---
title: "Hungary's Election and NATO Diplomacy | Pertti Torstila | Negotiator 130"
titleOriginal: "Unkarin vaalit NATO-diplomatia | Pertti Torstila | Neuvottelija 130"
episodeNumber: "130"
guest: "Pertti Torstila"
datePublished: 2022-04-07
duration: "43:47"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsbv1OHshk"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["geopolitics","leadership_governance"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. The publisher published no chapter marks for this episode, so none are listed here. No transcript is published either — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The episode was recorded on 7 April 2022, four days after the Hungarian election and before Finland applied for NATO membership; the question of whether Sweden would follow is open in it and has since been settled. The guest has long personal ties to Hungary, including a vineyard there, and the episode says so."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/172-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila-neuvottelija"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep130-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila/
---
# Hungary's Election and NATO Diplomacy | Pertti Torstila | Negotiator 130

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Summary

Pertti Torstila, former state secretary at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and a career diplomat, has known Hungary for close to five decades and still grows wine there. He takes apart Viktor Orbán's election victory: why the war in Ukraine became Orbán's trump card rather than his liability, and why people voted with their wallets. Torstila also explains the trauma of Trianon and what voting rights for Hungarians beyond the borders actually do. The episode covers his own part in Martti Ahtisaari's team in the Kosovo peace process, and an assessment of whether Sweden will apply at all once Finland has.

## Why the war helped him

The expectation abroad was that Orbán's position on Russia would cost him the election. Torstila's reading is the opposite and better supported: an electorate that feels close to a war rewards the candidate promising distance from it, and the campaign was fought on staying out rather than on taking a side.

## Trianon is not history

The treaty that left large Hungarian populations outside the borders is a live political fact rather than a historical one, and the voting rights extended to those populations are its direct descendant. Without that, the electoral arithmetic does not make sense from outside.

## From inside a peace process

Torstila worked in Ahtisaari's Kosovo team, and the passage about it is the most concrete thing in the episode: what mediation consists of in practice, told by someone who did the work rather than someone describing it.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Unkarin vaalit NATO-diplomatia | Pertti Torstila | Neuvottelija 130](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nsbv1OHshk).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/172-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila-neuvottelija).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep130-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/yhteiskunta/ep130-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila/).

## Explore the ideas in depth

- [Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/negotiation-strategy-leverage-and-power/): A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.

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Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Hungary's Election and NATO Diplomacy | Pertti Torstila | Negotiator 130, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep130-unkarin-vaalit-nato-diplomatia-pertti-torstila/, 2022-04-07. For quotes include episode 130 and timestamp.