It has been more than thirty years since the Romanian Revolution of 1989 brought the army into the streets. Thankfully, it now poses no danger to democratic governance and is not threatening to seize political power. But after almost twenty years of NATO membership, defense planning and procurement still occurs with limited civilian oversight. And this has persisted without drawing much notice from academics working on civil-military relations.[1] Conceptually speaking, almost all analysis here can be thought of as addressing some species of the principal-agent problems that arise from misalignment between the interests of the civilian government (the principal) and the military that acts on its behalf (the agent). But it can also be categorized by the type of regime in question. For authoritarian governments and emerging democracies, most work is essentially focused on coups and fundamental questions about civilian control of state violence; in consolidated democracies, attention shifts to decisions about the use of force abroad.[2] Romania is a consolidated democracy, the army stays in its barracks and shows no sign of leaving, and its limited resources and EU membership make it highly unlikely to unilaterally deploy force beyond its borders, so analysts give it little attention. This is a mistake.
In this article, I draw on interviews with current and former officials, officers, and civilian experts to illustrate the civil-military challenge Romania faces. Specifically, I argue that a combination of political consensus, institutional design, and a dearth of civilian expertise allow the military to operate with little meaningful oversight, and that ignoring cases like Romania’s creates important blind spots for policymakers. To conclude, I suggest that the U.S. should adjust the security assistance programs it offers to allies and partners to cultivate robust civilian expertise that is independent of existing military structures and capable of executing effective oversight.
Romanian Palace of Parliament (Romania Journal)
On the Ground in Bucharest
In 2015, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and representatives of all major parliamentary parties signed a pledge to increase defense spending to two percent of GDP starting in 2017, and to keep spending at this level for at least ten years.[3] Working from the certainty this provided, the Ministry of National Defense (MApN) developed a ten-year investment plan covering force modernization efforts through to 2026.[4] In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iohannis pledged to allocate 2.5 percent of GDP to defense spending, and while my conversations in Bucharest did not include politicians directly, the sources I did speak with reliably suggested that defense spending levels are not a live issue in Romanian politics.[5]
But this consensus is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it ensures funding will remain available for badly-needed force modernization efforts. On the other, it means there has been no serious political debate about how that spending should be undertaken. The military is left alone to plan and implement defense acquisitions, and parliament rarely, if ever, asserts itself over the details of actual defense planning. The military zealously classifies everything, partly to stifle public debate and partly due to the ongoing influence of communist-era practices. And politicians are unable (they lack the knowledge or expertise) or unwilling (defense issues are not a priority for most Romanians) to exercise much oversight.[6]
The institutional design of Romania’s defense acquisition process also favors the military’s decision-making autonomy. This begins with the way planning and acquisition choices are sequenced. Requirements are translated into acquisition programs entirely behind closed doors, and internally to the Ministry of National Defense (Ministerul Apărării Naționale or MApN). With no real public debate, defense staffers execute market studies, evaluate alternatives, and ultimately decide on program specifications and an acquisition strategy. Here, Romanian procurement law exempts government-to-government deals (a category which includes all Foreign Military Sales transactions with the U.S.) from full public tenders, so when the military fears an open procurement may yield an outcome it prefers to avoid, it has the discretion to launch a government-to-government process instead, to ensure it gets exactly what it wants.[7]
Romanian Ministry of National Defense (Wikimedia)
Furthermore, only large-scale programs—defined as those valued at more than €100M—require parliamentary approval, but even when parliament is required to weigh in, the Ministry of National Defense decides what they see. I was told at least once that the military prefers to be less than forthcoming about systems’ total expected life-cycle costs, to avoid spooking politicians with an even larger up-front price tag.[8] And for programs valued at less than €100M, there is no explicit need to secure parliamentary approval at all.[9]
Finally, Romania suffers from limited expertise on defense issues in the non-military government bureaucracy, and especially in formats that are independent of the military. The government's main defense think tank, Institutul pentru Studii Politice de Apărare și Istorie Militară (ISPAIM), is subordinated to the Ministry of National Defense. And while the defense college is ostensibly there to train civilian government staff so they can conduct effective oversight, the reality is that the military ends up training the civilians to think like they do.[10]
The Ministry of National Defense also has a direct presence throughout key elements of the Romanian state bureaucracy. One former senior Air Force officer indicated that the defense ministry has its own coordination offices embedded in key national security ministries, e.g. foreign affairs, finance, and economy. If he needed something from the Ministry of Finance, he could call and be sure to reach another military officer.[11]
Some of this is inevitable. The line between “expert who knows how things work on the inside” and “insider with major conflicts of interest” is blurry in the best circumstances, and liaison offices to smooth cooperation across areas of different functional expertise make sense. But even assuming no ill-intent, it is easy to see how the end result is a defense establishment that is essentially being asked to self-regulate.
Ultimately, the cross-party consensus on defense issues, the military’s ability to exploit the institutional arrangements that govern defense policymaking, and the lack of technical civilian defense expertise in non-military organizations have created an environment in which military decision makers are able to design, execute, and implement defense programs in relative isolation, without political input or robust public debate.[12] These programs are then presented to parliament for up-down votes in which the strength of the cross-party consensus on defense issues, and politicians’ reluctance to be seen as denying the military necessary resources, means they are essentially always approved. The result is that American-style defense politics (like legislative committee hearings, politicians writing letters to demand answers from service chiefs, Congress forcing the Air Force to keep the A-10 in service or the Navy to buy more F/A-18s) are essentially non-existent.
Implications for Research & Policy
The Romanian experience holds lessons for researchers and policymakers. They need to pursue more detailed cross-national case studies. By traditional metrics, Romania does not raise civil-military red flags, and it sits in a blind spot for typical academic approaches to the subject. Still, there is ample evidence that its defense acquisition policy lacks robust civilian oversight. But to identify this kind of shortcoming, researchers must look under the hood and trace actual policy processes, map out granular institutional structures, and evaluate how civilian control is exercised on a day-to-day basis, even when questions about the use of force or high-level political stability are not in play. At the policy level, it suggests that American policymakers should not understand supporting defense reform in NATO allies as a purely military-to-military exercise. Rather, the U.S. needs to engage NATO allies in Eastern Europe, like Romania, in the political and social aspects of policymaking, to help foster a new generation of staffers and bureaucrats with the technical expertise necessary to effectively manage defense acquisitions.
To address this, U.S. policymakers could consider a range of options, all of which would be designed to build human capital outside of military institutions, to strengthen civilian and political oversight capabilities. In-country advisory missions could embed technical advisors within allied ministries of defense and focus on training civilian and political staff. It may also be valuable to expand pathways for promising defense and foreign policy professionals abroad to study at American professional military education institutions. By focusing on non-military students, these programs could help cultivate a community of expertise in allies overseas that is better-positioned to execute an oversight function. Finally, the U.S. could consider developing opportunities for foreign non-military staff to embed with Department of Defense or Congressional structures to gain firsthand experience with acquisition planning and political oversight. These opportunities could be modeled on existing congressional fellowship programs which fund opportunities for staff from non-profits and other outside organizations to work directly on Capitol Hill in a policy capacity. Direct legislature-to-legislature working groups, designed to build capacity in defense oversight could also achieve some of the same goals.
EUCOM, Romanian defense officials discuss security cooperation in Romania and the Black Sea on October 2023. (U.S. European Command)
Conclusion
Discussions about civilian control of the military tend to generate mental images of tanks in the streets and coups d’états. Thankfully in Romania this is not a relevant fear. But a close examination of the situation on the ground underscores the need to avoid complacency in evaluating civil-military relations, even countries that are like Romania—staunch NATO allies, EU members, and consolidated democracies.
Here, a combination of political consensus, institutional structures, and limited civilian expertise has afforded the Romanian military the autonomy to execute major aspects of defense policy with little in the way of contested democratic oversight. Luckily, the outcomes this has produced so far have been positive, for Romania and for the United States. Romania is a committed member of the Euro-Atlantic community, a close U.S. ally, and of late a buyer of multiple advanced American-made platforms and systems.
But this is no reason to ignore what the Romanian experience illuminates. Analytically, it is important to capture underlying realities, even when the surface-level picture seems positive; democratically, it is important for civilian political bureaucracy to exercise real oversight over major budgetary decisions. As the war in Ukraine has made clear the necessity of strengthening NATO-member capabilities, the Romanian example can likewise illuminate the challenges that remain with East European allies and that future security assistance can be designed to address.
Eoin Lazaridis Power is a PhD candidate in political science. His dissertation focuses on defense-industrial and maritime security institutions in Europe; other research interests include international financial regulation, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and field experiments. The fieldwork referenced in this article was conducted in Romania in the summer of 2023, and funded by a State Department Title VIII Research Fellowship with the Middle East Institute’s Black Sea Program.
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Header Image: Romanian Flag (Romania-Insider.com)
Notes:
[1] Thomas-Durell Young, Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions. The Mirage of Military Modernity (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Yf Reykers and Daan Fonck, “No wings attached? Civil–military relations and agent intrusion in the procurement of fighter jets,” Cooperation and Conflict 55, no. 1 (2020): 66-85.
[2] See Risa A. Brooks, “Integrating the Civil–Military Relations Subfield,” Annual Review of Political Science 22, no. 1 (2019): 379-398 for a helpful overview.
[3] Alina Grigoras, “Pact On Increased Defense Budget Signed,” Romania Journal, January 13, 2015, https://www.romaniajournal.ro/top_news/pact-on-increased-defense-budget-signed/.
[4] George Vișan, “How to Spend on Defense: Romania’s 2 Percent Conundrum,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 14, no. 69 (2017), https://jamestown.org/program/spend-defense-romanias-2-percent-conundrum/.
[5] Cristian Andrei, “Decizii CSAT | Iohannis: Majorăm cheltuielile pentru apărare la 2.5% din PIB, România devine hub al ajutorului umanitar,” Europa Liberă România, March 1, 2022, https://romania.europalibera.org/a/decizii-csat-iohannis-cheltuielile-pentru-aparare-l2-5-din-pib/31730305.html. Independent Defense & Security Analyst. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Bucharest), Program Assistant. ISPAIM, Senior Research Analyst.
[6] ISPAIM, Senior Research Analyst. Independent Defense & Security Analyst. HotNews, Editor; in his view there is effectively no parliamentary influence on defense acquisition at all, even via informal channels.
[7] Romanian Land Forces; Chief of Structures & Armament Planning Directorate, (former). Romanian Air Force, Officer (former). MApN, Director General (former). Independent Defense & Security Analyst.
[8] Senior Military Official (former).
[9] Romanian Air Force, Officer (former). MApN, Director General (former). Independent Defense & Security Analyst.
[10] University of Bucharest, Faculty of Business and Public Administration, Professor. ISPAIM, Senior Research Analyst.
[11] MApN, Strategic Planning Directorate, Strategies & Plans Branch, Head (former).
[12] MaApN, Director General (former). Independent Defense & Security Analyst.