Hungary is a Recognized and Successful NATO Member State

“NATO has proven to be the largest, strongest and most successful military alliance in the history of the world", the Defence Minister pointed out, emphasizing that the Alliance at the same time had to continuously respond to new challenges all through its existence. In this context he outlined NATO’s strategic concepts to date, and underlined that the principle “one for all and all for one" of the Alliance is also manifest in the order of procedure. In contrast with the Warsaw Pact’s former practice, Hungary enjoys equal membership rights with the other member states in NATO. The most recent proof of this, Csaba Hende told us, is that during the week US Ambassador Ms. Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis informed him that a decision had been made about the donation of another US military weapons and equipment package of considerable value to the Hungarian Defence Forces (HDF), first of all to reinforce the HDF contingent in ISAF, Afghanistan. Within this, an entirely new feature is the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) capability.

After the Minister’s presentation, MoD State Secretary for Public Administration Lajos Fodor spoke about the representation of Hungary’s national interests through the HDF’ participation in international operations. In summing up, he said that the international role of the Hungarian armed forces guarantees the further representation of national interests in the processes of world politics. For Hungarian politics, the Hungarian Defence Forces are one of the tools of representing our interests. “This role in peace operations is a recognized and successful activity", the State Secretary for Public Administration closed his talk.