How would you assess the importance of NATO membership today, and what benefits has it provided to countries like Romania?

When trying to answer this question, I always propose to my students an exercise of counterfactual history: how would Romania be like if it was not a NATO and an EU member? The image is quite scary, both in terms of development and in terms of security, as they are very interconnected. Definitely, Romania would be in the grey zone, under the direct threat of Russia, probably with an unstable political system, with a much higher level of corruption, without the support of the structural funds, without the freedom of movement of the Romanian citizens in Europe and across the ocean.

Belonging to NATO has not only been beneficial in terms of security, but also in terms of the institutional strength of the Romanian state, the guarantee of the rule of law, the modernisation of the army, of the police, of the secret services. It is also important to notice that Romania succeeded to become a trusted interlocutor for the western States and the international organisations thanks to its positive credentials brought by the NATO membership.

Do you believe it is important to extend NATO’s membership to countries such as Moldova, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? What about Serbia, who seems reluctant to join NATO?

Keeping Moldova, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo under the Euro-Atlantic influence is critically important for guaranteeing the security of Europe and more generally that of the western world. These three countries have experienced not only social and political unrests, but also civil wars during different stages of their transition. The very statehood of these countries has been and to some extent still is problematic, and Russia and the other anti-western forces use this ambiguity related to the national identity and the geopolitical compass of these countries in order to keep a huge amount of pressure on the EU and on NATO. Thus, NATO’s presence in these countries is of paramount importance for maintaining their security. It is of outmost importance for NATO to succeed in defending the territorial integrity of Moldova and of Bosnia Herzegovina, threatened by the seceding forces whose interests are in line with those of Kremlin.

As far as Serbia is concerned, under the leadership of president Vucic, the geopolitical direction of the country has consistently switched from a hesitantly pro-western line to an increasingly pro-Russian stance. The conflict over the very existence of Kosovo has alienated even more Serbia from the perspective of integrating into NATO and the EU. NATO’s strategy should be maintaining of a constant pressure over the Serbian authorities, while showing to the Serbian citizens the huge advantages the other countries in the Western Balkans who joined the EU and NATO have succeeded to gain. Meanwhile, the renormalisation of the relation between Serbia and Kosovo should be one of the main preoccupations to avoid the risk of violent conflict in the region.

Many analysts and experts claim that Russia might try to open a new front in Europe by destabilising countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina or provoking new tensions in northern Kosovo. Do you think this risk is real, and how could Europe, and eventually NATO, counteract it? 

The destabilisation of the countries that have once been under the direct or indirect influence of Russia is certainly a part of Russia’s foreign policy strategy. Bosnia, which is still ethno-religiously divided, is a perfect case for projecting Russia’s influence in the region. Moscow is increasingly successful in convincing the Orthodox Serbian Bosnians to claim a higher degree of autonomy and even their independence from the other parts of the state.

Russia carries out a hybrid war by using to a high extent the local influencers in order to increase discontent among the local populations. The same recipe, applied in an even less covert manner, functions in northern Kosovo, where Russia uses the nationalist Kosovars actions to stimulate the Serbians’ secessionist claims. All these operations have increased since the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and we may very well expect an even more concentrated set of actions to push for a dramatisation of the local and regional conflicts.

How significant is the risk that countries in the Western Balkans, being outside the EU and only partially NATO members, could become increasingly dependent on external powers like Russia or China? What are the potential risks for Europe in this scenario?

Unlike Russia, China has a much more subtle strategy, which is less perceivable from a European perspective, even if it seems obvious for the Americans. Like in many African countries, China massively invested in the Western Balkan countries, especially in big infrastructure projects, in creating or strengthening enterprises in various fields, such as energy, heavy industry or agriculture. Given the financial limitations of the western states and the bureaucratic constraints that sometimes suffocate the investment processes in the western Balkans, the level of commitment in the direct development of key sectors of these countries’ economies is still relatively low. This allows China to continue its investments, even if during the last three years the pressures of the United States against the limitless opening towards the Beijing’s initiatives led to a certain slow-down. Nevertheless, if these investments of China will continue, and if the combined presence of China and Russia will be increasingly salient in the western Balkans, the European Union itself will be threatened in a more direct way both economically and geopolitically. The competition on the economic ground will have in the long term some important negative effects over the EU’s capacity to develop by investing and exporting, while the immediate presence of anti-Western actors near the geographical centre of Europe will be felt by the Europeans as an increasingly important danger to their security.

In Romania, work is ongoing to transform the military base at Mihail Kogălniceanu into the largest NATO air base in Europe. Is this a sign that the risks of an extension of the conflict in Ukraine are increasing, or is it simply a step towards enhancing defense capabilities on the Eastern flank?

The important investments in the infrastructures of the military bases in Eastern Europe reflect the current devolution of the geopolitical situation and the fact that there is the clear perspective over the possibility of direct aggression against Romania, Poland and/or the Baltic states. Romania and Poland have been warning the western chanceries for more than two decades about the increasingly threatening attitude of Russia and the likelihood of direct aggression against Ukraine. So, what happened in February 2022 was for these countries the expected result of a series of concessions made by NATO and the EU to Russia. It is now natural to ask for the reinforcement of the eastern flank and four a higher degree of protection against a threat that could transform itself into acts of war. While there is no proof that Russia is willing and actually capable to extend its aggression against Romania, there is a need to deter Putin through a stronger and more massive presence of the NATO forces in the region These forces in South-Eastern Romania are also likely to continue and reinforce the missions of protection over the Black Sea, bringing also significant information about the moves of the Russian marine. Seen from Romania, this reinforced presence of NATO is a shelter against a possible Russian more direct threat.