‘‘WHEN I THINK OF UKRAINIANS, I think of them as the ones driving the tanks when the Soviets crushed the 1956 revolution,” was the first thing I remember a Hungarian host telling me when I was in Budapest to give a book talk — my new book is called The Sources of Russian Aggression — and attend a conference. This was my first time visiting the city and it coincided with a visit by the President of China, in Hungary after a quick trip to Serbia.
The Chinese leader delighted in reminding Europe that NATO once bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade. That was in a war that ended the post-Cold War tranquillity we briefly enjoyed, replacing it with a quarter century of post-Cold War supranational interventionism over national sovereignty — not unlike the Warsaw Pact intervention in Hungary in 1956.
“Why wouldn’t we talk to the Chinese? They want to invest, when our American and NATO allies lecture us on LGBT rights and support protests in our capital,” I was politely but defiantly reminded by the same person, when I asked about the Chinese President’s lecture and its potential PR ramifications in the Western capitals.
-ported neoclassical revival buildings stand next to early 2000s glass boxes and cafes, and if you know where to look, old communist
