Romania in a post-American world

Hey everybody, Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Huron peak in central Colorado, and today we’re going to talk about Romania. Romania is one of those middle powers that kind of has been dealt a bad hand, it’s got a good chunk of land in the lower Danube, and it’s bracketed by the Carpathian Mountains, but it’s not quite big enough to kind of stand up to the neighbors. So it’s got these two access, three access points, really, you’ve got the Vienna Gap to the northwest that allows access to the Northern European plain, got the Bessarabian Gap to the northeast, which allows access to what I call the Eurasian hoardlands. And then down south, you’ve got the Balkan Mountains that pinch off access to the Sea on Montemara region. Now, in the Northern Europe plains and the hoardlands and Montemara are all capable of supporting absolutely massive powers that have dominated history, as long as it’s been recorded. And Romania is kind of stuck in the middle, it has access to all three of them, but could never generate the sort of military force that is necessary to punch out beyond those gaps and do anything meaningful. In fact, because it’s proximate to all of these gaps, it is usually one of the first countries that gets conquered or amalgamated when one of those three mega-regions decides it wants to expand beyond their natural borders. And in that sort of environment, Romania faces a double bind.

Number one, whether it’s coming from the Northern European plane, or Montemara, or Eurasian hoardlands, it’s got to decide whether it’s going to fight or whether it’s going to accede, and if it chooses to accede, then it is not in charge of its own destiny anymore, and it usually ends up being a cog in somebody else’s empire.

The second problem is that Romania, while being the most populous of the countries in the squeeze zone in between, is certainly not the only one. And there are others that might be a little bit different, more defensible, and have a little bit richer geography, and Romania is in constant competition with all of them. So even if it can make its peace with its larger neighbors, it then has to make peace with its smaller neighbors. Some, like Bulgaria, usually gets along with pretty well, others like Serbia are touchy, but probably the biggest problem of all of them is Hungary. Two problems here.

Number one, Hungary has a little bit more defensive of a geography than Romania. So it has a little bit longer history in terms of being an independent power, especially since it is up against that Northern European plain gap. Bessarabia is a 50-mile gap. And it’s really hard for country the size of Romania to plug that. But the Vienna gap is only a couple miles wide, and most of that is the Danube River, make it fairly easy for even a small country like Hungary to hold the line. That means that Hungary and Romania are the two countries that tend to find themselves fighting more often than even the major powers that are in the lands beyond. If you want to go just back to the Cold War, the review of these delightful stories that came out at the end about how yes, we were in a Cold War of the West versus the Soviet empire, but within the Soviet Empire, the Hungarian and the Romanian intelligence services were duking it out behind the scenes, while we were technically on the same side.

Now looking forward, the Romanians have some decisions to make. They know that the European system is of limited duration. They know that it’s in demographic decline, and they know that there’s going to be a fight for the region once again, just like there has in every age of their history that has been recorded to this point. Until very recently, they were convinced that when the Russians came again, they’d have to cut a deal, that they wouldn’t have a choice. But the Russians are doing so poorly in Ukraine that the Romanians are starting to entertain the possibility that there might not even be a major power on the other side of the Bessarabian gap again. And that means that the other regional power that they would probably have to cut a deal with, Turkey, becomes a lot more digestible. Turkey is an up-and-coming power. The relations with Romanians going back centuries have been pretty good. They’ve been excellent since the Cold War, it may be a little cool, but certainly professional. And if the Romanians are entering a world where the Russians are no longer a strategic factor, but Turkey is, that that’s a partnership, that’s not vassadom. And that could potentially spell the greatest chapter in Romanian history to date.

There are plenty of caveats in that statement. Romania has among the world’s worst demographies, they have one of the top-10 countries in the world for using abortion as a birth control method, and they’re among the worst demographic structures in Europe. They’re gonna have to find a new economic model and they’re gonna have to figure out what happens post-E.U. and maybe even post N.A.T.O., these are all big questions, but the fact that they’ve got a rising partner in Turkey right next door, but not directly adjacent (Bulgaria’s in the way) that’s, that’s a pretty good setup. All right. That’s it. Take care.