Halfway down the Danube

NATO

Today Romania -- along with Bulgaria, Slovenia, and three other countries -- joined NATO.

It wasn't a big deal. Nobody mentioned it in the office, and it didn't generate much by way of headlines. (I can't really read Romanian newspapers, but I usually pause to look at the headlines on the kiosks. Headlines, I can usually understand. And if I don't see any flattering pictures of President Iliescu or PM Nastase, I buy a package of chewing gum.)

That seems a bit strange when I think about it. Romania has been chasing NATO membership since 1997. In 1999, the Contantinescu government put itself in a very tricky diplomatic position in order to support the NATO intervention in Kosovo.

Right at the end of that conflict, Boris Yeltsin's Russia had send a few hundred troops into Kosovo, occupying Prishtina airfield. That raised the unpleasant possibility of Russia sending further reinforcements into Prishtina by air. But this couldn't happen without the Russians flying their troops across Bulgaria, Romania or Hungary.

Sure enough, Moscow asked each of these countries, one after the other, for permission to overfly. One after the other, at NATO's urging, they refused.

A diplomatic tug-of-war ensued, with Moscow leaning heavily on its former satellites, and NATO pushing just as hard in the opposite direction. Hungary had the protection of NATO membership, but for the other two countries it was a tense few days. And at one point, former NATO commander Wesley Clark says, he got a phone call from the Romanian Minister of Defense: if the Russians went ahead with a troop flight anyway, he wanted to know, what were they supposed to do? Shoot it down?

Well. It didn't happen, and now Romania is part of NATO. The Russians don't like this much, but they've grudgingly accepted.

In theory, at least, this should resolve Romania's security issues for a long time to come. But, as I said, nobody seems to care too much.

Maybe this means Romanians aren't too concerned about security issues these days; and maybe that's a good thing.

I don't know.

Posted by douglas at March 30, 2004 11:22 PM