Romania's Confused Geopolitics

 Starting with 1968, Romania's geopolitical situation and the foreign policy of the Romanian state stopped taking into account the country's historical ties and the geographical area it belongs to .This situation has changed unfortunately little since.

For a long period of time, the modern Romanian state had a policy of alliances that reflected the fact that the country's political elites had a very clear idea about Romania's actual enemies, its potential enemies and the states that could be of help in obtaining or defending its independence.

Until the end of the 19th century, the number one enemy of the newly created Romanian state was the Ottoman Empire, against which the Romanian army fought, alongside the Russian troops, to obtain its independence. Second on the list of Romania's enemies was, until its disappearance in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire.

After the union with Transylvania, Moldova and Bucovina in 1918 and the victory of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the main enemy of Greater Romania became the USSR, a communist state that emerged from the ruins of the old Russian empire. This enmity, it is worth emphasising, did not have a historical or geopolitical basis, being of a purely ideological nature ( in fact, between 1934 and 1936 Titulescu negotiated with USSR's Litvinov a non-aggresion pact with the Soviet Union ). For the Romanian political class in the interwar period, however, Soviet communism represented a permanent and real threat, because the infiltration of Moscow's agents had the potential to undermine the stability of the Romanian state.

The second great enemy of Romania in the interwar period was Nazi Germany, which in 1938 imposed on Romania, through the Vienna Diktat, the cession of northwestern Transylvania to Hungary. The success of the Nazis in Vienna encouraged Stalin in 1940 to demand by means of an ultimatum the reunification of Moldova with the USSR.

Until 1937, Romania had a policy of regional alliances well thought out by the then foreign minister, Nicolae Titulescu. This is how the Little Entente appeared, a pact signed in 1920-21 between Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatian-Slovenes directed against Austro-Hungarian revisionism and the Balkan Pact of 1934 between Greece, Romania, the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian and Turkey.

In 1941, the first and perhaps the most serious geopolitical error occurred, when Marshal Antonescu - the head of the Romanian state at the time - decided to participate with a million soldiers in the Nazi invasion of the USSR, although the dictator Salazar of Portugal advised him, in a secret diplomatic communication, to opt for Romania's neutrality.

After the occupation of Romania în 1945 by the Red Army, the ally of the Romanian state became the USSR, together with all the member states of the Warsaw Treaty. This time, Romania had a collective enemy, Western Europe, represented militarily in the area by NATO, which appeared in 1949.

It is nevertheless remarkable that the communist regime in Bucharest managed to convince Moscow to withdraw its troops from Romania as early as 1958, 31 years before that happened in the other communist states from Central and South-Eastern Europe.

After 1968, the Ceaușescu regime opted for a bizarre geopolitical orientation, anti-Soviet but pro-Chinese and pro-American, a fact that largely isolated Romania from the other alliance partners from the Soviet bloc and contributed to strategic destabilization in the area. For the first time in Romania's history, the Romanian state sought economic and political support outside Europe, from countries on other continents, such as the USA or China, located thousands of kilometers away, but which in turn had a adversarial relationship with the USSR .

Even more curious was the 1976 affiliation of Romania to the Group of 77, promoter of a policy of non-alignment. Since the group had only Yugoslavs and Romanians as members in Europe, Romania was included in the group of Latin American states of the G77. Again, Romania's potential allies were countries from other continents, thousands of kilometers away from our area of ​​the world. In this context, it should also be mentioned the alliances of the Ceaușescu regime with countries from Africa or the Middle East, which betrayed the exaggerated great power ambitions of the Romanian dictator.

Unfortunately, the disappearance of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to a return to normal from a geopolitical point of view or to re-establishing Romania's traditional alliances. Romania's accession to NATO in 2003, an alliance led from a distance of 7000 km from Europe, by Washington , is a case in point. Becoming a member of this alliance did not contribute to the geopolitical stabilization of the area, or to more secure Romanian borders , as the war in Ukraine currently demonstrates, on the contrary. Sadly, although since 2007 Romania has become a European Union member, the EU has been systematically prevented by the US to build its own collective security structures.

VAROUFAKIS ABOUT NATO

 Yanis Varoufakis has recently published in Unherd an article highly critical of NATO's role in Europe.

In reality, NATO is the military arm of American imperialism in Europe, otherwise Washington would have no valid reason to pay for the "defense" of EU countries itself. Varoufakis is right, NATO isn't in Europe to promote or support liberal democracy, this is pure propaganda, as his testimony of the "colonels' dictatorship" in Greece from 1967 demonstrates .

NATO's real purpose is that of enforcing the hegemony of the US in Europe and, if possible, even beyond, in Eurasia. Unfortunately, most Western Europeans are not yet aware of the obsolete, zombie nature of NATO after 1989, because they have become victims of relentless US propaganda. NATO did not even help "liberate" the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It was actually the Soviets who realised their time was up and who decided that their troops should return home.

In truth, it was not NATO military pressure that determined the Soviets to do so, but popular pressure from below in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. People in these countries demonstrated in 1989 in the streets against Soviet IMPERIALISM, against the artificial division of Europe, and not necessarily in favour of liberal democracy, as most Western pundits like to claim nowadays .

People from our area of Europe have only recently started to realise that the US has simply substituted its hegemony to that of the Soviets and they are not happy about it. As Central and Eastern Europe is historically the most anti-imperialistic region of Europe , what happened there after 1989 will backfire miserably against the US in the very near future.

THE POLITICS OF HALF-MEASURES

 A document  circulating in American conservative  foreign policy circles for some time now proposes a dormant NATO as a solution to the alliance's current crisis of credibility.

 Paradoxically, although the number of members of the alliance has increased recently, NATO's credibility as a peacekeeping force in Europe has all but evaporated.

According to the document, the burden of the EU's common defense would pass from the US to the Europeans, with the Americans only providing the continent's nuclear protection, the rest of the military obligations falling entirely to the Europeans.

In actual fact , the American nuclear umbrella is not even needed, as France can simply beef up its nuclear arsenal already at its disposal. Accordingly , we arrive at the logical conclusion that the proposal in question is meaningless, as it's generally the case with similar American proposals . In truth , NATO should not be sent "to sleep", but rather dissolved as an alliance .

ON KISSINGER'S PASSING

 I happened to have a brief exchange of views with Kissinger about China in 2000. At the time, I was alarmed by the laxity of the Clinton administration in policing the exports of dual-use high techology to China, which I deemed reckless. Kissinger asked his director of Kissinger Associates, Paul Bremer III – the future governor of Iraq – to answer on his behalf . In it, Bremer wrote that Kissinger told him that he shared my concerns, which were not however shared by the Washington elite at the time.

Whilst in my view he was less important and competent – among US top foreign policy experts – than George Kennan, Kissinger knew how to successfully make the transition from academic life to the corridors of power in Washington DC. I say that he was less competent than Kennan because he never really understood the USSR as Kennan did, nor could he get the better of Soviet diplomats the way he did with Zhou Enlai or Mao of China.

The book that launched his career was not about Metternich, but his 1957 " Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy”, in which he made the case for the feasability of limited nuclear wars among superpowers. The book made him one of the darlings of the military-industrial complex and impressed both Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger also knew how to deal with political leaders -from Ceaușescu to Nixon- who had oversized egos, if not downright megalomania, like the Romanian dictator. Nixon did not like Kissinger much, he just used him. For his part, Kissinger was singing praises to Nixon during working hours, whilst calling him unstable and a drunk in evening meetings with his friends.

Kissinger honestly acknowledged that at the origin of his success in China was the chief of the Czechoslovak secret service, which was the first to bring to his attention the existence of the Sino-Soviet split. Chancellor Adenauer of Germany also helped, giving him a book on the subject written by a German intelligence official.

Kissinger was an enormously ambitious individual. He wanted a big success in China and to get it, he made the error of agreeing to the demands of the Chinese to formally consider Taiwan as part of China. He did so without informing Nixon first or indeed without having his approval. Critics contend that he did in effect hand over Taiwan to China.

Finally, unlike Kennan, Kissinger was not known to oppose NATO’s eastern expansion, nor advocate for its dissolution . His last proposal was not to keep Ukraine neutral, but to convince Kiev to give up part of Ukraine’s territory in exchange for NATO membership. Sad but true.

Why NATO is now a zombie alliance

 With the exception of the Delian League and NATO, no other politico-military alliance has been kept operational after all its objectives were met. It is highly regrettable that the American political elite refuses to see NATO for what it really is: a zombie alliance that has become a menace to European and world peace.

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Ever since the first city-states appeared in ancient times, most countries felt compelled to enter into military and political alliances. The most common reason for doing so was that of deterring conquest by a more powerful state that would force them to lose their military and economic independence. Other alliances sought to maintain their members' political status quo and, especially in the modern era, to prevent the spread of liberalism in their lands (the Holy Alliance between 1815-1822; the Concert of Europe until  1914 ). Some European powers, during the 19th and 20th centuries, entered into alliances aimed at preventing the emergence of a single power as sole hegemon on the Continent.

The 20th century saw its fair share of political and military alliances, starting with the Triple Alliance between imperial Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy, which was directed against British hegemony. This alliance was followed in 1904 by the Franco-British Entente, aimed at containing Germany's expansionist drive in Europe and Africa, and joined by Russia in 1905. With American help, this coalition of states succeeded in defeating imperial Germany during World War I. 

In 1940 a new alliance, the Tripartite Pact, was concluded between Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and fascist Italy, with the objectives of defeating Britain with its European and American allies and of establishing themselves as the new hegemonic world powers. In order to thwart their plans and subsequent military expansionism, the US entered into an alliance with Soviet Russia between 1941-1945, which Great Britain also joined. Known as the Allied Powers, the Americans, the Soviets and the British succeeded in decisively defeating Germany, Japan and Italy.

In the aftermath of World War II, the world became bi-polar and witnessed the ideological confrontation between the USSR with its allies from Central and Eastern Europe and the Western European powers, allied this time under the leadership of the United States.

In order to preserve the ideological status quo in Western and Central Europe and to prevent a potential military invasion by the USSR, the Americans inaugurated the NATO alliance in 1949, in which Germany was also included as a member. Soon thereafter the Soviets created their own alliance coordinated by Moscow, the Warsaw Pact, with all the satellite countries from Central and Eastern Europe which -after 1945 - had been forced to adopt the communist system of government and accept the presence of troops on their territories. 

By 1989 the Soviets decided that the military occupation of satellite countries and the enforcement of communist orthodoxy there had become counterproductive. Accordingly, they decided to call back their troops, to give up their political monopoly within the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to dissolve the Warsaw Pact. Furthermore, in 1991 the USSR imploded and the emerging Russia abandoned its centrally-planned economy, adopting a version of a market-oriented capitalist system.

Finding itself victorious against Soviet communism and having successfully prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the United States made the bizarre decision, however, to maintain the NATO alliance even after its objectives had been fully met. Moreover, although Russia ceased to be the military threat it had once been to Western Europe, NATO expanded eastwards in 2 waves, in 1997 and 2004, via the inclusion of former Soviet satellites (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) or territories (the Baltic States), to the great disquiet of Moscow. 

In truth, over the past 3 decades NATO has become a veritable zombie alliance, which is highly detrimental to most of its European allies and -since 2014- a menace to peace in Europe. Its planned expansion to Finland and Sweden cannot hide for long its true character or the need to replace it with a pan-EU security organisation, as consistently requested by France since the Iraq invasion of 2003.

In the 21st century new military and political alliances have appeared. In Eurasia the most important is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which includes China, Russia, four of the five Central Asian "stans" and India. The main focus of this alliance is that of preventing or defeating Islamic extremism or terrorism in the region.

A few years ago the Japanese, the US, Australia and India have agreed to create the Quad, an organisation aimed at containing China, which - like CENTO and SEATO before it - would not live up to its objectives. 

Finally, the Americans, the Australians and the British decided to form the AUKUS alliance two years ago, aimed at managing the decline of US hegemony and at preventing its members from being attacked or defeated militarily (after the dissolution of NATO it is highly likely that Canada will join it as well). AUKUS is, therefore, one of the few new security alliances that are highly cohesive internally and it has all the chances of becoming one of the leading security organisations of this century.

WHY I DON'T TAKE SIDES IN THE WAR IN GAZA

 It may come as a surprise to readers of my geopolitics blog  that I have avoided - and will continue to avoid - taking sides in the conflict pitching Israelis against Palestinians in Gaza. 

The reasons are however quite simple. As a Romanian-Australian historian having specialised in Toulouse in international relations and geopolitics, my professional interests are exclusively focused on developments happening around Romania and, by extension, in Eurasia. This is why I have devoted most of my professional attention to the war in Ukraine in the past twenty months, as well as before that, since 2014. Sadly, Romania still has more than half a million ethnic Romanians living, or dying on the battlefields in Ukraine, and unfortunately it has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since February 2022. 

As Romania was for more than two decades a satellite of China during the Ceausescu regime, I have also paid special attention to China's spreading influence in Eastern Europe, before and after 1989.

By the same token, Russia was an important actor in the evolution of the Romanian principalities during the Middle Ages, as well as a leading power involved in the major developments affecting the history of the modern Romanian state since the unification in 1859. 

My professional interest in the major events happening within the EU has  deepened since 2007, when Romania was admitted as a member. 

My acquired knowledge of events from parts of the Arab world dates back to 2010-2011, when I was studying for my masters degree at Sciences Po in Toulouse. My research thesis then was concerned with the evolution of the EU's relations with the Maghreb countries. My thesis did not include research or references to events in the Mashreq ,nor did I acquire the necessary in-depth historical information about these areas.

After World War II, the US replaced European powers - the British and the French- in the Middle East, becoming its sole peace and security provider. Consequently, I have usually paid only scant attention to developments there. I have always considered it a huge mistake,for example,  and an illustration of his megalomania the fact that Ceausescu had cultivated political leaders from the Middle East, like Yasset Arafat , or that he tried - albeit unsuccessfully - to play the role of peacemaker between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A comparative analysis of the way major powers have governed the Arabs from the Middle East over the past few hundred years reveals the fact that the Ottomans were by far much more adept at keeping the peace among Arabs than the West has over the last  hundred years. Naturally, having the same religion as the Arabs in the Middle East or North Africa has helped the Ottoman Turks keep the peace in those regions until 1918 when the Sultanate imploded. Unfortunately, the skills of various Western administrators, including the Americans, were not up the task of keeping the Middle East stable and the Arabs pacified .

This above comment, however, should not be understood as an endorsement of President Erdogan's latest speech in Istanbul on behalf of the Palestinians from Gaza. Although his first decade in power was very successful, Erdogan has slowly but surely torpedoed his main achievements during his second decade at the helm. Trying to bask in the glory of his Ottoman predecessors, or of that of Kemal Ataturk, will not help the efforts to stabilise the Middle East or put an end to the conflict in Gaza. 

A FAREWELL TO THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

It is generally assumed that international relations graduates from IEP in Toulouse contribute little, if at all, to the management of international crises or their resolution. As always, there are exceptions to this rule.

The decision of the Armenian leaders of the Nagorno Karabakh enclave (Azerbaijan) to evacuate the province and relocate the entire population from there to the interior of the Armenian state is a step in the right direction. It brings to an end several decades of military confrontation between the Azeri Muslim majority and the Armenian Christian minority.

On August 4, 2023, I commented on an article about Armenians in the Azeri province signed by Srdja Trifkovic (Chronicles Magazine), stating that :

" Now, returning to the dire situation of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, I must say that I do not believe that there are any diplomatic or military solutions to this geopolitical problem. I also believe that the absorption of the 150,000 Armenians living there into the Armenian state proper is a much more logical and practical solution. After all, this is what the state of Israel has been doing for decades: absorbing Jews from countries where their ordinary life and religion are threatened."

I am now happy to hear that the Armenian authorities have reached the same conclusion and reacted accordingly.

Incredibly as this might sound, however, the bureaucrats of the US State Department would like Azerbaidjan to create the conditions for the RETURN of the 100,000 Armenians who already fled Nagorno Karabakh for the safety of Armenia. Their stance calls into question their ability to conduct American foreign affairs in Eurasia.