szilajcsiko
- 2022. szept. 25.

Hungarian vital signs – First we must have strength, and only then we must be right...

by Ferenc VUKICS

Original article:

Magyar életjelek – Először erőnk legyen, és csak aztán igazunk… (Vukics Ferenc írása), Szilaj Csikó, 24.09.2022.

"All people must be mobilised! And every boy old enough to carry a spear should go to Addis Ababa. Married men are to take their wives with them to carry food and cook. Unmarried men, take a maiden with you. Women with young children need not go. The blind, the lame and those who cannot carry a spear for any reason are exempt. Anyone found at home by this order will be hanged." Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia

I am proud of my country. Again. While in Europe diplomacy has been destroyed and everyone is a prisoner of war rhetoric, here at home I see that public discourse is open and, despite the obvious lack of information and knowledge, strives to understand the processes around us and find survival strategies to ensure the survival of the country.

Western public opinion has fallen into a cruel trap. In our country, experts, public figures and, even more unbelievably, politicians are talking openly about the reality that threatens us, which has triggered a 'united national survival programme'. After the first hesitant steps, more and more people (including experts) are expanding their knowledge, more and more opinions are emerging and more and more people are listening to others. A whole cluster of 'professional workshops' has sprung up across the country, further fertilising the debate on the war and the future of the nation. The whole country became part of a social dialogue.

Unfortunately, it is true that this required an apocalyptic cavalcade of wars and other crises in our neighbourhood, escalating into a world war, but all the signs are that the Hungarian instinct is in place and we are looking for a solution. In the process, we have done our part: we have spoken out, organised events, given presentations and connected people and community.

The National Defence Free University was founded and the Alliance of Hungarians Movement was relaunched. Civil society began to gather the country's "human resources" and, learning from previous mistakes, set about systematically building a collaborative community network.

Now the country is also playing this integrating role. We got Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks to cooperate. Some politicians in Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and the USA see our country as a role model, and our Foreign Minister has sat down to negotiate peace with Lavrov against all the odds, and will not let diplomacy die. This will create an important opportunity for the future: there will be an actor who will be able to intervene to defuse tensions without any vested interests.

I know these are big words, but Péter Szijjártó has taken a step that may well one day determine the fate of the world. All signs point to the fact that Hungarians are not only going with the flow, but wish to become the 'masters of their own destiny'.

After the Hungarian national football team's victory in Leipzig yesterday, an Italian friend of ours said that he would wear the Hungarian national team jersey we had given him as a present to the Oktoberfest: "Let the Germans get used to these colours. No matter what the order, it's the colours that matter."

The Poles are slowly realising that a thousand years of cooperation is worth more than the magic of war, and are slowly putting Hungarian wines back on the shelves.

In Leipzig, hundreds of our Polish friends joined us on the field to cheer on the Hungarian national team's victory. Perhaps never before in the last three decades have we had so many storm clouds over us, yet it seems to be just what is needed to wake the nation from its lethargic state.

The collective West is in deep trouble. Caught up in the spirit of war, they have no chance to discuss what is happening around them. There is no social dialogue. This means that while Hungarian society has at least started on the path that could lead to a solution, the average European citizen has not even been able to take the first step.

I have been writing articles on Ukraine since 2011. Many people are still prisoners of the 'club football' mentality of supporters. To them, we explain in vain that we are on the side of ordinary people and that it does not matter to us whether someone is Ukrainian, Russian or American. We did not decide that certain countries have huge nuclear arsenals. We have inherited this situation from previous generations, and we have to wake up with it every morning and go to bed with it every night.

Just because we think that the Russians are incompetent, that they do everything wrong and that they are on their way to their own destruction for some inexplicable reason, does not mean that our problems are solved.

When President Obama declared, a few months after taking office, that Russia had such a vast territory and such enormous resources that it alone had no right to them, we knew that the "collective West" was seeking to eliminate Russia. At the time, we thought that it would do this 'work' with Ukrainians, Belarusians, Caucasians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, but now we can see that it prefers to finish it with Russians and Europeans.

If Europe's efforts are not enough, a possible "Russian civil war" could solve their problems. It is frightening to think what cataclysms the break-up of a nuclear-armed power would unleash in the world.

The prisoners of the supporter mentality have to admit that on the threshold of a war disaster, it is not a question of who is right (especially not in a period when diplomacy is dying and is burdened by information operations and lies). European public opinion does not yet see it, but we are beginning to suspect that we must ask an open and honest question: are we willing to take part in a war that will last for years or decades and to make all the sacrifices that go with it?

Robert C. Castle was caught up in Putin's announcement of a partial mobilisation during a report. The reporter's final question was how the Western world would react to Putin's message:

"As we said, it's just a matter of how much sense we have. If we draw the right conclusions, we are now shifting gears here and moving to a de-escalation (force reduction) process, because if what we fear happens and Russia announces a general mobilisation, after mobilising the reserves, or builds up a large army from the reserves and multiplies the size of its forces, then Europe will have to mobilise. In Europe, young people of 18 cannot stay in the gym and in the cafés when in Russia the army is quadrupling or quintupling in size. We must react! Another problem is what China will do. Such an increased Russian army is a potential threat not only to Europe, but to all the countries around it. This means that these countries will have to respond in order to counter a possible Russian move. This is also true for Russia's allies, not just its enemies. This will have far-reaching consequences for world stability. A Russian army three or four times the size is not the force we have known before, and the calculus changes completely."

Later, after Putin's announcement of a partial mobilisation, I switched the TV between news programmes. Apparently, "we don't have enough brains". The de-escalation process has not started. Western leaders have made the strongest possible statements. I was curious to see what the domestic "vanguard" opposition media had to say about the situation. On ATV there was a programme on a news bulletin where the reporter was almost frothing at the mouth to assert that the economies of China, India and Russia were nowhere near those of the US and that if war was to be waged, they would not stand a chance against the Western world. The reporter was radiating a sense of superiority as he was in high spirits, asserting that the West is the most powerful structure in the world in every respect. The tone, the momentum, most resembled the dynamics of Nazi platform speeches, as if to impress upon the audience the inevitability and acceptance of war.

The European people still have no war consciousness. In their hubristic state, they do not really realise what they are risking. It is not only the "sums in the accounts" that are important when fighting wars.

After the Russian announcement, we heard that many people are trying to escape mobilisation, but we are also broadly aware that a part of Russian society will not do so. The same phenomenon would probably take place in the countries of the West after a general mobilisation was announced.

Let us be clear: there are no troops of "lame ducks" fighting next door. For all their faults, both the Ukrainian and Russian armies are the largest, best equipped and most trained in the world. The Ukrainian shortcomings are corrected by Western weapons, mercenaries, advisers, covert Western troops and planning, and the Russian failings by 'strategic depth' and covert support from China. The Russians have "space" to replace the counter-selective leadership with a competent team. We have known since Napoleon that they are capable of losing a lot of territory and power, but there capable leaders always emerge. Most of all, it is the threat that can bring them together.

Despite their technological advantage, the German, French armies do not even come close (combined) to the combat value of Ukrainian ground forces. That is why it is very difficult to replace the weapons there. European states where even the larger ones have only 2,300 or 3,300 tanks (the smaller ones have 12-30) cannot replace the more than 2,000 Ukrainian tanks lost, despite the difference in quality.

We can say how 'inept', unmotivated and untrained the Russian forces are, but that does not show what we are capable of in a war of this intensity. The Russians already know what they are capable of, and they know that they are not just fighting the Ukrainians. The Western armies are also sending their soldiers covertly into this conflict so that they too can gain as much experience as possible in this kind of armed conflict.

When everyone talks about how "rigid" the Russian forces are, and how "flexible" Western methods allow for combat procedures, I actually have to smile. Let's face it, if this 'flexibility' means how to flee headlong from Afghanistan in the face of a few upstarts in slippers and rifles, or how to raid the oil wells of Syria with an unauthorised force, then it really does mean quite 'flexible' combat procedures.

Let's not forget that the Russians have failed several times in Chechnya, but now, after Putin's announcement, the Chechen fighters have exceeded their commitment plan by 254% and can bring in another 8,000 reservists and 6,000 volunteers to join the 12,000 soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine. Russia has been able to solve minor problems in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Syria and Africa, and it is only a matter of time before they develop capabilities in response to the conflict in Ukraine.

A soldier does not start with being trained and well-equipped, but with his willingness to fight for a cause. A mercenary, if he doesn't get paid enough, doesn't take the risk. For him, it's "value for money".

We can throw the poor and uneducated Ukrainian masses (the rest have already fled) at the Russians in the hope that this will "wear the Russians out" so much that they will end up at each other's throats, but we must also reckon with the possibility that it will not. The British, the Americans, the Germans, the Poles, the Baltic states that we must prepare for all-out war with Russia, and this raises the question of where we stand on what we see as Russia's weakness, lest we end up being the weaker in these factors. We can claim how weak Russian 'morale' is, but we are not aware of how strong our 'morale' is. "Qualified" experts can claim that the Russian army has zero performance, while the armies of threatened Western countries could fight for a day or a week with the same intensity as the Ukrainians.

People who haven't even "shot a target in the wurstli", pondering how we should behave while being shot at from the other side. Remember: "War is started by professional soldiers and finished by reservists."

We already know what the professional soldiers of the Western armies did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I'm not sure we should know what our reservists would do against the Russians or the Chinese.

In the case of Iran, it has already been shown that a country with far less influence and resources than Russia has not been broken by sanctions. The invasion of Iran was such a hard nut to crack, given the capabilities of the Iranian armed forces and the expected resistance of the population, that it was not even attempted. In the case of Japan, the US had the nuclear bomb to break a determined country, but the current situation is much more complicated.

European forces without American ones are meaningless. We wrote recently here on Silay Chico that white, Midwestern families who supply soldiers are no longer keen to send their children to an army where officers are taught critical race theory, woke ideologies and LGBTQ progressivism. The European population wants to go to war, but they are very hopeful that they will have to endure this war from the armchair, as a continuing series with one or two worse outcomes.

While the populations of Morocco and Pakistan are almost entirely in favour of a war of war, the populations of Europe are in fact only thinking of fleeing.

It is important to clarify some issues:

A man has the right to decide what he is sacrificing his life for, so I disagree with anyone who thinks that anyone has the right to force another man against his will to go to the front (be it Ukrainian or Russian). Such armies start shooting their retreating soldiers, and the soldiers forced to do so will sooner or later use the weapons they are given against their officers and political leaders.
A man who is willing to kill another man without conviction, just for the money, is no different from a hitman. This man is not a hero, not a role model, but a sick man in need of help. Anyone who thinks that, simply because his country has not signed a few international treaties, his citizens can commit crimes against humanity in other countries and then, having done their job well, sip their coffee on the terrace of a London café in a perfectly legitimate manner is at least as sick as he is.
And just as sick is anyone who thinks that it is not a problem to have bloated children with bellies waiting to die in Africa because someone is looting their country in exchange for a comfortable life in Europe.

According to a spring survey, 14% of the adult Hungarian population is considering fleeing in a war situation. Among those with a definite plan for war, the proportion of those who would definitely leave the country is now 15 per cent, and 17 per cent of those who would probably do so. Young people (18-39) and the elderly (over 60) have similar propensity to leave (17 and 15 percent respectively), while the proportion of those aged 40-59 is only 8 percent. The proportion of men who choose to leave the country is higher among those who have not been conscripts than among those who have had such experience (20 and 9 per cent respectively). One fifth of Hungarians think they would definitely fight to defend the country if attacked, and a further 30 per cent said they would probably do so.

In Russia, a quarter of a million reservists are trained each year out of the nearly one million a year who, in theory, should have been required. In fact, the generally poor health of the Russian population means that about a third of conscripts are indeed unfit for military service for health reasons, but this still means that another third somehow disengage themselves from the obligation to serve their country in uniform. The problem is rather that those who do manage to get themselves exempted from service in one way or another tend to come from the better off, better educated, mentally and physically healthier sections of society. Those who are closest in standard of living and knowledge to young people in the West. This stratum is, of course, keen to protest, but just as it has no interest in conscription, it is not among them that we should look for the fighters of the regime-changing revolutions.

Among the Russian conscripts, there are many young people from very poor backgrounds with little education. In this stratum, however, the acceptance of military service is very high.

The Russians have at least faced their own difficulties, but we do not yet know anything about what lies ahead.

Every year, 75-80% of the 29,000 Finnish conscripts put on their angel's skin, putting Finland at the top of the list of countries with conscription, alongside North and South Korea, Turkey, Israel and Estonia. And yet the country has never been under imminent threat of external attack. The Finnish army has roughly 900,000 reserve troops, but even in the event of war, only about a third of these would be deployed at any one time, with the other two-thirds remaining in reserve or ready to relieve troops fighting at the front. You can throw around the Finnish example, but most Western countries are not there, and we don't know how Finnish young people would react to being called up. At least we now know why there was such a rush to join NATO. In countries that have not had conscription for decades, the number of reservists is almost negligible.

The Finns are seen as a "more modern Ukraine" in this conflict. The overwhelming majority of European countries continue to believe in supporting the rhetoric of war.

Maybe they think that if there is a war, they will have to fight it with people who were invited to their country because they didn't want to do certain jobs. This seems to be one such job. Because they are also at war with history education, they do not even think that if they put weapons in the hands of foreigners, the leadership and technological knowledge they have will one day be used against them.

In his usual radio interview on 4 March 2022, Viktor Orbán outlined the situation quite thoroughly. It is worth revisiting, because the events of the past few months put our own fate in a completely different context:

"The German case would take up all the minutes of our conversation, so let me just say that something of great significance happened there. I don't think radio listeners are aware, or only a small proportion of them are aware, that there's a German, apparently technical announcement that's going to redefine our future. So we will be living in a different Europe. In a few years' time, every listener will see this, because what is happening now is called the rearmament of Germany, which was banned. So, after World War II, because of Germany's role in World War II, the German army was virtually always smaller than the German economy would have allowed, and always smaller than was needed for European security, and the missing German army was replaced by the Americans on the European continent. But if Germany rearms, then it will be a new situation. Now, if you will allow me, I will close this bracket.

As far as Hungarian force development is concerned. A weak man does not get peace. If you want peace, you must have some kind of force. Your strength can come from two sources: your own strength and the strength of your allies. If you have no strength of your own, you have no allies, because no one will risk their life and sacrifice their money to protect you when you are not prepared to protect yourself. Therefore, anyone who says that NATO will protect us is wrong. NATO will protect us if we are prepared to protect ourselves. That is why we had to launch a force generation a few years ago. Hungary is a Hungarian country, which means that there is always a debate about everything, even about what should not be debated. There has been, but here you have to be firm, you have to be rock-solid, because if you do not start preparing for such a conflict in time, you will not be able to make up for it later. The years lost cannot be made up for later, because it takes many years to develop a military industry, to develop an army, to establish its place in the thinking of a country, not just a year or two.

We started on time. Of course, it would have been better sooner, but everyone will remember that in 2010 people were drowning in foreign currency loans, there was huge unemployment, the country was under-employed, and we could not solve everything at once. Pensions were low, wages were low, the thirteenth month's pension was taken away. There were many things that had to be done before the rearmament or the reorganisation of the Hungarian army in order to make everyday life bearable for the people, so that everyone could finally have a job and start moving forward. So we implemented a timetable. It was not the rebuilding of the army that was the most important thing, it was the foreign currency creditors and pensions and salaries and families and birth rates and the social security system and home creation and the reduction in rationing; these were the most important tasks. Then, of course, migration came along, and that took another year or two out of our lives, but then, as soon as we had some breathing space, we started to develop the armed forces - in a huge firestorm of opposition or left-wing firestorm, but we stuck with it nonetheless, and we got somewhere.

We are not ready, a war and a conflict in the neighbourhood is never good. But if it had been a few years later, we would be more prepared than we are now. But we don't look as bad now as we looked ten years ago. So we are strong enough now that we and our allies together can guarantee Hungary's security, we have concrete security, so Hungary can do no harm.

The only thing that could go wrong is if we lose our common sense and drift into this war; then there will be trouble, because because of our own stupidity and stupidity there is no NATO that can protect us."

Over the past millennia, we have been forced to learn a great truth: