„Hungary in a Constantly Renewing NATO”

The Hungarian Atlantic Council held a conference at the County Hall in Debrecen on November 24. The event “Hungary in a Constantly Renewing NATO" was attended by Defence Minister Dr. Csaba Hende, MoD State Secretary for Public Administration Lajos Fodor, MFA Deputy State Secretary for Security Policy and Policy Director Dr. András Péter Sztáray and Col. Dr. Gábor Boldizsár, the acting Dean of the Miklós Zrínyi National Defence University and the commander of the eighth rotation of the HDF Provincial Reconstruction Team (HUN PRT-8) in Afghanistan. Academician Prof. Dr. Szilveszter E. Vizi, the President of the Hungarian Atlantic Council opened the meeting.

The Defence Minister stressed that the cyberspace has opened up a new domain of warfare, whose significance is well attested by the earlier cyber attack on Georgia or the one that destroyed Estonia’s system of public administration, or again by the fact that the Chinese military has a staff of 100,000 people working only in this field.

MoD State Secretary for Public Administration Lajos Fodor delivered a lecture, in which he said that we can adequately represent our national interests through international military operations. He emphasized that it is an unwritten custom in NATO that 10% of the member states’ land forces are deployed in operations. More than 1,000 Hungarian troops are serving on missions abroad on a permanent basis, from the Balkans to Afghanistan to Cyprus, but they are present in Uganda as well, for instance.

Prior to the conference Col. Dr. Vilmos Kovács, the Commandant of the MoD Military History Institute and Museum opened the exhibition “From the Hungarian People’s Army to NATO membership".

 Photo: Mária Krasznai-Nehrebeczky