Romania: from NATOmania To Serbomania

This outbreak of Serbomania makes still more interesting the fact that only a few months before the same country saw a flourishing of NATOmania. Indeed, before this war started, the idea of joining NATO was not only Romania's official policy: it enjoyed tremendous popularity among the people and was supported by the mass media. According to one public opinion poll, almost 90% of Romanians welcomed admission to NATO. Most newspapers and other media enthused over the prospects of NATO expansion in the hope that Romania will also get a membership card. When in 1997, at the NATO summit in Madrid, Romania's candidature was tabled, public enthusiasm abated a little. But this is not yet a sufficient explanation of today's open hostility toward NATO.

And the point is not that many Romanian journalists and commentators have now launched an anti-NATO campaign or sided with the Serbs. What is strange is the argument itself put forward in defense of Serbia. It is generally dominated by the idea expressed by Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington who foresaw that post-Cold War international politics would turn to a clash of civilizations. Accordingly, many people regard the Balkan conflict as struggle between the "Western" and the "Orthodox" civilizations, i.e., the one to which Serbia and Bosnia belong.

Nobody seems to be losing sleep over ethnic cleansing and the dire straits of Kosovo refugees, Muslims by religion, as well as over the ruthlessness of Slobodan Milosevic, who is not an Orthodox patriarch but a wily ex-Communist apparatchik. Well-balanced arguments have vanished from the newspaper pages: now the latter attack NATO for waging a war against "heroic" Serbia and call upon the public to sympathize with "our Orthodox brothers."

Well-known Romanian journalist Cristian-Tudor Popescu, deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Adevarul with the largest print-run in the country, has gone even further, writing that "human rights are only an instrument the West uses in its struggle for world supremacy. The United States... wants to ruin independent countries throughout the world in order to extend its economic and cultural hegemony. Serbia seems to be only one of the targets in the influence campaign for control now underway."

"Thus," continues Mr. Popescu, "the Romanians must join forces with the Serbs and Russians in an anti-Western crusade." People have forgotten, for some reason, that Romania has always prided in itself as an "islet of Latin culture surrounded by a Slav sea." What is more, the Romanians always regarded Russia, unlike Serbia or Bulgaria, as an enemy. Especially in the Communist period.

Most Romanians are Orthodox, as are the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Russians. However, this has not prevented them from fearing the Russians, supporting the Bulgarians, and envying the Greeks over the last two centuries. And if the Serbs really hold a special place in the Romanian national heart, I suspect this has been associated not with the so-called "Slavic brotherhood," but rather with human reminiscences of the fact that both Tito and Ceausescu treated Russia as a common threat to their attempts to pursue a more independent political course.

Indeed, the weakest explanations of why peoples love or hate each other are usually found in "history" or the concept of "civilization": cynics and opportunists easily adjust both things to the "national interests" of the current day. Serbomania and NATOmania rather express some deeper local apprehensions. Many Romanians compare Kosovo with Transylvania where Hungarians have local majorities. They believe that if Kosovo breaks away from Serbia, Transylvania might also leave Romania one fine day.

But even if Serbia loses Kosovo after all, this will happen not because the West wants it. It will happen because the Serb government has thwarted all hopes for the peaceful coexistence of Kosovo Albanians and Serbs with its cruelty and intolerance. Luckily, things in Romania are going differently, and representatives of the Hungarian minority are full-fledged members of the ruling government coalition. However, owing to terrible economic conditions, many people are today deeply disappointed with this government, and this is why they oppose everything it says or does.

Of course, not all public voices joined the chorus of Serbomania: in mid-April, some prominent intellectuals published a manifesto defending NATO policies and calling on the government not to turn back the clock. But most people are likely to go on listening to sirens' songs about "Slavic brotherhood" until the economic situation in the country improves. Hence, Serbomania is only one more symptom of great uncertainty: it shows a deep lack of confidence so many people in Eastern Europe feel about their countries, their past, their future, and about themselves.

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