Hungary like Iraq?

Hungary's second round of national elections took place Sunday and the outcome in the race for controlling party and Prime Minister remained unchanged from the vote two weeks ago.

In a commentary posted in the Brussels Journal a link is drawn between Budapest and Baghdad, with respect to the Hungarian people opting to reelect an incumbent even during a time when the nation's economy is fast falling behind those of nearby countries like Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland.


If your interest in geopolitics has been piqued by that article, give this one a try. Russia controls one of the world's largest supplies of oil and natural gas, and in the past few years, and especially in the past few months, Vladimir Putin has put the squeeze on former Soviet countries like Ukraine and Belarus, raising gas prices until those country's leaders are essentially forced to make deals with Russian supply companies allowing them to build or control miles of distribution networks between Russia and the European Union. All this sets up the potential for Russia to hold a very powerful trump card over fledgling Democracies in the east of Europe, and economic superpowers in the west.
If you study the European map through the ages, you'll be hard pressed to find a period lasting longer than 50 years in which political boundaries didn't change and national monuments weren't felled. We shouldn't be so foolhardy as to think that this everlasting struggle for power has ended. We should instead be looking forward to realize the next source for a global shift. It seems likely energy will be the flag-bearer of change.