This week, a bevy of ministers, ambassadors, and assorted delegates from the NATO member states will converge on Washington and gather to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the alliance.
As the alliance of 29 countries considers its future, this milestone provides the opportunity to not only reflect on its collective military might but to also examine its members’ commitment to shared values.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to NATO. It is a symbolic and opportune moment for NATO’s leaders to consider Hungary’s course over the past two decades. Since the 2015 migration crisis, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has become the bad boy of European politics. His brash anti-migrant actions and anti-Brussels political campaigns have been a thorn in the side of the European Union and even created a rift between the ruling Fidesz party and its partners in the European People’s Party.
While much of Orbán’s politics is certainly distasteful, that alone doesn’t merit concern by NATO. Any large organization, and certainly one made up of over two dozen different democratic governments, is bound to find areas of disagreement. However, NATO is also a political-military alliance built to defend and enhance free institutions through consensus decision-making.
The preamble to the North Atlantic Treaty, the founding document of NATO, states that the members are to safeguard “freedom … founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” Article 2 of the treaty reiterates that the participants commit to the “strengthening [of] their free institutions.” European and American leaders need to confront Orbán because his actions have diminished Hungary’s free institutions and disrupted consensus decision-making.
Since assuming office in 2010, Orbán has systematically undermined Hungary’s democracy. After years of backsliding, Freedom House has downgraded Hungary to a “partly free” ranking. Hungary is now the only European Union member state not to be ranked “free.” The report bluntly states that Orbán “has presided over one of the most dramatic declines ever charted by Freedom House within the European Union.” Orbán has repeatedly used a parliamentary supermajority to restrict “the opposition, the media, religious groups, academia, NGOs, the courts, asylum seekers, and the private sector.”
In the State Department’s most recent Human Rights Report, it records an alarming case where an estimated “85 percent of all Hungarian media outlets nationally” were centralized under a Fidesz-controlled foundation and exempted from regulatory scrutiny. Such a brazen and boldface takeover removes even the appearance of the rule of law.
For NATO, the trouble is not Orbán’s political views but in the way he has changed the rules of the game.
Furthermore, Hungary has broken NATO’s consensus toward Ukraine. Since 2017, the Hungarian government has blocked meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, the official body for consultations between the alliance and Ukraine. Hungary did so over U.S. objections and at a time of ongoing Russian military hostilities and political subversion against Ukraine. Hungary did so because it believes that a Ukrainian law regarding minority language education discriminates against ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine.
The conventional wisdom in Washington has held that outside topics, such as human rights or trade disputes, should not be adjudicated within the context of NATO — that the commitment to the common defense is so important that it must be kept distinct from those disagreements. That has been the argument for not chastising the Hungarian government in NATO settings, especially on rule of law and democratic reversals. Yet, Hungary itself has violated that understanding by connecting NATO issues to the unrelated topic of the rights of ethnic Hungarians outside their border. The Hungarian government has demonstrated that it is willing to place its interests ahead of the good of the alliance.
The time has come for NATO and American leaders to say publicly what has long been known privately: that the actions of the current Hungarian government, both at home and in their relations with Ukraine, run counter to their longstanding commitment to NATO and do not keep faith with the commitment the United States has made to Hungary.
Discussing the problem with the Hungarian government in public does not diminish the United States’ responsibility under Article 5. On the contrary, this will begin a needed and overdue discussion about the diplomatic and foreign assistance tools the U.S. should employ to help Hungary again become fully free, as it was when it joined NATO 20 years ago.
Scott Cullinane was the professional staff member for the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats from 2014 to 2018.
