Romania with George Friedman

07-02-2014 • arclein

All Soviet satellites emerged damaged after the collapse of the old order in 1989. Few were as damaged as Romania. In many ways, the damage was self-inflicted: The villain of the piece was a Romanian, Nicolae Ceausescu. Ceausescu followed an anti-Soviet line, staying in the Warsaw Pact but displaying singular hostility to the Soviet Union. I recall Americans being excited about Ceausescu's Romania since, being anti-Soviet, it was assumed that by definition he had to be pro-American. To America's amazement, he wasn't. He wasn't even pro-Romanian given that he concocted a scheme to pay off all of Romania's foreign debts by destroying the lives of a generation of Romanians by consigning the vast majority of the country's agricultural and industrial production to hard currency exports. Beyond that, he created a nightmarish security system that was both