Preliminaries

Hungary's earliest contacts with NATO go back to the end of the 1980s. It was in 1988 that Kádár was removed from power, the political parties important in Hungary's recent history emerged, Miklós Németh became Prime Minister, and the Government accepted a NATO invitation. In November, Gyula Horn—as Deputy Foreign Minister—addressed the Hamburg meeting of the North Atlantic Council. He welcomed the beginning of "a direct dialogue between the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO members"; he also welcomed the development that Hungary, the first of the Warsaw Pact countries to do so, had made contact with the Council of Europe. In February 1990, now Foreign Minister, Horn announced at a meeting of the Society of Political Sciences that "a close connection with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be established, and I can even envisage the possibility that Hungary could one day become a member of one or the other political bodies of NATO". Horn primarily had the North Atlantic Assembly in mind, although he did not dwell on details. "I believe that about the simultaneous disbandment of the Warsaw Pact and NATO (...) in the current situation is an illusion… We ought to transform the Warsaw Pact into a consultative and co-ordinative body, stripping away all its decision-making powers. Only the parliaments of the member states should have the right to make decisions. The member states within the Warsaw Pact should be allowed armies that are exclusively national." This speech made quite a splash, especially since it was presented on Hungarian television as if the Foreign Minister had spoken about the possibility of Hungary's joining NATO. The Soviet government was dismayed by Hungary's drifting closer to NATO, and made its dismay clear through diplomatic channels. When Horn delivered the speech, however, Budapest already had Moscow's word on the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary, and the text of the agreement had been prepared for signature. But the Warsaw Pact was still in being, and Moscow made it quite clear that it wished to maintain the organization in one form or another.

The need for NATO guarantees was perceived around that time. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, there was a general anxiety over the possibility of a power vacuum in the region and a belief that only NATO could prevent this. It was generally felt that, in the case of a Soviet restoration—or the revival of the imperial idea—neither the UN nor the loose Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), would be able to offer effective help.

After the first free elections in 1990, Prime Minister József Antall trod cautiously in foreign policy. Without actually mentioning NATO membership, he considered a gradual disengagement from the Warsaw Pact and the strengthening of ties with the European Community his most important objectives. On one occasion, he stated that although Hungary wanted to leave the Warsaw Pact, it did not wish to join NATO. On Antall's initiative, Parliament passed an important resolution in June 1990. The House instructed the Government to start negotiations over Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact "in view of the fundamentally changed circumstances compared to the conditions prevailing at the time of signing the Pact." In the meantime, the Government's intermediate goal ought to be the suspension of Hungary's participation in the military structure of the Warsaw Pact. Also in June 1990, during a visit to Brussels, Antall called on NATO Headquarters and had talks with Secretary General Manfred Wörner—the first head of government from a former Soviet block country to do so. After this, in November, Antall made an official visit to NATO and addressed the North Atlantic Council. He explained that at that time NATO membership still seemed to be an unrealistic goal in the Hungarian Government's opinion. "[However], we consider it of utmost importance," he added, "that NATO should feel obligated to take a stance against aggression and the violation of national borders. [...] For us, NATO is the guarantee of European stability. While we have great esteem for the international agreements, Helsinki and CSCE, we regard NATO as the only effective organization to guarantee security."

At that time much thought was given to the possibility of Hungary becoming neutral. To the public this looked attractive—probably in consequence of the 1956 Declaration of Neutrality and the successes of Austrian foreign policy. Several politicians argued for neutrality, while others pointed out that, with the Cold War over, that status had become meaningless. It also seemed unlikely that the great powers and the neighbouring countries would recognize Hungary's neutrality by an international treaty, as had been the case with Austria in 1955.

The idea of joining NATO revived in 1991. The last Soviet soldier had left Hungarian territory in June; the Warsaw Pact was abolished on July 1; and the Soviet Union itself fell apart at the end of the year. In the Government's view, the North Atlantic Council made an important gesture in August 1991, when, on the third day of the attempted coup in Moscow, it discussed the situation. The Foreign Ministers attending the meeting issued a declaration, in which, in reference to the anxiety in Central and Eastern European countries, they reiterated their conviction whereby their "own security is inseparably linked to that of all other states in Europe, particularly to that of the emerging democracies". We expect the Soviet Union," the declaration went on, "to respect the integrity and security of all states in Europe." This was a plain warning to Moscow, which it could not afford to ignore—regardless of the outcome of the coup.

[...]

The primary goal was undoubtedly the declaration and institutionalization of Hungary's Western orientation. Under foreign domination and with its organic links with economic, social and political processes of the West severed for half a century, Hungary wanted to return to the place where it always thought it rightfully belonged. Although Hungary developed Western-type democratic institutions after the political transition, and opened her borders both literally and metaphorically, the political elite and the general public came round to the view that Hungary's full return to the West was not possible without membership of the two most important Western organizations, the European Union and NATO. Since it had soon become obvious that joining the Western-European integration was going to take quite a long time, people's attention was concentrated on the North Atlantic Alliance.

The historical consciousness of the political class also played a part in the efforts to achieve integration with the West. The fundamental fact here is that the Hungarian nation had no such thing as an independent state from the 16th century right up to 1918, and the period of independence the nation came to enjoy between the two World Wars was cut short by, first, the expansion of the Third Reich and then that of the Soviet Empire. Different generations of the political class bore the deep scars of their historical experiences of the attempts to revise the Trianon Peace Treaty, the experiences of the Second World War, the persecution of Jews, the terror of the Rákosi era, the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, followed by the introduction of martial law in Poland. All contributed to a syndrome of which the absence of a predictable future formed a part. At the same time, Central Europe also realized that after the Second World War, a period when its countries were strugg-ling to survive, the developed countries of the West achieved long-term stability. Nobody worries about the possibility of military conflict between the countries of the Euro-Atlantic region anymore.

In the other half of the continent, in the various successor states of the former Soviet Union, people found themselves living under conditions of permanent instability. For them the year 1991 brought the beginning of another turbulent period, rather than the promise of stability. In the light of this, it was understandable that the Hungarian political class did not want to be trapped in a "halfway zone", in the periphery of the stable region. "In the next five to ten years, for the first time in its history, this country will have a chance to cross the civilizational fault line splitting Europe in half and to make it to the Western side", the publicist Endre Gömöri noted.

The new developments in Russian foreign policy also helped shape public opinion. These years witnessed the realignments in domestic politics in Moscow; both the nationalists and the so-called centrists became critical of Yeltsin's leadership for its alleged Western sympathies. With growing frequency, statements of a distinctly confrontational tone appeared both in the press and in diplomatic correspondence—most notably on the part of Foreign Minister Kozyrev. Many people in Russia would have liked to see the restoration of Moscow's status as a superpower. A number of Russian declarations seemed to serve no other purpose than calling the world's attention to the point that the Russian federation continued to be a great power, whose specific interests were not to be ignored in foreign relations. People in Moscow believed that if they stopped emphasizing Russian interests at every available opportunity, the world would soon ignore Russia and relegate her to the rank of medium powers. All this was accompanied by economic and political instability in Russia. The impression in Budapest was that the declining performance of the Russian economy could lead to a serious imbalance, and that the future in Russian domestic politics was also unpredictable. No one could be sure what political processes an economic collapse might set in motion, and what consequences could follow. It was clearly appreciated that by joining NATO, the Hungarian Government could participate directly in the Alliance's political and military decision-making bodies as well as in the work of its administrative apparatus, allowing the development of closer and more regular contacts with the leading political circles of the Euro-Atlantic region. Budapest realized that over the last fifty years the member states of the Alliance had developed a complex mechanism of consultation, which was being used to great advantage in exchanging foreign political information regarding both member and non-member states; indeed, in some respects member states shaped the foreign policy of the West within the framework of the Alliance. In consequence, Hungary could not be indifferent to the point whether this foreign policy was being defined with or without Hungarian participation.

Naturally, considerations of a more general type also helped to shape the views of the political class, most notably the point that NATO membership would guarantee the country's defence. Once a NATO member, Hungary could feel virtually resistant to foreign aggression, since it would be backed by military might that could deter any state from the use of armed force. This factor obviously came into play in connection with the war in neighbouring Yugoslavia, as the end of that conflict was still nowhere in sight.

Many people in Budapest assumed that membership could help manage conflicts between the new member states. Although such objectives were not among NATO's functions, several observers pointed out that the political and military integration of new members could improve communication between these countries, helping them to arrive at compromises.

Observers also suggested that, in an indirect way, expansion could even increase internal security. Political integration within NATO, along with the intensive communication between political elites and governments, could favourably influence democratic developments in new member states.

Several Hungarian politicians declared that the economic consequences of the country's NATO membership could also be beneficial. The import of foreign capital would increase, as investors usually regard stability and security as crucial factors. Furthermore, joining NATO also seems a rational and cost-effective way to modernize Hungary's military defence, something that can no longer be put off. For more than a decade, the Hungarian armed forces have added no new weaponry to their arsenal, except for the fighter planes received from Russia as part payment of her debts to Hungary. Modernization is unavoidable, if Hungary wants her army to remain a credible and capable force. NATO member states, however, do not have to develop the full range of protection, it was argued, as this is precisely one of the great advantages of military integration. NATO membership could offer a level of security, which would not require military expenditure beyond Hungary's present economic capabilities.

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Partnership for Peace

Due to the relentless diplomatic efforts by the three Central European countries, as well as to the revised position of the Clinton administration, by late 1993 the leading NATO countries had come to accept the idea of expansion. The communiqué approved at the January 1994 session of the North Atlantic Council included the following: "We reaffirm that the Alliance [...] remains open to membership of other European states. [...] We would welcome NATO expansion that would reach to democratic states to our East, as part of an evolutionary process, taking into account political and security developments in the whole of Europe."

Budapest seized the opportunity thus offered. In February 1994 Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky signed the Framework Document containing the most important elements of the programme known as Partnership for Peace, which was subsequently ratified by the Hungarian Parliament and promulgated as Act LXVII of 1995. The next stage came when the Hungarian envoy handed over the Presentation Document containing the Hungarian position. The Individual Partnership Programme, endorsed in November 1994 and subsequently revised several times, was based on this document. Simultaneously with the launch of the Partnership for Peace, prospective member states were offered the opportunity to establish diplomatic relations with NATO. Up until January 1995, Hungary had been represented at the organization by its ambassador to Brussels. After this the department assigned to NATO affairs was separated from the Hungarian Embassy, functioning as an Atlantic Liaison Office. Ambassador András Simonyi was appointed to head the office. In addition, another Hungarian military liaison group ("cell") was formed to co-operate with SHAPE, which was led by Colonel István Szalai.

Participation in the PfP presented a serious challenge to the Hungarian army and its military command. The Hungarian Army, trained within the scope of the Warsaw Pact, was being asked to learn an entirely new way of thinking within a relatively short period of time—beside dealing with the concrete tasks associated with Hungary's admission. In the course of an intensifying co-operation,

NATO representatives let their Hungarian partners know what they expected. In this area, NATO officials laid emphasis on the broadening of civil control over the military, such as adequate regulation of the institutional and legal framework, and better public relations and greater transparency; they would have liked to see more civilian politicians in the bodies controlling the Hungarian armed forces. Certain changes have been implemented in this regard, to be discussed below.

NATO representatives found that the general level of foreign language skills in the Hungarian army was not up to the mark. They encouraged the Ministry of Defence to make serious efforts in language instruction. In 1995 the PfP Military Language Training Centre was established, where thousands of officers and NCOs received language training, mostly in English. Hundreds of officers were sent to various Western language schools.

An obvious way to prepare the Hungarian army for military integration was through joint exercises in Hungary. Soldiers taking part in these events learned the methods, work documents and procedures of NATO armies; they also gained valuable experiences in peacekeeping, humanitarian and rescue operations. The first Partnership for Peace programme in Hungary was a multinational command and staff management exercise at brigade level called Cooperative Light, which was held in 1995, followed by invitations to four other exercises abroad that same year. Most of the exercises in the period up to the formal integration were held under the aegis of the Partnership for Peace. Among the more important exercises was Cooperative Lantern, a command and staff management exercise held in 1998 in Hungary, which was attended by 570 officers from 19 countries. Another important objective concerned procedural harmonization, in other words the gradual introduction of the security policies and NATO'S doctrinal, strategic, operational, tactical and planning procedures and principles.

The largest project within the framework of PfP was arranged in the city of Veszprém. An Air Sovereignty Operation Centre (ASOC), mostly installed by the United States, was set up. Brought into service shortly before Hungary's formal admission to NATO, the centre came to play a major role in the protection of Hungarian airspace.

The ASOC's job is to identify all aircraft entering Hungarian airspace, to track them and, if needs be, direct any military operation against them. For the time being, the system transforms the analogue signals of older, Russian-made radar equipment into digital signals, as this is the only way to link the system with the corresponding units of the Alliance. However, by the year 2002 three digital radar stations with three-dimensional imaging capability will be placed in Hungary as part of NATO's defence development programme; this will further improve the efficiency of the system.

This means that the Veszprém and the Verona regional centres can simultaneously detect flying objects both in Hungarian airspace and in a bordering strip 200 kilometres in width. With the co-operation of the Budapest civilian airport Ferihegy, ASOC is able to identify these objects and to compare the information thus obtained with scheduled commercial flight information. In this way it can easily identify hostile planes approaching Hungarian airspace, making it possible to take immediate counter measures within the framework of the NATO integrated air defence. Naturally, this system will also contribute significantly to the safety of civil aviation in the region.

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Participation in IFOR and SFOR

After Summer 1995, when NATO launched several air offensives against

Bosnian Serb positions on the Security Council's mandate, thus opening the way for the restoration of peace in Bosnia, a decision to include Hungarian troops in the peacekeeping operation swiftly followed. Richard Holbrooke was the first to raise Hungarian participation in September 1995 in New York. The Americans needed a logistic base in Hungary near the Yugoslav border. In early November, they inspected the available facilities and the base at Taszár was agreed on. Again in that month, the Ministry of Defence informed NATO that Hungary was ready to participate in the IFOR mission. Ten days after the conclusion of the Dayton peace accord, the first American billeting group arrived at Taszár. In December an agreement on the transit of NATO troops was signed. Under the Hungarian Constitution, the agreement required Parliament's seal of approval, which was given that same month. Hungary joined the PfP-SOFA agreement, the text of which was identical with the 1951 London agreement regulating the legal status of the armed forces of the NATO countries (Status of Forces Agreement—SOFA). In this way, PfP-SOFA applied to every soldier setting foot on Hungarian soil after the signing.

In the period leading up to the country's admission to NATO about 500,000 foreign soldiers and civilian employees passed through Hungary under the aegis of first IFOR and then SFOR, along with 17,000 aircraft, two thousand trains and 210,000 armoured and other vehicles. The Hungarian army sent an engineering unit 416 strong to Okucani, where they were placed under IFOR command. The primary task of the unit was to rebuild and repair destroyed or damaged bridges; in addition, they had to clear mines and to render roads safe for the movement of IFOR/SFOR units. On top of this, the Hungarian army contributed to Bosnian operations by making available, partly or wholly, military bases in Kaposvár, Pécs and Táborfalva; by permitting the use of its own radio frequencies; and by coordinating road and railway transport. The costs of stationing foreign troops in Hungary were paid by NATO, and the Hungarian state footed the bill for the engineering unit dispatched to Okucani.

Initially many were worried about the adverse consequences of stationing American and other foreign soldiers in Hungary, fearing a possible increase in crime, prostitution and drug abuse. They were proved wrong. Discipline was maintained by all units; the only problem arose in connection with damage caused by heavy vehicles to roads and buildings not designed for such load. Eventually a bypass road was built at Taszár for this purpose, and people received compensation for damage incurred.

Relations between the Hungarian army personnel and the other military units of the IFOR/SFOR mission have been excellent. In recent years many American politicians and military commanders have visited Taszár. They have all been impressed by what they were shown there. The most important lesson for NATO about the Taszár compound was that they could depend on co-operation with both the Hungarian Government and army. In fact, the Alliance carried out the greatest troop movement of ground forces in its entire history through Hungary. It turned out that, without actually bordering any of the NATO countries, Hungary was easily approachable and could receive a large military force within a short period of time, serving a peacekeeping mission in a third country. Also, from the viewpoint of Hungary's national security it was important to know that in case of a threat she would be able to receive reinforcements from NATO.

After December 1995 Hungary's geo-strategic position undoubtedly strengthened. It became clear that the country had—and would continue to have—an outstanding role in the solution of armed conflicts along the eastern borders of NATO. This latter factor was far from being irrelevant from the viewpoint of Hungary's admission to NATO. In that period, a crucial part of the debate over NATO's expansion concerned the actual choice of the countries to be admitted. At one time certain member states would have liked to see no more than one or two new states. To a considerable degree, it was due precisely to Taszár and Hungary's contribution to the peace-keeping operation in Bosnia that soon afterwards there were talks again of the admission of three new members.

Admission

The fact that the leading members of NATO asked the Hungarian Government through various diplomatic channels to settle its ongoing disputes with the neighbouring countries, especially the disputes concerning the Hungarian minorities there, could be interpreted as a political condition of admission. The earlier mentioned Study on NATO Enlargement stated unequivocally: "States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, [...] must settle those disputes in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance."

This was partly the reason why the Horn Government made great efforts to prepare the bilateral treaties with Slovakia and Romania. The Government set two goals there. On the one hand it wished to reassure the two countries concerned that it had no intention to revise the existing borders; on the other hand, it tried to improve the position of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and Romania. The government did not wish to open a debate on the first point. It simply reiterated the position already declared in the bilateral treaty signed by the Antall government with Ukraine, whereby Hungary did not have territorial claims against its neighbours, and that it would have no such claims in the future. The situation was a great deal more complex regarding the minority issue, as neither the Meciar government in Slovakia nor Iliescu's administration in Romania was prepared to give broad rights to the Hungarian ethnic minorities.

Thanks to active Western diplomacy associated with the Balladur plan, the bilateral treaty with Slovakia was the first to be hammered out in 1995. The treaty addressed the problems of both the international borders and the national minorities. It contained both the declaration regarding the borders, and it guaranteed the rights of national minorities across a relatively broad range. Hungary scored a spectacular diplomatic success when it succeeded in having Recommendation 1201 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe accepted as a legally binding document in the bilateral relations of the two countries. Of all the multilateral documents produced so far, this recommendation offers the broadest rights to minorities.

The Romanian government took the treaty between Hungary and Slovakia very badly, and had no intention of following suit. For quite a while the negotiations offered no glimpse of hope. Nevertheless, the leading Western countries were able to persuade Romania to change its policy. As a result, the bilateral treaty between Hungary and Romania was signed in 1996. This agreement also addressed the problem of the borders and the minority issue, and although Recommendation 1201 was relegated to a footnote, the stipulations laid down there are as legally binding in the two countries' bilateral relations as those contained in the main body of the text.

The opposition parties strongly criticized the decision to sign these treaties, and their MPs all voted to reject ratification. In their view the treaties had serious shortcomings, the most severe being the failure to recognize collective minority rights and the right to autonomy. The opposition MPs argued that it was pointless to sign treaties with the Meciar and the Iliescu government anyway, as these would not implement them in legislation. At the same time, very little criticism was directed against the paragraphs dealing with the border issue. This demonstrated that by the second half of the 1990s Hungary had got over the Trianon syndrome, which up to then had, in one way or another, always been present in Hungarian political life. After the ratification of the agreements no serious political force challenged the political concensus that existing borders were immutable. As to minority rights, there seemed to be no improvement under the Meciar and Iliescu governments, and in some respects the situation even became worse. However, subsequent elections in both Slovakia and Romania returned coalition governments in which Hungarian minority political parties were junior partners, and the situation significantly improved within two or three years.

With the signature of the two bilateral treaties, Hungary had met the political condition for NATO membership. This alone, however, was not enough to convince the sixteen NATO members to decide in favour of the expansion. Leading officials of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry believed that a major diplomatic offensive was needed to acquire the necessary votes and to improve Hungary's image as a suitable candidate. Foreign Minister László Kovács and his colleagues used bilateral and multilateral talks to argue for Hungary's admission. A similar strategy was followed by the defence administration under Defence Minister György Keleti.

For a few months in Autumn 1995, Hungary's NATO membership came under a political threat on the domestic front. The extreme left Workers' Party, which was not represented in Parliament, succeeded in getting the necessary number of signatures to initiate a referendum on the issue of NATO membership. The Party was encouraged by the current polls, which indicated that the popular support for NATO membership was less than fifty per cent. Actually, this was quite natural considering that NATO membership was still not an issue in domestic politics since no formal invitation to join had been announced, and so the public paid no attention to the problem. The Party fancied the slim chance of either the referendum being invalid or the result being in the negative. Neither the coalition nor the opposition parties supported the initiative. They thought it was a mistake to consult the public before NATO actually issued the invitation, along with the terms and conditions of admission. The parliamentary parties also took into account the fact that according to the law two years would have to pass before the referendum could be repeated. On these considerations the Parliament voted against holding a referendum at that time, although it also declared that it supported the idea at an appropriate time.