Letters to the EditorSeptember/October 2019 245
balances so tilted the playing ¿eld that
he was able to renew his two-thirds
majority in parliament with less than a
majority o the popular vote (and did so
again in 2018). The repeated resort to
xenophobic and anti-Semitic prejudice
(directed not only at George Soros)
cannot alter the facts. Orban has trans-
formed Hungary into not an illiberal
democracy but a pseudo-democracy.WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GERMANY
To the Editor:
Robert Kagan’s thought-provoking
essay (“The New German Question,”
May/June 2019) addresses the important
issue o how a collapse o the European
Union and the liberal international order
might aect Germany and its role
within Europe. He concludes that such a
breakdown would bring back the pre–
World War II “German question,” which
European integration and the Atlantic
alliance were in part meant to resolve.
But Kagan underestimates the deep
cultural change that has occurred in
Germany since World War II. It is hard
to imagine any circumstances in which
Germany would revert to militarism; the
commitment o ordinary Germans to
peace is simply too strong. I the United
States were to withdraw its security
guarantee to Europe, or even i the liberal
international order were to collapse,
Germany would likely defy the expecta-
tions o realist international relations
theorists and simply choose to be inse-
cure rather than abandon its identity as a
Friedensmacht, or “force for peace.”
At the same time, Kagan underesti-
mates how problematic today’s “democratic
and peace-loving” Germany is in the Euro-
pean context. Germany’s semi-hegemonic
position within the ¤ is one o the mainrelevance to a clear U.S. national
interest.
Þ¢§¡¬£ ¶¢¥¬
State Secretary for International
Communication, Cabinet O°ce of the
Prime Minister, Hungary
Diamond replies:
The test o a democracy is not
whether the economy is growing,
employment is rising, or more couples
are marrying, but whether people can
choose and replace their leaders in free
and fair elections. This is the test that
Hungary’s political system now fails.
When Viktor Orban and his Fidesz
party returned to power in 2010 with a
parliamentary supermajority, they set
about destroying the constitutional
pillars o liberal democracy. First,
Orban packed Hungary’s Constitutional
Court with political loyalists. He did
the same with the National Election
Commission and the Media Council, a
newly created watchdog group. Fidesz
then rammed an entirely new constitu-
tion through parliament, clipping the
authority o the Constitutional Court
and politicizing the judiciary more
broadly and extending party control
over such crucial accountability agencies
as the State Audit Oce and the central
bank. Orban also purged state-owned
radio and television stations and made
them mouthpieces to justify his creep-
ing authoritarianism. He pressured
critical media outlets, which saw their
advertising revenues plunge, and
harassed civil society organizations that
received international assistance.
By the 2014 elections, Orban had
rigged the system. Yes, multiparty
elections continued, but his systematic
degradation o constitutional checks and