Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World

Over the course of 1955–75 the non-aligned developing ‘Third World’ evolved from a zone with which Bucharest had little contact to an area of primary foreign- and security-policy focus and a central pillar of Romanian soft power. Economic ties with the Third World kept pace with this strategic reorientation, becoming greater in number and diversity than those of any other Eastern European member of the Warsaw Pact. As of 1971, it had established diplomatic relations with 86 states, and economic and commercial relations with more than 100.¹

These ties were facilitated by a corresponding growth in capacities, including construction of a merchant navy of more than 170 ships by 1975.² This expansion also held true for both trade and assistance, particularly in areas of comparative advantage. By the end of the 1960s, for example, Romania was ‘the world's third largest manufacturer’ and ‘second largest’ exporter of petroleum equipment, almost entirely to developing countries.³ Between 1955–75, it accounted for more than half of all Eastern European petroleum development assistance from the Soviet bloc. By the end of that period, Romania was the largest donor of non-military aid among the Eastern European countries (contributing US$260 million in 1974).⁴

Remarkably little of this was coordinated with the other members of the Warsaw Pact. Despite the considerable leeway allowed bloc members in choosing economic partners, Romania exercised observably greater ‘independence in making individual commitments’ in the Third World than the rest of the Pact, whose aid patterns exhibited a ‘high degree of complementarity’ with Moscow.⁵ As US intelligence noted at the end of the decade, while other bloc members provided ‘support to Third World nations and insurgent movements, often in close cooperation with the USSR’, Romania pursued ‘objectives vis-à-vis the Third World that differ[ed] radically from those of the USSR and that do not purposely serve Soviet interests’.⁶ This situation was evident regarding military aid as well, where aspirations to ‘play the larger international role of mediator, as opposed to partisan’ made Romania a marginal contributor in comparison with all the other Pact members.⁷

Soviet–Romanian peer competition in the developing world had a particularly sharp edge to it, with the former going ‘so far as to dog the steps of Romanian commercial representatives in Arab countries (and in Latin America) and deliberately underbid them, even to the point of giving away free goods and services’.⁸ This discordance reflected a fundamental difference between the autonomy exercised by the other Eastern European members of the Soviet alliance in the post-Stalin period and the independence with which Romania acted.⁹ While the autonomy of the other bloc members remained dependent on Soviet approval and conformity with the Moscow line, Romanian behaviour often resembled not so much autonomy as mutiny.¹⁰

This was most evident in Romania's efforts to enlist other members of the Warsaw Pact, together with developing socialist countries outside of it, in order to counter Moscow's hegemonic tendencies within the alliance.¹¹ Bucharest sought to roll back that dominance by obstructing Soviet unilateralism within the Pact, empowering the non-Soviet allies vis-à-vis Moscow and/or dissolving the alliance altogether, prompting constant complaints concerning its attempts to ‘paralyze’, ‘subvert’, ‘obstruct’, ‘weaken’ and even cause the Warsaw Pact to ‘disintegrate’.¹² In this endeavour, Romania saw in the Third World a natural ally.

Bucharest began this campaign after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Moscow almost drew it into a nuclear conflict without its foreknowledge.¹³ As part of its effort to avoid a repetition of that near-catastrophe Bucharest overhauled the Soviet concept of ‘peaceful coexistence’, the state of permanent political and ideological struggle in the absence of military conflict, and reformulated it as the pursuit of a durable peace and expanded cooperation between states regardless of ideology (or ‘social order’, in Romanian parlance). Seeking to obstruct Moscow's military unilateralism, it declared negotiation to be the only legitimate method for resolving international tension and stressed the responsibility of all states for regional and global security, regardless of size.¹⁴ While it set forth the mediation of tension and conflict as the ‘sacred obligation’ of all states, Bucharest explicitly called upon small and medium-sized states to cross the ideological divide in the service of peace. Thus, it argued, ‘negotiations with any capitalist country on this basis in no way implies abandonment of principles; rather, it means serving the interests of peace.’¹⁵

Tactically, the removal of ideology from interstate relations served to justify the expansion of Romania's relations with non-socialist countries. Strategically, it dealt a terrific blow to the main barrier across the East–West divide and between the First, Second and Third Worlds. Romanian policy used the terms ‘Third World’ and ‘developing states’ interchangeably, but focused on the more profound non-ideological cleavages between great and small powers and between the developed and developing worlds.

To enable this, Bucharest called for ‘new-type relations’ based on a set of principles that would empower smaller states vis-à-vis the force potentials of larger powers. It then relied upon this ‘new code of international principles’ to combat Moscow's attempts to create supranational organisms, assume the role of ‘leading center’ and otherwise impose Soviet control over the Warsaw Pact (and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). As it declared in 1964, ‘There are no, and there can be no “parent” parties or “son” parties, no “superior” or “subordinate” parties; there is a great family of communist and workers’ parties equal in rights; no party has or can have a privileged position, none can impose its line or opinions upon other parties.’¹⁶ By extending this equality to states and placing it at the forefront of their foreign policy, Romania's Communist Party leaders defended their own interests and positioned their country as a champion of the ‘little guy’, drawing support from all three ‘worlds’ and especially from the developing Third World.

For example, party leader Nicolae Ceauşescu called upon small and medium-sized states to struggle for security by opposing the ‘imperialist policy of force, diktat, and interference’.¹⁷ ‘Since all peoples are interested in the achievement of security,’ he argued, ‘all of them are called upon to contribute to its realization’ because security ‘cannot be the result of an agreement reached among several states or among existing blocs’, but could only be achieved when all states concerned reached understanding ‘by virtue of their equal rights’.¹⁸

The ‘new type relationship’ on which Bucharest insisted excluded ‘the use of force and the threat of the use of force’, and guaranteed ‘that no state can fall victim to aggression,’ and all states could ‘develop freely in accordance with their own volition and be able to cooperate without obstacles in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and full equality’.¹⁹ A secure world, the Romanian leadership explained, presupposed that capitalist and socialist states ‘must live peaceably side-by-side and will establish normal relations with each other irrespective of their social order’.²⁰ ‘Acting in this spirit,’ Ceauşescu reiterated, Romania approached ‘its relations with every country in the world on a broad spectrum, regardless of other countries’ social order, and actively participating in the implementation of the new policy based on the principle of equality among states'.²¹

In essence, Romania was recruiting members outside the closed socialist community dominated by Moscow on the basis of its interpretations of Marxism–Leninism, and drawing them into a much broader community of independent actors. It advocated for the empowerment of small states and against their submission to great-power hegemons. Unsurprisingly, Moscow and its loyalist allies saw this as a fundamental challenge to Soviet foreign policy and security architecture. According to the East Germans, Romanian policy now ‘deviated’ from the policy of the other Pact members ‘on every important international issue’.²² As the East German State Security reported.

Starting from the theory that small and medium-size states should play an independent role in international relations in order to create an atmosphere of collaboration, it has in fact refused the Soviet Union its role in the active peace policy of the socialist countries. The class character of socialist foreign policy is erased entirely [when Romanian officials advocate] that small and medium sized countries of Europe must develop contacts and collaboration with a view to transcending the Cold War regardless of their military, political or philosophical leanings.²³

East Germany and Hungary repeatedly denounced ‘the well-known Romanian thesis on sovereignty and the role of small nations’ in their internal reports as ‘directly’ supporting ‘anti-Sovietism’.²⁴ Budapest warned small states of dire consequences should they engage in foreign relations outside the framework of their alliances, claiming that their disregard of class considerations served the ‘enemies of the working class’, undermined the ‘international class struggle’ and threatened to unravel the socialist world system.²⁵ The Romanians were likewise censured for their ‘reactionary ideas’, for serving the interests of ‘great power policy’ and ‘nationalistic separatism’, and for creating an ‘unprincipled bloc’ of small states that disregarded class character and ignored ‘the realities of world affairs’.²⁶

To such attacks Bucharest countered that European security depended upon guarantees of equality, sovereignty and independence, principles that were ‘universal in the sense that they are equally binding on all states and they protect all states with the same firmness’ despite differing political systems or alliances.²⁷ Only thus could ‘the “right” of the strongest, the “right” of the fist, and the law of the jungle’ be eliminated, and only thus could ‘the rule of law and the power of right’ be established. Security would not be achieved through ideological imposition, for what was ‘prohibited by general international law cannot be permitted in the relations of any continent, region, or group of states with any particular state’.²⁸

Ignoring the battle lines of East–West and regional competition often led Romania into sensitive and dangerous territory. For instance, there were inherent contradictions between its advocacy of small-state independence and equality, its status as a Soviet ally and its special relationship with the USA. But rather than attempting to conceal these contradictions, the Romanians ‘owned’ them, as Ceauşescu showed during a 1974 meeting with Palestinian organizations, explaining that

Severing diplomatic relations does not help to solve problems between states. Moreover, [the] existence of such relations does not entail total or even partial agreement with their policies […] But it does assist in search for solutions to various problems, solutions based on peaceful coexistence.²⁹

If the dangers and vulnerabilities of such a policy were evident, so too were the rewards. As spokesperson for small and medium-sized states Bucharest acquired a good deal of insight regarding developing-world problems and interests, and its relations with the Third World grew correspondingly.³⁰ Within a year after the period covered by this chapter, Romania was accepted as an observer in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), gaining a level of influence within it that occasionally rivaled that of NAM's official leadership.³¹ Romanian advocacy at the United Nations, within the Warsaw Pact, and in bilateral dealings for a new approach to the developing world and the problems of underdevelopment (specifically regarding the ownership of raw materials and fair exchange), gained it leverage and even some protection.

Romanian ‘mediation’ in the Third World was spurred by the same fear that motivated its change of strategy after the Cuban Missile Crisis: that of nuclear war caused by great-power unilateralism. Thus, in South East Asia, Bucharest was concerned that US troops might be sent into North Vietnam near the border with the People's Republic of China, and that Beijing's reaction might trigger the use of nuclear weapons.³² Alternatively, it feared that an exhausted and frustrated US administration, nearing the end of its rope in an unwinnable war, might perceive the nuclear option as its salvation.³³

The thousands of Soviet military personnel deployed in the Middle East likewise represented a potential catalyst that could trigger nuclear war if Soviet-backed Arab forces seriously threatened Israel, or if the USSR's Arab allies suffered such a catastrophic military defeat that Soviet personnel and prestige came under serious threat. As Ceauşescu warned Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1972, the attempt to impose a military solution would almost certainly draw in the USA and the USSR with ‘unfathomable consequences’.³⁴ Romanian fears of nuclear escalation were hardly fanciful. According to the US Department of State, the October War of 1973 brought ‘the United States closer to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union than at any point since the Cuban missile crisis’.³⁵

Romanian ‘small state theory’ sought to empower regional states to act on their own, without having to rely on ‘sponsors’ or ‘middle-men’. The problem with third parties, Ceauşescu announced to all who would listen, was that ‘no matter what you want, it is always difficult to find intermediaries that are quite so disinterested and that do not seek to draw certain uses’ from their involvement.³⁶ In Vietnam, Bucharest repeatedly parried Soviet efforts to use its ‘assistance’ to compel North Vietnam into what Hanoi considered an unfavourable peace. In the Middle East, the Romanians cautioned Sadat that ‘certain countries’ gave aid and assistance ‘only so that they can gain a position of influence’.³⁷ The same advice, to disembarrass itself of Soviet tutelage, had been proffered to the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser as well.³⁸

Vietnam revealed the very different directions of Romanian and Soviet policy in the Third World. But the conflict in the Middle East represented the sharp edge of Romanian–Soviet security contestation. In Vietnam, Bucharest and Moscow shared a common central goal: ending the war. Moscow might have preferred greater influence on how that conflict ended but, given the limitations of its influence over Hanoi and Beijing's antagonistic involvement, Romanian divergence had not become a source of major contention.

The Middle East was something else altogether. Negotiation and peace there were neither necessary nor desirable for the purposes of Soviet power projection. Tension and strife – not mediation – invited military influence. And Moscow and Bucharest each sought to limit the influence and access of the other in this region.

For Romanians, Soviet intentions were unambiguous and not at all helpful to a long-lasting resolution of the conflict. They had a ‘front-row seat’ for the extraordinarily risky provocations that the Kremlin launched in Berlin (1959/1961) and Cuba (1962). Within the alliance, they repeatedly faced down exaggerated Soviet threat assessments based on manipulated statistics and fabricated intelligence and aimed, they believed, at more completely subordinating the other allies to Soviet command. Soviet prophecies of imminent war, Romania's Foreign Minister reported, were made in order ‘to justify the so-called emergency course, namely, that in case of emergency, the command of the troops of the Warsaw Pact member states should be transferred to the Soviet General Staff’, giving Moscow ‘the possibility of interfering in the internal affairs of our countries’.³⁹

The Romanians observed first-hand how Moscow manipulated its Arab clients and encouraged tensions, systematically supporting Arab radicalism in the run-up to the 1967 Six Day War and goading Nasser with false intelligence into actions that provoked the conflict.⁴⁰ As to whether this was intended, Bucharest had no doubts.⁴¹ The Kremlin had done this before, in 1966, driving its Syrian and Egyptian clients together and frightening them into taking countermeasures by delivering the same sort of fabricated intelligence: that Israel was amassing its forces on their borders for an imminent attack.⁴² Given the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Bucharest shared the view that ‘instead of adopting a constructive position to prevent the war and maintain peace’, the USSR proved ‘the catalytic factor which instigated Egypt against Israel’.⁴³

Nor was there anything in the denouement of the war to shake Bucharest in its assessment. The crushing defeat delivered by Israeli forces to Egypt and its allies seemed a blow to Moscow's position, given that the Arab armies were Soviet-supplied and Soviet-trained. Paradoxically, however, the ruinous defeat proved a tremendous near-term boon for Soviet influence in the region as a panicked Nasser abandoned non-alignment as ‘no longer sustainable’ and requested a ‘direct military agreement with the socialist countries’.⁴⁴

In fact, Nasser was handing over his entire armed forces to the USSR. Syria likewise ‘begged’ for Soviet military personnel and equipment, proclaiming that the Arab countries would now follow the ‘socialist road’ and form ‘an alliance with the socialist countries’.⁴⁵ While the Kremlin avoided assuming direct responsibility for the Arab armies, it did establish a massive military footprint in the area (some 20,000 personnel in Egypt alone). Soviet advisors were posted throughout the armed forces, pro-Soviet officers were appointed to command posts and Nasser publicly declared his ‘total’ reliance on Egypt's Soviet military comrades.⁴⁶ The flailing Egyptian President went further still, initiating a purge of the armed forces, dismissing and arresting officers known to harbour pro-Western or anti-Soviet feelings, and promoting ‘cadres who had studies [sic] in the USSR’.⁴⁷

Brezhnev and Moscow's loyalist allies immediately saw an opportunity to capture the region for socialism.⁴⁸ According to Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov, the defeat handed the Soviet bloc ‘the means necessary to help the three Arab countries’ – the UAR [Egypt], Syria and Algeria – along ‘their non-capitalistic road, in their social transformation’, and to press that advantage elsewhere in the Third World.⁴⁹ Nasser's delivery of Egypt may have been unexpected. But it is difficult to imagine a more ringing endorsement of the Romanian assessment regarding the Soviet use of tension, crisis and conflict to expand its influence than the statement made during the Budapest meeting of loyalist bloc leaders in July 1967:

In general we think that there are premises to transform the military defeat of those countries into our political success. To strengthen our position and our influence there. It would also have great significance in terms of our influence on Turkey, Iran and the African countries. We should not dramatize the defeat, but use the emerging situation for increasing our influence in the region.⁵⁰

This threatened Romanian policy at a fundamental level. As Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer informed President Lyndon B. Johnson in the last week of June 1967, international crisis and tension endangered his country's efforts ‘to be master in its own house’ because Moscow invariably told the other bloc members ‘to get together, to renounce some of their sovereignty and some of their independence and to obey the command of another state’. This, the Prime Minister explained, was what motivated Romania ‘to interfere in problems which really are beyond her and to try to settle them’.⁵¹

The Romanian reaction was almost diametrically opposite that of the Soviet Union and the rest of the bloc, particularly in its advocacy of direct talks.⁵² East German Politburo members complained to North Korean leaders that while French President Charles De Gaulle aligned with the Soviet position on the issue of direct talks, ‘Romania currently stands to the right of France’, demanding ‘that Israel and the Arab nation negotiate directly with one another and that in this manner the UN [read: the USSR] be excluded from the process’.⁵³ GDR officials pointed out the irony of the situation. Foreign Minister Couve de Murville, ‘a French nobleman,’ supported Moscow's position while ‘a member of the Communist Party’, Romanian Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu, opposed it.⁵⁴ Romania's position on the withdrawal of forces conformed to Western European opinion, on the issue of direct talks it stood in advance of some (e.g., France), and it went beyond most others in proposing a means of transforming current antagonisms into cooperative relationships over time.

These, however, were by no means the main points over which Bucharest and Moscow contended. When the Six Day War broke out, the Romanians refused to follow the rest of the Warsaw Pact in breaking off relations with Israel and condemning the USA. According to Brezhnev, they were even ‘using their veto’ in the CMEA to block alliance assistance to the Arab allies of Moscow.⁵⁵ Worse still, Romania denied permission to the Soviet Union and the other Pact allies to use its roads and railways, or overfly its territory, for military-supply operations to Soviet client states in the Middle East.

At the July 1967 Soviet bloc meeting in Budapest, to which Romania was pointedly not invited, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev informed the other Pact leaders and Yugoslavia's Josef Broz Tito of the open break with Bucharest. After approvingly reporting Iraq's appeal ‘to the Arab world to cut off diplomatic relations with the Romanians and [for] inclusion of Romania on the “black list”’ alongside the ‘USA, England [sic] and the FRG, because they are helping Israel’, he turned to Bucharest's other ‘hostile’ activities.⁵⁶ The Romanians, he said, had opposed the Soviet line at the UN General Assembly's special session and held unapproved talks in New York while neither ‘contacting other socialist countries, nor informing them’ of the content of their discussions. They had visited Beijing while ‘skipping Moscow,’ without bothering to ‘inform comrades from other socialist countries about the results of that visit’ either. Romania's membership in the alliance and its commitment to the common defence was, in Brezhnev's words, ‘a façade’ because ‘everything indicates that they intend to finally break relations with our camp’ and leave the Warsaw Pact.⁵⁷

Soviet activities in the Middle East had pushed Romania towards the USA, with which, Bucharest felt, it shared a ‘similarity of views’.⁵⁸ Expressing his country's assessment that the USA had ‘a reasonable stand’ towards the conflict and ‘an equitable solution for peace’, Maurer told Johnson that a ‘large measure of responsibility for the provocation of the conflict in the [Middle] East rests with the Soviet Union’ and ‘does not rest with the United States’. The Prime Minister underlined the fact that ‘Romania could not rally to Moscow's position’ because it was pursuing a ‘dangerous policy in that part of the world and is interfering in a rude manner in the internal affairs of Arab countries’.⁵⁹

The prospects for countering Soviet inroads in the Middle East and advancing the peace process after June 1967 appeared rather dismal. To many, Moscow had won – game, set and match. A myth of Israeli military invincibility was created that made compromise even more difficult for Tel Aviv. And the humiliation inflicted upon Cairo (and Damascus) obscured the difference between negotiation and capitulation, and would continue to do so until Egyptian (and Syrian) pride and reputation could be restored.

A number of intervening events also appeared to diminish Bucharest's leverage with Moscow and key Arab states. In 1968, Romania was compelled to deploy forces to deter a possible Soviet military intervention after it publicly condemned the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.⁶⁰ Within a year, Syria, Iraq and Sudan broke off relations with Bucharest (and Egypt recalled its Ambassador) after Romania upgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel. In 1971 and 1972, Romanian state security foiled several Palestinian terrorist attacks against the Israeli Ambassador in Bucharest and the visiting Prime Minister Golda Meir.⁶¹

Ironically, by 1970 Nasser was reconsidering the subordinate position into which he had led his country by throwing its security into the hands of the USSR following the Six Day War. In his public appeal of 1 May 1970, Nasser opened the door to discussions with the USA (and Israel), and to an eventual amelioration of Soviet predominance in Egypt, for which he had been directly responsible.⁶² Shortly thereafter, he reached out to Bucharest for assistance.⁶³

Ceauşescu already knew that Tel Aviv was interested in direct talks because Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol had asked Prime Minister Maurer to facilitate Israeli–Egyptian contacts in 1969, renewing a request first made by the government of David Ben-Gurion back in 1956, during the Suez Crisis.⁶⁴ In October 1970, the Romanian leader discussed this with Prime Minister Golda Meir when both attended the jubilee session of the UN General Assembly in New York.⁶⁵ As he later recounted to Sadat, the Israeli prime minister ‘told me that she wants a political solution, that she is ready to make concessions and [find] an acceptable understanding’.⁶⁶

At the end of 1971, Sadat requested greater Romanian involvement in facilitating Egyptian–Israeli relations.⁶⁷ Consequently, officials from Bucharest quietly met with a number of officials from Tel Aviv and Cairo over the next several months. Ceauşescu's remarks to Sadat during their meetings in April 1972 suggest that Israel responded favourably, and Sadat affirmed his ‘full confidence’ and ‘complete faith’ in his Romanian interlocutor with whom he professed to share ‘the same opinions on all issues discussed’.⁶⁸

Ceauşescu had stressed the need for a ‘new initiative’ of a political rather than military character ‘to get things moving’ towards direct talks:

[A] way must be found to start discussions. Maybe one can consider confidential discussions […] They [the Israelis] want to talk any place and under any condition. An inflexible position is not the best choice. Secret negotiations could be carried out […] [T]he idea of secret negotiations should not be excluded; if not for now, at least in the future.⁶⁹

The following month, during the Israeli prime minister's visit to Bucharest in May 1972, Ceauşescu provided what Meir described as ‘the best news I have heard for many years’: that her Egyptian counterpart was ‘ready to meet with an Israeli’.⁷⁰ Unfortunately, for reasons probably related to internal Egyptian considerations, Soviet–Egyptian relations, and the Romanian preoccupation with the upcoming Helsinki (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; CSCE) talks, no further moves were made by Cairo before the year's end.

Less than two months later, in July, Sadat invited the approximately 20,000 Soviet military personnel in Egypt to leave, informing the Soviet Ambassador that Egypt would now ‘dispense with the services of all Soviet military experts’.⁷¹ Dissatisfaction with the large Soviet presence on the part of both Cairo and Moscow had been observable since 1970, but as the CIA reported, ‘the decision was unquestionably an Egyptian, not a joint one’.⁷² Sadat also reached out to the US administration, then distracted by Watergate, anti-war protests and an electoral campaign.⁷³ By now, what Bucharest had been telling Sadat privately, Washington and Israel were stating publicly – ‘that the Russian presence in Egypt was an obstacle to resolution of the Arab-Israeli problem’ – suggesting that their departure might offer ‘a potential break in the no-war-no-peace situation existing between Cairo and Tel Aviv’.⁷⁴

By the 1970s, Romanian policy towards the Third World began acquiring more substance, with Bucharest championing a ‘new world economic order’ that would permit underdeveloped states to improve their lot as a matter of global security. As Prime Minister Maurer cautioned in April 1973, the ‘ultimate consequences in international disturbance’ resulting from the ‘tendency of [the] US, USSR, and developed countries to disregard needs of great masses of people living in radically sub-standard conditions in underdeveloped countries’ would ‘dwarf’ all other threats, causing ‘grave damage to ‘civilized countries and their values’.⁷⁵ Ceauşescu made the same point within Warsaw Pact councils.

At the alliance's summit in April 1974, the Romanian leader argued that only fair exchange would ‘help underdeveloped countries develop more rapidly’:

Establishing just relations between [countries exporting] raw materials and finished products is an important question. Its resolution would accelerate the progress of the underdeveloped states. We must respect the right of peoples to be the masters of their own natural resources. The complex nature of these questions makes it necessary for all countries to participate in the discussion of them on the basis of equality.⁷⁶

Romania also continued its campaign to diminish the military clout of the Warsaw Pact and Moscow's ability to wield that clout unilaterally. It sought to mobilize all Pact members to call for the ‘simultaneous dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact’, it advocated ‘less stress on the military and more on the political component of the Warsaw Pact’, it called for unilateral disarmament and troop and budget reductions and it refused to drop older proposals for the rotation of all Pact command posts.⁷⁷ Bucharest was remarkably candid with Washington about the aims of its ‘deviant’ small-state policy and interest in spreading that deviation further afield:

Romania pursues policy based on principles, rather than on dominance of military and economic strength, both to advance its own national interest and because it sees successful pursuit of policy as benefiting peoples of other countries and ultimately contributing to a more secure and just framework of international relationships. If Romania can succeed, others (Eastern European countries) will be encouraged to try same course according to their possibilities.⁷⁸

The Romanians shared the mid-1973 CIA assessment that Moscow had failed in the Middle East because its geopolitical interests had ‘little in common with the interests of the countries of the area’, and that it failed in Egypt specifically because conflict between the Arabs and Israelis was ‘the initial source – and still the main basis – of the Soviet position in the area’.⁷⁹ The bottom line for Kremlin strategists was that, despite the risks of direct involvement in the war, ‘peace would remove a major reason for their presence in the Arab world’.⁸⁰

In typical fashion, the Kremlin knew of the planned attack on Israel some two days before the start of the October War but did not bother passing that information on to Romania. Nevertheless, Bucharest moved rapidly out of the starting gate, informing Moscow once again that it would neither provide military assistance to the belligerents nor allow other Pact members to use its roads or railways for that purpose, and it ‘would not allow Soviet planes to overfly Romanian territory with military supplies for Arab countries’ either.⁸¹

Bucharest also sent three notes to Moscow and Washington proposing a ‘five kilometer zone between Arab and Israeli forces where UNEF [the United Nations Emergency Force] would be stationed and offered Romanian participation in force’.⁸² On 14 October 1973, before the Arab armies faced serious defeat, it sent messages to Egypt, Syria and Israel ‘to abandon hostilities and engage in negotiations’.⁸³ After the Third Egyptian Army was surrounded by Israeli forces, on 22 October, Cairo asked Bucharest to intercede with Tel Aviv, and Foreign Minister Abba Eban was invited to Romania for ‘urgent talks’.⁸⁴

In response to Moscow's declaration that it ‘reserved the right to act unilaterally’ in the region (despite the opposing decision of the UN Security Council), and to Washington's subsequent placing of the US Armed Forces and nuclear arsenal on alert, the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) leadership called for a Romanian–Soviet or Warsaw Pact summit specifically to discuss the ‘dispatch of troops to the area and the risks of direct involvement’.⁸⁵ Ceauşescu placed considerable store by Romanian participation in the new United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II), noting to the RCP leadership on 26 October that ‘we are the only country accepted by both parties and, in this way the troops of the socialist countries would be present in the Middle East’.⁸⁶

Moscow did not respond to the request for a summit. Since the nuclear crisis was averted within 24 hours, Bucharest did not continue to pursue it. However, the Kremlin did reject Romania's participation in UNEF in no uncertain terms.⁸⁷ Bucharest was told ‘not to participate in the Middle East Peace-Keeping Force’ since only loyalist allies (in this case, Poland) would be accepted, and warned that if it did not withdraw the offer then the Soviet representative on the UN Security Council would veto it anyway, creating more scandal further damaging to bilateral relations.⁸⁸ Romania's Ambassador in Washington admitted to an American interlocutor that same evening (2 November 1973) that ‘withdrawal had been at Soviet behest’ and that this move against Romanian participation in UNEF was not an ‘isolated case of Soviet pressures on Romania’ but rather part of ‘a Soviet policy of isolating Romania in all fora, ‘from Vienna to New York’.⁸⁹

Moscow held no comparable leverage over Romanian moves within the region. Eban's visit (4–7 November) was given ‘heavy coverage’ in the Romanian news media, which described it as ‘an important contribution in strengthening efforts in the direction of [a] just and equitable political solution to Middle East crisis’.⁹⁰ Praising Romania's policy of maintaining contact with all sides, the Israeli Foreign Minister declared that all problems could be dealt with in ‘free, sovereign, sincere negotiations’ with ‘flexibility and realism, not necessarily shaped by Great Powers’.⁹¹ Bucharest then sent delegations (during 12–28 November) to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan. Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan later reported that Bucharest continued mediating between Tel Aviv and Cairo in more covert fashion, persuading both to continue talks between emissaries of their intelligence services in Romania and Morocco in spite of the war.⁹²

Bucharest considered its efforts a safety net for the high-wire shuttling of Henry Kissinger, ‘providing both an indirect means of communication between the parties and a back-up possibility for continuing efforts at accommodation if other efforts (like those of the US) ran into difficulties’.⁹³ According to US observers, Romania benefited from its involvement ‘by again demonstrating its independence of view, its attachment to the principle of direct negotiations between parties as the only proper method to resolve disputes, and its even-handedness toward both Israel and the Arabs which might allow it to play a useful role in the future’.⁹⁴ But it also incurred serious costs ranging from Arab boycotts and sabotage by the other Pact members to terrorist attacks by Palestinian radicals.⁹⁵

Just how close to the wind Romania was sailing is suggested by the exchange between Soviet Defence Minister Andrei Grechko and GDR leader Erich Honecker in mid-November 1973. Marshal Grechko, known to be a ‘“major domestic critic” of détente and [a] hawk on [the] Middle East’, was already spoiling for a fight with the Romanians after they cancelled the Warsaw Pact Committee of Defence Ministers meeting scheduled to take place ten days hence in Bucharest, allegedly because their defense minister had ‘more important tasks to fulfill’.⁹⁶ For Grechko, this was ‘an insult and a crass provocation, just one among numerous examples of the impertinence with which the Romanian comrades recently behave’.⁹⁷

Adding injury to insult, Bucharest refused to participate in the bloc's joint operations in the Middle East during and after the 1973 October War. As in June 1967, Grechko complained, ‘only Romania’ refused military assistance and denied the use of its military facilities, territory and airspace to allied forces for conveying military aid to Moscow's Arab clients.⁹⁸ This, the Soviet Marshal underscored, contradicted the policy of every other Pact member as well as Yugoslavia, all of which had ‘accorded active assistance to the Arab states during the aggression’.⁹⁹

The final straw was Bucharest's demonstration of ‘insolence and effrontery of the meanest sort’ by inviting the Israeli Foreign Minister to Romania ‘as if there were no war in the Middle East’. According to the notes taken by the East German Chief of the General Staff, the Soviet Defence Minister then claimed that he and Brezhnev agreed that military intervention in Romania was required, operational plans for which had already been approved and prepared.¹⁰⁰ Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and Grechko was held in check.

By 1975, Western observers viewed Romania as moving towards the Third World and the Middle East as some sort of haven offering protection from the USSR.¹⁰¹ Relations and coordination with all small and medium-sized states were indeed important elements of Romanian soft power. But the Middle East was a central battlefield in which Romanian and Soviet world views and interests repeatedly clashed, and Bucharest was playing the long game. Here, Romania was a strategic actor rather than an opportunistic tactician.

The stark nature of Romanian–Soviet competition in the region was indicated during the visit of the Egyptian War Minister to Bucharest in April 1976, when Ceauşescu underlined the fact ‘that small and medium-sized countries must unite to avoid being “swallowed up” by the Soviet Union’.¹⁰² Ceauşescu and his Defence Minister then ‘praised Egypt's abrogation of the friendship treaty with the USSR, and both candidly described Bucharest's efforts to fend off Soviet pressure’.¹⁰³ In Romanian eyes, this represented a major victory against Soviet hegemony and for the empowerment of small and medium-sized states, one that was superseded only by Sadat's meeting with his Israeli counterpart in Tel Aviv – also brokered by Bucharest – the following year.

Within the Soviet bloc, the justifying principles for such activity had to be constantly defended. Thus, Bucharest declaimed efforts at ‘twisting Marxist-Leninist doctrine to advance Soviet hegemony’ and protested the misuse of ‘“proletarian internationalism” to mean that anyone who defends his nation's independence violates communist theory’.¹⁰⁴ Now, however, with the reorientation that had been under way for more than a decade, it could rely on Third World support. That same April, after quoting Lenin in defence of his country's position, Ceauşescu ‘went on to warn the Soviets that they themselves cannot be free if they oppress others’, that ‘true’ proletarian internationalism was ‘based on the defense of national sovereignty’, that ‘many developing countries share Romania's position and that they, too, reject efforts to write the role of the nation out of communist theory’.¹⁰⁵

By the end of the decade, Kremlin authorities were regularly denouncing Romania for seeking to roll back Soviet influence within the Pact and globally, especially in the developing world. According to a Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Central Committee official responsible for the country, the USSR and other Pact members were exasperated by Romania's single-minded efforts to ‘cut off the USSR from the socialist countries and from those in the course of development’.¹⁰⁶ Within the socialist community, Bucharest persisted in its attempts ‘to draw to its side, in anti-Soviet actions, the leaderships of Bulgaria, Poland, and the GDR’, and it did much the same amongst small and medium-sized states throughout the Third World.

In Africa, Bucharest denounced ‘the “intervention of foreign troops” in Angola and called for cessation of “any kind of foreign intervention” (which would include Cubans and Soviets)’.¹⁰⁷ It even assisted Angola's National Liberation Front (FNLA), which opposed that country's main Soviet client (the MPLA; the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) during 1974–5.¹⁰⁸ This ‘seriously negative’ policy changed little in the years that followed, with Romania insisting that African problems ‘must be resolved by the Africans, without any outside intervention’, and protesting ‘against the presence of Cuban troops in Ethiopia’.¹⁰⁹ And Soviet Central Committee authorities were infuriated with Romania's characterization of the ‘fraternal assistance accorded by socialist Cuba to the people of Ethiopia’ as ‘an act of aggression’.¹¹⁰

According to Fidel Castro, in Latin America, the Romanians were ‘brainwashing’ leftist leaders in Mexico and encouraging ‘rousing distrust toward the Soviet Union and breaking up the movement’.¹¹¹ Moscow likewise bemoaned Romanian refusals to support to its policies in Nicaragua.¹¹² As one observer noted, Romania desired to ‘avoid anything that might upset the international situation or permit Nicaragua to slip into the Soviet orbit’.¹¹³

Particularly egregious in Moscow's view was the Muslim delegation that Bucharest sent to Ayatollah Khomeini after the fall of the Shah of Iran. According to Soviet officials, ‘the delegation tried to warn Khomeni [sic] not to invite specialists of the USSR into Iran, underscoring, at the same time, that the interests of the great powers are all encompassing and do not coincide with the interests of the small and medium-sized countries’.¹¹⁴ Perhaps more galling still were the ‘anti-Soviet overtures’ that Romania made to the Ambassador of Afghanistan in Moscow while the Soviets were preparing operations to overthrow the Afghan leadership.¹¹⁵

Due to fundamental policy differences, Romanian cooperation with the Warsaw Pact in the Third World became the exception rather than the rule over the course of 1955–75. Although difficult for either of the great powers to perceive clearly at the time, Romanian policies in the developing world were not driven merely by the need to counter Soviet (or US) hegemony. Nor did Bucharest turn towards the Third World merely to avert or balance Soviet hostility because of Romania's relations with the West. They had a logic and dynamic of their own.

Romanian policies were aimed at creating a world in which there was safety in numbers, where great powers were constrained from employing force unilaterally, and where small and medium-sized states had access to and influence over discussions and decisions at the international level that directly affected them. In other words, Romania's policy towards the Third World, despite its membership in the Warsaw Pact, was not so much a variation on a theme as it was a different story altogether.

1.Romanian Foreign Ministry Archives (hereafter, AMAE), fond Israel/1970, problema 220, vol. I, f. 181.

2.Constantin Georgescu and Monica Tudor Georgescu, ‘Romania's Merchant Fleet’, Knowledge Horizons – Economics, vol. 6, no. 4 (2014), pp. 167–70.

3.CIA, ‘Communist Aid to the Third World Oil Industries (ER RP 73–12)’, 1 June 1973, pp. 1–3, 19. All of the CIA documents referenced herein are available at https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/home.

4.CIA, ‘Intelligence Report: Communist Aid to Less Developed Countries of the Free World, 1974 (ER IR 75–16)’, 1 June 1975, pp. 2–3.

5.‘Coordination and instruments for direction of Soviet and East European aid programs within and outside CEMA’, in CIA, ‘Relationship Between Soviet and East European Economic Aid Programs in LDCs (SOVA [Office of Soviet Analysis])’, 26 September 1975, pp. 1–3.

6.CIA, ‘National Intelligence Estimate: Soviet Military Capabilities to Project Power and Influence in Distant Areas (NIE 11-10-79)’, 1 October 1979, pp. 21–2.

7.See Table 6: ‘East European Military Assistance to Third World Countries, 1955–1977’, in ibid., p. 21. For details on the Bulgarian case, see Jordan Baev, ‘East-East Arms Trade: Bulgarian Arms Delivery to Third World Countries, 1950–1989’, Global Cold War, Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/lory1.ethz.ch/collections/index.html (hereafter, PHP), 18 September 2006.

8.‘Memorandum of Conversation between Emil Bodnaras and Harry G. Barnes, U.S. Ambassador to Romania’, Bucharest, 17 May 1974, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) Digital Archive. Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110457 (accessed September 2017).

10.Hungary, for example, ‘needed to keep itself to the line defined by Moscow’ in order to ‘pursue its own interests as well’. Csaba Békés, László J. Nagy and Dániel Vékony, ‘Bittersweet Friendships: Relations between Hungary and the Middle East, 1953–1988’, CWIHP e-Dossier No. 67, Wilson Center, 5 November 2015. See also Anna Locher, ‘Shaping the Policies of the Alliance – The Committee of Foreign Ministers of the Warsaw Pact, 1976–1990’, May 2002, and Christian Nünlist, ‘Cold War Generals: The Warsaw Pact Committee of Defense Ministers, 1969–1990’, May 2001, both in Warsaw Pact Records, PHP (accessed October 2017).

11.Bucharest tried to do the same in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). See Elena Dragomir, ‘Cold War Perceptions: Romania's Policy Change Towards the Soviet Union, 1960–1964’, doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2014, pp. 131–4, 153.

12.See, for example, Jan Sejna, We Will Bury You (London, 1982), p. 75–6; Vojtech Mastny, Learning From The Enemy: NATO as a Model for the Warsaw Pact (Zurich, 2001), p. 22; PHP. See also ‘Hungarian Minutes of Politburo Meeting on Summit in Bucharest’, 12 July 1966, and ‘Report to the Hungarian Party Politburo and Council of Ministers on the PCC Meeting’, 9 March 1968; and ‘On the Position of the Socialist Republic of Romania: Additions to the Speech by the East German Head of State (Erich Honecker), 4 April 1974’ – all in Party Leaders, PHP (accessed October 2017).

14.Scânteia, 26 April 1964 (Scânteia was the principal daily newspaper.) This ‘declaration of independence’ was officially entitled The Declaration with Regard to the Position of the Romanian Workers’ Party on the Problems of the International Communist and Workers’ Movement.

17.Agerpres (national news agency of Romania), 6 May and 28 June 1971; Robert R. King, ‘Rumania and European Security’, Rumania/13, Radio Free Europe Research (hereafter, RFER), 20 July 1972, Open Society Archives (OSA), Box 114, Folder 2, Report 266, pp. 12–13. Ceauşescu told US officials not to take anti-imperialist attacks personally, since the charge had a wider application.

19.‘Speech by the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (Nicolae Ceauşescu) at the January 1972 PCC Meeting in Prague’, PCC Meetings 1970–1990, Party Leaders, PHP (accessed October 2017).

21.‘Minutes of 14 April 1974 PCC Meeting, Including Speeches’, Warsaw, April 17, 1974’, in PCC Meetings 1970–1990, Party Leaders, PHP, pp. 36, 39–42 (accessed October 2017).

22.‘Situation of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the Imperialist Influence on This Country, February 7, 1969’, Hauptverwaltung A (HVA) report, BStU, MfS, ZAIG 5481, f. 1–38; Document 5 in Georg Herbstritt and Stejaru Olaru, Stasi si Securitatea [The Stasi and (Romanian) State Security] (Bucharest, 2005), pp. 276–7.

23.BStU, MfS, ZAIG 5481, f. 1–38; Herbstritt and Olaru, Stasi si Securitatea, p. 276.

24.See, for example, ‘Minutes of the Joint Meeting of the Central Committee and the Ministers’ Council, August 04, 1971’, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest (MOL), MOL M-KS-288 f. 4. cs. 113. o. e. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110268; ‘Evaluation by the East German Embassy in Bucharest on Ceausescu's Visit to China, June 11, 1971’, in China and Eastern Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s: International Conference, Beijing, 24–26 March 2004, Global Cold War, PHP (accessed October 2017), pp. 1–3. ‘Analysis of Romanian-Chinese Relations by the East German Embassy in Bucharest, 18 December 1972’, in ibid., p. 3; and ‘Analysis of the Romanian Attitude Toward Maoism, 1974’, in ibid., pp. 2–3.

25.King, ‘Rumania and European Security’, pp. 10, 13; Tamas Palos, ‘Small Countries – Big Policy’, Népszava, 20 August 1971; K. K., ‘Hungary and Her Southern Neighbors’, Hungary/14, RFER, 26 August 1971, p. 9. See also Charles Andras, ‘European Security and the Security of Europe’, East-West Relations Background Report/1, RFER (EERA [East Europe Region Analysis]), March 1970.

26.K. K., ‘Hungary and Her Southern Neighbors’, p. 10; Robert R. King and William F. Robinson, ‘Rumanian-Hungarian Relations: Friendship with Reservations?’ Eastern Europe/5, RFER, 10 March 1972, p. 7.

27.Nicolae Ecobescu and Edwin Glaser, ‘European Security and International Law’, Lupta de Clasa, no. 3 (March 1972), pp. 51–62 in Joint Publications Research Service, No. 55958, 10 May 1972, pp. 43–55; King, ‘Romania and European Security’, pp. 13–14.

29.Telegram #2092, Subject: Ceausescu Visit To Lebanon, From American Embassy Beirut (Houghton) to Secretary of State, Washington, February 20, 1974. Ceauşescu met with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, Fatah's Farouq Qaddumi, Saiqa's Zohayr Muhsen and the PDFLP's Yasir Rabdrabbu.

30.See, for instance, Dusko Doder, ‘Ceausescu Moves Romania Toward Third-World Role’, St. Petersburg Times, 30 May 1975.

31.Romania thus attended the NAM conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1976, and was admitted to the UN's Group of 77 developing nations (the G77) the same year.

32.‘Conversation between Governor Harriman and President [of the Council of Ministers] Maurer of Romania regarding Vietnam and Middle East’, 28 November 1967, US Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Box 557, Folder 4, Document 11, pp. 12–14. US arguments against ‘no first use’ proposals in the Nonproliferation Treaty referenced the overwhelming conventional Chinese threat. ‘Transcript of Discussions Held on the Occasion of the Reception by Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu of Richard Nixon, Former Vice-President of the U.S.A.’, Bucharest, 22 March 1967, Romanian National Archives (hereafter, ANR), Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 15/1967, f. 4, 16–20. See also Document 34 in Larry L. Watts, Mediating the Vietnam War: Romania and the First Trinh Signal 1965–1966, CWIHP Working Paper No. 81, Wilson Center (July 2016). Available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/cwihp_wp_81_larry_watts_july_2016.pdf (accessed September 2017).

33.Romanian Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer and North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong discussed the threat of US employment of nuclear weapons in Vietnam after that scenario appeared in L'Express in October 1966. Maurer admitted he ‘did not know’ whether it was genuine. Document 30 in Watts (2016). The danger of US nuclear escalation was also discussed with the Soviets. ‘Transcript of Senior-Level Discussions Between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Romanian Communist Party’, Moscow, 17–18 March 1967, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 14/1967, f. 7–8.

34.‘Memorandum of Conversation between Nicolae Ceausescu and Anwar El-Sadat’, Cairo, 3 April 1972, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 19/1972, ff. 37–43 (hereafter, Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation I). This translation from Mircea Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches New Middle East Initiative’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (2008) p. 541.

37.Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation I, in Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches’, p. 541.

38.See, for example, ‘Note of Conversation of Nicolae Ceausescu with ad interim charge d'affaires of the United Arab Republic, Fikry Mahanny Nakhla, in Bucharest, Accompanied by a Copy of the Appeal Addressed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser to U.S. President Richard Nixon’, 12 May 1970, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 15/1970, f. 1–20.

39.‘Stenographic Transcript of the Meeting of the Consultative Political Committee of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party’, 24 November 1978, in Dennis Deletant, Mihail E. Ionescu and Anna Locher, ‘Romania and the Warsaw Pact: Documents Highlighting Romania's Gradual Emancipation from the Warsaw Pact, 1956–1989’, March 2004, PHP.

40.CIA, ‘Intelligence Report: Soviet Policy and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War’ (Reference Title: CAESAR XXXVIII), 16 March 1970, pp. 3–6, 53–8.

41.Although Moscow provided false intelligence to its Arab clients that contributed to the outbreak of war, controversy continues as to whether it provoked Egypt and Syria intentionally or inadvertently. Regardless of the final verdict on this debate, it is worth noting that interpretations stressing inadvertence rely substantially on arguments of dysfunctional civil–military competition within the Kremlin at the time. Given that such competition would have been largely opaque to anyone outside the inner circle, it is unreasonable to expect that contemporary observers could have perceived Soviet actions as representing anything other than Soviet policy. For the interpretation of inadvertence, see Guy Laron, The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (New Haven and London, 2017).

42.Isabella Ginor, ‘The Cold War's Longest Cover-Up: How and Why the USSR Instigated the June 1967 War’, MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs), vol. 7, no. 3 (September 2003), pp. 34–59. See also Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, ‘The Six-Day War As A Soviet Initiative: New Evidence And Methodological Issues’, MERIA, vol. 12, no. 3 (September 2008).

43.‘Telegram from Valeriu Georgescu, Extraordinary Envoy and Plenipotentiary Minister of Romania in Tel Aviv, Regarding the Position of the Israeli Communist Party vis-a-vis the [Israeli] conflict with Arab Nations’, 20 June 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bucharest, Telegrams, Tel Aviv, vol. 1. 1/1967. Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113619 (accessed September 2017); James G. Hershberg, ‘The Soviet Bloc and the Aftermath of the June 1967 War: Selected Documents from Polish and Romanian Archives’, CWIHP e-Dossier No. 13, Wilson Center, 7 July 2011. Available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-soviet-bloc-and-the-aftermath-the-june-1967-war (accessed September 2017).

44.‘The Visit of the Czechoslovak President's Special Envoy, V. Koucki, to the UAR’, 28 June 1967, CWIHP History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112572 (accessed September 2017); ‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts)’, 11 July 1967, CWIHP History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113622 (accessed September 2017).

46.‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Moscow’, 9 November 1967, CWIHP History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113629 (accessed September 2017); ‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts)’, 11 July 1967.

47.‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Moscow’, 9 November 1967.

48.‘Record of Conversation between Polish Politburo member Zenon Kliszko and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev’, Moscow, 24 June 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, KC PZPR, Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw. Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113621 (accessed September 2017).

49.‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts)’, 11 July 1967.

50.Ibid., Interestingly, Yugoslavia's Josef Broz Tito also attended, and adhered to, the Moscow line.

51.‘Memorandum of Conversation’, Subject: ‘Call of Romanian Prime Minister on President Johnson,’ Washington, 26 June 1967, Document 157, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XVII, Eastern Europe, US Department of State, at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d157.

53.‘Memorandum on a meeting with a delegation from the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK on 3 July 1967’, Document No. 4, in Bernd Schäfer, ‘Weathering the Sino-Soviet Conflict: The GDR and North Korea, 1949–1989’, in ‘New Evidence on North Korea’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 14/15 (2003–4), p. 45.

55.See ‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts)’, 11 July 1967. See also Dumitru Preda (ed.), Romania-Israel: Documente Diplomatice [Romania–Israel Diplomatic Documents], vol. 1, 1948–69 (Bucharest, 2000).

56.‘Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet-bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts)’, 11 July 1967; TASS (USSR press agency), 12 July 1967.

57.Polish Record of Meeting of Soviet bloc leaders (and Tito) in Budapest (excerpts), 11 July 1967.

58.‘Memorandum of Conversation’, Washington, 26 June 1967, Document 157, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XVII, Eastern Europe.

59.CIA, ‘Rumanian Reaction to the Johnson-Maurer Meeting of 26 June 1967’, 1967, p. 1. See also CIA, ‘Intelligence Information Cable, Romanian Diplomats’ Comments on Relations with the United States and the Communist World’, 1967.

60.See, for instance, former Warsaw Pact Chief of General Staff, A. I. Gribkov, Sud'ba varshavskogo dogovora: Vospominania, Dokumenty, fakty [Part of the Warsaw Pact: Recollections, Documents, Facts] (Moscow,1998), pp. 75–6, 119–47.

62.See, for example, U.S. News & World Report, 2 May 1970. See also ‘Memorandum From the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon’, Washington, 12 May 1970, Subject: ‘Nasser's “Appeal” to You – A New Diplomatic Initiative’, Document 115 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–76, vol. XXIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, US Department of State, at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v23/d115.

63.‘Note of Conversation of Nicolae Ceausescu with ad interim charge d'affaires of the United Arab Republic, Fikry Mahanny Nakhla, in Bucharest, Accompanied by a Copy of the Appeal Addressed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser to U.S. President Richard Nixon’, 12 May 1970, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 15/1970, f. 1–20.

64.Ion Calafeteanu and Alexandru Cornescu-Coren, România i criza din Orientul Mijlociu [Romania and The Crisis in the Middle East] (1965–1971) (Bucharest, 2002), p. 82; AMAE, fond Telegrame Varsovia, dosar no. 25/1956, telegram no. 29017, 15 November 1956; Mihai Retegan, In the Shadow of the Prague Spring: Romanian Foreign Policy and the Crisis in Czechoslovakia, 1968 (Iaşi, 2000), p. 25.

65.Ceauşescu was in the USA during 8–28 October 1970. After New York, he and Prime Minister Meir met separately with President Nixon and attended the same White House dinner for UN delegates in the East Wing on October 24, 1970.

66.Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation I, in Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches’, pp. 541, 543. See also, Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York, 1978), pp. 230–1.

67.‘Transcript of Conversation on Occasion of the Reception by Nicolae Ceausescu of the First Vice-President of the United Arab Republic Council of Ministers, Dr Aziz Sedki, Regarding Romanian-Egyptian Relations and the Situation in the Middle East (13 December 1971), Accompanied by the Letter of Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat (President of Egypt) addressed to Nicolae Ceausescu and a Note Referring to the Conversations’, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 107/1971, f. 1–24. Sedki was appointed prime minister one month later.

68.‘Memorandum of Conversation Between Nicolae Ceausescu and Anwar El-Sadat’, Cairo, 6 April 1972, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 19/1972, f. 45–56 (hereafter, Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation II), in Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches’, p. 543.

69.Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation I, in Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches’, p. 541; and Ceauşescu–Sadat Conversation II, in Munteanu, ‘CWIHP Launches’, p. 543.

70.Kenneth W. Stein, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (New York, 1999), pp. 63, 185.

72.CIA ONE (Office of National Estimates), ‘Memorandum: The Russian Ouster – Causes and Consequences’, 22 August 1972, p. 1.

73.William B. Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (Washington, DC, 1986), pp. 22–3.

75.Telegram #1413, Subject: Call on Prime Minister Maurer, From American Embassy, Bucharest to Secretary of State, Washington, 18 April 1973, Central Policy Files, US National Records And Administration (hereafter, NARA). Available at https://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=5193&dt=2472&dl=1345 (accessed September 2017).

76.‘Minutes of 14 April 1974 PCC Meeting, Including Speeches’, Warsaw, April 17, 1974’, in PCC Meetings 1970–1990, Party Leaders, PHP, p. 42.

78.Telegram #1413, Subject: Call on Prime Minister Maurer, From American Embassy, Bucharest to Secretary of State, Washington, 18 April 1973, NARA.

79.CIA, ‘Intelligence Memorandum: Soviet Policy in the Middle East’, May 8, 1973, pp. 1, 6.

80.Ibid., See also CIA, ‘Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East (SOV 86-10048X)’, 1 December 1986, CIA, Appendix B, ‘Moscow and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process’, p. 83.

83.Scânteia, 25 October 1973; Petre Otu, ‘Romania's Position Towards The Arab-Israeli War of 1973’, in Shaul Shay and Orly Woland (eds), The Cold War and the Arms Race in the Middle East, Proceedings of the Israeli-Romanian International Seminar, Tel-Aviv, Israel, 19–23 May, 2002, p. 53.

84.Otu, ‘Romania's Position’, p. 54; CIA, ‘Romania-Israel-USSR’, in CIA, The President's Daily Brief, 6 November 1973, p. 3.

87.Paradoxically, Romania's offer of peacekeeping forces during the Suez Crisis in 1956, although agreed by Egypt and the UN Secretary General, had been rejected by the USA.

88.See, for instance, Telegram #3987, Subject: Soviet Opposition to Romania Participation in Middle East Peace-Keeping, From American Embassy, Bucharest (GS Martens) to Secretary of State, Washington, 1 November 1973, NARA.

89.Telegram #4491, Subject: UNEF, From US Mission United Nations (USUN), New York (Bennett), to Secretary of State, Washington, 6 November 1973, NARA.

91.Ibid; Telegram #4063, Subject: Eban Visit to Romania, From American Embassy, Bucharest (Martens) to Secretary of State, Washington, 6 November 1973, NARA.

92.Interview with Moshe Dayan, Jerusalem Domestic Television Service, 5 October 1977, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report – ‘Middle East and North Africa’, 6 October 1977, p. N2. See also, Stein, Heroic Diplomacy, pp. 184–5.

93.Telegram #4117, Subject: An Unofficial Romanian View of the Abba Eban Visit, From American Embassy, Bucharest (Martens) to Secretary of State, Washington, 10 November 1973, NARA.

95.See, for example, CIA, ‘Arab States – Romania’, in United States Intelligence Board (hereafter, USIB), National Intelligence Bulletin, 30 August 1975, p. 11. Bucharest avoided boycotts of its airline TAROM, which flew to Tel Aviv, Beirut, Cairo and Algiers, in 1967 and 1974, but not August 1975.

96.Pravda, 8 October 1973; Victor Zorza, ‘The Middle East War: A Boost for Soviet Hawks’, Washington Post, 16 October 1973.

97.‘Minute regarding the meeting between Comrade Erich Hoenecker and Comrade Marshal Grechko’, 17 November 1973, BStU, MfS, SdM 1577, S. 50–56 – reproduced: Document 12, in Herbstritt and Olaru, Stasi si Securitatea, pp. 314–15.

100.Ibid; Otto Wenzel, ‘The Soviet Defense Minister Suggests the Military Occupation of Romania’, Zeitschrift des Forschungsverbundes S.E.D.-Staat an der Freie Universitat Berlin [Journal of the Socialist Unity Party (East German Communist Party)-State Research Association at the Free University of Berlin], nr. 6 (1998), p. 94.

101.‘Romania’, in USIB, National Intelligence Bulletin, 26 April 1975, p. 12. According to the CIA, Ceauşescu was ‘pushing hard for closer association with the nonaligned world and possibly for a seat at the Geneva talks on the Middle East’, because of a belief ‘that by inserting himself into the Middle East picture and by improving relations with key nonaligned nations, he [would] be better able to resist Soviet pressure’.

102.CIA, ‘Romania-Egypt’, in USIB, National Intelligence Bulletin, 22 April 1976, p. 8.

103.Ibid; ‘Transcript of Conversations on the Occasion of the Reception by Nicolae Ceauşescu of General Mohamed El–Gamasy, Chief of the Egyptian Military Delegation’, 16 April 1976, ANR, Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 32/1976, f. 1-10.

104.CIA, ‘Romania-USSR’, in USIB, National Intelligence Bulletin, 28 April 1976, p. 6.

105.Ibid., These remarks were made to the Congress of Romanian Trade Unions on 26 April 1976.

106.‘Conspect of Conversations with Cde. V. I. Potapov, Head of Romania Sector of CPSU CC Section’, May 16, 1979, Document 4, in Larry Watts, ‘The Soviet-Romanian Clash Over History, Identity and Dominion’, CWIHP e-Dossier No. 29, 31 January 2012. See also Document 5 in ibid.

107.Telegram #6545, Subject: Romanian Foreign Policy: Ceausescu's Year-End Review, From American Embassy, Bucharest (Barnes) to Secretary of State, Washington, 19 December 1975, NARA.

108.Odd Arne Westad, ‘Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974–1976: A New Pattern of Intervention’, CWIHP Bulletin, nos 8–9 (Winter 1996), p. 25, 31, footnote 42; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation (New York, 1994), p. 558.

109.See ‘Conversations with Cde. V. I. Potapov, Chief of Romanian Sector of CPSU CC Section’, 27 October 1978, Document 3 in Watts, ‘The Soviet-Romanian Clash’. See also Documents 2–5 in ibid.

110.‘Exposition of the Conversations with Cde. V.I. Potapov, Chief of the Romanian Sector of the CPSU CC’, 27 June 1978, Document 2 in ibid. Bucharest was also attacked for its allegedly pro-NATO and pro-Beijing attitude towards Zaire.

111.‘Minutes of the Meeting between Todor Zhivkov and Fidel Castro in Sofia’, 11 March 1976, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive. Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112241 (accessed September 2017).

112.These complaints were voiced by Brezhnev and Soviet Central Committee expert on Romania, V.I. Potapov, during 1978–9. See Documents 3, 4, 5 in Watts, ‘The Soviet-Romanian Clash’.

113.Sebastian Garcia, ‘El Rey defiende las libertades en su visita oficial a Rumanía’ [King Defends Freedoms During his Official Visit to Romania], El País, 21 May 1985. Romania had similarly mediated with the military junta in Portugal in 1975, to ‘head off a radical swing to the left that could bring Portugal under considerable Soviet influence’; CIA, ‘Romania: Ceauşescu's remarks during visit to Portugal bound to irk Kremlin’, in USIB, National Intelligence Bulletin, 3 November 1975, p. 8.