Rana Mitter, the historian teaching China s next generation — Quartz qz.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from qz.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Modern Diplomacy
Published 1 week ago
Democracies have an inbuilt flaw when their own processes can be employed to undermine them. It is what has happened in Hungary in the last decade, and Hungary is not alone.
In his youth the current prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, was an ardent dissident leading a youth movement, Fidesz, and in 1989 he was calling for the removal of Soviet troops and free democratic elections. Opposition to single-party socialist rule was eventually successful, and he was elected a Fidesz member of the National Assembly in 1990.
In 1998, his party won a plurality, and he served his first term as prime minister until 2002 when the socialists returned to power. However, a landslide victory in 2010 gave Orban a two-thirds supermajority, and with it the power to amend constitutional laws.
Critics see the hand of Carrie Symonds in the costly makeover of the couple’s apartment and other political dust-ups. Supporters see “outdated sexist tropes.”
LONDON - Vaccines are the new diplomacy, but it s not all that different to the old diplomacy.
Countries around the world have been plunged into tense talks over vaccine supplies that have threatened to boil over into full-blown trade wars, with rich nations squabbling with each other while poorer nations look on, waiting for help.
Western states are hoping to take the moral high ground over China and Russia, which stand accused of handing out jabs in a bid for influence. But all parties are looking to see what they can gain from the fight, with some in Europe and the U.S. recognizing that vaccine donations to developing nations are a downpayment for future geopolitical clout.