FAGARAS (Romania): In heavy rain, a Romanian infantry platoon rushes to the rescue of a British company trapped on a muddy hill, pounded by enemy artillery.
The Carpathian slopes reverberate with the thunder of machineguns as soldiers from Britain’s 51st Highland Regiment fire with Romanian Kalashnikovs — not standard East European army issue, but modified to meet NATO demands.
The success of this joint exercise carried out near the Transylvanian town of Fagaras, north of Bucharest, has officers on both sides beaming with satisfaction.
But can NATO’s Balkan applicants, Romania and Bulgaria, translate such cooperation with NATO troops into reforming large militaries, trained to defend their borders against capitalist enemies, to meet alliance standards?
“They are both making efforts, but they lack the money and it’s difficult to change mentalities after all these decades,” said one diplomat from a NATO member country.
The two Balkan neighbours, left out of NATO’s first eastern expansion five years ago, look certain to win an invitation in November at the bloc’s watershed Prague summit, seen as ending Europe’s long Cold War divisions.
Doubts over the strength of their democracies, endemic corruption and the slow pace of reforms have been put aside after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington showed the enemy could strike from across the globe.
The Prague summit is expected to also invite the former communist states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia to join, in a move that would extend NATO from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
“FORCES OF CHAOS”: US President George W. Bush has backed the expansion, meant to make NATO a broader organisation capable of fighting “the forces of chaos and hatred” all over the world.
“Romania and Bulgaria bridge the gap with (NATO members) Greece and Turkey. Their significance is in their strategic location — the Black Sea and Caucasus,” said a Western diplomat in Sofia. “The rest is not important, it can be fixed later.”
Such views anger officials in the two candidate countries, who say their efforts to reform bloated, Soviet-type armies into strong, lean fighting machines, as well as their contributions to international peacekeeping missions are underrated.
“The geopolitical aspect is really important, but I don’t agree with the view it’s the only reason we will be asked to join,” said General Miho Mihov, Bulgaria’s defence adviser to the presidency and former chief of staff.
Both countries say their experience in dealing with international crime on their Black Sea shores, a crossroads between Europe and Asia, will be invaluable in a new era of fighting international terror.
“There is no distinction between organised crime and international terrorism. Really, it’s the same,” Mihov said.
In their eagerness to join NATO, Romania and Bulgaria rushed to offer military bases and overflight rights to Washington if it needs them in a possible attack against Iraq.
Romania was also the first country in the world to sign an agreement with the United States, sparing American officers from having to face a new international war crimes court.
HARD ROAD AHEAD: Western observers say the former Warsaw Pact members are working hard on costly reforms set out in Membership Action Plans (MAPs), such as boosting civilian control of the army, and promoting the rule of law.
But their defence budgets, high for the size of their struggling economies, are among the smallest in NATO, which is expected to foot the rest of the bill.
A country of about 22 million people, Romania has pledged to slash its armed forces to 90,000 in 2007 from 300,000 when communism collapsed in 1989. It will also spend around $1 billion on defence this year, 2.38 percent of GDP.
Bulgaria, which has about a third of Romania’s population, has vowed to cut military personnel to 45,000 from over 150,000 during communism. Defence spending last year was 2.65 percent of GDP, at about 400 million euros ($398 million).—Reuters