Behind the Scenes at the Munich Security Conference + Hungary, Moldova, Turkey

Congress can be opaque and hard to understand, and never more so than when it comes to how American foreign policy is constructed. I’m often at the center of Congress’s work on national security, and as part of my role as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I travel overseas to represent the United States abroad. And so to try to make that work easier to understand, I almost always write a behind-the-scenes narrative of my trip for my constituents to read.

Right now, I’m just back from a weeklong trip to Munich, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Chișinău, Moldova; and both Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey. Five cities in six days. What follows is a candid account of the reasons for and results of the trip.

Friday and Saturday: The Munich Security Conference

The Munich Security Conference is the most important and well-attended transatlantic national security dialogue in the world. For three days every February, hundreds of foreign leaders gather to set the global security agenda for the coming year. Diplomatic breakthroughs are often achieved in Munich. Alliances are nurtured. Messages to adversaries are sent. Each year Congress sends a delegation and most years I am part of the group that attends. This year, I flew overnight on Thursday from Boston and arrived in Munich on Friday morning.

The conference has two stages (with two simultaneous programs) and dozens of meeting rooms for meetings called “bilats” – bilateral meetings between leaders of two countries. During the weekend, I spent most of my time in bilats with various foreign leaders and very little time in the main halls listening to the official program. Sometimes the meetings are very small; for instance, on Friday afternoon, Senator Chris Van Hollen and I did back-to-back bilats with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Greek Prime Minster Kyriakos Mitsotakis. I met alone with the UN Special Representative for Yemen Hans Grundberg and Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic. Our entire Senate delegation of about a dozen members met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

Meeting with my friend Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of Kosovo, in Munich.

This year, all eyes were on the American congressional delegation and the question of whether the United States is going to stand by or abandon Ukraine. Of course, it was a hard question to answer. The Senate had just passed the national security supplemental bill, which includes funding to support Ukraine, and so our Senate delegation could confidently state that we had done our job (interestingly, some of the Senators who voted against Ukraine aid, like Lindsey Graham, bailed on the trip to Munich at the last minute presumably so they wouldn’t have to explain their no votes). But House passage is far less certain, and while I told foreign leaders I thought House approval was better than a 50/50 chance, I honestly do not know if that will happen with a Speaker who seems unable to pass even the simplest measures through the body.

Speaking on a panel discussion in Munich on the crisis in the Red Sea and the future of Yemen.

On Saturday night, I attended a small dinner hosted by my friend, Alex Soros, President of the Open Society Foundation. The dinner table consisted of Alex, me, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and four Balkan leaders: the Presidents of Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, and the Prime Minister of Albania. All of us know each other well, and so the conversation was boisterous, candid, and funny. Prime Minister Edi Rama, an old friend, was in rare form. He told long, funny stories about his adventures in the region, and he traded jokes and barbs with the regional leaders and Americans at the table. Sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgewise.

But at one point, Albanian PM Rama made a pointed and serious remark: “Chris, if you let Ukraine go to Russia, it will be very hard in our region. It will be very hard for people to trust you. The most important thing for you in the Balkans is Ukraine.”

Sunday: Budapest, Hungary

On Sunday morning, I boarded a small military plane with Senator Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, and Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina (and my co-author of the 2022 bipartisan gun safety bill), bound for Budapest, Hungary. We went to Budapest for two reasons: to push the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Orbán to pass legislation allowing Sweden to join NATO, and to show support for pro-democracy activists who are fighting Orban’s anti-democratic consolidation of power.

We were greeted at the airport by our impressive Ambassador, David Pressman, with interesting news: Orbán’s government had decided to boycott our visit. Our bipartisan delegation represented the highest-level congressional delegation in years, but Orbán wanted to make a point that he would not be pressured by the United States. Not only would Orbán not meet with us, but he prohibited every single member of his party, down to the most junior member of Parliament, from seeing us.

We stopped at Pressman’s house to get a briefing from embassy officials, and he gave us some startling advice. “I think you should tell the press what you think of Orbán’s refusal to meet. And I wouldn’t hold back on what you think of his decision to be the last country to approve Sweden’s membership, even though he swore Hungary would not be the holdout,” he told us. 

Meeting with our great U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman in Budapest.

I have found over my years of foreign diplomacy that many of our embassies are allergic to conflict – they don’t want to upset their host country, even when the host country is involved in behavior directly contrary to American interests. This reluctance to speak publicly against bad policy is understandable but over the years I have viewed it as a weakness of our diplomacy.

It was sound, refreshing advice. Orbán is a classic bully who thinks that by engaging in confrontational behavior, he will never be confronted in return. And history shows that when you stand up to Orbán (as Europe did last month because of his refusal to vote for an economic aid package for Ukraine), he often does the right thing.

After our meetings with civil society leaders and members of the opposition parties, we headed to the embassy for a dramatic press conference. The room was packed – maybe a dozen cameras and fifty reporters. Shaheen, Tillis and I have traveled together before (In fact, it was on our trip to the Balkans in April of 2022 where Tillis and I became friends, leading to our partnership on the gun bill), so we have confidence that we can effectively deliver a coordinated, tough message when we need to.

Shaheen and Tillis didn’t hold back on their push for Hungary to join NATO and their disappointment that Orbán wouldn’t meet. I went a little further. “I’m going to be honest with you – President Orbán’s refusal to meet is really strange and concerning. We aren’t coming with a political agenda. We are a bipartisan delegation seeking to strengthen our two country’s partnership.”

We knew our comments would make the story of our visit Orbán’s refusal to meet. But we weren’t afraid of it – we thought that maybe by outing his petulant tactic we could press him to move forward on Sweden’s NATO bid.

Monday: Chișinău, Moldova

Tillis broke away from our trip to attend a Helsinki Commission meeting, leaving Shaheen and I to continue on to Moldova, a small country that sits on the southwest border of Ukraine. If Ukraine falls, Putin will possibly set his sights on Moldova, another former Soviet state. Shaheen and I wanted to go to Moldova to highlight the consequences of allowing Putin to win in Ukraine and to show support for the strong pro-American and anti-corruption government of President Maia Sandu.

Meeting with President of Moldova Maia Sandu.

I was thrilled to meet Sandu, a former World Bank economist who is diminutive in stature but larger than life in the presence she commands. She watches Putin carefully, and she confirmed our fears that if handed Ukraine, Moldova will be the next target. She explained that Putin was not waiting for an invasion, but rather has already begun running a massive propaganda, bribery, and vote buying campaign to try to undermine her government. She wanted help to fight back.

So we left her office to go meet with a team of anti-corruption and counter propaganda groups that are working with the support of U.S. funds and a relatively new counter-propaganda agency at the State Department, the Center for Global Engagement (GEC). I helped found the GEC with former Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman through legislation we passed in 2016. Shaheen and I received a chilling briefing about the extent of Russia’s covert efforts to undermine the press and buy the upcoming elections, and we left determined to beef up the GEC’s resources for Moldova.

As we wrapped up our meetings in Chisinau, we received interesting news. That afternoon, Orbán’s government announced that as soon as the spring parliamentary session begins on February 26, they will vote to approve Sweden’s application to join NATO. It is unlikely the timing of the announcement was purely coincidental to our decision to publicly confront Orbán the day before. Pressman’s advice had been prescient.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey

The final stop of our trip was a visit to Turkey, a NATO partner and key player in Middle East politics. In the capital of Ankara our dance card was full: President Erdoğan’s government was enthusiastic to meet with us. There is new momentum in our two countries’ often strained partnership. Last month, Turkey ended its long delay in supporting Sweden’s NATO application, and Congress approved a major sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

In our meetings, we thanked the Turkish government for this new cooperative spirit and we searched for additional common ground. The issue I raised repeatedly was the concerning trend of private companies using Turkey to evade U.S. anti-Russia sanctions and send goods that can be stripped and converted for defense use into Russia. This is happening at an alarming rate, and we were briefed that the Turks would claim that they want to crack down on companies who are sending defense articles to Russia, but they are just waiting on information from the U.S. on those companies.

“I have to be honest with you,” I told Mehmet Simsek, the impressive Finance Minister, “from what I understand, in many cases your government has all the information you need. The problem isn’t that we haven’t given you the information. The problem is you haven’t acted on it.” I think my directness was surprising to Simsek, and he suggested setting up a formal Turkey-U.S. working group to go after sanctions evaders. It was a very positive suggestion and another sign of our two nations’ improving alliance.

At the end of day, we went to the majestic presidential palace of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s imposing and powerful leader. He doesn’t take many meetings with visiting U.S. members of Congress , and so we were glad to be able to meet him in person.

Meeting with Turkey’s imposing and powerful leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

There were no surprises in our meeting. We discussed a wide range of topics, from Gaza and Ukraine to the Balkans and Iran. Our meeting ran long, and as it ended he told us, through his translator, that he was next seeing our recent dinner partner, Edi Rama.

We left the presidential palace to head to the airport and took our small plane to Istanbul. We had to make one more stop, in the city where many of the pro-democracy activists are based. Like Hungary, Erdoğan’s government has a concerning history of stifling free speech (Turkey was in the top 10 jailers of journalists worldwide last year, and has consistently vied with China for #1 in recent years), and before leaving we wanted to meet with leading writers and journalists to show our support for free speech in Turkey.

“Just meeting with us today sends a strong message to the government that the U.S. has our back,” said one of the attendees.

In the early afternoon, we headed to the airport to board flights back to the United States, confident that we had made a difference in supporting our countries efforts to strengthen NATO and support Ukraine at this vital time. 

When I travel, I am always realistic about the impact I can have. I am not a direct representative of President Biden, but I am a close ally, and I know the Administration can not be everywhere at once. Our trip was a perfect example about how smart, strategic congressional diplomacy can help advance key U.S. interests.