A year after his inauguration as president, Nicușor Dan signs a lobbying contract through which he tries to become more visible in Washington. The priority of his foreign policy remains America.
The President of Romania, Nicusor Dan
The Bucharest-Washington axis launched by former president Traian Băsescu in 2004 to secure Romania against Russia is still considered the basis of Bucharest's foreign policy. Nicușor Dan tried in several ways to prove his loyalty to the United States and to the administration led by Donald Trump, even when the Americans questioned his legitimacy along with that of the presidential elections in Romania. In February, he went to Washington for the Gaza meeting of the Peace Council, an institution invented by Donald Trump: of the heads of state of the European Union, only he and Viktor Orban were there. Nicușor Dan's effort was not rewarded even with a standing discussion after the official ceremony ended, but upon his return he said that “the problem of the legitimacy of the Romanian administration no longer exists in the United States.” A year earlier, US Vice President JD Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference about canceling the 2024 presidential elections “based on shaky intelligence suspicions and enormous pressure from neighbors on the continent”.
Consistency in Romania's foreign policy
In this complicated context in which Nicușor Dan seemed not to be recognized by the United States in his capacity as president, diplomacy from Bucharest did not find other ways to get into Donald Trump's good graces. This is how the Romanian head of state arrived at the Peace Council, where even the president of Poland, an admirer and close friend of the Trump administration, did not go. Then, after the US and Israel began the attack on Iran, Romania was among the few European states that approved Washington's request to temporarily deploy refueling planes, equipment and troops to Romania, with the explanation that the American equipment brought to the country would be strictly defensive.
Bucharest hopes to return this generosity, as has happened several times in the country's recent history: in April 1999, Romania allowed US and NATO planes to use its airspace to end the war in Kosovo, in 2003 Romania allowed US troops to use the Mihail Kogălniceanu military base and sent soldiers to the Iraq war, at a time when Old Europe opposed the invasion of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2026 Bucharest remains with Washington in a war as controversial as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. This consistency in foreign policy suggests that Romania needs Americans more than Europeans in the field of national security. That in Bucharest's strategy, the Europeans would not be able to do much if the country were to be attacked by the Russians and that the bet on the Americans remains valid, although the armament money comes from the EU.
Everything that Nicușor Dan has done in this first year of his mandate in terms of foreign policy demonstrates his clear will to maintain the Bucharest-Washington axis regardless of what is happening around. Nicușor Dan seems not to mind Donald Trump's threats to annex Greenland or Canada, nor his pro-Russian leanings, nor his mercantilism towards Europe. Is it the pragmatism of a marginal country that needs a great power for its survival? Beyond keeping the axis, Nicușor Dan and Donald Trump find themselves in the main conservative ideas, with the difference that the Romanian president is afraid (for now) to publicly expose his ideological creed.
Approaching the MAGA soul
The critical Europe Day speech thought by Nicușor Dan overlapped well with the “Strategy to combat terrorism of the United States”, a document published at the same time by the White House, in which the Trump administration once again attacks Europe, which it calls an “incubator of terrorist threats” and “left-wing extremists”.
For Nicușor Dan, not only continuity on the Bucharest-Washington axis matters, but also Donald Trump's conservatism, which even in its gregarious form satisfies many Romanians. The president seems to look at the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement with admiration and perhaps even with the thought that if he were to form a party, this would be his chosen direction and path.
The lobbying contract for “facilitating institutional dialogue and for supporting objectives of national interest in relation to the US Administration and Congress”, means that over half a million dollars per month would help Nicușor Dan to get even closer to the soul of MAGA, to obtain a state visit to Washington, but also to eliminate visas for Romanians, to bring more American soldiers to the country, more defense technology and maybe even more investments.
Romania misses the European deepening and the strengthening of defense on its own, following the Finnish or Polish example, but it strengthens its Balkan conservatism supported by the majority of domestic parliamentary parties, for which political despotism, rentier mentality, clientelism and personal interest matter more than the national interest. The Bucharest-Washington axis solves what remains uncovered.
Sabina Fati – DW
