Romania Is Summoned by History to Write and Implement a Powerful Strategic Narrative

“After a century of expectations and promises, Romania does not need a new beginning, but a new conscience. A conscience that can turn identity into a project, patriotism into strategy, and memory into vision. This is the true renaissance.”

By Major General (Two Stars) (retd) Corneliu Pivariu

The celebration of 107 years since the founding of the unitary national state finds Romania at a moment of historical inflection[1]. In a world where the architecture of power is being reshaped under the pressure of competition among geopolitical blocs, technological transformations, and the rebalancing of the international order, Romania is compelled by history to rediscover its strategic rationale and to define—lucidly and coherently—its own national narrative, or risk remaining marginal in major decision-making.

After a century marked by survival, adaptation, and successive dependencies, Romania can no longer remain merely a passive subject of regional or global transformations. The time has come for our country to become an actor conscious of itself and of its own potential, able to express its fundamental interests through a strategic language of the present and the future. In the absence of such a strategic narrative, Romania risks diluting its identity in a multipolar context dominated by the competition of perceptions and the confrontation of narratives.

A nation’s strategic narrative is not a mere rhetorical construct, but the coherent expression of a vision regarding its historical mission. It articulates values, interests, directions, and priorities—integrating the internal dimension (identity, culture, institutions) with the external one (regional, European, and global). Without such a synthesis, public policies remain fragmentary, diplomatic responses ad-hoc, and the external perception of Romania—ambiguous.

Today, Romania faces a dual challenge: to consolidate its sovereignty within major alliances while at the same time asserting itself as a factor of balance and stability at the intersection of three zones of tension—Euro-Atlantic, Eurasian, and Mediterranean. In an era of competing narratives, a nation that does not tell its own story risks becoming a secondary character in someone else’s.

Therefore, 107 years after 1918, Romania needs not another proclamation of the ideal of unity, but a strategic renaissance: a modernized national conscience that converts the experience of history into geopolitical vision and the aspiration to dignity into capacity for action. Only through an authentic strategic narrative—coherent, realistic, and future-oriented—can Romania regain the status of an actor with relevance and vocation in the regional and global architecture of the 21st century[2]. It remains to be seen whether today’s Romanian political class is concerned with this, understands the historical moment, and the responsibility that falls to it.

The Global Context and the Pressure to Redefine the Nation

In recent years, the world has entered an accelerated phase of strategic reconfiguration. The failure of the post-1990 globalist paradigm, the rise of alternative centers of power, and the fracturing of Western consensus regarding the international order have generated unprecedented competition among development models, values, and forms of political legitimacy. Emerging multipolarity is no longer a hypothesis but a reality that obliges every state to redefine its position and role in the global system.

For Romania, this transition from a unipolar world to a pluricentric one is not only an external challenge but an internal one as well. The country sits at the intersection of three major geopolitical zones—the NATO eastern flank, the wider Black Sea neighborhood, and the eastern frontier of the European Union—becoming increasingly a contact space between divergent interests, and also a potential pivot of regional stability.

The successive crises of the last decade—pandemic, the war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, energy fragmentation, and digital transformations—have shown that states lacking a coherent vision and their own strategic narrative are condemned to reaction, not projection. At the same time, they have demonstrated that political survival and economic prosperity today depend more than ever on a state’s capacity to generate trust, meaning, and direction.

In this context, Romania is constrained by objective realities to rethink its development model, its approach to the alliances it belongs to, and especially the mechanisms through which it projects influence in the region. Remaining solely within the paradigm of “strategic partnerships” without an internally articulated national strategic project amounts to relinquishing one’s own voice in the concert of great powers.

National redefinition does not mean a return to isolationism, but the lucid assumption of a distinctive strategic identity—one that combines Euro-Atlantic belonging with the Romanian civilizational specific, the historical experience of surviving between empires with the modern potential of a creative nation. Romania has the unique opportunity to transform its frontier geography into a geopolitical advantage, provided it clearly formulates its interests and builds a narrative capable of sustaining and legitimizing them in the international arena.

Identity, Memory, and Vision: Foundations of a Romanian Strategic Narrative

Every state that aspires to lasting geopolitical relevance grounds its action on three interdependent pillars: identity, memory, and vision. Identity provides internal coherence, memory confers historical legitimacy, and vision projects the direction of the future. In Romania’s case, the weakening of these pillars after 1990 led to a period of strategic indecision, in which belonging to international structures temporarily substituted for the formulation of a national doctrine of its own.

The Romanian identity, rooted in a Latin, Byzantine, and Carpathian confluence, is by its very nature one of synthesis and balance. This identity allowed Romania, over the centuries, to survive between empires and to integrate diverse influences without losing internal coherence. In a fragmented world, this kind of identity can become a strategic resource—a model of cultural and political resilience capable of inspiring stability in a turbulent regional environment.

Romania’s historical memory is, however, ambivalent. On the one hand, it fuels the sense of continuity and legitimacy of the national state. On the other hand, the absence of a lucid assumption of one’s own failures—from periods of economic and geopolitical dependence to internal societal fractures—has led to a form of collective mental and operational blockage. Without strategic reflection on the past, the nation risks repeating errors in new guises.

Vision, as the prospective dimension, presupposes the capacity to transform potential into project. Romania needs a vision that correlates its real resources—geographical, energy, human, and cultural—with a clear direction within the new multipolar order. This vision cannot be imposed from outside nor reduced to mere programmatic documents. It must be the expression of a renewed national conscience that recognizes power no longer derives only from military or economic strength, but also from the ability to generate meaning and build credible narratives.

An authentic Romanian strategic narrative must therefore unite these three dimensions in a coherent formula: identity as a moral and symbolic foundation, memory as a lesson and source of wisdom, and vision as an instrument of geopolitical projection. Only through this synthesis can Romania move from mere reaction to strategic action, from imitating external models to asserting its own paradigm. And without balance among these dimensions—between what we have been, what we are, and what we wish to become—the nation risks losing coherence of meaning.

Romania between Belonging and Autonomy: The Dilemma of Strategic Sovereignty

In the 21st century, sovereignty can no longer be understood only in the classical sense—as the absolute independence of political decision—but as the capacity to choose knowingly, to define national priorities within major alliances, and to maintain control over one’s essential processes: economic, informational, energy, and cultural[3].

Through its membership in NATO and the European Union, Romania has made an irreversible strategic choice, anchoring itself in the Western value and institutional space. Yet this belonging does not exempt the Romanian state from the responsibility to formulate its own coherent vision of the national interest, articulated in relation to regional realities. Absent this autonomy of strategic thought, participation risks turning into mere conformity.

True sovereignty does not consist in shunning partners, but in intelligently managing interdependencies. The countries that manage to impose their profile within alliances are not those that refuse cooperation, but those that condition it on their own priorities. Poland, Turkey, or Hungary offer different examples of exercising such selective autonomy, each with its own risks and benefits. Romania, by contrast, has often remained in a zone of strategic ambiguity—prudent to the point of passivity, institutionally integrated yet conceptually hesitant.

Romania’s dilemma is therefore one of calibrating sovereignty. On the one hand, the regional context—the war in Ukraine, energy pressures, economic volatility, and the dynamics of spheres of influence—imposes solidarity with Western allies. On the other hand, long-term national interests—food, industrial, demographic[4], and informational security—require a more nuanced approach and strategically autonomous management.

Strategic sovereignty involves not only protecting territory and institutions but also projecting a national meaning into the world. To be sovereign means, in essence, to have a distinct voice within a chorus of consensuses—to contribute to collective decisions without dissolving one’s own identity. Romania today has every premise to assert this intelligent sovereignty: its geographic position, its membership in solid security structures, its natural resources, and the cultural capital of a nation that has learned to survive through adaptation.

But the time for mere adaptations has passed. In a world undergoing accelerated rebalancing, Romania must become the subject of its own history, not merely the object of others’ histories. Defining and asserting a coherent strategic narrative is the first step toward regaining this sovereignty—not through isolation, but by lucidly assuming the role of a responsible and visionary actor in a changing world order.

Directions for Action and Elements of a Romanian Strategic Narrative

An authentic strategic narrative is not drafted in administrative laboratories; it is built through the convergence of strategic thinking, political will, and the responsible participation of society. Romania possesses significant resources—geographical, energy, human, cultural, and symbolic—but these must be correlated within a coherent project capable of expressing who we are, what we want, and where we are heading.

1. Political and institutional dimension
The first step is to clarify the state’s fundamental interests and articulate a national strategic doctrine that transcends electoral cycles and decision-making fragmentation. A minimal consensus among the main political forces is needed regarding the major directions of development—from security and education to energy and digitalization. Such a consensus does not nullify pluralism; it turns it into constructive competition around a common project: the Romania of the future.

2. Economic and technological dimension
Romania’s economy must move beyond the paradigm of consumption-led dependency and rebuild its own value chains anchored in strategic industries and innovation. The development of infrastructure, the defense industry, energy production, and sustainable agriculture can become the core of a sovereign economic model based on relative autonomy and managed interdependencies. In the 21st century, economic competitiveness equates to national security.

3. Cultural and educational dimension
Without a solid strategic culture, no state can project coherence over time. Romania needs an educational renaissance that forms generations capable of critical thinking, creation, and innovation—not merely reproducing imported models. Promoting culture, the Romanian language, and national values internationally must be regarded as instruments of power (soft power), not as a secondary public-policy domain.

4. Diplomatic and security dimension
Romania should rediscover its role as a bridge between worlds—between East and West, North and South, Europe and the Middle East. Romanian diplomacy has a vocation for balance, but it needs the courage of clarity. In today’s multipolar context, our country can become a vector of regional stability and a promoter of strategic dialogue, provided it sets clear objectives and coordinates its instruments of influence.

The armed forces and intelligence services are pillars of national security and external credibility[5]. Romania is already an active security provider within NATO and its strategic partnerships, but this status must be consolidated through steady investment in defense capabilities, the modernization of the national industry, and more effective integration of the intelligence component into decision-making. Only through real synergy among diplomacy, defense, and intelligence can Romania strengthen its profile as a respected and indispensable actor in the security architecture of Southeastern Europe. Military and diplomatic strength cannot substitute for internal cohesion—they must rest on citizens’ trust and societal resilience.

5. Societal dimension and public trust
No strategic narrative is credible unless it is internalized by citizens. Restoring trust between state and society is the foundation of any durable national project. Romania needs a new social contract built on mutual respect, transparency, and participation. A society that understands its direction becomes, in itself, a geopolitical force.

In sum, a Romanian strategic narrative must blend analytical lucidity with moral inspiration, tradition with innovation, belonging with autonomy. This is not about reinventing an ideology, but about formulating an integrative vision through which Romania can reclaim its natural place in a world undergoing rebalancing.

This vision can be defined by the concept “Carpathian Renaissance — Romania’s Strategic Narrative,” which expresses not only the recovery of a state but the revitalization of a civilizational space.

“Carpathian Renaissance” symbolizes reconnecting Romania to its own sources of strength—geographical, spiritual, and moral—and rebuilding internal coherence as the foundation of external projection. In this paradigm, the Carpathians become the metaphor of the nation’s backbone, the place where identity turns into strategy and memory into vision.

Through this narrative, Romania is not defined in relation to others, but by rediscovering its own geopolitical vocation: to be a center of balance and convergence in Central and Eastern Europe, a bridge of stability between the great zones of influence that meet at its borders.

“Carpathian Renaissance” is, in essence, the project of a conscious, sovereign, and visionary Romania—capable of transforming the experience of history into national strategy and its geographic position into geopolitical advantage.

Only through such a narrative can Romania move from mere adaptation to strategic self-definition, from reaction to projection—becoming not only a beneficiary of its alliances but a contributor to regional and European equilibrium.

“Carpathian Renaissance” expresses the rediscovery of Romania’s strategic conscience—the transformation of national identity and memory into a project of vision, action, and dignity—through which the country reaffirms its vocation as a center of balance, stability, and convergence in Central and Eastern Europe.

The crucial — and ultimately rhetorical[6] — question is this: does the political class in power truly wish, is it capable, and will it commit itself to promoting a new strategic narrative for Romania?

More than a century after the Great Union, Romania is confronted not—first and foremost—with a territorial struggle, but with one of vision and strategic coherence. If in 1918 the priority was achieving unity, today the challenge is redefining the meaning of that unity in a fragmented world dominated by the competition of perceptions and the struggle to control narratives.

History no longer judges only the courage to fight, but the wisdom to build. Romania stands at a decision point between perpetuating inertia and assuming a destiny of its own. In an era in which power is measured by the capacity to shape meaning, a nation that fails to formulate its own story risks becoming a mere footnote in the history of others.

Romania’s strategic narrative must not be a public-relations exercise, but a project of national regeneration. It entails a resetting of priorities, a reprofessionalization of the elite, a recapturing of trust between state and citizen, and a rediscovery of Romania’s mission in the world. That mission is not limited to survival; it extends to active contribution to regional balance and to European civilization.

Romania’s strategic renaissance presupposes an alliance between memory and vision. Memory—to understand where we come from and what sacrifices brought us here. Vision—to know where we are heading and how we can turn potential into durable reality. From this synthesis can be born a new kind of patriotism—lucid, creative, and responsible—capable of turning values into policy and ideals into projects.

In this equation of renaissance, the Republic of Moldova is not merely a matter of foreign policy, but a living part of Romanian national identity. Its future is organically linked to Romania’s—not only through language, culture, and history, but also through geopolitical destiny. Supporting Chișinău’s European path, consolidating institutional, economic, and cultural ties, and continuing to build a Romanian-Moldovan strategic community are not options but a historical duty.

Romania is therefore at a crossroads: either it remains captive to a peripheral role, dependent on others’ decisions, or it becomes an actor with a voice of its own—a state that knows how to think strategically and act consistently. The choice does not belong only to governments, but to the entire nation—to every conscience that understands the future is not inherited, but built. Let us therefore not look only to the political class, but each of us become as active a contributor as possible to building Romania’s future. The examples of the past and the reality of the present oblige us to this.

One hundred and seven years after the forging of the unified national state, Romania should feel, deep within its destiny, that reality is summoning it to begin a new chapter—one born of a convergence of visions and a spiritual and strategic re-binding of all Romanian lands. Such a renewed consciousness, able to transmute identity into purpose, patriotism into strategy, and memory into vision, is the true rebirth of a nation that must rediscover its voice and its meaning in a world that no longer pardons silence.

This is, in essence, the “Carpathian Renaissance”—the moment when Romania rediscovers its strategic conscience and turns memory into vision, patriotism into strategy, and identity into project.

NOTICE: I confirm that this article was conceived, structured, and finalized by the author. AI-based tools (such as text assistants) were used solely to support routine tasks — including preliminary drafting, linguistic refinement, and organizational clarity — without generating independent content, interpretations, data, or bibliographic references. All factual information, sources, and analytical judgments were independently verified and validated by the author. The responsibility for the final version of the manuscript, including its accuracy, originality, and integrity, rests entirely with the author.

Brașov, 29 November 2025

[1] “Those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it,” said George Santayana in The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905–1906)—an expression quoted and paraphrased over time by numerous leaders, including Winston Churchill.
It is precisely for this reason that, in a period when our current decision-makers increasingly seek to minimize the role and place of history in the educational process, I recall briefly: during the First World War (1916–1919), Romania suffered human losses estimated at about 800,000 people, of which approximately 335,000 were military deaths. Material damages exceeded 30 billion gold lei (the equivalent of about 10–11 billion USD at today’s rate), including the destruction of industrial, railway, and agricultural infrastructure in the occupied territories.
Romania’s Treasury, sent to Moscow and never returned, is valued at an estimated 16 billion USD today (of which about 12 billion USD represents 93.4 tons of gold).
Nevertheless, the sacrifice made possible the fulfillment of the Great Union ideal of 1918, through which the Romanian national state was completed.
After 1918, two essential moments marked Romania’s modern history:
– The Second World War, in which Romania lost about 800,000 people—military and civilian—and was compelled by the Paris Peace Treaty to pay 300 million USD in war reparations to the USSR (a sum fully paid by 1952, though estimates suggest the total amounted to nearly 2 billion USD). Material destruction is estimated at approximately 460–600 billion USD at today’s value. Romania also lost its historical territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina. At the end of the war, the country fell into the sphere of influence of the then USSR—with the consent, it must be said and reiterated, of Moscow’s wartime allies.
– The second major moment was the events of December 1989, when, following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist Party, Romania returned to the path of a democratic society and market economy. During nearly 50 years of communist dictatorship, several hundred thousand Romanians lost their lives (the exact number is difficult to quantify)—a large part of the intellectual elite, valuable politicians, and generals who could not survive a regime of terror imposed through 41 prisons, 72 forced labor camps, and 63 deportation centers.

[2] In the last 35 years, various national programs have been made public, many of them intended to unite society as a whole. However, only the Snagov Pact (June 21, 1995) represented the sole national political agreement signed by all parliamentary parties in Romania, under the aegis of President Ion Iliescu, which consecrated the consensus on the strategic objective of European integration. The document — The Snagov Declaration on the National Strategy for Preparing Romania’s Accession to the European Union — constituted the first and (so far, one hopes not the last) example, after 1989, of cross-party unity around a project of national interest.
Why, then, is today’s Romanian political class unable to demonstrate that it is capable of a new consensus?

[3] Unfortunately, it is precisely in these areas — economic, energy, and informational — that Romania has yielded an excessive degree of control to foreign entities. The country faces a systemic dependency on the European Union and the United States, with strategic vulnerabilities in energy, technology, and finance. In agriculture, Romania does not suffer from a lack of resources, but from a lack of control over its own food chain — from seed to shelf.
The only sectors where partial autonomy is still preserved are natural resources (gas, agriculture) and logistical potential (Corridor IV, the Black Sea).

[4] According to Eurostat (2025) and the National Institute of Statistics, Romania’s population has declined from 22.8 million inhabitants in 1990 to 18.9 million in 2025, representing a net loss of more than 4 million people. The fertility rate stands at 1.6 children per woman — far below the demographic replacement threshold of 2.1 — while over 22% of the population is aged above 65. Approximately 5 million Romanian citizens live and work abroad, mainly in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom, most of them of working age.
United Nations estimates (World Population Prospects, 2024 revision) anticipate that, unless the trend reverses, Romania’s population could fall below 16 million by 2050, with major structural effects on the labor market, social sustainability, and national security.

[5] It is worth emphasizing that the new National Defense Strategy of Romania 2025–2030 was presented to the public by the President only on November 12, approved by the Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT) on November 24, and subsequently adopted by Parliament on November 26. The White Paper on Defense is still in the process of being updated by the Government.
Until their full implementation, Romania continues to operate strategically on the basis of documents prepared for the 2020–2024 period, even though the security environment has changed profoundly since 2022. Under these conditions, a growing gap can be observed between declarative planning and the real capacity for implementation. Despite the increase of the defense budget above the 2% of GDP threshold, external technological dependence, the vulnerability of the national defense industry, and institutional fragmentation continue to limit the country’s strategic autonomy. Romania therefore remains a provider of security through participation, but still insufficiently through its own initiative.

[6] The most recent national polls indicate an extremely low level of public trust in the political system. From an analytical perspective, based on INSCOP and IPSOS data, it is reasonable to estimate that only about one quarter of Romanians still trust the central political institutions, while confidence in the “political class” as a whole is likely even lower — around 15–20%. In parallel, between two thirds and 70% of citizens believe that Romania is heading in the wrong direction, according to INSCOP and CURS surveys conducted in the autumn of 2025. Taken together, these figures point to a prolonged crisis of democratic legitimacy and institutional performance.

According to the “Democracy Index 2024” published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Romania ranks 72nd globally and is classified as a “hybrid regime” (the only EU member state in this category). The country is immediately preceded by the Republic of Moldova (71st) and followed by Papua New Guinea (73rd). The report marks a deterioration compared to 2023, when Romania was positioned around 60th. The shift into the hybrid-regime category reflects a weakening of government functioning, an erosion of political culture, and a noticeable decline in civil liberties.