Greater Romania Emerges From Stalingrad’s Ashes, by Declan Hayes
Dreams of Greater Romania, of România Mare are for idlers, not for the peoples trying to live their lives in peace by the waters of the Don, the Dniester and the Danube
As NATO’s Ukrainian campaign rumbles on, the specter of Greater Romania, România Mare, once more haunts Transylvania, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Banat, Crișana, Maramureș and, of course, Moldova where NATO’s agents, along with their Irish flunkeys, have been particularly active.
If Romania’s irredentists have their way, then Ukraine will cede northern Bukovina, and Moldova will surrender Bessarabia and send its Russian speakers fleeing eastwards towards Odessa, which Romania’s 4th Army besieged in 1941 before making their way with their Wehrmacht chums to a little town on the Volga called Stalingrad. Egged on by Hitler, who needed to secure Romania’s oil fields, the 4th Army’s advance through Transnistria met only token resistance before laying siege to Odessa in what can only be described as an utter shambles.
If history only repeats itself as farce, one wonders what now lies in store for Greater Romania, which has territorial claims on Moldava, Ukraine and Hungary, all of whom have also their own Greater Moldova/Hungary/Ukraine territorial claims. If Ukraine is our metric, we can expect Romania to be again bled dry as NATO continues to encourage it to join Ukraine in biting at Russia’s heels. Romania simply cannot afford this NATO induced nonsense. As the German economy tanks, so also will Romanian exports to Germany, Romania’s largest trading partner and, though largely self sufficient in food and gas, Romania does not have the financial reserves for further meddling in NATO’s Ukrainian quagmire.
Far better to take a leaf out of Hungary’s playbook and paddle their own canoe rather than continue to subsidize the American and German arms’ industries. If the Anglo Americans and their German flunkeys want to row with Russia in Ukraine, Romania should leave them at it and stay out of it as they have been down that road to no good end before.
In so much as România Mare is one of history’s casualties, the fault lies wiith the Versailles Treaty which deliberately destroyed the peace and tranquility of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and not with all the victims of that ignominious treaty.
Romania is a land rich in resources and, like nearby Moldova, historically abundant in corrupt leaders. If Moldova is to merge with Romania into a modern România Mare, then let the people of those regions and not, as in Ukraine, their corrupt leaders, propose to each other and sign the wedding vows; let the peoples of Romania and Moldova be captains of their own ships. If, as is likely, NATO is encouraging România Mare to make the same sorts of problems in Transnistria for the Russian forces stationed there as Hitler wanted Romania’s 4th Army to cause for the Soviets in Odessa and Stalingrad, then Romanians best watch out as it cannot end well.
But Romanians need not go back that far. They only have to look over the fence into Ukraine to see how Kiev’s intermarium fantasies have fared in towns like Mariupol where its most fervent adherents were fed into the same sort of meat grinder that previously chewed up the Romanian 4th Army in Odessa and Stalingrad.
And, if there is to be a wedding, one wonders, as with Galicia and Poland, what the dowry will be. Moldova is Europe’s poorest country; it is not only totally dependent on Russia for all its energy needs but inflation is out of control. Although the EU is throwing Moldova’s corrupt leaders a few crumbs, some 600 million euros in empty pledges to feed the 500,000 Ukrainians, a miserly 1200€ a piece, who have taken refuge there, Moldova, with or without EU membership, will be a basket case for decades to come.
Should the Russian Armed Forces press on to Odessa and thence to Transnistria, then those areas, which are overwhelmingly pro Russian, would be at peace and would most likely prosper. Moldova, in contrast, would retain its wine industry, its human trafficking, its massive emigration and its empty dreams of EU salvation.
American war hawk Robert D Kaplan sees matters differently. Writing in Jeff Bezos’ controversial Washington Post, he tells us how NATO has turned Romania into a modern day paradise, marred only by the presence of Russians in Transnistria, Eastern Ukraine and even in Russia itself, which is much too near to Romania for Kaplan’s liking. Kaplan is simply a case of the NATO fool not knowing that the NATO fool knows not. As NATO’s shock and awe terror tactics have never solved any problem, they have nothing positive to contribute to Ukraine, Romania and environs, which have defied the solutions of the great and the good for over a century and which will not be solved by roving American war hawks working for the media outlets of the world’s richest oligarch embedded in NATO’s Washington nerve center. The solution, as ever is in dialogue, in the mainland European parties to these disputes sitting down and solving their problems in their own interests and not in the interests of the Anglo American war hawks, their oligarchs or the war peddling scribes employed by them.
Dreams of Greater Romania, of România Mare are for idlers, not for the peoples trying to live their lives in peace by the waters of the Don, the Dniester and the Danube free from the intrigues of Kaplan, Bezos and the Potomac’s other selfish schemers.
Source: Strategic Culture