Romania is America’s new indispensable ally in Eastern Europe

When upgrades are completed, the Mihail Kogalniceanu NATO base will be home to more than 10,000 military members and their families and cover an area the size of Harrisburg. But it isn’t in Pennsylvania — it’s in Constanța, Romania, on the Black Sea, along with the U.S.-run Deveselu naval base, home to an Aegis antiballistic missile system.

With war raging across Ukraine and the Middle East, and relations volatile with NATO member Turkey, Romania has become America’s new indispensable ally.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, Romania moved to join the EU and NATO. At first, American and European leaders hoped for a cooperative relationship with Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, and some were skeptical about Romania’s capacity to be a reliable democratic ally. But fairly quickly, the U.S. threw its weight behind NATO expansion. Russia was keen to restrain Western influence in Poland and Ukraine, but Romania held less strategic value. Nor could Moscow portray non-Slavic Romanians as having historic roots in “Ancient Rus.”

After 9/11, America’s strategic vison shifted toward the Middle East and southwest Asia, and NATO wanted more partners in the fight against terrorism. The geopolitical value of a large pro-Western country bordering the Black Sea dramatically increased. Romania was an early and substantial contributor to multinational forces in Afghanistan — even transporting its own troops there. NATO admission followed in March 2004.

After a brief honeymoon, Russia began taking concrete actions to block growing Western influence in its neighborhood. To prevent fulfillment of NATO’s 2008 promise of membership for Ukraine and Georgia, Moscow carved out two statelets inside Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and pressured Ukraine. In 2014, in the wake of upheaval in Ukraine and EU involvement, Russia seized Crimea and directly supported secessionist movements in that country’s east. New NATO members needed little imagination to conjure a Russian threat, confirmed by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia’s aggression presents Romania with a complex set of dangers. To its north, Romania now has a 330-mile noncontiguous border with a country undergoing occupation and war. Although the western part of Ukraine has seen little fighting, its eastern and central regions — bordering on the Black Sea and the Danube Delta — have drawn dangerous attention as Russia tries to strangle Ukrainian exports. The dismantling of the Ukrainian naval fleet and the seizure of Sevastopol and ports like Kherson and Mariupol put Russia in a potentially dominant position in the Black Sea.  

Reversing this situation is difficult, because access to the Black Sea through the Bosporus Straits is governed by the pre-World War II Montreux Convention and enforced by Turkey, which is jealous of its prerogatives. When the U.S. tried to send two large hospital ships to Georgia in 2008, Turkey blocked their entrance. As a Black Sea littoral state, Russia does not face such limitations. Even in wartime, Russian ships returning to their “home” bases are permitted to pass through. This situation leaves the Black Sea “well suited for bullying your neighbor,” in the words of the Defense News.

But the Ukrainians have shown how drones and short-range missiles can even the odds against a larger navy. Even without big ships, a Black Sea NATO base in the home waters of a country that shares Washington’s view of Russia is a major strategic asset for surveillance and intelligence gathering.

Despite complications, Romania supports Ukraine economically. As Russia mined sea lanes, destroyed ports and threatened commercial shipping, Kyiv turned to Romania to allows its ports on the Black Sea and in the Danube River to be used for vital grain exports. When a 2022 UN-brokered deal with Russia fell apart, Romanian ports like Constanța picked up the trade. This puts Romania’s people in harm’s way, as Russian bombs fall just across the border; armed conflict has damaged the region’s fishing economy.

Romanians are strongly supportive of their country’s NATO membership and support for Ukraine. While facilitating the transit of Ukrainian grain, Bucharest, in cooperation with the EU, has been able to avoid the fierce opposition from local farmers seen in Poland and Hungary.

Nor has Romania embarrassed its American or European partners by sliding toward one-party rule, as happened in Poland and Hungary. In 2023, the European Commission praised the country’s comprehensive legal reform. Parties of the center-left (Social Democrats) and center-right (National Liberals) have swapped control peacefully and even governed together for a time. In the recent European Parliament elections, the two parties cooperated to blunt the rise of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, an anti-EU, anti-NATO nationalist party. This group came in a distant second, but it did gain seats for the first time.

Romania’s stance has drawn predictable growling from Moscow about Romanian “threats to Russia.” But probably the greatest danger to Romania is the prospect of a second Belarus, i.e., a Russian dominated neighbor, in Moldova. This tiny country, wedged between Ukraine and Romania, is already split by Transnistria, a Russian-sponsored enclave. Once part of Romania, roughly one-quarter of the country’s population identify Romanian (not Moldovan) as their mother tongue.

Leaders in Transnistria (where the population is one-third Russian) have raised charges of discrimination and repeatedly asked Moscow for “protection”. Under the pro-Western government of Maia Sandu, Moldova is now a candidate member of the EU, has received increased aid from the U.S. and is exploring closer ties with NATO. If linked to Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine, a Russia-dominated Moldova would likely spur a huge flow of refugees to the south and make the country’s 280-mile border with Romania a volatile frontier.

“Vin americanii!” — “The Americans are coming!” — was the cry of anti-Communists in Romania just after World War II. The Americans did not come then, but today, the grandchildren of those who shouted that slogan can see plenty of them down the road in Constanța — along with the geopolitical changes they represent.

Ronald H. Linden is a retired professor of Political Science and director of European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.