America's Imperial Apparatchiks in Eastern Europe

Upending constitutional order or undermining the political systems of Orthodox members of the EU or NATO will not work for the Alliance in the long run. Furthermore, cultivating hate of Russia in these countries is bound to backfire.

Very few Westerners know that in 2014 the actions in Maidan Square were mirrored in neighbouring Romania, albeit without violence. On the cusp of the presidential elections, American-backed Romanian secret services replaced the Liberal Party's president at the time with an ethnic German, Klaus Iohannis, who was hand-held to win the country's presidency that year. This, to be sure, was one of the freakiest developments ever in the country's political history, very similar to Ukraine being led by a Jewish president.

The former president of the Romanian Liberals was definitely an unsafe choice for the US in the region because he was friendly towards Russia. As Nato was gearing up for a major confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, neighbouring states like Romania, Bulgaria or even neutral Moldova had to have at their helm political leaders that the US could control 100 percent.

It's a well known fact that - generally speaking - Catholic Western politicians have always been mistrustful of politicians hailing from Orthodox countries. Even when they were accepted as EU members, for example, Romanians and Bulgarians were made to feel like tolerated, second-class citizens and prevented from enjoying the full benefits attached to their membership. Thus, even 15 years on since their accession to the EU, neither Romania nor Bulgaria have been accepted into the Schengen zone. 

These double standards in the way the EU is being managed, where its Catholic member states are favoured and where its Eastern Orthodox members are regularly derided or have their economic performances downgraded, are too well-documented to insist upon here. The important point to mention at present is that the meddling of the US and EU in the above-mentioned Orthodox countries' selection of their political leaders is not only extensive, but highly detrimental to the very ideas of democracy, freedom and self-rule.

In preparation for the current conflict in Ukraine, the US felt it needed to promote to executive office in Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria an Americanised breed of politicians who, although natives of the countries concerned, have been trained at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or have done stints at the World Bank. Orthodox nations, it seems, are not to be trusted to make decisions about what is happening in their region: they have to be guided and kept on a short leash by Washington. 

Current events in Ukraine show why the US and the EU have worked in tandem over the last few years to demolish what was left of the Romanian or Bulgarian democracies which emerged after the 1989 revolutions. Like nowadays in Ukraine, opposition leaders have been regularly jailed on corruption charges that in the rest of Europe could attract at most a fine. In so doing, the US has made sure that the "right" politicians get into high office, and once there, they do America's bidding against its eternal foe Russia. 

At the end of the day, these countries are going to be left with quasi-dictatorial political regimes manned by Western-trained politicians who act as Washington's puppets and seriously affect their countries' national interest, if Bulgaria's recent loss of gas supplies is any guide. Furthermore, pushing these countries' leaders to prove their loyalty to the Western alliance and adopt a much more bellicose stance towards Russia than what their citizens would normally approve of, makes their territory prime targets of Russian missiles if and when the Ukraine conflict reaches boiling point. But who cares, right ? They are only some poorer, second-class citizens of an alliance lacking the most basic respect towards their traditions, religion and culture...