A North Korean Blueprint for Romania's Future

 

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.

The “New Europe” Concept Revisited

The recent use of the “New Europe” label by American policymakers comes as no surprise, as US foreign policy has been hijacked a second time this century by neoconservatives. Unfortunately, what the neoconservatives have overlooked is the true " graveyard of empires" role played in the modern era by the nations from this area of Europe. Indeed, all the major European empires which attempted to dominate it , like Austria ,Germany or France, as well as outside powers like Russia or the Ottomans , imploded. Therefore there is no reason to believe that US domination of it will have a better fate than that of its other imperial predecessors.

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Since the start of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine in 2022, the discredited geopolitical concept known as  “New Europe” -launched in 2003 by the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld- has started being used again in American official narratives about Eastern Europe.

The concept “of New Europe” was coined by Rumsfeld after NATO’s leading allies in Europe -France and Germany- flatly refused to participate alongside the American and British troops in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

“New Europe” referred to ex-Soviet satellites like the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and even Bulgaria, which were supposed to be more pliant to NATO’s geostrategic objectives in Europe.

Already by 2003 after NATO’s bombing campaign in Serbia or the Iraq invasion, the alliance was thoroughly discredited as a peacekeeping organisation. In spite of Russian objections, however, NATO expanded eastwards and by 2008 at its Summit in Bucharest the Americans were talking about including Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. Again, this objective was defeated by the opposition of the French and German leaders, who knew that the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO would be an absolute red line for Moscow, as the then-US ambassador to Russia William Burns also warned his bosses in Washington.

20 years later the concept of “New Europe” has resurfaced again in American political discourse, a fact that should come as no surprise, since neoconservatives have hijacked American policy a second time, as they did during the George W Bush presidency. Now as then, neoconservative-inspired foreign policy has ignited a devastating military conflict, this time being fought on NATO’s behalf by Ukrainian proxies. 

Like in 2003, the Americans include in this group of countries they call “New Europe” almost all of the USSR’s former satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, from Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. What US policymakers have not mentioned to these new NATO members is the fact that they would simply substitute American hegemony to that of the Soviets without actually considering them -as it was the case between 1949 and 1989 with France, Italy or Germany- equal alliance partners on the European continent. 

To their discredit, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian leaders have failed to realise that what took place was just a change in colonial masters: from the neighbouring USSR to the much more distant USA; from a land-based military superpower to a maritime superpower.

This confusion in the minds of Central and Eastern European political leaders has been fully exploited by the US, which convinced them to invest their countries’ hard-earned billions into American weaponry and to prepare for war with Russia, a war that -needless to say- is not about to happen. Thus, states in the region were persuaded to invest between 2.5% (Romania) to 4.5% of their GDP (Poland) in military hardware, with a view to getting American security guarantees against an enemy that does not plan to invade them anytime soon.

What American geostrategists fail to realise is that they have applied the New Europe label to the most anti-imperialist region of Europe. Accordingly, it is just a matter of time for ex-Soviet satellite countries to grasp that what has actually happened is just a change in colonial masters. When that takes place, the time-honoured anti-imperialist traditions of nations in the area will reassert themselves in a forceful way, jeopardising American plans to establish themselves as the new masters of Central and Eastern Europe.

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.