Ecaterina MATOI
Introducere
Romania is not situated in the Middle East; however, after experiencing a relatively peaceful Cold War along its post-World War II (WWII) borders, it remained susceptible to a global conflictual landscape that visibly resurfaced in Europe amid uninterrupted revisionist competition. Perestroika was followed by the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the subsequent emergence of Kosovo, which Romania does not recognize as a state.
The post-2008 (Georgian war) rift between the US/NATO and the Russian Federation announced already the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At a jus ad bellum justification level, each great power constructs theoretical and propagandistic argumentation, in a dynamic that reshapes cultures, borders and values at an increasingly detailed level.
This analysis hypothesizes that Romania is a relatively medium-sized country, with foreign policy depending significantly on great power confrontation, and its foreign policy and strategic culture is rooted in institutional solidarity, as are its attempts to balance geopolitical rivalries in the region situated between the non-unionized Balkans and the Black Sea.
Framing the 2026 conflictual landscape as a resurgence of the Cold War would only be partially representative. Should such a perspective be employed, then the security dynamics between the US and Europe require a systematic update, and the attempts to decouple the Global South from a traditionally dominant Western corporative culture into a realigned structure would count as Russian strategic reinforcement.
In this context, Romania’s foreign policy is analyzed in the context of global dynamics, particularly the United Nations (UN) impasse, a US perspective as Romania signed a defense cooperation agreement shortly before joining NATO, a European and economic perspective, and that of dynamics in its neighborhood. The selected framework is Gideon Rose’s neoclassical realism, while the paper is structured as a set of historical process analyses
Theoretical framework and research design
The two main explanatory frameworks of international relations, i.e. (institutional) liberalism and realism, co-exist along other approaches to foreign relations for more than one century, and provided mixed outcomes. On one hand, liberal cooperation frameworks meet limits at national or interest group level, while realist power balancing is bounded by the development and management of material power relative to competitors. Should institutional solidarity be considered a reference line, states can be assessed based on their overcompliance or undercompliance.
Data analyzed in this analysis hints that Romania is a state that committed to institutionalism and the limits of this approach being primarily emphasized by the great power competition and the necessity to position itself in frameworks beyond institutional cooperation. Therefore, while assessing Romania’s foreign policy dynamics would be more appropriate from an international institutionalism perspective, the power-based dynamics and rearmament race require a realist assessment framework.
According to Gideon Rose (Rose, 1998), neoclassical realism argues that relative material power significantly determines a state’s foreign policy, although direct connections are not always demonstrable. When considering that Rose references Kenneth Waltz’s assumption of “autonomous realms”, Romania’s pursuit of institutional solidarity can be identified as a measure balancing normativity with autonomy. Acknowledging the finite limits of material power, particularly in great power confrontation, provides a theoretical fundament for dynamics such as the NATO – Russian Federation confrontation, and the pursuit of ownership or control of material power. Romania has chosen to employ its power in various frameworks, and in the particular case of war from Ukraine, Bucharest committed to fully support an initially US-led campaign, and subsequently an apparent European stance, as the US is reshaping its foreign policy, and the security relation with Europe, in a radical manner.
Romania’s potential defensive-offensive stance in the war from Ukraine is difficult to assess as a single parameter and independently from its long-term commitments. However, as a Black Sea riparian state, and a frontier of the EU, Romania projects its image as a normative exporter, supporting Moldova and Ukraine’s EU candidacies, and a security consumer that relies on NATO to compensate for the asymmetry of Russian influence in the Black Sea. Consequently, Romania is aligning with NATO’s hard power projection, and with the soft power policy the EU promotes for expansion.
The limits between Romania’s strategic vulnerability and institutional solidarity in perspective
The offensive/defensive distinction from realist characterization of international relations requires an assessment in the context of revisionism. The outcome of Cold War was equated with a definitive and irreversible American win over the Soviet Union, reflected in Moscow’s territorial withdrawal, and its reshaped political and economic system. In the first decade after Perestroika, the US and allied success was indeed a definitive outcome, and challenging this assumption might have been equated to revisionism of US unipolar hegemony.
At the beginning of 20th century, two types of US hegemony emerged: a punctual one, as Iraq, Afghanistan and other traditionally non-aligned countries continued to contest and fight US hegemony, and thus not systematically revisionist, and a systemic one, i.e. Russian Federation’s decision to accept Perestroika as a temporary, hence not definitive, outcome of the Cold War. Russian revisionism in this context can be equated to a return to confrontation with the US-led West, in a renewed framework attempting to coagulate fast-rising economic actors that had not previously considered closer alliances.
The escalation of power contestation clearly resulted in the Ukrainian conflict, that was imposed to Ukraine, its neighbors and large security blocks: the hard stop the Russian Federation is attempting to impose on EU and NATO expansion is not a regional or new conflict, but rather a renewed one. As this conflict advances, both former hegemons of the Cold War are pursuing revisionist agendas. The US under President Donald Trump seeks to impose a renewed unilateralism, with components including both negotiations with large powers such as China and the Russian Federation, and territorial revisionism (Greenland spat), as well as wars. Likewise, the Russian Federation seeks to contribute to a fundamental revision of international relations, deleveraging the US dollar, and promoting a multipolar world.
Members of the Western block, such as Spain (EFE, 2026), but also states from Asia, Africa, South America, advocate for reforming an international system that is in visible impasse. However, given Russia’s former superpower role, Moscow’s revisionism might entail far-reaching implications for Europe, and consequently for Romania’s region. Therefore, while not revisionist in nature, Romania’s conservative approach to foreign policy is particularly relevant in two contexts: East-European geopolitics and the great power confrontation from this region.
In the Ukrainian conflict, Romania’s diplomatic stance is consistent with both international law and UN principles, as Bucharest consistently supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemned territorial annexations, such as UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 (UN 68/262, 2014) and 78/184 (UN 79/184, 2024). Furthermore, Romania entered a joint initiative with Poland and the Baltic states (Bucharest 9/B9 format) to push for stronger EU sanctions against territorial revisionism (Vaida, 2022). The position adopted is also consistent with Romania’s anti-revisionist stance, reflected also in the divergence between Romania, which does not recognize Kosovo, and its allies that did. Consequently, Romania offers the international community a consistent non-revisionist stance on state borders.
Romania’s institutional solidarity is both a predictability declaration and a measure to cope with vulnerability. Particularly in the case of Kosovo recognition, Romania seeks to stabilize regional borders, in the context of Hungarian claims to Romanian territory it occupied. A similar stance has been adopted by countries such as Spain or Greece. At regional level, Romania aims to preserve its territorial integrity, while maintaining and expanding relations with Moldova and neighboring countries.
Romania’s security vulnerabilities can be modeled as a pyramid. It’s NATO and EU memberships, and the allied military bases it hosts, were supposed to represent a step in the expansion eastwards. As long as the front line consisting from Ukraine and the Black Sea represents a stable inward allied territory, and the conflict remains a proxy, protracted confrontation, Russian incursions into Romanian territory remain a relatively limited threat.
However, should the US abandon its main European defense alliance, two dynamics may fundamentally change Romania’s security calculus: an increased risk of Russian hybrid or conventional attack in the Black Sea, and the propagation of an European military economy that can result in a large-scale confrontation with the Russian Federation, or a spillover of European military assets into regions that Europe did not project military power in the past: unless Europe is ready to disadvantage its economic pace in order to invest in latent military infrastructure, the investment in rearmament will have to bring geopolitical and ultimately economic returns.
While Europe appears to consolidate its union, Romania still remains an advanced outpost between non-union territories: the Balkans, Ukraine and the Black Sea are EU and NATO borders. Romania’s sole land lifeline to Europe’s allied heartland is Hungary, a relatively medium-sized state also prone to great power rivalry and even American internal strife, ensuing between the Democrats and Republicans, and with declared revisionist aspirations towards Romanian territory (Wynn, 2018).
Romania contributes to the regional balance of power with a predictable non-revisionist policy, while at global level, its efforts are supporting the Western alliance that defeated the Soviet Union and trust that European eastwards expansion is a natural step after Perestroika. Unlike its Hungarian and Bulgarian neighbors, Romania consistently supported Ukrainian territorial integrity and defense effort, with clear and comprehensive measures. However, in the context of a global reshuffle, that might lead Washington to abandon the Ukrainian war effort, Romania has neither the technological capacity nor the manpower to contribute to the war in a manner similar to its larger European allies, and this is confirmed by its relatively medium-sized country foreign policy. Besides the relative material power level, Romania invests resources in stabilizing regional disputes, such as the international case with Ukraine for the Serpants Island territorial waters, or the Bystroye Canal ecological crisis (Tudose, 2023).
The UN/NATO perspective on Romania’s foreign policy balancing act
While Romania has consequently upheld its commitments to the UN Charter and principles, and in this framework selected Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a central foreign policy goal, Bucharest’s stance has been overridden by a blocked Security Council, and a sinuous American-Russian relation. The persistence of the war from Ukraine encourages peace-seeking countries to search for alternatives to the existing global order, leading potentially to new geopolitical and security definitions. While the US and Europe began to meet resistance in Ukraine and Central Asia, Western foreign policy determined an increased coordination of competing forces, notably in cooperation formats such as BRICS, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
On the one hand, the NATO alliance remains strong and unwavering; however, two types of spats have emerged among its members: direct confrontations, such as the Greenland takeover bid or the tariffs dispute, and protracted disagreements, for example over the wars in Ukraine and Iran, as well as broader foreign policy issues like Spain’s growing support for the Palestinian cause and UN reform.
As a space for projecting interests and power, the Black Sea region may remain a long-term front line for great power confrontation, unless a breakthrough in UN stalemate is achieved. Unlike the Persian Gulf or Suez Canal, which represent traditional confrontation spaces, the Black Sea emerged as a branch of Middle Corridor, i.e. a relatively more secure trade route between Europe and China, that the US will likely seek to downgrade unless it manages to control it. In the eventuality of a long-term conflict with the Russian Federation and an uncertain Suez Canal, the Middle Corridor route through the Black Sea will compete with Turkish land routes. Furthermore, should the UN stalemate persist, China will be forced to increase efforts to secure its commercial interests, and eventually expand the scope of BRI and SCO cooperation. Consequently, a stalemate in Europe’s attempt to expand eastwards, with or without American support, and maintenance of hostilities with the Russian Federation without any consequential breakthrough, might result in new SCO members in the Black Sea, besides the Russian Federation (member) and Türkiye (dialogue partner).
As a fellow NATO colleague, Türkiye has already begun strategic dialogue with Asian partners, in defense and economic sectors among others. Romania however, splits commitments between a NATO-based collective security arrangement, that guarantees the security of its borders through Article 5 of the NATO collective treaty (Romanian MOFA NATO, 2026), and the US Security Cooperation Agreement with Romania
(US DoS Romania, 2025). In the context of diverging policies on Ukraine between the US and Bruxelles, Romania ensures platform for both European and American counterparts to access the front line. The bilateral framework with the US led to an approx. $ 900 million modernization loan and the installation of Aegis Ashore missile system at Deveselu (Romania), while the NATO framework resulted, in the context of Ukrainian war, in the establishment of a French-led multinational battlegroup at Cincu Training Area, deployment of rotating air defense assets, and the “Eastern Sentry” activity (NATO Romania, 2026).
As the war from Ukraine drags on, and global confrontational rhetoric increases, Romania makes extraordinary efforts to contribute to collective security as in the case of defense spending increase from 2.5% to 3.5 % from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in perspective (Chiriac, 2025), despite already unsustainable budget deficits. Hence, from a security consumer, as it was the case in past decades, Romania transforms into a security contributor. Furthermore, Romania has decided to co-produce drones on its territory with Ukraine, in a EUR 200 million program backed by EU SAFE funding (Ukraine MOD Drones, 2026).
From a UN and NATO perspective, Romania probably ranks among the most conservative and anti-revisionist countries from Europe, vigorously supporting EU and NATO deterrence programs in the Black Sea.
The EU perspective on Romania’s balancing act in the Black Sea
The accession to the EU in 2007 connected Bucharest to an economic space that absorbed exports, but did not provide significant relative material gains in trade: as of 2024, Romania still runs a negative trade balance, struggles to contain budget deficits and does not manage to develop a consistent outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In 2024, from Romania’s $ 104 billion of exports (a -3.2 % decrease in exports from 2023, i.e. $ – 3.79 billion), $ 80.5 billion (77.4 %) were delivered to Europe, with Germany, Italy, France, the UK, Hungary and Poland as leading destinations (oec.world, 2026). Most exports comprised vehicles, vehicle parts, insulated wire, and electric control boards, emphasizing Romania’s role in the broader automotive industry that Europe develops. Two large trade partners outside the EU were China and Türkiye, with which Bucharest runs a trade deficit.
Romania did not historically depend on trade or financial relations with the Russian Federation, nor did it develop global-scale energy-intensive industries that require particularly cheap energy. However, the transit to the European economic block underlines the importance of balance between income and spending.
Although not due to compliance, the infringement/sanctioning procedure launched by the EU against Romania was paused at the end of 2025, but not cancelled and measures such as funds suspension may still be enforced (spotmedia.ro, 2025). Furthermore, Romania consistently ranks in leading inflation positions across the Euro-bloc, reporting the highest EU inflation rate in March 2026 (9% annualized) (Newsroom, 2026).
Romania’s relative material power is also burdened by a depopulation that the Polish Center for Eastern Studies OSW calls “Thirty years of Crisis”: from the early 1990s to 2021, the country lost 17 % of its population, mainly due to migration, and in the period 2025 – 2025, studies project that the population is expected to decrease from 19 million to 16 million (Calus, 2025). The World Bank report cited by OSW hints that at least 4 million Romanians were living abroad, which is not comparable to the number of Palestinian refugees, but comparable to the 4.9 million Syrian refugees reported by UNHCR in the year 2015 (UNHCR, 2015, p. 16). Romania is thus struggling to achieve a fragile balance, that is relying after 35 years of commitment to Western causes, on remittance of Romanian economic migrants, mostly from the EU, for an anyway stretched budget that is supposed to upscale military spending to dangerously unsustainable levels. Hence besides the stretched geographical EU and NATO outpost, Romania is also a stretched economic outpost, with obvious limitations to provide sustained war support, in case of grave escalation in the Black Sea area.
Amid allegations of elections interference of EU officials in Romania and Hungary, which are not discussed in detail in this paper, but it is emphasized that the EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen did not maintain neutrality in Hungarian elections and declared that Hungary chose Europe when voting Peter Magyar (SRF Hungary, 2026). Furthermore, an envisioned plan to remove veto rights of EU members in decision-making and replace it with a qualified majority (Benton, 2026). As the Dutch Member of European Parliament Sander Smit noted, abandoning unanimity can equate to bypassing national democracy, and particularly in the case of relatively medium-sized or remote states, decisions against their national interests can be taken. In the particular case of Romania, that has no financial, human or other significant material capital as reserve, such measures, and parallel projects such as the centralization of EU finances, and military force, can lead to devastating outcomes on long term.
On the one hand, large EU states and decision-makers seek to benefit from partners’ resources under advantageous conditions, și in parallel, they aim to suppress the already relatively reduced sovereign powers that keep countries like Romania afloat, by revising fundamental cooperation agreements and principles. As the EU prepares itself to become a global military player, relatively medium-sized country risk being marginalized or remaining in an increasingly authoritarian Brussels—whose institutions, unlike those in the United States, are neither elected nor accountable to the people who might, at their behest, be sent to war and die—while private defense corporations strive to accumulate as much capital as possible, thereby expanding the war economy.
Conclusions
This analysis aimed to assess Romania’s strategic vulnerabilities and institutional solidarity in the context of efforts to balance the Black Sea region. As a relatively medium-sized East-European state, Romania committed to a Euro-Atlantic agenda and, even at clearly unsustainable costs, it strictly adheres to commitments in a non-revisionist approach to international relations.
However, Romania is required to cope with at least three revisionist tendencies: Russian contestation of American and allied definitive victory in the Cold War, American revisionist approach to global cooperation and peace, and European Union’s push to reform the very foundation of EU cooperation by attempting to remove veto rights of relatively medium-sized countries and replace unanimity with qualified majority.
Romania has been identified as a geographical and economic outpost for the EU, that despite certain positive indicators, suffers from economic weakness and a severe depopulation comparable to that of countries in war. Besides these structural vulnerabilities, Romania is situated between the non-EU Balkans and a Black Sea with increasing potential to become a contestation space between European and Asian security architectures unless breakthroughs are achieved.
Romania’s case is not singular, but it reiterates the dependency patterns of relatively medium-sized countries with limited material resources, especially in long crises that require great power resources to aim for victory or at least survive.
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Cover page credits: Daciana Cristina Visan via Pexels.
About the author: Ecaterina Matoi is the President of Strategic Dialogue for Global Affairs Initiative.