BALKANS FORCED INTO SPOTLIGHT FOR NATO SUMMIT
Michael Bird
The Diplomat
March 3 2008
Romania
Romania is buzzing with geopolitical significance at a time when
NATO’s heads of state arrive in Bucharest this April.
After a rare moment of calm, the Balkans is again a flashpoint
of political struggle. There is a major schism in the EU between
countries choosing to support Kosovo’s independence and those who deny
its legality. Russia has never been more at odds with the west since
the Cold War. The greater Black Sea region is dividing into countries
with Russian influence, such as the Republic of Moldova, those tied to
the EU consensus, such as Romania, and those with divided loyalties,
including Ukraine and Serbia. The geography of these new divisions
forms a kind of iron patchwork.
But Romania is no longer playing poodle to the USA. Bucharest’s
non-recognition of Kosovo is the first moment when modern Romania has
challenged American and major European powers on a serious geopolitical
issue. Instead the country has sided with its neighbours and domestic
public opinion.
Recent bilateral visits between Presidents Basescu and Tadic indicate
that Romania wants to show solidarity with the embattled EU-leaning
head of state’s moderate position. The motivation for this seems to be
a good neighbourliness. The kind that was absent when Romania allowed
NATO air strikes to pass over its territory and bomb Belgrade during
the 1999 Kosovo uprising.
Serbia also has great relations with Russia, whose foreign policy over
the last three years publicly seems to have been to ignore Romania’s
existence. Bucharest must regain some dialogue with Moscow, beyond the
trading of insults. Hopefully, Belgrade can build a bridge for Romania
to Russia, while Bucharest can act as a bridge for Serbia to the EU.
Romania has nothing to fear from the ‘Kosovo precedent’. This is the
theory that any European region fostering hopes of independence could
use Kosovo as an example for the realisation of its aims.
Recent international news reports have hyped up Romanian fears
of partition north of the Carpathian mountains. But there is no
Transylvanian Liberation Army or People’s Front of Targu Mures
preparing to kick out Romanians from the Hungarian-speaking
territories.
Instead members of the Union of Democratic of Hungarians in Romania
are in Strasbourg to learn about the best EU forms of federal
Government. Romania’s future may be federalist, with regional powers
granted to Iasi, Cluj-Napoca or the Hungarian speaking counties. But
this will be decided by law-makers and bureaucrats, not gunfire.
More pertinent is the issue of the breakaway Moldovan state of
Transnistria. Kosovo’s independence may embolden the state to call
for international recognition. The parallels are vague. This district
is a melting pot of Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans, unlike the
clear Kosovan Albanian majority in the ex-Yugoslavian territory.
Transnistria is a rogue nation which regularly declares its
independence or unification with Russia in statements which gain no
official support, not even from the Kremlin.
This could change with Kosovo. But any major country choosing this
moment to grant sovereign status to Transnistria, Abkhazia, Ossetia
or even Nagorno-Karabakh would be acting on political opportunism
designed only to anger the west and destabilise the region.