Why Romania’s presidential vote could shake NATO and why the opposition is blocking the best contender

Four major Romanian political parties formed a coalition on Wednesday night, vowing to keep Romania on a pro-EU and pro-NATO path.

The extraordinary agreement comes as ultranationalist, pro-Russian Călin Georgescu leads polls ahead of the country’s presidential election on Sunday.

The Social Democrats, the Liberals, the reformist Save Romania Union (USR), the Hungarian minority party UDMR and representatives of other ethnic minorities said in a joint statement they wanted to prevent international isolation for Romania and maintain economic development and combat the rising cost of living.

The coalition means that the four parties, along with the ethnic minority representatives, will together hold a majority in parliament and will be able to push for a prime minister from among their ranks.

…

The parties managed to fend off an outright victory by far-right parties in a parliamentary election this past Sunday. But the strength of the radical vote, which brought together three far-right parties in the parliament, suggests that ultranationalist Georgescu could still win the presidency this Sunday. 

Romanian polling agency CURS predicted he would win 57.8 percent of the vote against reformist candidate Elena Lasconi of USR. 

But those international ties are deplored by Georgescu, who has condemned the Deveselu missiles as a national “shame,” campaigned for ending Romanian aid to Ukraine, and called for “Russian wisdom” in shaping foreign policy.

At the same time, Georgescu insists he doesn’t want to withdraw from the alliance.

“I do not want out of NATO, I do not want out of the European Union,” Georgescu said last week. “What I want, however, is to take a stance, not to kneel over there, not to take everything. Like I said, we should do everything in our national interest.”

Even were Georgescu inclined to withdraw from NATO, that would be a difficult aim to achieve as the far right doesn’t have a majority in the country’s parliament. It could also rile Romanians, 88 percent of whom support membership in the alliance, according to a recent poll. (ER: We’ve learned to ask ‘whose poll?’)

But under Romania’s French-style political system, the president is the head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and in charge of foreign policy. Having a NATO-skeptic in the Cotroceni Palace, therefore, could create big problems for the alliance; Georgescu could copy Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s playbook, for example, and act as a pro-Kremlin spoiler within NATO. (ER: ‘Wouldn’t that be a bad thing?!’ said no sane person ever.)

A dramatic political shift in Bucharest, then, could undermine Romania’s role as one of the military alliance’s major regional security players. The country is one of the alliance’s top spenders, flies F-16 combat jets, is buying M1 Abrams main battle tanks from America, and aims to open one of the largest air bases in NATO. It also deployed troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan. (ER: So its taxpayer monies are being used and abused.)

That growing military might comes on the back of over two decades of fast economic growth that has transformed the country from a Balkan basket-case into an increasingly prosperous nation that has even bested old rival Hungary in terms of GDP per capita.

“Romania’s role has evolved a lot in the past 20 years since it joined NATO, and the country has made steps toward being a security provider and not only a security consumer,” said Anca Agachi, a policy analyst at the RAND think tank.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago, Romania has sent weapons, including a Patriot air defense system, and helped funnel international aid to Kyiv. It also borders the Black Sea — where Russians are attacking civilian vessels and laying mines.

Russian drones have passed through Romanian airspace on their way to attacking Ukraine, and drone fragments have been found on its territory.

“Proximity to Ukraine has positioned Romania as a vital logistical partner,” said Antonia Colibasanu, a Romania-based geopolitical analyst at Geopolitical Futures, adding that Romania is also a training hub for Ukrainian F-16 pilots.

NATO deterrence

NATO leaders agreed in March 2022 to establish four additional multinational battlegroups along the alliance’s eastern edge, including a French-led one in Romania. The unit, stationed in Cincu, will be upgraded to a 4,000-strong brigade by next year. It includes troops from Belgium, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal and the U.S.

In addition to the missile defenses in Deveselu, Romania aims to spend $2.7 billion turning its Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase into one of NATO’s largest facilities. Once the upgrades are completed in 2030, Kogălniceanu will host over 10,000 soldiers and civilians, some of whom will be shifted from America’s Ramstein base in Germany.

“This will be a very concrete tool of deterrence on the eastern flank,” said George Scutaru, CEO of the New Strategy Center think tank and a former national security adviser to Romania’s president.

Next spring, Romania will host a large-scale military exercise dubbed Dacian Spring 2025 that will test France’s ability to move a war-ready brigade across Europe in 10 days.