Danube Institute Podcast

We asked Or Yissachar, an Israeli national security and Middle East researcher, a Senior Fellow at David Institute for Security Policy, about Israel's war strategy and ultimate war goals, and the possible end of the Iran-Israel conflict's open war phase.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

China and the West have known each other for longer than we commonly admit. And for most of that time, a small cognoscenti has expressed mutual admiration. From Confucians interested in Hegel, to Marxists interested in Laozi. Danube Fellows Philip Pilkington and David Lloyd Dusenbury discuss their recent lectures, seminars, and a second essay they have recently co-authored, entitled: “Hegel, Marx and the Mandate of Heaven”. They trace Chinese Marxism to Li Dazhao, influenced first by Bergson and then Marx, and argue China imported a Western linear view of history while producing a distinctly Chinese Marxism that shaped Mao. They discuss Hegels critique of Confucian governance as overly rule-bound and authoritarian, contrasting it with Leibniz’s admiration for Confucian “li” - akin to natural law. From early Jesuit reports like Matteo Ricci to the Chinese Rites Controversy, they trace a journey longer and stranger than most have ever realised. Pilkington and Dusenbury are founders of the Danube Institute’s Recivilisation Project, which responds to a fraying post–Cold War order by seeking deeper civilisational dialogue, especially with China.

We asked Thomas Fazi, a writer and journalist at UnHerd, about the EU's propaganda and censorship to keep people "free".The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

Subsidiarity is meant to hold the peace between 27 often fractious nation-states. It’s the basis of EU Law. The principle that decisions are always taken at the lowest level of authority, - only matters which concern all, are governed by all. The sense that Brussels does the Brussels things, and stays out of domestic politics. That what happens with Irish tax law, Swedish social benefits, or Hungarian marriage laws, is at heart, the reserved right of the lawmakers voted in by each of those three unique polities. Except that… this simply isn’t the case. Because no one is any longer sure where subsidiarity begins and end. To give one example - Hungarian migration laws are being taxed at the rate of a million euros a day for the country’s failure to adhere to Europe’s common migration framework. So - who can enter your country is evidently no longer reserved power. Now, there is the Digital Services Act, which attempts to force mass internet censorship on member states. The European Public Prosecutor's Office in 2013 took away the exclusive privilege of nations to prosecute on their sovereign territory. In the Common Agricultural Policy’s micro-regulation: Brussels prescribes field rotation schedules, hedgerow maintenance, and the percentage of farmland that must be left fallow. Time and again, we see the principle of Subsidiarity dying by a thousand cuts. So - should we hang onto it? Is subsidiarity something that works - the best bolster we have against super-state overreach? Or is it now little more than a polite fiction, best dispensed with to reveal where true power lies? Father Mario Portella is familiar with the subject on two levels. Firstly, he is a Catholic Priest - and Subsidiarity is originally a Catholic doctrine, first sketched by Pope Pius XI. Secondly, he has just published a paper for the Danube Institute, in the course of which he has traced the increasingly confusing story of subsidiarity across the history of the EU. Father Mario is visiting fellow here at the Danube Institute. He’s also former Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence and Priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

We asked Ken Jimbo, Professor of International Relations at Keio University and former Special Advisor to the Minister of Defense, about Japan's preparations for possible Taiwan conflict scenarios.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

Sean Nottoli worked for the National Endowment for Democracy, via its International Republican Institute, for four years. Both were in turn funded by USAID. At the time, Sean worked on projects including a study of attitudes to the US, Russian and China among Hungarians. Information later pitched to the Hungarian political parties. Elsewhere, he worked on an initiative that coached rising European politicians, with the aim of boosting NATO national spending to the 5 percent target figure. What was it like to be at the coalface of influence operations on the European continent? And what will replace it? Is the US entirely out of the influence operations game? Or has it merely changed shape? Danube Politics is a product of the Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank connecting the country to the Anglosphere and beyond on matters of geopolitics, trade and conservatism.

Can you make fish from fish soup? Recently Viktor Orbán reminded Hungarian voters that certain decisions are irreversible. And the world certainly has reached several crossroads right now.This month on View From The Danube, Rod Dreher hosts Philip Pilkington, Callum Nicholson, and Raymond Ibrahim to discuss the Iran war, arguing a failed Trump-administration decapitation strike has shifted into long-range missile attrition, with Iran now hitting Gulf states, U.S. bases, Dubai, airports, and energy infrastructure.They warn about Iran’s ideological and Shiite eschatological motivations, dispersed IRGC command, and U.S. interceptor and Tomahawk limits raise escalation risks. Meanwhile, at home, Trump faces low public support and fast partisan backlash.After all, Iran’s economic warfare strategy - cyberattacks, targeting UAE as a financial hub, and potentially closing the Strait of Hormuz - could trigger oil shocks, inflation, and a broader financial crisis.In part two, the team cover the recent Gorton & Denton by-election, Islamization and left–Muslim political alliances in Europe, demographic pressures, and the situation in France following the murder of a student.In part three, they turn to Hungary’s contested polling and the election flashpoint of the Druzhba pipeline.View From The Danube is a production of The Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank focused on communicating with the English speaking world from a classically liberal, conservative perspective.

We asked Hessam Habibi Doroh, an expert on Iran, a researcher at the Austrian National Defence Academy, and a PhD candidate at the University of Public Service in Budapest, about the Iran war, its geopolitical context, and the survival chances of the Islamic regime.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.

We asked Nadežda Kokotović, Director of the Brussels Energy Club, about what the European energy situation will be like after the introduction of a complete ban on Russian gas and oil.Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.The conversation was recorded a few days before the recent Iranian war broke out.

Philip Pilkington and David Dusenbury dismantle Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis — tracing it from its Hegelian and Kojèvian roots through to its spectacular collision with contemporary geopolitics.As China rises, Russia endures, and the liberal West struggles with demographic decline and institutional decay, Pilkington and Dusenbury ask whether the real question facing both East and West isn't the end of history but the revival of civilization. Drawing on Hegel, Confucius, Adam Smith, and the strange story of how a Stalinist philosopher helped design the European Common Market, they explore what "re-civilization" might look like — and whether the West and China could pursue it together.