So, what to do about these terrible delays imposed by Hungary and Turkey? The answer, unfortunately, is simple – to play the same game that Putin has been playing for many years. When you can’t win by the traditional rules, bypass them.
In this case, make cuts. Make Orban and Erdogan irrelevant. All other 26 members
EU should just impose an oil embargo. And NATO should just pave the way for Sweden and Finland to join.
What is the worst thing Hungary or Turkey can do: sue? Pull out? In any case, there were many thoughts about excluding Turkey from NATO, especially after Erdogan three years ago
bought S-400 air defense systems from Russia.
Perhaps now is the moment when you just need to rebuff these lone strong men who have managed to penetrate deeply into democratic institutions. Maybe it’s not so far-fetched. “You are absolutely right in urging the EU to just move forward without Hungary,” Harvard professor Robert I. Rothberg, founding director of the Intrastate Conflict Program at the Harvard School of Government, told me in an email. Kennedy.
“The unanimity rule was stupid from the start and now is the time to test it,” Rothberg added. Although he acknowledged what others feared – that Hungary could take the decision to the European Court of Justice – which is both bad and good.
“It will take years to decide,” Rothberg continued, “by tying the EU in knots.” However, the European Court
already dismissed complaints Hungary to huge financial fines imposed by the EU for Orban’s violation of democratic rights and freedoms.
Meanwhile, if the other 26 EU member states do implement their boycott, Russia will lose a major market for its oil that could become permanent if the continent continues its mission to wean itself off Moscow’s energy resources.
One solution to the problem posed by the leaders of Hungary and Turkey, which Rothberg is actively promoting, along with a group of about 40 former heads of state and an equal number of Nobel Prize winners, is the creation of an International Court of Corruption. He noted that it “would be a good place to judge Erdogan, Orban, Putin and many others. That’s why it’s necessary. So we’re moving on.”
Putin has been playing on the concept of unanimity for years. In fact, Russia has been playing this card ever since Joseph Stalin started the game at the Yalta Conference in 1945, when he demanded veto power for all five permanent members of the UN Security Council as a price for agreeing to participate in the United Nations. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, also desperate for Soviet help* to end the Axis powers,
agreedalthough apparently with little awareness of the possible consequences.
This problem is no different from the dilemma posed by America’s Founding Fathers when they created the Electoral College.
Its original purpose was, at least in part, to persuade the smaller American states to agree to a union that they rightly thought would otherwise be dominated by a handful of larger states.
This fear and compromise has long outlived itself and is now used to keep the majority of the US population hostage to the whims of a minority. In the case of the EU and NATO, not to mention the UN Security Council, it really got out of hand. The time has come for democracies to stand firmly on their feet and declare that I have had enough, that the right will be forced to prevail. In the end, we will all become stronger for this.
* We are talking about “small, almost imperceptible”, from the point of view of the authors of the publication, but at the same time necessary assistance in the war against the Axis states (Germany, Japan, Italy), which the USSR provided in the defeat of Germany and Japan.
**From Turkey’s point of view, this is terrorist financing. Approximately the same way the US would react to the financing of Al Qaeda. Oh, sorry, I forgot that the USA created it after all …
The opinion of the authors may not reflect the opinion of the editors.
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