Thread by @gjpappin

David Pressman’s departure from Budapest today—reprising his provocations on the way out—doesn’t just portend a new dawn in Hungary-US relations.

It marks a key moment in showing that the whole “aircraft carrier” of liberal foreign policy has run aground.

A few thoughts🧵

Pressman was a particularly extreme version of the foreign policy built in the wake of America’s victory in the Cold War. Seeking a reason for the West’s victory, the Clinton-era State Department (which he joined) settled on a kind of new mission: to spread liberal values to the four corners of the globe, as the essence of “alliance” with the United States.

The results that this eventually produced during Pressman’s assignment were certainly embarrassing—especially to America’s allies, who had to wince and look askance at a great power (temporarily) made a mockery of itself.

Certainly no one in the Albright-era State Department (of which Pressman was a product) expected the U.S. ambassadors would bide their time attending “pride marches” in the far-flung corners of NATO member countries. But by the time of the Biden administration, a deep rot had set into the liberal foreign policy apparatus.

The new values proved not even to be very good guarantors of security. Who wants to die for woke liberalism? After only a couple years of the Biden administration’s fever-pitch wokeism, it’s no wonder no one wanted to join woke agencies or the woke military.

When Trump lost in 2020, the liberal foreign policy apparatus concluded it was time to double down on the mistaken efforts of the previous generation. Trump was to be viewed as an aberration, and it was time to “lean in” again. For the Biden administration, it was clear that there was—other than Trump—an enemy no. 1: Viktor Orbán. With Trump vanquished at home, it was time to turn their attention to the final battleground: Budapest.

What if, they thought—just one last time—we poured in millions to try to color-revolution just one last time?

Unfortunately for the Biden administration, when Pressman sat down at the controls, they didn’t have the same effects in Hungary that they’d had elsewhere. Pressing the “Hungary equals Putin” button on arrival, Pressman was seemingly surprised to find out that it didn’t immediately turn the country into shills for the Biden administration’s foreign policy. Isn’t that button supposed to work!?

As it has done so often, the Biden administration is making a graceless exit here, too. One day after the elections, Pressman held a “Celebration of Democracy”—at which he denied interest in the outcome of the U.S. elections, only to spend half an hour lecturing about the damage Orbán had done by betting on Trump.

The Biden administration has also taken steps to make access to affordable energy difficult for the region and sanctioned a Hungarian government member in the administration’s final days.

In a few short days, a foreign policy based on national sovereignty will return to the United States. Those who expected the Biden administration and its liberal foreign policy to continue—which includes many European powers—will now face the urgent need to adapt.

It’s a change that can’t come soon enough.