ASEAN’s Multilateral Dilemma: Continuity and Change from NAM to BRICS by Anis H. Bajrektarevic & Evi Fitriani

 (No Asian Century without true multilateralism)

ASEAN’s enduring strength has never been its ability to project power, but its capacity to manage diversity through restraint, process, and dialogue. In an increasingly polarised strategic environment, pressures to align more explicitly with emerging blocs such as BRICS risk diluting ASEAN’s long-standing emphasis on autonomy and consensus. For Southeast Asia, security is less about joining alternative power centres than about preserving decision-making space amid intensifying great-power rivalry. A revitalised non-aligned approach—adapted to contemporary challenges such as economic fragmentation, digital governance, and maritime security—offers ASEAN greater flexibility to engage all major actors without becoming dependent on any. In this sense, non-alignment is not a rejection of cooperation, but a pragmatic strategy to sustain ASEAN centrality in a multipolar, yet deeply contested, regional order.

Let us continue with a rather simply question: Why ASEAN’s security lies in non-alignment, not bloc membership?

For more than two decades, the “Asian Century” has been treated as an inevitability rather than a hypothesis. Yet inevitability is not strategy, and Asia’s economic rise has not produced commensurate strategic autonomy. As this author warned in No Asian Century, “growth without agency is not power.” It is exposure.

Nowhere is this clearer than in ASEAN’s strategic predicament.

The region is richer, more connected, and more central to global supply chains than ever. It is also more militarised, more contested, and more instrumentalised by external powers. This is not ascent; it is crowded relevance.

Consequentially, ASEAN is increasingly urged to anchor itself more firmly in BRICS—or, alternatively, to revive the logic of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The choice is often framed as outdated idealism versus modern multipolar pragmatism. This framing is false.

BRICS: an alternative centre, not an alternative logic

BRICS markets itself as a corrective to Western dominance. In reality, it substitutes one form of centrality for another. The bloc is multipolar in composition but hierarchical in effect, shaped by stark asymmetries of power, demography and strategic ambition.

For ASEAN (and RI for that matter), deeper institutional attachment to BRICS would not mean insulation from great-power rivalry. It would mean internalising it. Sino-Indian competition, Russia’s confrontation with the Atlantic world, and the geopolitical agendas of newly admitted members are not externalities. They are the bloc’s operating environment.

As (one of the co-authors) observed, “multipolarity without rules multiplies friction.” For smaller and mid-sized states, friction is not leverage; it is vulnerability.

BRICS offers financial instruments and political visibility, but not protection in the sense ASEAN requires. Protection implies predictability, autonomy and room for manoeuvre. A bloc dominated by continental powers with unresolved rivalries offers none of these.

Non-alignment: misunderstood, not obsolete

Non-alignment is often caricatured as neutrality. Historically, it was the opposite: a strategy of autonomy (active peaceful coexistence – strategic equidistancing engagement, not a passive neutrality) in a system designed to deny it. NAM failed not because its premise was wrong, but because it lacked economic integration, technological depth and institutional discipline.Those deficits are not arguments against non-alignment today. They are arguments for upgrading it.

The contemporary international system increasingly resembles the one that gave rise to NAM: weaponised finance, sanctions as diplomacy, fractured trade regimes, and information warfare. In such a system, alignment reduces options; autonomy preserves them.

ASEAN already behaves as a de facto non-aligned actor—hedging, consensus-building, resisting exclusive security commitments. The problem is not doctrine; it is institutional confidence.

ASEAN’s real security deficit

ASEAN’s vulnerability is not military inferiority. It is structural dependence.Security in 2026 is decided less by troop numbers than by: (i) control over supply chains and standards; (ii) digital and data sovereignty; (iii) food and energy resilience; and (iv) narrative and diplomatic bandwidth – to name but few most pressing ones.

Neither BRICS nor NAM can deliver these automatically. But BRICS constrains ASEAN’s room to build them independently, while non-alignment preserves that space.As No Asian Century(almost two decades old, but still highly relevant work) reminds us, “Asia’s problem is not lack of power, but lack of cohesion.” ASEAN’s cohesion is diluted, not strengthened, by bloc discipline.

(We are drifting from a Kantian promise of cooperative order into a Hobbesian reality of coerced choice. Rules increasingly yield to power, norms to narratives, and multilateralism to managed loyalty. In such a system, as Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic has warned, the message to smaller states is blunt: comply or die. For actors like ASEAN, the challenge is not to moralise this shift, but to survive it—by preserving strategic autonomy in a world where alignment no longer guarantees protection, only obedience.)

Centrality must be defended, not donated

ASEAN’s strategic value lies in being indispensable, not aligned. The moment it becomes a junior partner in any camp, its celebrated “centrality” becomes rhetorical.

Selective engagement with BRICS is sensible. Conceptual renewal of non-alignment is necessary. Exclusive commitment to either is unnecessary—and risky.

There may be no Asian Century, as Bajrektarevic famously argued (long ago), because Asia has yet to decide whether it wants to be a subject or a venue of global politics. ASEAN’s answer to that question will determine its security more than any acronym it joins.

History rarely rewards those who choose sides early. It remembers those who made themselves unavoidable.

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Anis H. Bajrektarevic, Chairperson and prof. Intl. Relations & Global Pol. Studies
Evi Fitriani, Dean of the FISIP, University of Indonesia, Jakarta

Faith in the crossfire by Virginia Robertson

World Religion Day arrives each year with soft language about harmony, shared values, and the human hunger for meaning. It is a day designed to remind us that faith traditions, at their best, are moral compasses rather than weapons. Yet the calendar keeps spinning, and the world keeps contradicting the greeting-card version of belief. In today’s reality, religion is less a bridge and more a border wall, less a shelter for the vulnerable and more a banner waved in political combat. The gap between what this day represents and how faith is actually used has become impossible to ignore.

We live in a time when outrage travels faster than reflection and certainty is prized over curiosity. Religion, once a language for wrestling with doubt, has been repackaged as a megaphone for it. Social media rewards the loudest prophets, not the wisest ones. Algorithms prefer anger to nuance. And so faith, which should humble us before the complexity of existence, is flattened into slogans, reduced to hashtags, and sharpened into a cultural weapon.

Into this landscape steps what many have come to call Trumpism, not merely a person but a style of politics that thrives on division, grievance, and theatrical conflict. It borrows religious imagery while emptying it of moral content. Crosses become campaign props. Bibles become stage accessories. The language of salvation is recycled to promise national rebirth, as if redemption could be won at the ballot box and damnation assigned to whoever voted differently.

Trumpism does not need theology; it needs loyalty. It does not ask believers to love their neighbors but to suspect them. It replaces the ancient commandment to care for the stranger with a modern obsession with walls, purity tests, and enemies. In this worldview, compassion is weakness, doubt is betrayal, and complexity is a lie invented by elites. Religion becomes less about transforming the self and more about policing others.

World Religion Day, in contrast, imagines something quieter and more radical, that different paths can exist without canceling each other out, that belief does not require uniformity, and that reverence can coexist with disagreement. It speaks the unfashionable language of coexistence in an era addicted to conquest. But such language struggles to survive when outrage is profitable and fear is politically efficient.

Hate is not an accidental byproduct of this moment; it is a strategy. It mobilizes faster than hope. It simplifies reality into heroes and villains, saints and sinners, patriots and traitors. It is emotionally efficient, requiring less effort than understanding and less courage than empathy. Wrapped in religious vocabulary, hate gains a sacred glow, making cruelty feel like duty and exclusion feel like righteousness.

The tragedy is not only political but spiritual. When religion is reduced to an identity badge, it loses its power to challenge the ego. Instead of asking difficult questions about greed, violence, or indifference, it becomes a mirror that flatters its holder. God is recast as a supporter of our side, a cosmic voter who shares our opinions and blesses our resentments.

This is not new, but it is louder than before. Empires have always enlisted gods in their campaigns. What is new is the speed and scale at which this manipulation travels. A misleading quote, a doctored image, a sermon clipped into a meme can circle the globe before breakfast, reinforcing tribal lines with every share. The result is a world in which people who pray to the same deity cannot agree on the meaning of mercy.

World Religion Day, then, risks becoming ceremonial theater, a polite pause before the shouting resumes. Yet dismissing it would be too easy, and too convenient for those who benefit from the chaos. The day still carries an inconvenient message, that faith traditions, stripped of political costumes, often converge on the same moral ground. Do not kill. Do not steal. Care for the poor. Speak truth. Restrain your power. Remember that you are not the center of the universe.

These principles are profoundly unhelpful to movements built on ego, dominance, and spectacle. They resist being monetized. They slow down the machinery of rage. They insist that dignity is not a limited resource.

To take World Religion Day seriously in 2026 is not to pretend that everyone will suddenly hold hands. It is to acknowledge that belief systems can either anesthetize conscience or sharpen it. They can excuse cruelty or expose it. They can sanctify walls or dismantle them.

The choice is not between religion and secularism, or between left and right. It is between faith as a tool for self-examination and faith as a license to dominate. Between belief as a call to humility and belief as a costume for power.

In an age where Trumpism sells certainty and hate offers instant belonging, the older, harder path of compassion looks almost subversive. It lacks the drama of enemies and the comfort of simple answers. It demands listening, apology, restraint. It demands admitting that no flag, no party, and no doctrine has a monopoly on truth.

World Religion Day does not solve our problems. But it exposes the lie that hatred is inevitable and that division is destiny. It reminds us, quietly and stubbornly, that faith was never meant to be a throne. It was meant to be a mirror.

#eBook Mating center by Frank Belknap Long

The lovely woman approaching him on the travel strip was non-sex-privileged, he could tell by her attire but she looked at him boldly. As she came abreast of him she stumbled, and he instinctively flung out his arm to catch her. The feel of her body against his sent a shock through his system.

Mating center

She was trembling also, and she whispered strange words to him. "It is breaking down! Can't you feel it? The love instincts are returning—" "No," he protested.

She clung to him, grinding her body against his. "Love me," she whispered. "I know you want me. I can see it in your eyes." He tried to push her away.

Frank Belknap Long Jr. born April 27, 1901 and died January 3, 1994, was an American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos alongside his friend, H. P. Lovecraft.

In Public Domain
First Published 1961
Ovi eBook Publishing 2024

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Marx cousins #020 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Groucho Marx attempts to seduce Karl Marx’s beard,
only to be met with a scathing analysis of capitalism
disguised as a poorly-aimed spittoon.

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NATO’s cracks that will never heal by Thanos Kalamidas

Whether Trump ever invades Greenland or not is almost beside the point. The damage is already done. The sentence has been spoken, the thought normalized, the unthinkable turned into a cocktail-party hypothetical. That alone should terrify anyone who still believes NATO is a sacred pact rather than a fragile agreement duct‑taped together by fear, memory and fading habits of trust.

NATO was never just a military alliance. It was a psychological contract. A vow that certain lines would never be crossed, certain ideas would never even be entertained. You don’t joke about annexing allies. You don’t float trial balloons about carving up friendly territory like a bored emperor scanning a map for his next hobby. You don’t treat sovereign partners as real estate listings. Once you do, the alliance stops being a family and becomes a hostage situation.

And that is the real wound, not to NATO’s tanks, not to its budgets, not even to its readiness reports but to its spine. Trust is the only weapon NATO has that cannot be manufactured. Missiles can be built. Soldiers can be trained. Strategies can be rewritten every decade. Trust, once poisoned becomes a slow, expensive disease that no summit communiqué can cure.

For seventy-five years NATO sold itself as predictability in an unpredictable world. A boring machine of consensus, paperwork, shared drills and mutual defence clauses written in the dry language of lawyers and the wet ink of history’s blood. Its power was not drama but reliability. You knew who was on which side. You knew the rules. You knew that if the worst happened no one would suddenly decide that alliances are optional and borders are merely polite suggestions. Now that certainty is gone.

When the leader of the alliance’s most powerful member casually questions the value of NATO flirts with abandoning it or toys with the idea of territorial acquisition from a partner, something fundamental collapses. Even if nothing happens. Even if it was “just rhetoric.” Even if the administration changes and a more civilized tone returns. The crack remains. Because allies do not listen only to what you do. They listen to what you consider doing.

Every European capital heard the message loud and clear, the United States is no longer a constant; it is a weather system. Sometimes sunny. Sometimes violent. Sometimes destructive. Always unpredictable. You can negotiate with an enemy. You can deter a rival. But you cannot build your survival strategy around a roulette wheel disguised as a superpower.

So NATO today exists in a strange limping state. Officially united. Practically nervous. Publicly loyal. Privately preparing for betrayal. Defence ministries are no longer asking how to coordinate with Washington; they are asking how to survive without it if necessary. Not out of ideology, but out of instinct. And that instinct is deadly to alliances.

Once partners begin planning for abandonment, cooperation turns transactional. Solidarity becomes conditional. Meetings become performances. Statements become theater. The famous Article 5 starts to read less like a guarantee and more like a clause written in disappearing ink.

Some argue that NATO has survived worse. Vietnam. Iraq. Trump before. Yes. But this is different in one crucial way: this time the threat is not disagreement over policy. It is disagreement over the very idea of alliance itself. The suggestion that loyalty is negotiable. That treaties are temporary. That partners are burdens unless they pay rent. That logic is not diplomacy. It is protection racket economics. And once that logic enters the bloodstream of global politics, it does not politely leave.

Even if future American presidents wrap themselves in Atlantic flags and recite speeches about shared values, European leaders will remember. Militaries will remember. Intelligence agencies will remember. The maps will be redrawn quietly; budgets shifted silently, doctrines rewritten in cautious language that translates to one brutal sentence: trust no one fully.

NATO will continue to exist, of course. Bureaucracies are immortal. Logos outlive principles. There will be summits, group photos and carefully choreographed smiles. But the soul of the alliance, the assumption that some things are simply unthinkable, has been punctured.

Greenland, in this context, is not geography. It is symbolism. It represents the moment when alliance stopped meaning “we stand together” and started meaning “we stand together unless something better comes along.” That is not an alliance. That is a marketplace. And marketplaces do not inspire soldiers to die for each other.

The tragedy is that NATO does not collapse with an explosion. It erodes. Quietly. Politely. With press releases and diplomatic language and carefully chosen words that hide the rot underneath. One day the building is still standing, the flag still flying, the anthem still playing, yet everyone inside knows the foundation is cracked and the exit signs are suddenly very important.

Trust, once lost, does not return with elections. It returns, if ever, with decades of consistent behaviour, humility, and restraint. Three qualities modern geopolitics treats as weaknesses.

So no, the real danger is not American troops landing in Greenland. The real danger is that NATO has already learned to imagine it. And once an alliance can imagine its own betrayal, it has already begun to die.

The Big Bang #Poem #Painting by Nikos Laios

We fragile things,
We scurry across
The Earth in ignorance
Of the majesty of creation.

At night I look up at
The cosmic fabric
Of the universe through
A wineglass in wonder;
At the billions of stars
Swirling brightly in
In the heavens above,
The rivers and flows
Of stars and galaxies
Across the cosmic web.

Then I think of the day
Of creation and how it
All started on the day
With no yesterday,
The Big Bang!

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With a digital painting from Nikos Laios

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Check Nikos Laios' eBOOK, HERE!

The man with the match, the party with the petrol by Jemma Norman

Robert Jenrick’s jump from the Conservatives to Reform UK is being treated like a plot twist. In truth, it is the logical final scene of a drama that has been badly written for years. He did not just defect; he confirmed what many voters already suspect, that the Conservative Party is no longer a political home but a transit lounge. The more interesting question is not why Jenrick left, but why staying would have made sense. When a senior figure decides that Nigel Farage’s insurgent outfit offers more future than Britain’s most successful governing party, something has gone profoundly wrong. And that something is not merely Farage’s talent for disruption, but the Conservatives’ growing talent for self-sabotage.

Nigel Farage is not a policy wizard. He is a mood merchant. He sells grievance, identity, and the intoxicating idea that politics should feel like a pub argument rather than a spreadsheet. Yet he understands something the Conservatives keep forgetting: politics is emotional before it is rational. Farage offers his supporters belonging, clarity, and enemies. The Conservatives offer leadership contests, internal purges, and talking points that sound like they were written by a risk assessment committee. Farage does not need to build a credible government-in-waiting. He only needs to look confident while his opponents look confused. Every defection becomes proof of momentum. Every Tory meltdown becomes free advertising.

Enter Kemi Badenoch, the latest custodian of a crumbling brand. She is clever, combative, and ideologically sharp, but leadership is not a debating competition. It is an exercise in reassurance, discipline, and narrative control. Badenoch has yet to show that she can unify factions that increasingly resemble rival tribes. Her instinct is confrontation, not coalition. That plays well on social media and party conference stages, but it is disastrous when your party is already haemorrhaging credibility. Voters do not crave another internal culture war. They crave the sense that someone, somewhere, is actually in charge. Instead, they see a party that fires first and explains later, that panics when leaks appear and that treats dissent as treason rather than diagnosis.

Jenrick’s defection is less about ideology than about oxygen. Reform UK is where the noise is. It is where cameras turn, where outrage is rewarded, where certainty replaces nuance. The Conservatives, by contrast, resemble a once-grand department store with flickering lights and “closing down” signs taped over the windows. Badenoch may argue that ruthless discipline is necessary to rebuild authority. But authority cannot be rebuilt by looking brittle. When senior figures leave hours after being sacked, it does not project strength. It projects chaos with a press office.

Farage, meanwhile, barely has to lift a finger. He positions himself as the anti-establishment outsider, even as he becomes the gravitational centre of the right. His skill is not strategy but timing. He waits for the Conservatives to wound themselves, then offers sanctuary to the bleeding. He understands that modern politics is less about programmes than about performance. He plays the role of the straight-talking rebel while the Conservatives audition endlessly for the role of “competent adult” and keep forgetting their lines.

So who is destroying the Conservative Party? The honest answer is both, but not equally. Farage is the match. The Conservatives are the petrol station. Without decades of internal contradictions, broken promises, leadership churn, and ideological identity crises, Reform UK would be a footnote. Farage exploits weakness; he does not create it. Badenoch inherited a disaster, but she is not yet proving to be the architect of its repair. Her sharpness may energise the base, but it does little to calm the wider electorate, which is tired, suspicious, and allergic to drama.

Jenrick’s leap is therefore not a betrayal of conservatism. It is an indictment of a party that no longer knows what it wants to conserve. Until the Conservatives decide whether they are a serious governing force or a permanent audition panel for the loudest personality in the room, defections will continue. Farage will keep smiling. And voters will keep watching the slow, undignified demolition of a party that once defined British politics, now struggling to define itself.

Me My Mind & I #01: Why I don't watchTV #Cartoon by Patrick McWade

 

A different way to check internal and external ...thoughts!
'Me My Mind & I' is a cartoon series by Patrick McWade.
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Robert M. Hutchins: Building on Earlier Foundations by Rene Wadlow

Much of our current work for a more just and peaceful world builds on the thinking and efforts of earlier foundations.  An important foundation is the leading role of Robert M. Hutchins, long-time President of the University of Chicago  (l929 -1951) whose birth anniversary we mark on 17 January.

Hutchins' father, William,was President of Berea, a small but important liberal arts college, so Robert Hutchins (1899-1977) was set to follow the family pattern.  He went to Yale Law School and stayed on to teach. He quickly became the Dean of the Law School and was spotted as a rising star of US education.  When he was 30 years old, he was asked to become President of the University of Chicago, a leading institution.  Hutchins was then the youngest president of a US university.

In the first decade of his presidence, the 1930s, his ideas concerning undergraduate education − compulsory survey courses, early admission after two years of secondary school for bright and motivated students, a concentration on “Great Books” - an examination of seminal works of philosophy in particular Plato and Aristotle − divided the University of Chicago faculty.  There were strong and outspoken pro and anti Hutchins faculty groups.  Moreover Hutchins' abolition of varsity football and ending the University's  participation in the “Big Ten” university football league distressed some alumni whose link to the university was largely limited to attending football games. For Hutchins, a university was for learning and discussion, not for playing sports. As he famously said “ When I feel like excersizing, I sit down until the feeling goes away.”

It is Hutchins' creation and leadership of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution in 1945 which makes him one of the intellectual founders of the movement for world federation and world citizenship. After the coming to power of Hitler in Germany in 1933 and his quick decision to ban Jewish professors from teaching in German universities, many Jewish scientists and professors left Germany and came to the USA.  Some of the leading natural scientists joined the University of Chicago.  Thus began the “Metallurgy Project” as the work on atomic research was officially called. The University of Chicago team did much of the theoretical research which led to the Atom Bomb.  While Hutchins was not directly involved in the atomic project, he understood quickly the nature of atomic energy and its military uses.  He saw that the world would never return to a “pre-atomic” condition and that new forms of world organization were needed.

On 12 August 1945, a few days after the use of the atom bombs, Hutchins made a radio address “Atomic Force: Its Meaning for Mankind” in which he outlined the need for strong world institutions, stronger than the UN Charter, whose drafters earlier in the year did not know of the destructive power of atomic energy.

Several professors of the University of Chicago were already active in peace work such as Mortimer Adler, G.A. Borgese, and Richard McKeon, Dean of the undergraduate college.  The three approached Hutchins saying that as the University of Chicago had taken a lead in the development of atomic research, so likewise, the university should take the lead in research on adequate world institutions.  By November 1945, a 12-person Committee to Frame a World Constitution was created under Hutchins' chairmanship. The Committee drew largely on existing faculty of the University of Chicago − Wilber Katz, Dean of the Law School and Rexford Tugwell who taught political science but who had been a leading administrator of the Roosevelt New Deal and Governor of Puerto Rico. Two retired professors from outside Chicago were added − Charles McIlwain of Harvard, a specialist on constitutions, and Albert  Guerard of Stanford, a French refugee who was concerned about the structure of post-war Europe.

From 1947 to 1951, the Committee published a monthly journal Common Cause  many of whose articles still merit reading today as fundamental questions concerning the philosophical basis of government, human rights, distribution of power, and the role of regions are discussed.  The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution  was published in 1948 and reprinted in the Saturday Review of Literature edited by Norman Cousins and in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists some of whom were in the original “Metallurgy Project”.  The Preliminary Draft raised a good deal of discussion, reflected in the issues of Common Cause.  There was no second draft.  The Preliminary Draft was as G.A. Borgese said, quoting Dante “...of the True City at least the Tower.”

In 1951, Hutchins retired from the presidency of the University of Chicago for the Ford Foundation and then created the Ford Foundation-funded Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions where he gathered together some of his co-workers from the University of Chicago.

Two ideas from The Preliminary Draft are still part of intellectual and political life for those concerned with a stronger UN.  The first is the strong role of regional organizations.  When The Preliminary Draft was written the European Union was still just an idea and most of the States now part of the African Union were European colonies.  The Preliminary Draft saw that regional groups were institutions of the future and should be integrated as such in the world institution.  Today, the representatives of States belonging to regional groupings meet together at the UN to try to reach a common position, but regional groups are not part of the official UN structure. However, they may be in the future.

The other lasting aspect of The Preliminary Draft is the crucial role that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should play.  The then recently drafted UN Charter had created a “consultative status” for NGOs, but few of the UN Charter drafters foresaw the important role that NGOs would play  as the UN developed.  The Preliminary Draft had envisaged a Syndical Senate to represent occupational associations on the lines of the International Labour Organization where trade unions and employer associations have equal standing with government delegates.  In 1946, few people saw the important role that the NGOs would later play in UN activities.  While there is no “Syndical Senate”, today NGOs represent an important part of the UN process.

Hutchins, however, was also a reflection of his time.  There were no women as members of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, and when he created the Center for the Study of Democratic  Institutions with a large number of “fellows”, consultants, and staff, women are also largely absent.

The effort to envisage the structures and processes among the different structures was an innovative contribution to global institution building at the time, and many of the debates and reflections are still crucial for today.

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Notes
For an understanding of the thinking of those involved in writing The Preliminary Draft see:
Mortimor Adler. How to think about War and Peace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944)
Rexford Tugwell. Chronicle of Jeopardy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
G.A. Borgese. Foundations of the World Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953)
Scott Buchanan. Essay in Politics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953)
For a life of Hutchens written by a co-worker in the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions: Harry Ashmore. Unreasonable Truths: the Life of Robert Maynard Hutchens (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1989)

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

fARTissimo #020 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

fARTissimo is what people do not see when they see a piece of expression
but what they project in what they think they see.

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Orbán’s assault on the planet by Brea Willis

In the age of wildfires, unprecedented floods, and storms that seem scripted by a dystopian novelist, one would think that every world leader would instinctively recognize the urgency of protecting the planet. And yet, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán appears determined to swim against the tide of reason, championing policies that not only resist environmental responsibility but actively undermine it. It is a peculiar brand of governance, one that masquerades as pragmatism while leaving the air thick, the rivers choked, and future generations to inherit a broken ecosystem.

Orbán’s political philosophy, when it comes to the environment, reads almost like a case study in willful blindness. The man who built fences to keep people out seems equally eager to erect walls against the climate crisis. Renewable energy initiatives are stalled or sabotaged; green innovation is sidelined in favour of state-favoured fossil fuel ventures. There is no elegant denial here, no clever doublespeak about “market forces” or “economic necessity.” Hungary’s defiance is blunt, unapologetic, almost boastful. In a world where the atmosphere itself has become a battleground, this posture is not mere policy it is a moral statement, albeit a troubling one.

It is tempting to frame Orbán’s environmental negligence purely as a domestic concern, a quirk of Hungarian politics. Yet in truth, the implications ripple far beyond the Danube. Climate change, like gravity, does not recognize borders. Floodwaters rising in Budapest echo the deluge threatening Venice or Jakarta. Droughts that parch Hungarian farmland are kin to the infernos consuming California or Australia. In resisting global efforts to curb emissions, Orbán and his government are not merely failing their own citizens, they are flouting an increasingly fragile international consensus on survival. There is no domestic wall high enough, no clever rhetoric that can shield a nation from a planet in revolt.

One must wonder what drives this obstinacy. Is it ideology, or merely opportunism? Hungary under Orbán has become a showcase for crony capitalism, where energy contracts and construction projects often favour political allies over environmental logic. Fossil fuels are not simply an energy source; they are a political currency, a way to consolidate power while dismissing inconvenient truths. It is a reminder that climate denial is rarely about science, it is about profit, influence and the comforting illusion that someone else will pay for the consequences. And when the rivers run dry or the floods arrive, it will indeed be someone else: the ordinary citizens, the farmers, the children, and the elderly who cannot vote their way out of a climate disaster.

Orbán’s approach is also culturally telling. He frames environmental concern as a kind of foreign interference, a Western imposition on Hungary’s sovereignty. To care about the planet is, in this view, unpatriotic, a distraction from more “pressing” national interests. It is a narrative that resonates with those who feel threatened by globalization, yet it is fundamentally myopic. The environment, unlike borders or ideologies, is indifferent to political loyalty. The climate does not negotiate; it simply reacts. Denying it, delaying action, or pretending it is someone else’s problem will not protect Hungary, and it will not protect the world.

And yet, despite the bleakness, the absurdity of it invites a kind of grim humour. Orbán’s rhetoric often evokes a parody of eco-scepticism, grandiose declarations about national pride juxtaposed with the very real images of smokestacks, depleted rivers, and choking smog. One might imagine him standing on the banks of the Danube, gesturing nobly toward the water, and declaring that Hungary is “safe” because it refuses to participate in international climate accords. It is tragicomic, a blend of theater and recklessness, but it is also deadly serious.

The global community watches with a mixture of frustration and incredulity. Orbán’s Hungary is not alone in its obstinacy, yet it is emblematic of a growing pattern: nations and leaders who reject environmental stewardship in favour of short-term gain or political theater. In the grand calculus of history, this will be remembered not as a quirk of policy but as a profound moral failing. The cost is not abstract; it is lived experience: the heatwaves, the floods, the displacement, and the incremental erosion of hope.

At the heart of the matter is accountability or the lack of it. Citizens, journalists, and neighbouring nations may debate, protest, or write scathing columns, but the consequences of inaction are unyielding. The climate does not negotiate, the rivers do not wait, and the air does not pardon neglect. Hungary’s path under Orbán is not merely environmentally reckless; it is ethically reckless, an abdication of responsibility in a moment when responsibility has never been more urgent.

If there is any lesson to be drawn from this era of environmental threat, it is that leadership matters. Courage matters. And stubborn denial, when wielded by those in power, can transform a nation’s natural heritage into a cautionary tale. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has chosen a defiant path, one that prioritizes politics over survival. The rest of the world watches, waits, and, if history has its way, remembers.