Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Paculescu has indicated that negotiations regarding future US bases in Romania are underway and will be finalized in the coming months. Currently, the necessary technical and geographical aspects are being discussed prior to the signing of the political agreement between the parties, although there is no doubt that these agreements will be made public before the end of the year, especially now that Romania's accession to NATO has been definitively approved.
In this regard, it should be noted that, in the eyes of the American administration, the Iraq War has provided the definitive push toward a policy of alliances with Eastern European countries, to the detriment of bilateral agreements with its former most important strategic allies: France and Germany. The push for alliances with countries like Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria reflects the American administration's desire to diversify its presence in Europe and, above all, to diminish the strategic importance of its German bases, especially given that both the German government and society have expressed their rejection of the American intervention in Iraq.
It should be noted that the new design of American bases in Eastern European countries will opt for smaller, more flexible bases than those previously established in other European countries. In this respect, the American administration is trying to move away from the German model, where it concentrates almost 70.000 of its 140.000 troops deployed in Europe.
The possible location of the American base in Romania is currently under discussion, as is the division of operational costs between the two administrations. Constanta appears to be the more likely choice than Buzau and Timisoara, although the possibility of the US government choosing one of the aforementioned sites cannot be ruled out.
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