With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, Romania will need to craft a balanced foreign policy toward the United States that highlights its geopolitical value. That cannot be done by a president who takes his marching orders from Moscow, Israeli publication Haaretz said in an analysis.
A year or so after Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika and glasnost to the Soviet Union in 1986, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in Bucharest.
Peres told me a few years later: “I asked him, ‘Why aren’t you introducing glasnost in Romania? Isn’t it time and the right thing to do?’ Ceaușescu looked at me bewildered and said: ‘It’s about the window. If you crack the window open just a little, it is not fresh air that will come in, but instead the brutal storm outside will sweep in and demolish your entire house.'”
It happened anyway, within the space of a week in December 1989, and Romania hasn’t looked back. Until now.
I doubt any Romanian reading this wants to be reminded of Ceaușescu’s reign of terror and brutal secret police, but here’s the analogy: If Romania opens its window just a little to allow far-right, extremist and heavily pro-Moscow candidate Călin Georgescu to become president, the Romanian house will ultimately be swept away by Russia.
On Sunday, Romanians have a crystal-clear choice in their runoff presidential election. Elect Save Romania Union candidate Elena Lasconi, a liberal democrat, European Union-oriented, NATO-oriented, United States-oriented, pro-Israel candidate who promises continuity and a measure of stability. Or elect Georgescu and mortgage Romania’s future to Moscow instead of Brussels.
From roughly the end of the 18th century to World War I, Romania’s political trajectory gradually turned from the Ottoman east to the emerging Western and Central Europe. The 1866 constitution, under Charles Hohenzollern (later King Carol I), was based almost entirely on Western constitutions. A similarly clear Western inclination is expressed by its 1990 post-Ceaușescu constitution.
In 1916, Romania entered the war on the side of the Allies. But during the tumultuous interwar period of 1919-1939, its political fault line resembled that of Germany, France, Italy, Austria and elsewhere: a struggle between parliamentary democracy and authoritarianism.
Romania is today confronted by that same fault line.
The 1928 election, a model democratic event, was won by Iuliu Maniu – who is considered the pillar of Romanian democracy. However, in the 1930s, emulating Germany, Austria and Italy, the far right gained popularity through a toxic mixture of nationalism, Orthodox spirituality and fundamental antisemitism. These are the very same attributes of Romania’s modern far right, which failed to win a majority but nonetheless made big gains in Sunday’s parliamentary election.
After the fall of Ceaușescu in 1989, Romania set a course for integration into Europe amid the post-Soviet reality. In March 2004, it joined the NATO military alliance in what was called the second wave of enlargement (the first was five years earlier), together with Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In January 2007, capping a 12-year accession process, Romania joined the EU along with Bulgaria.
The first round of the presidential election, on November 24, ended with a major upset as the little-known Georgescu led the voting with 22.9 percent, forcing Sunday’s runoff against Lasconi.
Romania held its general election in the intervening week, where the central question was not only about electing a new parliament. It posed a crucial conundrum: Would Romania continue to anchor itself firmly to the West and be part of the Euro-Atlantic sphere, or would it revert to being a Russian satellite in Vladimir Putin’s orbit?
Romania’s geopolitical location – a NATO member bordering Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and the Black Sea – is such that Putin’s dreams and delusions of creating a Soviet era, Warsaw Pact-esque sphere of influence make it ideal to co-opt and control for its foreign policy.
Putin would relish creating a rogue, disruptive and vociferous Romanian-Hungarian axis at the heart of NATO – which is exactly what would happen if Georgescu wins on Sunday.
This is why Moscow is so heavily involved in the election through an influence-peddling campaign of hundreds of misinformation and disinformation clips that originated in Russia.
Mainstream political leaders are calling for agreements between the Romanian parties comprising the center and center-left democratic bloc, asking both the parties and their supporters to coalesce around a pro-European majority – meaning Lasconi. That is why she and others have firmly stated that for the sake of continuity, balance and stability, both internally and in regard to the EU, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu should stay in office should she win on Sunday.
They have all commented repeatedly on the direct link between the rise of ultranationalism and extremism in Romanian politics, and Russian propaganda and social media interference campaigns disseminating misinformation, disinformation and false facts to foment frustration and anger among those who get unfiltered “news” from these sources.
A Georgescu win would inevitably spell instability and disunity within NATO, just when the alliance needs to craft a Ukrainian policy given U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s hostility toward Kyiv. Georgescu himself denied that he wants to withdraw from the alliance, explaining instead that Romania needs to renegotiate the terms of its membership in NATO.
First, countries cannot really negotiate the terms of their membership. Once a country joins NATO, it is committed to and bound by the treaty’s 14 articles. A country can fail to live by alliance decisions, or not meet financial commitments on defense expenditure, or debate ad hoc decisions. But it cannot negotiate the terms of membership.
Second, and more importantly, Putin would not want Romania to leave NATO but rather, like Hungary, sow discord and chaos from within. Georgescu would be Putin’s proxy of chaos in both NATO and the EU.
Furthermore, with the incoming U.S. administration being suspicious of NATO and anywhere between indifferent to impatient to hostile toward Ukraine, Romania will need the EU and NATO as a shield and deterrent against Russia.
Simultaneously, it will need to craft a balanced foreign policy toward the United States that highlights its geopolitical value. That cannot be done by a candidate who takes his marching orders from Moscow. This is why, given the unpredictability of Trump on Ukraine and NATO, Sunday’s runoff election in Romania matters.
