Hungarian American Coalition News, 2002 (11. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
2002 / 2. szám
Hungarian American Coalition NEWS July 2002 Special Issue on NATO Expansion Vol. 11, No. 2 RESOLUTION ON NATO EXPANSION Adopted Unanimously at the December, 2001 Board Meeting of the Hungarian American Coalition The Hungarian American Coalition continues to support the enlargement of NATO to include all aspirants that satisfy the membership criteria of the Alliance and are willing and able to be providers as well as consumers of security. No aspirant nation should be excluded from NATO solely because of geography or objections from non-NATO states. The Coalition also firmly believes that security is grounded in a stability that only democracy can guarantee. Accordingly, aspirant nations must grant their ethnic minorities and national communities minority rights to enable them to preserve their cultural heritage, facilitate their full participation in the economic and political life of the state at all levels, and permit them to exercise internal self-determination, such as local self-government. Further, aspirant nations must protect their ethnic minorities and national communities from de jure and de facto discrimination and not only speak out against manifestations of intolerance, but also take active measures to combat it. Finally, aspirant nations must demonstrate a willingness to cooperate with their neighbors to the fullest extent possible on all matters of mutual interest to them. MINORITY RIGHTS: A PREREQUISITE TO SECURITY AS NATO EXPANDS As NATO ponders its next round of enlargement, it must ensure that the candidates are committed to Western values by deeds, rather than by verbal assurances. While the alliance must expand to fulfill the promise of the end of the Cold War and embrace nations that have been victimized by Soviet imperialism, such as the Baltic countries, NATO should only accept members that contribute to the security of Europe. States in Central and Eastern Europe which do not grant rights necessary for minorities to preserve and promote their unique characteristics and to fully participate in the social, political and economic life, would not strengthen NATO, they would weaken it. They also would not promote democracy. NATO's core function is to promote security in Europe. Yet it has not fully recognized that a primary cause of tensions and violence in Central and Eastern Europe is discrimination against and intolerance toward national, ethnic and religious minorities by the majority. Moreover, a government that fails or refuses to respect minority or collective rights can hardly be deemed genuinely democratic, even if it has come to power through the ballot. The Treaty of Trianon, a treaty that was imposed on and not negotiated with Hungary, transferred more than 3 million ethnic Hungarians and over 70% of the country's territory to foreign rule at the end of the First World War. The Peacemakers discarded the vaunted principle of self-determination when they arbitrarily assigned such large numbers of Hungarians to the newly-created or enlarged states of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. This European Order created in 1920 and reinforced by the post World War II peace arrangements unceremoniously and almost instantaneously collapsed with the end of the Cold War. While most of the
