Today’s post was inspired by an article that appeared in Magyar Idők today under the headline “From Texas straight to the Bakony Mountains.” Bakony is a region located in Transdanubia, north of Lake Balaton. It lies almost entirely in Veszprém County. There, American soldiers, in conjunction with units of the Hungarian armed forces, stage military exercises that last for a couple of months. The center of these activities is the Hajmáskér Military Base, which until 1990 was in the possession of the Soviet occupying army. Hungary’s largest military firing range can be found there.

The Hungarian media has provided so little information on the country’s participation in NATO exercises over the last four or five years that an ordinary citizen, even if interested in politics and international relations, will most likely be baffled to hear that a NATO operation called Atlantic Resolve even exists. And yet, Hungary has been involved in joint military exercises in Hungary and elsewhere under its aegis. Ever since April 2014 the U.S. Army in Europe has led training and security operational activities in Eastern Europe. A division of about 5,000 troops, with tactical headquarters in Poznan, Poland, serves the area on a nine-month rotation schedule. Its mandate is “to increase the ability to respond to potential crises and defend our allies and partners in the European community.” This summer a company-sized element (80-150 soldiers) from the 1st Squadron of the 7th Cavalry Regiment was once again being dispatched to the Várpalota Training Area in Hungary.

Today’s Magyar Idők was surprisingly open in reporting that Atlantic Resolve was intended to “deter and block” growing Russian influence. Otherwise, the article pointed to the U.S.-Hungarian cooperation that exists in the military field and the eagerness of American soldiers to get to know Hungary better. Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Glazebrook described a military camp held in July where Hungarian teenagers could become acquainted with an American family and talk to American soldiers.

I was surprised that Magyar Idők was interested enough in Atlantic Resolve to send a special correspondent to Fort Hood, who gave a detailed description of life at this enormous military base. The reporter had an interview with Wilson Rutherford, the commander of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, and also talked to soldiers who will be among those heading to Eastern Europe. As far as I could ascertain, this was the first time that Magyar Idők had reported on American soldiers conducting military exercises with Hungarians on Hungarian territory. The paper even included a colorful map of countries where Atlantic Resolve “is present.”

Earlier, opposition parties were the only ones that paid any attention to the fact that Hungary is part of the Atlantic Resolve and that military exercises are carried out on Hungarian soil. When in February 2017 a reporter asked János Lázár about the truthfulness of the rumor that American troops will arrive in Hungary, Lázár’s answer was that “we wouldn’t like to have foreign armies stationed in the territory of Hungary.” That was a clever way of trying to get out of a sticky situation. A couple of months later 24.hu already knew that 125 American soldiers were on their way from Poland to Hungary, led by Colonel Chad Foster, the commander of the 4th Squadron of the 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment. They were bringing 14 Bradley fighting vehicles. Nine countries participated in this major military exercise. Troops started in Poland, Germany, and the Baltic and moved across Europe to engage in a more serious war exercise in Romania and Bulgaria.

It was at this point that Válasz, an online news site somewhat sympathetic to the Orbán regime but by now defunct, complained about the government’s concealment of the presence of American troops in the country. The reporter said that, with the possible exception of those who live near Várpalota, no one knows anything about these military exercises. Here is the largest NATO exercise in Hungary, this one called Buffalo Ride-17, and the publicly owned television and radio stations didn’t say one word about it. At the end of his article he said that he was“displeased to have to reconstruct a story after the fact.”

While there was general pro-government media silence about the American presence, the Hungarian military’s website was most enthusiastic about “these international exercises [which] are unquestionably useful” for the Hungarian military. We learn from the commander in charge that the Hungarian military took part in several international exercises in 2016, named Brave Warrior, Warpaint Ride, and Black Swan, and he goes on, paragraph after paragraph, about the usefulness of these exercises. But this kind of information doesn’t get farther than the military personnel and their families. The general public is simply not informed.

I don’t know what it means, if anything, that Magyar Idők decided to come clean and report in two separate articles that, yes, there are American soldiers in Hungary who are conducting military exercises under the aegis of Atlantic Resolve, the very same Atlantic Resolve that was forcefully condemned in Magyar Hírlap, the second pro-government daily, more than a year ago. In January 2017, when American troops disembarked in Bremerhaven to proceed to Poland, Károly Lóránt, a Fidesz loyalist and frequent contributor to the paper, wrote an opinion piece about Americans who oppose the launch of Atlantic Resolve. A couple of months before the American soldiers actually arrived in Hungary, Lóránt condemned these military exercises in “Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Germany, and France.” I hope you noticed that Hungary was not mentioned. Either Lóránt didn’t know that Hungary was slated to hold these military exercises in the summer of 2017 or he decided that it was something the Orbán government didn’t want to advertise.

Since I’m convinced that nothing sees the light of day in Magyar Idők that doesn’t have the approval of Viktor Orbán, I have to assume that it is no coincidence that, after years of silence on joint U.S.-Hungarian military exercises, the quasi-official government paper now devotes two fairly friendly articles on Atlantic Resolve and NATO troop movements in East-Central Europe. What it means only time will tell.

Source: Hungarianspectrum