Hungary Clears Way for Sweden to Join NATO Transcript

Hungary has cleared the way for Sweden to become the 32nd member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO. Hungary’s Parliament voted Monday to ratify Sweden’s membership to the military alliance. The country opposed the application for nearly two years, admission to NATO requires unanimous approval from all members. Final steps to formalize the move are expected in the coming days.

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With the addition of Sweden, NATO becomes 32 members strong. For the past two centuries, Sweden had preferred to stay neutral, but changed its mind after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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Charles Kupchan joins me now, he’s a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. So a month ago when we talked, you said, “Hungary will come along,” and now they have. Why did Hungary change its mind?

I think there were two things at play. One is that Hungary, like Turkey, is a transactional country, doesn’t feel like the Alliance is a family. And so they want to exact a pound of flesh. And in this case, it appears to have been some Gripen fighter jets from Hungary. Just like in the Turkish case, it was some F-16s from the United States.

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And I think the other thing is that Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, likes to be the bad boy. He wants to be the ringleader of a right wing movement in Europe, not unlike the Trump America-first movement here in the United States, that is more pro-Russian that sees the West as Christian and white. And so by trying to hold off on bringing Sweden in and appearing to be more pro-Russian, he was trying to, I think, put himself at the front of this leadership of a far right movement within Europe.

Does this cause any headaches for Orban with Putin?

I don’t think so. I think that Putin knew that sooner or later Hungary was going to cave and approve Swedish membership. The bigger picture, yes, big headaches for Putin. Why? Because Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, in part because he wanted to roll back the post-Cold War settlement, weaken NATO, get NATO to pull its forces back from the Eastern flank in Central Europe. What did he get?

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He’s got more forces on the Eastern flank, and now he’s got two new members, Sweden and Finland, one of which, Finland, has a border with Russia that runs almost 1,000 miles. So this is a sign that NATO is really responding to the invasion of Ukraine by beefing up, exactly the opposite of what Putin wanted.

And Charles, it’s been a couple of weeks since former President Trump said, and he’s repeated this, this construction of NATO funding as if it’s a kind of dues-paying membership at a country club. What do you think the net result of those remarks have been, and how have they been dangerous with respect to how Americans receive them? And then also how does it stir the mind of the other NATO countries?

Well, if it had been just an isolated statement, I think people could have said, “Hey, that’s Trump being Trump. He says things to get a rise out of folks.” But it comes against the backdrop of paralysis in the US Congress, its refusal to approve President Biden’s request for a new assistance package for Ukraine at a time when it desperately needs more air defense, more artillery, more money, because the Russians are pushing forward.

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And as a consequence, there are many Europeans who are asking, “What’s going on here? Are we witnessing either a kind of neo-isolationist surge in the American electorate that we need to take into consideration? And is the United States just so politically messed up right now that we can’t count on it as a big ally, as a reliable ally?”

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I was in Munich at the security conference the weekend before last, Germans are talking about the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons, or sharing the French nuclear deterrent because they’re just not sure that they can count on the United States anymore. That’s a big deal.

It is a big deal. Charles Kupchan with the Council on Foreign Relations. Charles, it’s always, it’s a pleasure to have you. Thank you.