was that support for the Western intervention was the only reasonable course of action for an
emerging liberal democracy.
In justifying their unqualified support for NATO intervention in parliament, Romanian
decision makers framed their response precisely in the terms of value-based confrontation depicted
in the Western discourse.
When the Romanian leaders explained in parliament why they wanted
to grant NATO unrestricted access to the Romanian airspace, and do so for an unlimited period
time, they pointed out that, “the Kosovo crisis represents a conflict between democracy and
barbarism. Failure to cooperate with NATO might lead the West to place us in the camp of non-
civilized people, for only they would not be opposed to what Milosevic is doing to Kosovar
Albanians.”
Both their official discourse and the more confidential statements indicate that in that
instance Romania decision makers adopted the logic of appropriate action: it was inconceivable for
a country that claimed to be a modern democracy to do anything other than support the allied efforts
to protect Kosovars.
As it was becoming increasingly clear that the Romanian government and pro-West societal
actors were encountering significant domestic opposition, allied officials stepped in to help them.
NATO representatives resorted to a strategy of shaming the critics of war, by presenting opposition
to the Kosovo campaign as an indication of support of “barbarity.” For instance, Prime Minister
Tony Blair pointed out in his address to the Romanian Parliament on 4 May 1999 that the only
appropriate course of action for an emerging democracy was to take a firm stand against the actions
of the Milosevic regime. In his words, "This is a test for countries like Romania, on the front-line…
this is a time for democracies, old and new, to stand up and be counted.”
officials sought to project the image of a link between compliance with NATO’s expectations and
instrumental rewards. Thus, in that same speech to the Romanian Parliament, Tony Blair promised
that the U.K. would support the start of the accession dialogues between the EU and Bucharest.
A critic might argue that NATO’s pedagogic practices reflect no more than a case of
instrumental learning on the basis of pregiven identity: Czech and Romanian proreform elites had
decided they wanted to build liberalism, so it was a sensible thing for them to learn how to be “good
liberals” from the institutions of the Western world.
But this argument tends to misrepresent the
dynamics of the process of learning that was involved in this case, the competition between
different interpretations of the correct model of democracy, and the role of identity-based trust and
100
Author’s interviews with senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 7 April 2000, Bucharest.
101
Gousseff 2002, 12.
102
Speech by liberal deputy minister for foreign affairs, 22 April 1999, Bucharest; printed in Adevarul, 23 April 1999.
103
Author’s interview with senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 7 April 2000, Bucharest.
104
Romania Libera, 5 May 1999, 7.
105
Ibid.
106
See Zuern 2005.
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Convention