Is Bucharest Planning To Rebuild “Greater Romania”?

The draft law that the Romanian Ministry of Defense just introduced for allowing the armed forces to deploy abroad in defense of their country’s compatriots raises very serious questions about Bucharest’s geopolitical intentions. The neighboring countries of Moldova and Ukraine have Romanian minorities within them, some of whom have Romanian citizenship such as the 1.3 million in the first-mentioned. Parts of both of them also used to constitute so-called “Greater Romania” during the interwar period.

The polity included all of modern-day Moldova apart from its unrecognized separatist Transnistrian region as well as Ukraine’s Budjak and Northern Bukovina regions. During World War II, Romania also participated in the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa and occupied Odessa Oblast, which was ruled as the “Transnistria Governorate”. That historically Russian city is also at the center of speculation about France’s geopolitical plans nowadays too.

President Emmanuel Macron claimed in late February during a meeting with EU leaders in Paris that a conventional military intervention in Ukraine cannot be “ruled out”, later specifying that his country could take the lead in this respect if Russia advances on Kiev once again or moves on Odessa. France already has troops and tanks in Romania and even signed a security pact with Moldova last month. It’s therefore already positioned to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if the decision is made.

Romania has emerged as a crucial conduit for NATO arms to Ukraine over the past two years to complement routes through Poland, which have become blocked in recent months as a result of farmers’ protests in response to Brussels’ “Green Deal” and the influx of cheap and low-quality Ukrainian grain. Arms and equipment are sent to Greece and then pass through Bulgaria and Romania en route to Western Ukraine. The “Moldova Highway” that’s being built in Romania will facilitate this flow.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said in mid-March that “Troops cannot be sent to Ukraine under NATO’s mandate because Ukraine is not a NATO ally. But in general, if Ukraine has bilateral agreements with a certain state in any sphere, these issues are a matter of bilateral relations. Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine.” Reading between the lines, he essentially signaled that a so-called “coalition of the willing” could intervene there instead of it being a formal NATO mission.

As was earlier written, France is already positioned to conventionally do so via its troops and tanks in Romania if the decision is made. Although Iohannis said that “Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine”, that was before the pro-Western Balkan Insight drew attention to Bucharest’s growing religious dispute with Kiev. Their article titled “Religious Rivalry Threatens Romania-Ukraine’s Close Partnership” was published at the end of last month and is very relevant in light of the latest draft law being tabled.

In brief, the Romanian Orthodox Church announced its support in late February for a separate church for ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. Most of them belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and not Kiev’s newly created schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, and they’ve since come under pressure following a serious of “suspicious incidents” for refusing to defect to that false religious body. The proposed separate church is apparently designed to protect them from further harassment.

The unspoken intent is for ethnic Romanians to physically distance themselves from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and thus avoid more fascist attacks against the latter’s congregation, which Ukrainian radicals carry out due to the former’s ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. The model that could be employed would emulate that which was already applied towards the Moldovan Orthodox Church in basically bribing priests to defect towards that country’s newly created autonomous local diocese.

If the ethnic Romanians’ request to register their proposed religious entity is denied by Kiev and more “suspicious incidents” follow as punishment for their refusal to defect towards its false religious body, then a Romanian military intervention in defense of its compatriots there also can’t be ruled out either. Most live in modern-day Chernivsti Oblast but there’s still a small community in southern Odessa Region’s Budjak region as well, which overlap with the land previously controlled by interwar Romania.

The likelihood of Romania unilaterally intervening in Ukraine is low, let alone intervening only in that country and not in Moldova where a much larger percentage of the local population holds Romanian passports. Therefore, if any military intervention occurs, it’ll probably be a joint operation with France. Paris would try to seize control of the Black Sea coast around Odessa while Romania would seize Budjak and Chernivsti Oblast, or at least the mostly Romanian-inhabited parts of those regions.

The trigger for this scenario could be a Russian military breakthrough across the front lines sometime later this year that would then serve as the pretext for France to lead a “coalition of the willing” of at least itself and Romania to raise the costs of Russia potentially crossing the Dnieper River. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned his French counterpart in a conversation on Wednesday that intervening in Ukraine could cause problems for France itself, thus hinting at immediate retaliation.

That likely isn’t a bluff either since Russia already killed several dozen French mercenaries in Kharkov in late January so the precedent has been established proving that it could also act against French troops too. In fact, some or perhaps even all of those mercenaries might have even been undercover members of the French military, the possibility of which might explain Macron’s reluctance to follow through on late February’s threat since he fears a humiliating military defeat in that event.

Nevertheless, if he decides to go through with it anyhow irrespective of whether it’s intended to preempt the previously mentioned trigger for this scenario or occurs immediately afterwards, then Romania would probably join France in those two Ukrainian regions and Moldova as well. The casus belli that Bucharest could rely on for intervening in Ukraine might be its growing religious dispute with Kiev while the Moldovan dimension could be attributed to alleged Russian threats from Transnistria.

Russia has previously bombed Ukrainian military targets in Budjak’s southernmost Danuban region like the town of Izmail so it would probably also bomb any Romanian military units that deploy there too. Furthermore, if Russia’s peacekeepers in Transnistria are attacked, blockaded, or threatened by Romania and/or France, then that could also prompt Russia to attack the aggressors in Moldova and possibly within Romania itself, which would amount to strikes within NATO territory for self-defense reasons.

Bucharest’s plans to rebuild “Greater Romania”, arguably in joint partnership with France to a large degree, are therefore fraught with danger and should be reconsidered by responsible policymakers. World War III could be sparked by miscalculation since the escalation cycle could easily spiral out of control in that scenario. If the Ministry of Defense’s draft law passes, then Bucharest would regard itself as having the subjectively defined legal pretext for risking this, which raises the chances of a wider war.