Back to Normality – The Chicago 2012 NATO Summit

In unfortunate conformity with article 91, chapter II of the constitution – regarding the active president’s monopolistic prerogatives – Romania’s foreign policy has, for the last eight years (2004-2012), been the prisoner of a politician who is power-hungry, totalitarian, dedicated to common evil, damaging and incapable of promoting national interests.

Modern Romanian diplomacy – built, over more than one and a half centuries, upon deciphering these interests, upon wisdom and personal relations with long term partners, mainly from Europe, but also from other countries – has been abandoned. The Foreign Ministry is a disaster area, and the damages caused on the inside by bad management of foreign affairs are overwhelming in all directions: social, economic, development, tourism, education, country image, etc. The upcoming Chicago NATO Summit (May 20-21) offers Victor Ponta’s government the unique opportunity to rapidly begin a decisive confrontation with the president for the reinstatement of traditional Romanian foreign policy and of its time-proven postulates…

At Chicago, NATO – as we have known it for 63 years: a primarily Europe-U.S. structure, and only recently a tool for resolving certain global issues – needs to reinvent itself or disappear. It needs to change itself radically, as President Obama would have it, to the pride of his hometown; or, as some in London and in other parts believe, renounce its global ambitions and, after its loss of legitimacy in Afghanistan, return penitently home to Europe and take care of its birthplace; or, finally collapse at the smallest shake-up, as Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski believes.

The Summit agenda concerns the organization’s structural pillars themselves. It is complex and very difficult to achieve, in the context of a general financial crisis, the American election year (the heated democratic-republican debate on topics of foreign policy) and America’s current strategic military “pivot” from Europe towards the Pacific.

The first point on the agenda remains the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, but the subsequent $4.1 billion dollars a year, 10 year-long financial assistance program for Afghan security forces isn’t supported by any of the major European allies. Certainly, to keep himself in the game and in the favors of the American ally, Traian Băsescu will make astounding promises in Chicago, promises which will be detrimental to the organization’s image. But Victor Ponta or another of his government’s officials will have to say loud and clear that Romania is overwhelmed by this financial burden, one not surpassed even by countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, François Hollande’s France, Italy or Spain.

The next point on the Chicago agenda is the “issue of issues”: NATO-Russia relations. Secretary General Anders Rasmussen’s efforts to establish a constructive relationship between the Alliance and Moscow – one that is essential, according to him, not only to Europe, but to global security – are well known and appreciated. As well-known as Rasmussen’s initiative is, the damaging and foolish personal perspective of the Romanian president towards Russia, and of Băsescu’s Romania in general, is stuck in an absurd hostility toward almost all of the country’s regional and geopolitical neighbors.

The odds are small that there will be an acceptable solution for all parties concerning common NATO-Russia anti-missile defense, but it is there that Ponta’s representatives or – why not – Ponta himself, have the extraordinary opportunity to announce on the highest level the position of the new Romanian government concerning the future anti-missile system in Europe, as well as on its relations with Russia and European ex-Soviet states. It is an opportunity to truly contribute to the process of defusing the former “Cold War” stereotypes and the recently emergent ones between Moscow and NATO concerning the shield.

To reduce existing suspicions between parties and to increase mutual trust, to extend institutionalized cooperation and to join European partners Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Baltic countries etc., those that are for the integration of Russia and of other ex-Soviet states in the European community. Point 3 on the agenda will also be part of the heated talks in Chicago. It concerns the financing of the European anti-missile defense system which was discussed and established at the Lisbon 2010 Summit as a common project for the Alliance. For now, all European states involved are contributing with what they have around: locations, existing air and water facilities, communications, roads, etc. Nobody has, however, opened their pockets for purchasing equipment and arms.

What Washington is asking to happen is affected by diminished defense budgets in all NATO countries, so it seems that Europe’s anti-missile defense system will remain, for a good amount of time, an exclusively American financial effort. The next point on the agenda concerns establishing an Allied consensus concerning the future role of the remaining American nuclear weapons in Europe. Some NATO member countries insist that they be withdrawn. Others want them to remain as proof of America maintaining its commitment to defend Europe. The Chicago Summit isn’t looking to solve this issue, even now, 20 years since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and of the great ideological conflict between capitalism and communism.

Regardless, the Ponta government representatives present in Chicago will have to identify and remember the viewpoints expressed regarding these last two issues on the agenda, as they will become, in a few years, topics of major concern in the Euro-Atlantic landscape. The fifth point on the agenda of the Summit is a world-first issue promoted by Secretary General Rasmussen, a defensive concept that he calls “intelligent defense.” Essentially, it is about a more efficient use of crisis-diminished national defense budgets through planning and sharing the costs for more expensive equipment among allies, which would be utilized in common by two or more partners. But things are not so simple, because of local conditions, mentalities, regulations, parliaments, legislation and different levels of equipment.

Finally, a major political statement is expected at the Chicago Summit, through which NATO would continue to offer aid to countries in North Africa that request it.

On March 29, 2012, under the leadership of the president, the Supreme Defense Council approved Romania’s mandate for the Chicago NATO Summit. The document, which came “de facto” through the establishment of the new Victor Ponta government, is another mind-blowing farce of the Băsescu brand, one completely torn from Romanian reality, as well as from the aforementioned NATO reality. The president’s press release, written in a perfect communist wooden tongue, like some copy-and-paste from the newspaper “Scânteia” 30 years ago, exults the heart-felt trust of our entire people in the bright future of the “international community’s commitment in Afghanistan, concerning the identification of viable solutions that would contribute to the consolidation of military capabilities of the Alliance in the NATO expansion process, as well as to the importance of the extended region of the Black Sea,” under the wise leadership of our beloved nation, etc.

The Băsescu regime remains, after almost eight years, a cynical farce. This is present in everything from the “Live well!” out of the empty and accursed coffers, left as “inheritance” by the latest liberal-democratic party government of Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, all the way to the mandate for the NATO Summit in Chicago in two weeks. It is the duty of the Ponta government, of Ministers Florin Georgescu, Dobrițoiu, Rus, Corlățan and of professor Marga, that while there, at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, they expose this farce and announce to the Euro-Atlantic partners and begin Romania’s return to normality. They must announce it in America, in the century of the Pacific: the full return of Romania to Europe.

May God help them!