Strategic Partnership with Russia?

Even though most of the time we are preoccupied with the "serious" issues of our politics, there is an external affairs issue that keeps appearing and disappearing from the headlines: the wonder regarding the bad (or inefficient) relations with Russia. From time to time, after reading a book, looking at a map or taking part in a symposium, certain politicians wisely exclaim: "We shall not forget about Russia!" After that he focuses on the internal fights that have got to dominate the every-day life of the Romanian parties.

The respective issue is as real as it gets. We have come up to a point in which the relations with Russia are tensed and confuse. We depend on Russia energetically (as well). The balance of the bilateral commerce brings a two billion deficit for us every year. The vital matters of the region cannot be solved without a careful and normal cooperation with Moscow, even if these matters regard Transnistria, the Black Sea or the unknown ways of the energy pipes.

We had and we still have politicians that believe that this relation can be built on some sort of revolutionary vigilance: they should give our thesaurus back first, and we will talk afterwards! Thousands of newspaper pages have been filled with such an attitude and, in the meantime, we lost a second thesaurus by leaving aside a political and economical vital relation. Now, it seems that Romania is haunted by a cold-war nostalgia. The great powers have decided to put an end to it, but this is not necessarily true for Bucharest. We shall not follow them! They are not in the position to tell us what to do! This is why high-ranked politicians describe the Russians as the number one public enemies.

I went to Moscow the other day. There, the general opinion is that Romania frequently takes anti-Russia positions. They believe Romania constantly takes fundamental anti-Russia positions as well as positions against the interests of the Russian Federation. The recently adopted or launched initiatives of President Basescu regarding the Black Sea, supplying hydrocarbon to Europe and the role of Russia in the Moldavian Republic.

On the other hand, the Romanians believe Russia wants to remain distant as far as the political and economical relations are concerned and, therefore, the Romanians are under the impression of a cold period in the bilateral reports. Out of the countries of Central Europe, Romania is the only country that hasn’t received any official visit from Russia in the past 16 years. The Moscow leaders have made all kind of symbolical gestures to the other countries in Central Europe, but never to Romania (Poland: the list of the officers killed in Katyn; the Czech Republic and Slovakia: sorry for the invasion in 1968; Hungary: sorry for the invasion in 1956 and the reimbursement of certain parts of the thesaurus deposited in Russia).

Of course Romania had focused mainly on two already fulfilled goals: NATO and the EU. However, after we managed to become members of the EU we discovered something that shouldn’t surprise us at all: ever since 1997, Russia is a strategic partner of the EU. This means Russia has become our partner on the 1st of January 2007. The strategic partnership between the EU and the Russian Federation, which became valid on the 1st of December 1997 under the name of "The Agreement for Partnership and Cooperation", was initially valid for 10 years and it was based on four common fields: the economic field, the freedom, security and justice field, external security field and research, education and culture field. It is obvious that Romania, no matter the leaders, becomes part of this strategic partnership and has to show a truly European attitude, in accordance to the agreements between the EU and the Russian Federation as far as the relations with Moscow are concerned. Europe has always been aware of the fact that Russia is still powerful. Getting rid of "it" is not a solution. We should find more efficient ways to collaborate with it.

We should save on energy not only when we prepare for the winter, we should do it as well while we act like Superman during external negotiations. Theoretically, this is a favorable moment in which Moscow is looking for viable partners in Central and Eastern Europe. If we are not able to find a solution to this problem, we might get isolated from an extremely useful cooperation plan, which seems to be more certain by the day.