ROMANIA – NATO RELATIONS: THREE DECADES OF DIALOGUE AND TRANSFORMATION CONCERNING SECURITY
ROMANIA – NATO RELATIONS: THREE DECADES OF DIALOGUE AND TRANSFORMATION CONCERNING SECURITY

Summary/Abstract: In 2020, there will be 30 years since the initiation of the first official and permanent contacts between Romania and NATO. In the three decades, Romania’s security has undergone a complex transformation process, spanning from overcoming the relative international isolation, the access to security guarantees and improved relations with the actors in the region, to internal institutional modernization. Without being the only determining factor in these developments, the dialogue with NATO was, however, one of the main variables of change. The Alliance generated benchmarks for transformation, assistance in its implementation, as well as successive progress assessments, placing at the end of this change, first the promise of membership and, subsequently, the protection granted by the Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Starting from the analysis of Romania’s internal and external situation in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the current paper aims at making an additional contribution to a better understanding of the effects, in the field of national security, of the relation to NATO. The research reviews not only part of the parameters and mechanisms of change, but also Romania’s context of action in 2020, as a member of the Alliance, in comparison to its situation in 1990.

• Details
• Contents