Foreign Digest: North Macedonia, Sudan and Hungary

North Macedonia

            Presidential elections were conducted in North Macedonia earlier this month.  The newly installed President plans to integrate the former Yugoslav Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.  Integration is supported by its southern Greek neighbor after the two States reached on accord on the Slavic Macedonia’s name, in order to distinguish it better from the homonymous Greek province across the border to prevent any separatism there.  The dispute had lasted two decades since Macedonian independence from Yugoslavia. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin opposed the deal in order to keep Macedonia out of NATO and keep Europe divided and employed an active measures campaign against it, but it failed.

Sudan

            The former Islamist tyrant, war criminal and state sponsor of terrorism has been charged by the new transitional military government, which overthrew him last month, for atrocities.  The government has also reached an agreement to share power with the opposition in a civilian government until elections in three years.  Until then, the opposition will have two thirds of the seats in the national assembly.

Hungary

            The Hungarian President was a guest this week at the White House, the American Executive Mansion.  Previous United States Presidents declined to grant Viktor Orban such an honor.  The visit legitimizes his admitted illiberalism, kleptocracy, anti-immigrant xenophobia and anti-Semitism, as well as his pro-Putin foreign policy.  Furthermore, the pretender to the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump, even praised Orban for some of these policies.  Trump, who has been a champion of extreme nationalism and who himself has authoritarian and kleptocratic proclivities, has a pattern of praising or congratulating authoritarians, such as those of the Russian Federation, North Korea, Communist China, Turkey and the Philippines, sometimes specifically for their authoritarianism, or at least excusing their illiberalism.  The withdrawal of U.S. leadership on freedom has not only tarnished American prestige, but helped exacerbate the global trend toward authoritarianism and reduced liberty around the world.