liberal order was not an American order. The Europe that the United States helped build after World War II had, in his view, become anti-American. Although founded and sustained by the United States, the European Union had evolved into a constraint on American power. In Trump’s narrative, the deindustrialization of the United States and the unraveling of its social fabric were the price paid for a liberalism that had outlived its usefulness.
Europe’s sovereigntist turn is here to stay.
The fundamental hypocrisy of the liberal order, in this view, was the supposed equality of states—the fact that Bulgaria is as important as the United States and Washington should follow the same rules as any other state. Trump’s vision of a postliberal order is what the political theorist Stephen Holmes has described as “hierarchy without order”: a system in which Trump is king and others are lesser actors, some stronger than others, but all revolving around his orbit. Other great powers, such as China and Russia, may enjoy their spheres of privilege, but only so long as they recognize American primacy. This is not traditional spheres-of-influence politics; Trump does not seek cooperation but demands deference.
Trump, in many ways, represents a paradox: a nationalist who struggles to understand nationalism—especially that of others. His nationalist anti-immigration, anti-green, and anti-woke agenda resonated with far-right voters in Europe. And together with Orban, he created the sense that the world was witnessing a revolutionary turn and that illiberals would inherit the earth. But even as he offered rhetorical support to his ideological allies in Europe, he failed to show them the respect they expected. European far-right leaders were uneasy about Trump’s tariffs last year. Then they opposed his ambitions to annex Greenland.
Trump’s war in Iran and his attack on the pope proved to be the tipping point. He demanded that Europeans join the war effort even though he didn’t consult them beforehand, and he showed an unprecedented lack of respect for the Catholic Church when he posted AI-doctored images of himself as the pope. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who until this moment was positioning herself as one of Trump’s major supporters in Europe, refused to join the war and criticized his statements about the pope, signaling that the electoral cost of aligning with Trump had become too high. Orban, however, remained silent. Although the rupture between Trumpism and the European far right did not begin in Budapest, it culminated there when Orban’s defeat convinced many leaders of the European far right that association with Trump is politically toxic. It risks branding them as the new globalists.
How the Kremlin Lost Its Europe Strategy
Orban’s defeat is an ideological turning point for the European far right, but it is also a geopolitical earthquake. Most immediately, it will alter the Kremlin’s calculations regarding the continent. During the Hungarian election campaign, Bloomberg News reported that it had obtained a transcript of a call between Orban and Putin from October 2025 in which Orban allegedly referred to Hungary as the “mouse” that is ready to assist the Russian “lion.” Hungary was most useful to Russia in vetoing EU efforts to send 90 billion euros (about $105 billion) to Ukraine. With U.S. support to Ukraine waning, Moscow was of the mind that it could prevail as long as Europe remained paralyzed.
But now that the mouse is gone, the lion must rethink its European strategy. The change of government in Budapest means that Kyiv will finally receive the financial support that could allow Ukraine to continue fighting for at least two more years. Moreover, for Russia, the loss of Orban is a loss of momentum in its strategy to divide and weaken Europe. No current European leader can easily replicate the role Orban played. Those asking who might become the next Orban underestimate how difficult it is to occupy that position. At this point, not even Orban himself could reproduce it. It is therefore unsurprising that pro-government commentators in Moscow have concluded that Russia should harbor no illusions about rapprochement with Europe.
With Orban gone and Europe accelerating its rearmament, Russian leaders must decide whether political warfare alone will suffice to protect their interests on the continent. His defeat increases the risk that Moscow will consider a much more aggressive strategy, such as cyberattacks and pressure on some of the EU member states. Russian strategists might also want to take advantage of the fact that transatlantic relations are eroding faster than Europe is rearming; in other words, their window to act is now. Short of military action, there is also a higher risk now that Trump, behind the back of Europeans, goes for some kind of grand bargain with Moscow, swapping European interests for business deals with Moscow.
How Europe Lost Its Extremes
When it comes to Europe’s internal dynamics, the political shift in Budapest highlights two clear trends that suggest a convergence is happening in the European mainstream. First, Europe’s sovereigntist turn is here to stay. Hungary’s great political upset was not that Orban was defeated by a classical liberal or progressive touting deeper integration with the EU, but that he was beaten by a fellow conservative—one who shares Orban’s original vision of a strong, independent Hungary but rejects the long-serving prime minister’s corruption. Liberal elites are also endorsing the push for national self-determination because of Trump’s bullying and insist on strategic autonomy in defense and technology. Even centrist leaders in Germany and France increasingly envision a sovereign Europe that is not necessarily a federalist one and where foreign and defense policies are not run by Brussels.
Second, and perhaps surprising given the first, Europe’s new right is becoming less Euroskeptical. It increasingly sees Washington and Moscow—not Brussels—as the primary threats to national sovereignty. Appeals to exit the EU or drop the euro are now viewed as losing proposals. If they hope to gain power, leaders like Le Pen, the AfD, and their allies will likely focus more on national political agendas while distancing themselves from both the United States and Russia. Meloni, with her strong support for Ukraine and cooperation with Brussels, is now the model for this Europe-friendly new right.
In this context, Orban’s defeat creates space for a new consensus on European sovereignty—one that could potentially include segments of the national populist camp. While political polarization between the European establishment and its challengers remains intense, there are emerging areas of cooperation. Centrist political leaders such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have endorsed some of the anti-immigrant policies of the right, for instance. The current energy crisis triggered by Trump’s war in Iran also forces the parties on the right to temper their criticism of the EU’s green agenda. When it comes to defense, both the voters of the centrist parties and the voters of the far right are supportive of Europe’s rearmament.
Indeed, at a moment when the radical remaking of the EU is on the agenda, the Hungarian parliamentary elections may prove to be one of the most consequential votes in European politics of the past decade—just not in the way many observers initially thought. So go ahead, look for the globe of Hungary.
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