At a plenary session on Tuesday, the Senate passed, 97 to nil, a declaration marking the 20th anniversary of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the US, in the presence of former presidents Emil Constantinescu and Traian Basescu.
The draft of the declaration was adopted by the Senate “two decades after the launch of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the US on July 11, 1997, and on the threshold of a century from the affirmation of the right of the peoples in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to autonomous development by President Woodrow Wilson in the Fourteen Points statement presented to the American Congress on January 8, 1918.”
Senate Chairman Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, explained that Emil Constantinescu was the one who initiated, together with then US President Bill Clinton, the strategic partnership which established the relationship between Romania and the United States, a relationship that remains today the basis for Romania’s Euro-Atlantic political orientation.
Tariceanu went on to say that the efforts to consecrate and strengthen the strategic partnership were continued under Ion Iliescu’s term in office and that Traian Basescu signed, together with US President Barack Obama, the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century, the bilateral political document of reference that sets out the guidelines for relations between Romania and the US in the form of a strategic partnership.
In its declaration, the Senate celebrates 20 years of strategic partnership between Romania and the United States, reaffirming its determination to further strengthen bilateral relations on the main pillars – security, economy, democracy and the rule of law, education and culture – while recognising the historic importance of the partnership for the democratic development of Romania in the sense of its Euro-Atlantic engagement and integration.
According to the declaration, the Senate “is calling on the business community of Romania and the United States of America, as well as the executives of the two countries to work closely together to materialise the economic dimension of the strategic partnership by multiplying joint efforts so that the next decade in the strategic bilateral relationship may outline economic force as the engine of prosperity under the partnership.”
Senators applaud Presidents Constantinescu, Basescu for contributions to Strategic Partnership with the US
Senate Chairman Calin Popescu Tariceanu on Tuesday called on senators to applaud the former Romanian presidents who contributed to the signing and strengthening of the strategic partnership between Romania and the US.
“Romania was back then in a gray area from which the Strategic Partnership with the US had the purpose of bringing it out and bringing it back to the community of democratic and free nations so that it could then afford to achieve its second strategic goal, accession to the European Union, and the unquestionable merit for this achievement lies with President Emil Constantinescu. Then we must not forget those who, fortunately, are still among us and have played their part and brought their contribution to making this major decision for our present and for the future – Victor Ciorbea, the then prime minister, then Senate Chairman Petre Roman, then Foreign Minister Adrian Severin and then Defence Minister Victor Babiuc, and this list is undoubtedly incomplete. Let us applaud together then Romanian President Ion Iliescu and Prime Minister Adrian Nastase for their decisions after the abominable 9/11 attacks in response to the call of the American partner to enroll Romania with the multinational counter-terrorism coalition in the Afghan theatre of war. I would like to applaud Traian Basescu, our senator colleague, the president who consolidated this partnership for the third millennium,” Tariceanu told the plenary session of the Senate.
The senators also watched a film with file footages from US President Bill Clinton’s 1997 visit to Bucharest.
Former President Constantinescu: Romania-US Strategic Partnership, a national security guarantee by world 1st military power
Former president of Romania Emil Constantinescu says that the inking of the Romania – USA Strategic Partnership two decades ago represented a guarantee of the national security by the world’s first military power, whose credibility is based on defending its allies from any external aggression.
In his word delivered on Tuesday in the plenary sitting of the Senate, Emil Constantinescu recalled the chance of certain contacts with “visionaries such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama” in the 1991 – 1992, when he was invited to lecture at reputed universities like Berkeley, Stanford, Georgetown, in his capacity of professor with Duke University.
“I’ve found the preoccupation of the US strategists to build in Eastern Europe, considering the launch of the NATO Partnership for Peace and the expected broadening of the NATO to the East, strategic partnerships the like of those previously created with Israel and Turkey. Poland was the first pick. (…) I realised that by placing Romania alongside Poland, as a US strategic partner was more important at that moment of instability of the Eastern Europe’s borders than the NATO or EU member quality, from the viewpoint of guaranteeing the country’s national security, independence and unity. And this not only because the European Union and even NATO have failed in solving the bloody conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also because the Partnership with the USA represented a strong foundation our integration with the EU and NATO would have subsequently been built,” Constantinescu said on the occasion of passing the political Declaration of the Senate marking 20 years of Romania-USA Strategic Partnership.
In his opinion, “those who have not realised back then this truth have commenced to acknowledge it barely after 17 years, when Russia has annexed Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, when they found how split the EU is and how difficult a NAO intervention is, because it depended on the approval of the Parliaments of all of the member states.”
He praised the winning once with the inking of the Partnership launched on 11 July 1997, in Bucharest, of “the guarantee of the national security by the world’s first military power whose credibility is based on defending their allies from any external aggression,” and also decried the loss after 20 years of “the exceptional national solidarity” that has been created during the NATO and EU integration process.
“We could only regain it by a commitment to another huge historical project, for Romania’s 21st century, tailored to the new realities of the globalised world and the society of knowledge. What need we right now? We need to win the national dignity feeling, a feeling that cannot be guaranteed not by the President, nor by the Government or the Parliament, if the national dignity is not the sum of self respect and respect to the others of each and every citizen of this country. Only by replacing the current scission could we rebuild the social fabric seriously affected by the moral crisis the Romanian society is living and could we enjoy the fruit the national security could guarantee and the economic growth could provide us,” Emil Constantinescu concluded.
