“Defense, at the hands of political arrangements” – Why Romania is compromised, according to a security expert

The resignation of Ionuț Moșteanu from the head of the Ministry of Defense brings back to the fore the instability of this portfolio, marked in recent years by frequent changes and political appointments without solid training in the field. In the current context, his departure has implications that go beyond the ministry and reach the Cotroceni Palace.

The Ministry of Defense changes its head after only a few months in office PHOTO Inquam

Just five months after his appointment, Ionuț Moșteanu resigned as head of the Ministry of Defense, becoming one of the ministers with the shortest term. He is the second member of the Bolojan Government to leave office following a scandal, four months after former Deputy Prime Minister Dragoș Anastasiu, who resigned in the context of public and political pressure generated by revelations regarding his involvement in a corruption case.

Cost containment

Ionuț Moșteanu's gesture of resigning is a “Formal. Simple. An act of political responsibility”, says political scientist Cristian Pârvulescu for “Adevărul”, being the only solution at the moment to reduce costs, both for himself and for the USR candidate for the Capital City Hall or for President Nicușor Dan:

“An attempt to quickly close a scandal that has direct implications for the campaign of Cătălin Drula and indirect implications for President Nicușor Dan. Because, on the one hand, the president is the one who proposed Ionuț Moșteanu as a minister. Let's look at the fact that these are the areas reserved for the president and the president tried to turn the electoral battle for Bucharest mayor's office into an opportunity to build a political formation that he supports in Parliament.”

For the head of state, the victory of the USR candidate is important “to strengthen his position and strengthen a party to lean on and which is growing. It is a dynamic party if it wins the mayor's office and can impose its own terms on a possible and increasingly unlikely merger between the PNL and the USR”.

10 ministers in 10 years

Ionuț Moșteanu is the second minister to leave the MApN leadership following controversies in the last 5 years. Just 3 years ago, Vasile Dâncu was the one who announced his resignation, after a series of blunders. Currently, the ministry gets to change no less than 10 ministers in 10 years. Therefore, the situation has not been rosy for a very long time at the top of this ministry, and the cabinet led by Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan is no exception.

“We may have worse”is the opinion of security expert Hari Bucur Marcu, explaining that, “from the beginning, when this government was formed, it was not formed with people who were good at the respective fields, to be managers of the respective fields, they made do with idiots”.

Moreover, the security expert also criticized Romania's new Defense Strategy. “It's not really any defense strategy, just a pretense of a national security strategy.” He recalls that he warned from the beginning of his mandate that there are high chances that Ionuț Moșteanu, newly installed in office at that time, will manage the largest defense budget in recent years and that there are high chances that he will be mismanaged.

Now, it is likely that someone from that party will appear who will be a minister, no matter how good he is in the field or not – Hari Bucur, security expert

“The moment you come with a coalition of four parties and each one wants sinecures, and the sinecures from defense and foreign affairs were given to the president, who is no longer the president of the party, but he founded that party. And now, probably, someone from that party will appear who will be a minister, no matter how good he is in the field or not. That's why this is the problem, the idea of ​​national defense planning is abolished.

We are talking about a situation in which national defense must be planned with a 10-year perspective, until we have the budget of 5% of GDP, so that we are in line with the others, so that the other members of the Alliance do not say that they are defending us and we sit with the money and do something else with it, other than investing in defense. We, being in the first line of the Russian threat”, Hari Bucur Marcu also explains for “Adevărul”, indicating that a clear planning “it greatly narrows the decision-making power on the elements” regarding the money for this field.

However, neither “there is no way you can be a good minister in the current conditions, so our Romania is compromised, from my point of view“, says the security expert. The reason being that “instead of making policies, arrangements are made behind the scenes by various services, not only assets. We have private intelligence services, from former actives, who have become private”. According to him, the defense ministers of recent years, with some exceptions, were not prepared for this portfolio. And the situation has been going on since the time of Gabriel Oprea.

“Things are much worse. At least 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and before that, but much more subtle, instead of it being democratic control over the military, which military is all the armed forces and we have militarized services, yes? So instead of it being civilian control, over the military, it's just diverse. Different services, including defense intelligence, which isn't talked about much, except when it's found out that there's one that used operative money as to make their villa or something like that. So, including those in defense, they are the ones who actually lead the politicians.”

We remind you that the Minister of Defense, Ionuț Moșteanu, resigned on Friday, November 28, in the context of a scandal related to the information about his studies in his CV, reasoning that he does not want the discussions about his training and the mistakes he made “many years ago to distract those who are now running the country from their difficult mission“.