POLITICS: Romania in NATO Membership Push

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Jan 15 2002 (IPS) - With less than one year before the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, issues new invitations to hopefuls in Eastern Europe, Romania is trying to boost its chances particularly in light of the focus on global security risks.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States Romania is using as a strong argument its contribution and participation in global security.

With peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, Bucharest says it is ready to send 48 soldiers, including military police, communications and logistical troops, and a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to Afghanistan by the end of January.

The costs of this operation, estimated at about six million US dollars, will be paid from the state budget.

“Romania is the only non-Alliance member to take part in the Afghanistan force and that’s a way to show our commitment in supporting international fight against terror,” says George Maior, a senior official in the defence ministry.

The country previously made available its air, land and territorial waters to NATO forces after the launch of military actions against Taliban targets.

Analysts say the prospects for Romania seem to be also brightened by NATO’s desire to build a security cordon along the shores of the Black Sea, where Central Asia heroin often lands before being smuggled to the west European cities.

Premier Adrian Nastase argued last week that Romania’s membership in the alliance would “expand security in the area” of the Balkans. “I don’t think there are alternatives to this choice. We have to mobilise all intellectual and material resources we can bring about country’s acceptance into NATO this autumn,” Nastase added.

Romania hopes to join the group after a summit in Prague in November when the Western military alliance is expected to consider a second wave of new members after failing to garner enough support to join in the first wave of NATO expansion in 1997.

In recent years, the government was pushing ahead with several reform programmes, including a radical reduction of the officer corps and an end to conscription by the end of the decade.

Plans are on track to cut down the region’s biggest armed forces to 140,000 personnel by 2003, less than half the total in 1989. Around 4,000 officers were sacked last year and many retrained with the use of World Bank funds.

Defence spending, around 800 million U.S. dollars in 2001, will rise to 1.4 billion dollars this year and more money will be allocated for new equipment.

Despite progress in overhauling its armed forces, the Romanian military is still handicapped by the country’s Warsaw Pact when it inherited a lumbering and inefficient machine in dire need of downsizing, upgrading and restructuring.

But defence commitments will not be the determining factor at the NATO summit in Prague. This was the same situation five years ago when Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland won invites, although their army reform were incomplete.

“Political and economic reforms will tip the balance at Prague meeting,” says a political analyst Valentin Stan. “Unfortunately, these parts of Romania’s application prospectus are rather less glossy. The lack of functioning market economy, endemic corruption and security worries could undermine all achievements from the military front,” he says.

Official statistics say a third of the country is living in poverty, scraping by on less than 50 U.S. dollars a month. Much of Romanian industry is still stagnating, while growth is being driven by a few successful firms.

More worrying for NATO is the problem of corruption – a daily fact of life for most Romanians. A lack of transparency in many state institutions allows abuses of power to go unchecked. On the other hand, Bucharest has started to tackle human trafficking, but illegal migration remains a concern despite tighter border controls.

This is not the first time the Romanian government has pushed for Alliance membership. The former centre-right administration of President Emil Constantinescu launched a high profile accession campaign in 1996.

Yet local analysts believe that this time Bucharest’s prospects are a lot better mostly as a result of events in the Balkans and Central Asia.

“NATO perception of Romania should have changed following the 1999 crisis in Yugoslavia and recent war against terrorism when Romania acted like a member of the Alliance,” says Valentin Stan.