NATO Must Scrutinize Objectives of Possible Newcomers

by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Defense News Banner, 05 April 1998

The decision by Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to postpone final U.S. Senate action on
NATO enlargement affords an opportunity to reflect on an aspect of this initiative that has
received too little attention — the prospect that it might entail the incorporation in the Atlantic
alliance of a Trojan horse.

Enlargement candidates could include countries governed by erstwhile communist
apparatchiks
whose track record of enmity to NATO make them dubious partners for peace, to say nothing of
trusting them with defense secrets and technology.

Consider the case of Hungary. That nation’s first democratic elections, held in 1990, gave
power
to a center-right, anticommunist government that set Hungary unmistakably on the path of
democratic and military reform. Four years later, though, Hungarian voters did an about-face and
elected a coalition led by the renamed Communist Party — now known as the Socialist Party.

There is an ominous irony to the enthusiasm these Socialists recently have shown for their
country’s admission into NATO. Hungary’s leaders have spent their entire careers fighting for the
other side and against the values NATO was created to advance and protect.

Taken together, Hungary’s current prime minister, defense minister and foreign minister can
count
more than a century of devoted Communist Party membership. For his part, Prime Minister Gyula
Horn voluntarily took up arms against his own people to assist the Soviet invaders in crushing the
Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956.

He subsequently made a successful career in the Communist government, rising to the
position of
foreign minister by the end of the 1980s.

Of particular relevance to Hungary’s future role in NATO is the Socialist Party’s policy with
respect to military reform. With the victory of the Socialists and their left-liberal allies, the Free
Democrats, in 1994, the process of transferring the Defense Ministry to civilian control was
reversed.

The former communists named a career political commissar, Col. György Keleti, to be
defense
minister. Keleti served in the infamous Main Political Administration — the organization
responsible for communist indoctrination of young recruits and for monitoring the ideological
conformity of those in uniform — until his retirement in 1993.

Keleti and his fellow commissars reported up a separate chain of command, directly to
officials of
the Communist Party. They were among the most faithful and dedicated of the old guard. As late
as 1988, Keleti voiced his antipathy toward NATO and the West with the publication of a
textbook he authored, “Defense Study for Secondary School Pupils.”

In this forceful exposition of communist military thought, Keleti wrote that, “The developed
capitalist countries have created aggressive military organizations to achieve their goals. Of these,
NATO can be regarded as the biggest threat to world peace.”

The process by which Hungary is pursuing NATO membership is itself cause for concern.
According to “Hungary 1997: The NATO Referendum, Statement of the British Helsinki Human
Rights Group, Nov. 18, 1997″:

“To further its ends, the government spent an estimated $2 million of its own citizens’ money
promoting the ‘Yes’ campaign in a blitz of propaganda crudely masked as ‘public education.’ The
effect was to return Hungary to a past time when only one candidate stood for election.”

As unsettling as the procedures followed to produce Hungary’s NATO referendum were its
results. While 85 percent of those who turned out voted in favor of NATO membership, only 49
percent of the population voted. In fact, if the Socialist government had not made some
controversial eleventh hour changes to the Hungarian constitution, the referendum would have
been invalid.

After all, up to that point, national referenda required the participation of at least half the
voting
public. Why, U.S. senators might well want to know, would a majority of Hungarians — when
finally given an opportunity to approve their country’s formal integration into the West — decline
to vote? The reason seems to be alienation arising from NATO membership in particular and
Western integration in general by the former communist bureaucrats.

The Atlantic alliance long has asserted that only governments meeting certain criteria would
be
eligible for admission. It seems a minimal requirement would be that candidate nations not pose a
threat to the robustness and security of this important defensive alliance.

By most reasonable standards, it would appear that the present government of Hungary fails
to
meet this test. As a result, a vote on including Hungary in NATO should be postponed until after
scheduled elections in May establish whether, and to what degree, the Hungarians will be
represented by a government that will prove an asset to the Atlantic alliance, not a potentially
serious liability.

_________

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the director of the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a
regular
contributor to Defense News.