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“Broken windows” of Europe

The European Community as well as the entire civilized world goes through restless times nowadays. Today we faced with something that wasn’t imaginable yesterday – with an egregious violation of peaceful coexistence principles. One country provides direct military aggression against another breaking the key foundations of international law and the generally accepted morality standards. Leading experts say that due to Russian goal-oriented actions the conflict in the East of Ukraine will be long and exhausting. It seems to be problem of the Ukrainian-Russian bilateral relations only and this situation doesn’t concern us. But is it so cloudless in Europe now? Have we got any internal instability points, which, under certain circumstances, are able to destroy whole system of peace and security in the region? Is it possible to ensure that the territorial expansion and conquests era in Eastern Europe is the thing of the past?
In fact this question is not idle. Especially, if we remember that there is Romania as a member of the European community, the enough small state, but with exorbitant ambitions. Every person who learned history knows that in the 20-th century Romania skillfully used the global changes and conflicts of major geopolitical actors for acquiring new territories. That happened after the First World War, when Romania found itself in the camp of the victors. The same situation took place during the Second World War, when Bucharest was able in time to join the anti-Hitler coalition and avoided the punishment for the Nazis campaign in the East. Every kind of power in this state: the king, the communists or, focused on human values, capitalists – the idea of “Greater Romania” have always been implemented: the state, which united Romanians and their lands that were a part of Romanian language state formation in any times.
Has something changed now? No, probably. Bucharest considers population of Moldova as Romanians and continues to perform its aggressive foreign policy in relation to it. But on official level Romanian government refused territorial claims to neighbor states. Nowadays, when Moldova is firmly affected by political and economic crisis, there is a strong and broad social basis for unification of Moldova and Romania. Using the ethnic similarities between two nations, Romania is trying to get a dominant influence on the Republic of Moldova and use this influence to change the map of region.
Moldavians have taken a decisive step towards the European Community. As a result the governors of Romania significantly increased their rhetoric concerning the countries unification. The president T. Besesku plans to merge Moldova to the country as “historically Romanian land”, notwithstanding even the fact that majority of Moldova people accepts the idea of unification with Romania critically. Romanian officials (especially the president and prime minister) continue to declare that the border between Moldova and Romania will be completely canceled till 2019.
They do also everything possible to get the favorable results of census in Moldova and issue Romanian passports to residents of Moldova without any sort of control. It has already caused the flood of migrants in the most of EU countries. But the most important one is that they generously finance the activities aimed at the promotion of separatism in the territory of neighboring countries. There is a lot of evidence that such activities are financed from the state budget of Romania. It means that the money, which the EU annually allocates to carry out reforms, is also used to fund them. At the same time European experts say that Romania was able to perform only 27% of all planned projects. It means that we are financing Romanian aggressive policy, which can be harmful for us.
Current policy of the Romanian authorities was under the sharp criticism by the EU for several times. In particular, the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament Hannes Swoboda during the working visit in Bucharest expressed his attitude to the relations of Romania and Moldova. He stated that T. Besesku and his aggressive policy threaten Moldova as a sovereign state. In addition, he believes that the Romanian government has no respect for the sovereignty of Moldova. Romanian policy is not based on the international law and doesn’t respond the European values.
But the European criticism or concern is not an obstacle for the Romanian authorities. They continue to implement their plans and say that they will “help” Moldova this notwithstanding. Bucharest hasn’t even tried to cover up their expansionist plans from the senior partners in the EU. Moldavian economy is bad, but Bucharest doesn’t mind it. Everything is very simple. Politicians in Bucharest are sure that the EU will close its eyes and will fund their aggressive ambitions. Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta has recently mentioned that the country’s unification with Moldova will take place in the nearest future. According to him it will happen in four years.
Such statements have seriously concerned the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry. Its representatives said that, in accordance with the Romanian Prime Minister’s words, they may conclude that not only current President Traian Basescu means to violate the territorial integrity of Moldova, but also the other representatives of political system. This is a very dangerous situation.
The leader of the Transdnistrian separatists Yevgeny Shevchuk also emphasized that the plans for joining of Moldova is one of the key factors in the formation of the Transdnistrian conflict.
This is the first alarm sign for us. It shows that there is a real threat for security of European countries. It is absolutely clear that in the context of serious complication of Russia-West relations Romania can provoke by its Moldova – policy aggravation of separatists moods in the TMR. It may spread to the territory of Moldova and, certainly, will be supported by Russia, like it has been in the South-East of Ukraine.
It’s hard for me to understand the inactivity European establishment in the current situation. The war is near the EU borders now! Europeans probably believe that they can’t face with the similar problems and war.
But they forgot the designed by social psychologists “law of the broken window” – the lack of response for the smallest disgrace leads to expanding of the disgrace. For example, when in an empty house one window has been broken and nobody reacted and subsequently did not punish the bully, in a few weeks all windows in this house will be smashed and the building will turns into a dangerous slum….
I don’t want to be a prophet, but I wish the Europe not to become such a dangerous slum with a war on its territory, only because Europeans currently have no desire to respond to the first “broken window.”
Today, European politicians needn’t to express their concerns. They must take strong preventive measures to curb the illegal and dangerous activities of Romania, which creates the base for distribution of the Russian aggression on the territory of Europe.
Mark Atkins:
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