Office of the Historian

90. Telegram From the Embassy in Romania to the Department of State1

652.
Bucharest, January 29, 1982, 1905Z

SUBJECT

  • Manifestation of Romania’s Relative Independence.

REF

  • Bucharest 0638.2
1.
C—Entire text.
2.
Begin summary: This message amplifies the Embassy’s views provided in reftel concerning Ceausescu’s invitation to the Secretary to visit Bucharest in approximately 10 days, and discusses Romanian perceptions of our current relationship and our policy of differentiation in Eastern Europe. End summary.
3.
To assist the Department in assessing the advisability of accepting President Ceausescu’s invitation to the Secretary to visit Bucharest, we want to stress that this is a matter of the utmost seriousness, importance and urgency for Ceausescu and the foreign policy leadership, and that fundamental Romanian perceptions of the Western connection and specifically relations with the United States are at stake here. We have been getting many signals in the last few days that there is very strong concern in the Romanian leadership that we are tacitly withdrawing from our policy of differentiation in Eastern Europe. All of this is coalescing with further perceptions here of our apparently negative reactions to Romania’s various requests over the past few months for some measure of assistance during this period of intense economic/financial difficulties.
4.
We believe that the U.S. is at an important decision point in its relationship with Romania and the place that Romania will occupy in our foreign policy framework. If the decision is towards in effect dismantling the differentiation policy between Eastern European countries and the USSR, the fundamental basis of our present relationship with Romania is undercut. We continue to believe that Romania’s pursuit of an “independent” foreign policy and a clear cut Western connection on balance has positive aspects for our security and foreign policy interests.
5.
We offer the following manifestations of Romania’s pursuit of a policy of relative foreign policy independence believing that as a whole they illustrate that this independence has been in our own interest and in the overall Western interest and that we should continue to encourage it.
(A)
Romania, though a member of the Warsaw Pact, does not allow its troops to participate in maneuvers in other countries nor other Pact forces to enter its own territory.
(B)
Romania refused to increase its defense expenditures in November of 1978 when the Soviets urged all Pact members to do so. Since then it has publicly reduced arms expenditures.
(C)
Romania has taken a relatively even-handed stance toward the INF issue, outlining both the American and Soviet positions and urging successful negotiations.
(D)
Romania, unlike other Warsaw Pact states, never attacks American motivations on foreign policy questions. When it does criticize us, as in the case of the Polish sanctions, it addresses itself to our actions, but not to our basic attitude.
(E)
Romania has made it plain that were there a Warsaw Pact intervention in Poland, it would not participate, just as it did not join in the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia.
(F)
Romania is the only communist nation which has diplomatic and trade ties with Israel. It has played a useful role in the Middle East diplomatically (easing the Sadat-Begin rapprochement) and in other ways (facilitating the Shah’s oil shipments to Israel.)
(G)
Romania refused to go along with the Soviet effort to gain unanimous support for an anti-American declaration on Cuba at a November 1981 Moscow conference of secretaries of ruling communist parties.
(H)
Romania has refused to recognize the Vietnamese installed regime in Phnom Penh and has generally frustrated Soviet efforts to gain greater acceptance of that entity, even within the Warsaw Pact and CEMA.
(I)
Romania, unlike the other members of the Warsaw Pact, has excellent relations with the People’s Republic of China.
(J)
Romania has made a serious long-term effort to increase its participation in the world economy and to avoid dependence on the Soviets and the rest of CEMA.
Witness:
—
Romania has over one billion dollars a year in bilateral trade with the U.S.;
—
Romania participates in the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT;
—
Romania broke ranks with the rest of CEMA and entered into a bilateral agreement with the EEC;
—
Romania in 1975 was the first CEMA country to sign a trade agreement with the U.S.;
—
Romania has over 50 percent of its trade with the West and the developing world and the amount is increasing;
—
Since 1972 Romania has qualified under the general system of tariff preferences (GSP) granted by the U.S. and other Western countries to the developing world;
(K)
Romania was the only Warsaw Pact state which refused to support the Soviet position on the UNGA resolutions on Afghanistan.
(L)
Romania is the only Warsaw Pact country to maintain that international discussion of its human rights practices is legitimate and, in fact, to engage in a human rights roundtable with the U.S.
(M)
Romania was the only Warsaw Pact nation to criticize the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea.
(N)
We have constructed with the Romanians a network of political, commercial, cultural, and scientific ties which have operated to our benefit and which may, in time, cause some opening up on the part of the regime. In the meantime, we have been able to carry out a significant refugee program and make representations, often successfully, on behalf of individual dissidents.

In sum, Romania is a nation which, while maintaining its own orthodox communist regime and ever mindful of the fact that geography has made it a neighbor of the Soviet Union, has sought to assert its independence. It has done so economically as well as politically. It is in our interest to do what we can in a carefully considered and pragmatic way, to encourage this effort. How we behave toward Romania now will not just be noted by its present rulers, but by their successors and those who may in time lead the other states of Eastern Europe. Showing that such a policy of independence will elicit a positive response from the chief power of the West is in our strategic and political interest as well as in our economic interest.

Funderburk
  1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC Country File, Europe and Soviet Union, Romania (02/01/1982–02/14/1982). Confidential; Exdis.↩
  2. See Document 89.↩