If Romania's former dictator Ceaușescu wanted to emulate North Korea's dynastic communism, it now seems that his former secret police generals and their descendants wish to transform Romania into a North Korean-style militarised society. All this with NATO'S backing.
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For more than a year now, the second-in-command of NATO, Mircea Geoană, is being pushed forward by some circles in the American foreign policy establishment and in the affiliated Romanian media, as the best placed candidate to become president of Romania in the 2024 elections.
Mircea Geoană was a presidential candidate before. In 2009 he ran against incumbent president Băsescu and lost. His main qualification for being appointed ambassador to Washington, the boss of the Romanian Social Democrats or subsequently deputy Secretary-general of NATO was the fact that he is the son of Ceaușescu-era Securitate general Ioan Geoană.
His ex- political boss Ion Iliescu, former president of Romania, said he considered Mircea Geoană as a "dimwit".
One can say many things about Ion Iliescu, but not that he isn't a shrewd judge of character. To illustrate this, here is the enlightening substance of an interview given by Geoană recently about his vision for Romania's future:
"The only public institution that enjoys the respect and trust of Romanians is the Romanian Army. This is where we must start to rebuild(...) Investing in the army, in the military career, in modern equipment, represents more than a requirement of national security or obligations towards NATO, for which Romania acquits itself impeccably. It represents the support point for the historic Leap, which only a modern state can achieve", (Mircea Geoană.)
Geoană sees Romania's future as a country full of army barracks, ammunition and weapons plants, manned by people thoroughly trained into military warfare or industrial arts. If during the 1980's Ceausescu wanted to inaugurate a local version of North Korean dynastic communism, Geoană -with his American and presumably with former secret police apparatchiks in Romania - now envisions the transformation of his country into a militarized society, similar, if not identical, to North Korea.
Never mind that Romania has never been a military power before, or indeed ever wanted to become one. These development priorities, however, reflect the sad reality that in Romanian politics the American military-industrial complex and NATO are calling the shots.
Unfortunately, these "reconstruction plans" for Romania, drafted somewhere else, can succumb to the law of unintended consequences. The most obvious of such consequences that comes to mind is a militarised Romania that could easily turn back into a totalitarian state in the decades ahead and become a security threat to the entire region which surrounds it. This potential outcome of the 2024 presidential elections is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Last century, NATO was for decades known to support the dictatorial regime of general Franco in Spain. A fully militarised Romania would also complement nicely Zelensky's de facto dictatorship in Ukraine.
