Under the coordination of the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, altogether eight ministries, five national security services and several cooperating organizations have completed a one-week NATO exercise.

The Crisis Management Exercise 2011 (CMX 11) is one of the most important NATO exercises, which is sponsored by the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Originally scheduled to take place in March 2011, the exercise was postponed due to NATO’s engagement in Libya: thus the 28 NATO member states started managing a fictitious crisis situation on October 19. The exercise scenario was about a situation in which a non-NATO member country launches an attack on a NATO member state.

The planning phase involved the cooperating ministries, the national security services, the public media and the INFOSEC organizations, which were regularly updated and actively engaged in the process.

From day one, Exercise Co-directors MoI State Secretary for Public Administration Dr. László Felkai and MFA State Secretary for Public Administration Iván Bába agreed that there is a need for a situation which provides the ministries with opportunities for practicing the execution of crisis management tasks and for facing new security threats like cyber attacks.

This year was the first occasion when the CMX scenario focused on NATO’s collective defence task involving consultations on the basis of Article 4 and potential invocation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, including negotiated resolution and military intervention.

Although no forces were actually deployed for the purpose of CMX 11, the ongoing work in NATO’s consultative and decision-making bodies involved a total of 2,500 personnel including the representatives of the Alliance and the members states as well as the invited countries and international organizations.

The some 70 Hungarian participants were exercising the civil and military crisis management mechanisms in Hungary, the preparations for top-level political and military decisions and the timely and principled adoption of the national position.

MoD State Secretary for Public Administration Lajos Fodor, the national exercise director said that the CMX 2011 was an excellent opportunity for practicing inter-departmental coordination based on the principle of comprehensive approach and the tasks of defence administration in a crisis situation.

(Ministry of Defence)