Punching below its weight. Romania’s foreign policy dilemmas

The vast majority were sent to camps in the Soviet Union.10 After the war, Romania found itself in the Soviet sphere of influence; just as in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc, the Moscow-dependent communists took power in the country. [...] The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the subsequent launch of the so-called ‘war on terror’ prompted the US to significantly soften its stance towards the expan- sion of the Alliance. [...] They include the following: the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy; the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protec- tion of minorities; a functioning market economy and the ability to cope with competitive pressure & market forces within the EU; the ability to take on the obligations of membership, including the capacity to effectively implement the rules, standards and pol. [...] Copies of the statue of the Capitoline Wolf can be found in many Romanian cities; the most famous one is located in the centre of Bucharest (Romania received it from Italy in 1906 to mark the 25th anniversary of the coronation of King Carol I and the 1800th anniver- sary of the Roman Empire’s conquest of Dacia). [...] That is why, from the beginning of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2014, the Romanian government sought to bolster NATO’s eastern flank and called for defence spending to be raised to 2% of the country’s GDP.55 The debate on this topic quickly accentuated the already visible differences in the perception of the Russian threat among the countries in the region.