Ambassadorial tussle in Budapest: U.S. versus China

A change of pace is in order after so much discussion about the sad state of the Hungarian media. Today I’ll return to the illustrious U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein.

The last time his name appeared on the pages of Hungarian Spectrum was in early January of this year, when Professor Charles Gati made fun of him by calling attention to the ambassador’s unbounded admiration for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Perhaps Cornstein is vying for Zoltán Kovács’s job as communications director of the illiberal Hungarian government, he remarked.

Professor Gati wasn’t joking. Cornstein, who spends as little time as possible in Hungary, could be hired as Orbán’s P.R. man if he weren’t past retirement age (he’s 81). Hungary has had many mediocre American ambassadors, but Cornstein takes the cake, and therefore it is a good thing that his activities and pronouncements are limited. Recently, however, he gave interviews both in the United States and in Hungary.

Let me start with an interview he gave on July 5 to John Catsimatidis, the Trump-supporting, over-the-top American billionaire best known as the owner of New York City supermarket chain Gristedes, who started a podcast, “The CATS Roundtable.” I don’t know how many people tune in to his conversations, but Catsimatidis is quite capable of conducting more than ten interviews a day. Most of his interviewees are well known, especially to New Yorkers. Perhaps his highest profile recent guest was Roger Stone.

The interview with Cornstein was educational. We learned that Hungary is neither an Eastern nor a Western European country. It is situated in Central Europe, which a lot of people haven’t even heard of until now. Hungary is a country everybody loves, China as well as Russia, but one ought not to worry about the Hungarian government being too thick with the Russians or the Chinese because they suffered under communism for 40 years. One of the issues, he continued, that divides the people of the European Union is immigration. The forceful leader [Viktor Orbán] of the country wants Hungary to remain Hungarian, and “obviously” he doesn’t want any immigration from Africa. After rattling off some wrong numbers about Viktor Orbán’s political support, Cornstein confused Orbán’s anti-immigration policies and the Hungarian government’s closing of borders because of the pandemic. All, in all, Cornstein said, Hungary is the best kept secret in the world: a beautiful country, wonderful food and even better wines, happy and friendly people.

He gave a similar interview to ATV on July 17, from which we learned that the great admirer of Hungary had just returned from the United States after a four-month absence.

By contrast, his second interview, on MTV on July 22, caused quite a stir. Since he had spent the last four months in New York, he went into great detail about the wonderful work done in New York to contain COVID-19. He praised the discipline and cooperation of the residents, which resulted in stopping the pandemic in the city and state. But then Cornstein, a friend and supporter of Donald Trump, went on to repeat Trump’s anti-Chinese mantra, which upset Chinese ambassador to Hungary Duan Juelong mightily. Yesterday he wrote an opinion piece, which was published in Magyar Nemzet.

Duan Juelong wasn’t exactly diplomatic when he called Cornstein’s accusations “lies.” While China was battling the virus and many countries, including Hungary, gave much appreciated assistance, “the American government and some American politicians, setting aside science and professionalism, used manipulative racist epithets, calling COVID-19 the Chinese virus.” Yet China sent more than 4.4 billion masks to the United States, which means that, in theory, thanks to China, every inhabitant of the United States received 14 masks. During this time, the U.S. government did everything in its power to undermine international solidarity and to politicize the pandemic. Trump’s policy of “America first” ignores diplomatic dignity and all moral foundations. Duan Juelong  then lashed out at the anti-China policies of Donald Trump.

Péter Szijjártó confirms that Huawei will be building Hungary’s 5G network / Photo: MTI/Hungary Today

I assume that Duan Juelong couldn’t possibly have written this attack on the United States, in the course of criticizing the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, without authorization from his minister of foreign affairs. I also assume that David Cornstein received some instructions before he placed an answer on the web site of the U.S. Embassy in Budapest. Since the Chinese ambassador was not far off the mark on Trump’s ill-will and incompetence, Cornstein avoided all critical remarks about Washington’s handling of the crisis and concentrated on the evils of the communist system and the threat China poses to the democratic world. He criticized the medical equipment that came from China, which was overpriced and of poor quality. This, by the way, was the case with equipment shipped to Hungary as well. But “the people of Hungary understand clearly that companies based in communist dictatorships—such as Huawei or ZTE—are obligated to obey their government’s orders to cooperate with their intelligence services.” Cornstein said that he would let “the Hungarian public decide which friends are better for them and their country’s future. That choice is clearer by the day, between freedom and democracy on one side and tyranny and authoritarianism on the other.” He is confident “which side Hungary and the wonderful, freedom-loving Hungarian people will choose.”

So, as is obvious, this exchange was not really about the Chinese and American handling of the pandemic. What is at stake is Huawei’s building out of Hungary’s 5G network, which apparently the not so freedom-loving Orbán government still supports.

July 31, 2020