(story to be published in tomorrow's issue, March 27)
The ardent debate over an alleged direct telephone line between top political levels in Moscow and Bucharest has brought to public attention a very sensitive issue, that of the relations between Romania and Russia. Along their common history, ties between Russia and Romania have been a string of paradoxes. Occasional allies but never friends, without cultural or racial affinities to bind them, Romanians and Russians, or rather, their leaders, regardless of political colour and office, have tried to exploit their bilateral relations to the maximum efficiency. While in the late 19th century Russia saw its alliance with Romania as a suitable prelude to instating its absolute domination of the Balkans under the pennant of freeing its Slavic Orthodox brothers, Romania was itself trying to take advantage of Petersburg's imperial vitality to earn complete independence from the Ottoman Gate. With the first goals achieved and with Turkey out of most of the Balkan Peninsula, after the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, Russia's and Romania's political aspirations came in stark opposition with each other. The bickering ended with Bessarabia being annexed by Russia and with a definitive freezing of relations between the two capitals and peoples. This is the moment of hiatus between the two nations, which until that point did not seem to be much different from ties between Russia and other Balkan Slavic peoples. The communist period in Romanian history, contrary to ongoing pressure to connect Bucharest to Moscow, has not brought major changes in the quality of these relations. After an initial period of operating as an appendix to the USSR, as the domestic communist regime gained consistency and social support, Romania began distancing again from Moscow in the intent to shelter itself from the consequences of another world war. After the fall of Ceausescu, relations between Romania and the USSR, then Russian Federation, engaged on a twisted journey, between resuming privileged relations and "diplomatic freezing," during the presidential mandates of Ion Iliescu and Boris Yeltsin. The ascent to power of the political team around Ion Iliescu has made Romania a temporary adherent to Gorbachev's reform politics. In this context, in 1990-1991, Romania has been the most conservative country in Central and Southeast Europe, going as far as opposing the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation with an obstinacy worthy of a better cause. The signing of the Mutual Assistance and Reciprocal Aid Treaty between the dying USSR and Romania was a new stage in the re-connection to the "socialist community." While Central-European countries were eager to curb their political liaisons with Moscow to the minimum, Romania was signing a treaty that reiterated its acceptance of common security policies. In short, Romania in the '90s was for Western Europe what Belarus is today for the Community of Independent States. In view of the above, in 1990 through 1992 Romania's foreign policy has been an extension of the Soviet Union's strategic interests, as the Bucharest authorities spoke in favour of "democratisation of international relations" and "multi-polarity," both terms being seen by Soviet leaders as the pillars of the new Soviet foreign policy. In fact, the signing of the Treaty between Romania and the Soviet Union in 1991 brought Bucharest back into a subordinate position to Moscow, a position all the other countries in Western Europe avoided, sensing the extremely difficult situation in the USSR. This "shift" among Romanian authorities in terms of foreign policy and international relations can be attributed to the initial goals set forth by those newly arrived in power in Romania, who climbed to power largely owing to the liberalisation policy Moscow promoted. Thus, the new Romanian authorities maintained three of the piers of the "socialist community": a common foreign policy, a common military policy (within the Warsaw Treaty Organisation) and a planned economy, although sifted through an optimisation process. The attempt to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power in the autumn of 1991, and the equivocal position taken by Ion Iliescu about the conspirators in Moscow, has renewed tension between the two capitals, especially after Boris Yeltsin took over power in Moscow. In contrariety with political developments in Western Europe, discredited both before the West and the new leaders in Russia, as never before in contemporary history, the regime in Bucharest achieved the performance of maintaining chilly relations with virtually all world power centres. Although officially Bucharest launched a string of foreign-policy messages showing its desire to be treated as a country with Western-style objectives and policies, Romania was nevertheless perceived as a country with a revisionist foreign policy that was unpredictable in its domestic evolution. After the change of political power in Bucharest, by virtue of the desire to speed up Romania's entry into the international democratic community, relations between Bucharest and Moscow remained in low gear, with neither side showing particular interest in the other. The reality is that Romania is no longer of the same interest for Russia as it was at the beginnings of the "cold war." First of all, in the latest years, Russia has been restructuring its domestic politics, in the attempt to win a dominant position in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Internationally, even the Kremlin leaders realise that "the battle on either end of the bridge" has been lost, and Russia's only alternative in foreign policy is to support the old doctrine of multi-polarity in an alliance with China, Iraq, Iran and other extra-European regional powers. In the first stage, Romania was important to Russia from the prospect of control over the Lower Danube, the land link with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and the fact that Romania is a transit country for raw materials exports toward Southeast Europe. Political changes in the last years have much diminished Moscow's interest for Romania. It is clear that Russia can no longer afford to exert political and military pressure on Turkey; Bulgaria is no longer a faithful ally to Moscow; with Serbia soon to follow. As to the energy issue, major changes have happened here too. Determined to put an end to the Ukrainian economic blackmail and the pillaging of natural gas from Russian pipelines, one of Kiev's sources of revenue, the natural resources "barons" in Moscow decided to lay a new course for the oil and gas pipelines, this time passing through the Black Sea and Central Europe. The Republic of Moldova, or what is still controlled by the government in Kishinev, remains the only turf for competition and confrontation between the two countries. In fact, the relations between Bucharest and Moldova are an accurate barometer of those between Moscow and Bucharest; in most cases, the Moldovans in power are the spokespeople of Russian interests in the area. Because of the new realities, Romania is no longer critical to Russia as a strategic ally, as it is not for the West. Romania is the ideal candidate for a buffer state between the "Slavic block" - Russia and Belarus - and NATO. It is equally true that Russia is no longer a threat for Romania; one of the happiest outcomes of the Soviet Union's dissolution was that Kiev remained between Moscow and Bucharest.
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