Is a more perfect Union in
Europe in America’s national interest? On the American holiday in 2026 that principally
honors George Washington, whose eight-year commitment as the military commander-in-chief
to the cause of freedom for the 13 new sovereign republics that had been members
of the British Empire (and would forge a comparable political Union[1])
was decisive, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the E.U. state of
Hungary to deliver “a message of support from the Trump administration to
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” who was behind in the polls in his
re-election campaign.[2]
At their press conference, Orbán and Rubio “signed an agreement on energy
cooperation and hailed what they described as a ‘golden age’ of bilateral
relations.”[3]
E.U. officials were nowhere in sight; it was as if Hungary were still a
sovereign state rather than a semi-sovereign E.U. state. An implicit question
untreated by the media in the E.U. or U.S. is whether bilateral relations
between the U.S. and individual E.U. states, as if the E.U. were nonexistent,
was still in the U.S. national interest, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing
invasion of Ukraine.
The full essay is at "Is the E.U. in the U.S. Strategic Interest?"
2. Sandor Zsiros, “’We Want You to Continue’: Rubio Delivers Trump’s Campaign Message to Orbán in Budapest,” Euronews.com, 16 February, 2026.
3. Ibid.
