Romania's 15 minutes of fame: how we landed at the forefront of the change in US strategy towards Europe

This year, Romania missed the opportunity to recalibrate its transatlantic relationship in the context of Donald Trump's return to the White House. The transition from the comfortable status of a security beneficiary to that of a responsible regional provider caught us unprepared. While our neighbours on the northern half of the eastern flank were consolidating their diplomatic positions in Washington and investing in their own defence, Romania, paralysed by internal political crises and unable to articulate a coherent narrative about what happened in the context of the cancelled presidential elections, unwittingly became the case study through which the Trump administration illustrates the new transatlantic paradigm, with its central idea: the US will offer fewer free security guarantees to those who do not prove they deserve them. Three major diplomatic failures in 2025 have made Romania the subject of international newspapers: discrediting on the Munich stage, suspension from the Visa Waiver programme, and the withdrawal of American troops. These are not mere hiccups, but the direct consequences of the actions of a political class irresponsibly anchored in nostalgia for a romantic era of the strategic partnership that has come to a definitive end. 

Romania before Trump 2.0: with its homework not done and under the spell of nostalgia 

Rightly so, Europe held its breath in 2024 ahead of the US presidential elections. Time was running out, the romantic era of transatlantic unity, represented by the two decades beginning with our troops fighting shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and ending with the demonstration of Euro-Atlantic solidarity with Ukraine in the face of the Russian Federation's war of aggression in 2022, followed by the unprecedented fortification of NATO's eastern flank, was coming to an end. Project 2025, the flagship report of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank produced to feed the Trump 2.0 administration with public policy proposals, announced a paradigm shift in the relationship between the US and Europe, based on the idea that European states cannot expect "the United States to provide a defence umbrella for countries that are unwilling to contribute appropriately" to the global security architecture and that systematically refuse to take their fate into their own hands. Another important theme of Donald Trump's domestic campaign and that of the Republican Party was the very need to reassess the support given to Ukraine.

European think tanks were preparing working scenarios for a much more pragmatic and transactional presidency in the event of Donald Trump winning the election as early as the beginning of 2024, and Western analysts introduced the strategic imperative of "Trump-proofing" (i.e., preparing the European continent to withstand the shocks of a potential American withdrawal during an unpredictable Trump 2.0 presidency) into their vocabulary. Leaders such as former German Chancellor Scholz have addressed the situation even more directly, publicly stating that it would have been better for the future of the transatlantic partnership to see a Democratic candidate win the US Presidency. 

In Romania, the year 2024 did not bring the same anxiety. The Romanian analytical community seemed as caught up in the mirage of nostalgia for Trump's first term as the country's leaders, with the President of Romania making a productive state visit to the White House. Through the voice of Romania's ambassador to the United States, our country expressed its conviction that, regardless of who comes to power across the Atlantic, the Romanian-American strategic partnership will continue on the same terms. The Romanian authorities did not for a second abandon the diplomatic requirement not to publicly express preferences regarding the results of other countries' internal electoral processes – an elegant strategy in our relationship with a strategic partner from whom we expect to provide us with security. 

The question is: even if we have only expressed ourselves in very optimistic terms in public, as the rules of diplomacy require, have we not shown unjustified optimism internally by choosing not to do our homework in order to be able to manage a transatlantic relationship that is more transactional than ever? Judging by the statement of the former presidential adviser for national security, Ambassador Cristian Diaconescu, who, one month after Donald Trump took office as US president, implied that Romania did not have significant contacts within the new administration, one would be inclined to believe that we did not do our homework. 

Without an elected president, diplomacy had been operating with the handbrake on

The cancelled presidential elections in November 2024 and the resumption of the entire electoral process following the decision of the Constitutional Court resulted in the paralysis of Romania's foreign policy, which operated with the handbrake on in the first half of 2025. The Romanian-American strategic partnership was no exception: apart from  the reception by Romania's interim president Ilie Bolojan of a US Congressional delegation in April 2025, we had no notable bilateral meetings in the first half of the year, and the political dimension of the strategic partnership was captured by representatives of the sovereignist pole who visited Washington on the occasion of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, as well as at his residence in Mar-a-Lago. 

While Romania was preoccupied with maintaining internal stability and preparing for the second round of presidential elections, our neighbours, especially the Baltic states, were already meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to plead their case and obtain security commitments from the Americans regarding the northern half of the eastern flank. 

Although we did not have an elected president until the end of May 2025, and the government was in an equally uncertain situation, not even the Romanian Parliament took the initiative to visit Washington when Donald Trump took over the leadership of the United States. Not even a parliamentary delegation from our country appeared before the US Congress to promote Romania's geopolitical cause and thus strengthen political dialogue with the main security provider we rely on in the Black Sea region. 

The shock in Munich

Although the cancellation of the presidential elections was reflected in Romania's foreign policy in the first half of 2025 like a shadow that followed us perpetually, the country's leaders were unable to produce, even at the eleventh hour, a unified narrative about what happened with the presidential elections in the form of a concise document that could be made available to external partners, whether they be representatives of allied governments, think tanks or academic researchers. In terms of communication, Romania preferred strategic ambiguity to a coherent positioning strategy that would make conspiracy theories less attractive. Twelve days passed between the Constitutional Court's annulment of the presidential election on 6 December 2024 and Klaus Iohannis' speech in which the former head of state claimed that "Russia was behind it all." Given the speed with which perceptions are formed in the geopolitics of the moment, this is far too much time lost.

Another concrete example of this lack of internal cohesion was the press release issued by the Secret Communications Service (STS) after the first round of the 2024 presidential election, in which representatives of the Service stated that "the STS has not received any information from other entities with responsibilities in the field of cybersecurity regarding the occurrence of cyber-attacks" and that "no vulnerabilities had been identified in the secure provision of communications and information technology services made available to the Permanent Electoral Authority", thus contradicting the official Supreme Defence Council (CSAT) press release issued on the same day, which stated that "the members of the Council found that there had been cyber-attacks aimed at influencing the fairness of the electoral process."

However, the climax in the story explaining the reasons that led to the cancellation of the presidential elections was reached only in February 2025, at the Munich Security Conference. In his first major international speech since taking office as US Vice President, J.D. Vance mentioned Romania three times, and the main strategic rival of the nation he represents, China, only twice. According to the US Vice President, "Romania simply cancelled the results of the presidential election based on unfounded suspicions from an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours." Vice President Vance's speech is all the more disturbing when compared to the State Department's statement in December 2024. In that statement, the US expressed concern about the CSAT report "on the Russian Federation's involvement in malicious cyber activities aimed at influencing the integrity of the electoral process in Romania." 

The US Vice President's speech in Munich represented not only a paradigm shift towards Romania, but also a realignment of the transatlantic order using Bucharest as a case study. As can only be seen by analysing the speech in its entirety, J.D. Vance used the case of Romania to illustrate how Europe has distanced itself from the United States at the normative level, naming as the greatest threat to European security not the Russian Federation or China, but the lack of representativeness of democracies within the EU through the restriction of freedoms of expression, a price paid for combating disinformation operations that Washington no longer considers acceptable. The US State Department's warning that the US must rediscover its cultural allies in Europe echoes this leitmotif, which it associates with the imperative of restoring conservative values within the transatlantic partnership. These discursive dynamics show us that, between freedom and security, the US will give priority to the former, at least in its relationship with Europe.

Troop withdrawal

Romania was once again in the international spotlight when the Pentagon's decision to withdraw approximately 1,000 American soldiers from our country was announced by the Kyiv Post on 28 October and confirmed by the Ministry of National Defence a day later. This decision by the US Department of War affects not only Romania, but also Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia. However, most of the soldiers in this division are stationed at the Mihail Kogălniceanu base, placing us at the forefront of this troop resizing in the European theatre of operations. The troop resizing only exacerbates the asymmetry between the northern half of NATO's eastern flank and the southern half, especially since the US continues to guarantee the rotational presence of the brigade in Poland. 

If this decision did not have drastic implications for the deterrence posture on the eastern flank, I wonder why, despite the fact that the entire US administration was paralysed by the shutdown, the two chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, Republicans Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker, rushed to strongly condemn, in a joint statement, the Pentagon's decision to reduce the number of troops on Romanian territory. The statement by the Republican congressmen was published on the same day that the Romanian government offered optimistic assurances to citizens that the US commitment to our country was not in question. 

In contrast to the prompt reaction of the Republicans, Romania's approach to this decision was passive: not even a press conference by the President or a meeting of the CSAT was organised to discuss a plan to cover this new security deficit. Once again, Parliament missed the opportunity to organise a hearing of the relevant ministers based on the question: how will Romania manage its security needs in this new geopolitical context, given that the Black Sea remains a theatre of war and the Russian Federation has announced plans to modernise its fleet? 

Absent from the process of redesigning the Euro-Atlantic architecture

In the second half of 2025, after the new president and government took office, Romania's voice continued to be absent from high-stakes transatlantic conversations. At the NATO Summit in The Hague, we endorsed the new requirements for strengthening national defence budgets, in full transatlantic solidarity, but when it came to proposing creative solutions to the major continental dilemmas, we lacked precisely that "active, personality-driven" foreign and security policy that the President of Romania said he wanted. 

For example, regarding the EU-US trade agreement negotiated by the European Commission and the Trump administration in the summer of 2025, Romania had no position, even though the introduction of the 15% tariff increases the price of Romanian products for American consumers and companies, making them less attractive compared to similar products from countries that benefit from lower tariffs. 

Peace in Ukraine was another key issue on the transatlantic agenda on which we failed to formulate firm national preferences, even though the regional context directly affects our security. However, after the historic meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and the European leaders accompanying Volodymyr Zelensky, through the voice of military leaders from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and Italy, Romania was promoted as the country to which the US could send additional F-35 fighter jets to deter the Russian Federation, as part of the security guarantees offered to Ukraine. Through President Dan, Romania has repeatedly rejected throughout the year the idea of sending troops to Ukraine in a possible peacekeeping formula, with our alleged role as regional security providers being limited to logistical support.

The EU maritime security hub in the Black Sea, which Romania wishes to host in order to implement the bloc's new strategy for the region, has not yet progressed beyond the stage of an idea. The political and diplomatic efforts of our leaders to speed up the operationalisation of this new entity in Constanța have been rather modest. The only political initiative likely to bring this entity closer to our country came from the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Victor Negrescu, who initiated a cross-party letter together with other Romanian MEPs, addressed to the European Commission, supporting Romania's candidacy as host country for the hub. 

Conclusions and recommendations for 2026

Looking at the current European security architecture with a cool head and as a whole, we can see that Romania has been at the forefront of redefining Euro-Atlantic relations this year, being the main ‘beneficiary’ of the process of minimising the American contribution within NATO. How will we navigate this new dynamic within the strategic partnership with the United States in 2026? 

We already know what the United States wants from Romania: we need only glance at the State Department communiqué issued following the meeting between Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which our country is described as a "security provider" in the Black Sea region, marking an important transition from being a mere beneficiary of security, but also a semantic choice indicating the need to assume strategic responsibility. What we do not know, however, is what Romania's political elites want from a strategic partner that is no longer as generous as we have become accustomed to? Starting from this harsh reality of the end of the romantic era of the transatlantic alliance, my recommendations for relaunching the Romanian-American strategic partnership are as follows: 

1. Promoting a policy of strategic responsibility for Romania, in which we abandon the idea of outsourcing our national security to other states and invest responsibly in modernising our own capabilities, starting with a gradual increase in the national defence budget to reach the target of 3.5% of GDP by 2030. For a regional comparison, in 2024, Poland allocated 4.2% of GDP to defence, compared to Romania's 2.3% of GDP. 

2. Strengthening a regional security community in the Black Sea with the aim of deterring the Russian Federation. By revitalising the strategic partnership with Turkey, but also by inviting experts from Ankara to the EU Maritime Security Hub that we wish to host, we can expand the trilateral regional initiative for demining to include Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Another regional format in which Romania must invest intellectual resources is the trilateral partnership with Poland and Turkey, which could be elevated to the level of a military alliance, with the same goal of deterring the increasingly aggressive operations of the Russian Federation in the region. 

3. Revitalising the Three Seas Initiative to function as an economic NATO for the eastern flank and prioritising the attraction of American investment in critical sectors. Romania should present to the American side the economic potential of a regional approach to the reconstruction of Ukraine, which would also include the Republic of Moldova. Such a regional approach would strengthen the entire North-South corridor and could prevent China's geo-economic expansion in Central and Eastern Europe, an objective that is of interest to the US in the context of the intensifying strategic competition between Washington and Beijing. 

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).