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Hungary Threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Traditionally, Hungary's role in the Warsaw Pact had
been to
follow the Soviet lead on matters of national and bloc
defense.
But even during the early and middle 1980s, when member
countries
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began
installing
intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Western Europe in
response to the installation of Soviet SS-20 missiles in
the
western portion of the Soviet Union, the attitude of the
Hungarian government toward the West was never as rabidly
vehement as that displayed by the governments of
Czechoslovakia
or East Germany
(see Principles of Foreign Policy
, ch. 4).
In
fact, the Soviet Union has criticized Hungary for not
spending
enough on its military and for stressing defense of the
country
(honvedelem) instead of defense of the countries of
the
Warsaw Pact.
Western analysts speculated about Hungary's military
role in
a Warsaw Pact conflict with the West. Hungary did not
border any
NATO country and therefore was not in the front line of
Warsaw
Pact troop deployment. It was seen to play a supporting
role,
primarily by supplying military engineering support and
some
antiaircraft defense. In a war with NATO, Hungarian forces
would
either be used in the Warsaw Pact's Western Theater of
Military
Operations against West Germany or in the Southwestern
Theater of
Military Operations against NATO's southern flank. In both
scenarios, Hungarian forces would have to enter the
territory of
neutral countries. For instance, Yugoslavia's neutrality
might be
breached to project Soviet and Warsaw Pact power in the
Mediterranean. Hungarian military engineering support
would prove
crucial in such a campaign.
Data as of September 1989
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