The following conversation was recorded on October 2, 2025, and has been edited for clarity. You can listen to the conversation here.

 

Natalia Kopytnik: I would like to welcome our guest today, Dr. Antonia Colibasanu. Antonia is a senior geopolitical analyst at Geopolitical Futures. She is also an associate professor at the Romanian National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, as well as a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Antonia, thank you so much for joining us today on The Ties That Bind.

Antonia Colibasanu: Thank you very much for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

NK: I wanted to set the scene here about the Black Sea region as a whole. In recent years, it really seems like there’s been a shift in both Washington, DC, and Brussels, and a refocus on the Black Sea region. Now, the obvious reason why is, of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But it seems that Romania was really pushing for stronger US involvement, stronger NATO presence in the Black Sea region for quite some time, predating the 2022 invasion. So, generally speaking, what, in your view, is Romania’s vision for Black Sea security? And what role does it really want to see NATO or the US or both play in this region?

AC: Well, it is true that Romania has advocated for an increased NATO presence in the Black Sea. And that is because the Black Sea is different from the rest of the seas surrounding Europe, which means that it is a geopolitical node. It is where everything comes together and everything falls apart at the same time. What do I mean by that? In peacetime, it’s a wonderful place for trade and investment. It’s the place where Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Balkans are all interested in cooperating.

When it comes to war and conflict, that is when we are very much separate. And you see the influences from the Middle East, from Eurasia, from the plateau of Eurasia—which is the Eurasian mass and from Europe.

And the Black Sea obviously only hosts three NATO member states, which makes it difficult for NATO, especially since the Black Sea is a closed sea. What do I mean by that? You don’t have a body of international waters and the sea itself is warded by one NATO member, which is Turkey.

Turkey is a very powerful nation and state when it comes to military power in NATO at the Black Sea, which means that it dominates the sea. And at the same time, it means that it will always balance its role between what it does in the Black Sea, what it does in the Middle East, and what it does in the Mediterranean. This is why Romania was advocating for more NATO presence and in truth was advocating for more US and Western Allies’ presence in the Black Sea. That’s pretty much what Romania is doing right now.

It also is trying to upgrade itself as a NATO member in terms of being a logistically important hub for the Black Sea and for the future Ukrainian reconstruction, helping Ukraine in any way it can, considering the closeness because we border Russia directly on sea. But we are also bordering a very important conflict zone on the southern coast of Ukraine, which is the Danube, which is very close to Odessa, a place that we know is under attack almost daily right now by Russia.

So, growing infrastructure that can be used for commercial reasons, but also for military reasons to increase posture in the Black Sea region, but at the same time making sure that it maintains close cooperation with Bulgaria and Turkey, and making sure it attracts Western Europeans into the area by building bridges in the metaphorical sense and building infrastructure in the very pure sense of the word.

NK: So you mentioned a few things, and I think it’s fair to say that for American audiences, the Black Sea can often feel like a very far off body of water. It comes up in the news occasionally. Probably Turkey’s role on the Black Sea is much more well known because, as you said, Turkey essentially has the right to say who does get to go into the Black Sea, who does not go into the Black Sea because of the Montreux Convention.

And so if Turkey is the gatekeeper of the Black Sea, what is Romania’s role? And in your view, what are the areas that Romania has been most critical, I guess, in supporting Ukraine on the Black Sea during this war?

AC: I would say that the most important element of help that we provided was making sure that Ukraine has a line to the world to send its grains in particular, but also other exports to the world, maintaining the food supply chains in the very first years of the war, and then basically allowing for a line of contact between Ukraine and the Mediterranean to be established through our territorial waters and the Bulgarian territorial waters. The other thing that Romania has done is focusing on growing the importance of the Danube, and that is also an effort that was sustained by the European Union.

Romania understands the US message in the sense that Europeans need to have a bigger role in their own defense and security. This is one thing that Romania was very much focused on by actually going and lobbying for an EU Black Sea Strategy for the European Union to be involved in the Black Sea, while at the same time maintaining contact with strategic partners, the US being the most important one, and basically allowing for the US to have more of a footprint in Kogălniceanu, which is a US base. [It helped] Ukraine through that base, but also through other training sites that we built and we restructured to address the Ukrainian needs, the military needs.

At the same time, making sure that we are in close contact with the US when it comes to defending the line and defending the territorial waters, because it is there where we have a direct interest and common interest with the US: maintaining the open and free seas, which is basically allowing for trade to flow from one point to another.

This is where Romania has looked at what exactly do we see when it comes to security threats for international shipping and for investment that pertains to economic zones and economic exclusive zones.

We have in our economic exclusive zone, for instance, a project that refers directly to European energy security. So if we have the resources online in 2027 as we would like to then we would be a direct competitor for Russia in Southeastern Europe. And we understand that that would increase the security risks for us because obviously Russia is not going to be happy about having a competitor close to its own borders and potentially cutting down contracts that it already had with the Southeastern European countries.

So, all that is basically where Romania has understood to build itself up and build its role in NATO because Romania is obviously one of the newest members of NATO considering the NATO history. We are still growing.

NK: Definitely. I just wanted to follow up on the Kogălniceanu base that you mentioned. It is undergoing an expansion, to my understanding, over the next few years. And it’s, I think, said to be the largest NATO base going forward, even surpassing Ramstein in Germany.

Can you tell us a little bit more about how this expansion and this really huge investment in Romania will change NATO’s capacity in the region in the next few years?

AC: Well, that is actually dependent on the US presence because it has been a US base, and the expansion is due to the policy changes that are coming from Washington with regard to this area. But not only that, because what we are hearing—and I know that this process and the policy towards the Black Sea and towards the new containment line is very much in sync with what happens elsewhere in the world—what we’ve been hearing lately is that the Kogălniceanu base might actually help with the operations in the Middle East, which is something new and also points to other interests that the US has in the area, as well as the geography of the Black Sea, which I’ve already pointed at.

So the bottom line is we will likely have the Kogălniceanu base integrated into the NATO containment line that is now growing in importance because, obviously, we need to be more prepared on the eastern flank and have more interoperability with other nations, but also on the global stage, understanding that this is a geopolitical node, this is a security node.

So, there is that. And then there is also the perspective of Kogălniceanu playing a global role in the extended region of the Black Sea, comprising the Middle Eastern operations into what we have as the longer containment line, if you will, because right now we are seeing the restructuring of security threats, the restructuring of trade and so on.

NK: It’s good to keep that perspective also, that the Middle East is a factor here. It’s not just the eastern flank, but also America’s interests in the Middle East.

So you have a report recently, which we can link in the show notes for this episode, that outlined key NATO priorities for developing regional infrastructure on NATO’s eastern flank. And as you stated in the report, the Hague Summit this past summer marked a landmark shift in how NATO defines defense spending. And I think it’s the first time that it was formally acknowledged that non-military budgets that work to bolster security, such as infrastructure, energy, cyber security projects, can and should count toward those established GDP targets, which are now the 5 percent GDP by 2035 I believe. So you outline all of these areas for investment based on the vulnerabilities exposed during NATO exercises in the past few years.

I will say for myself, in the context of all the coverage of what’s been happening on the eastern flank, the drone incursions, the airspace violations, and the continued conversation about supporting Ukraine’s defenses, what one hears about all the time is weapons, weapons deliveries. But of course, weapons, tanks, equipment needs to be transported. And reading this report about all of these weaknesses and choke points, frankly, it’s something I hadn’t really thought about. It made me a little bit uneasy reading about some of these.

So I wanted to hear, of course, you listed all of the countries and all of their ongoing projects and plans for fixing some of these vulnerabilities. But for Romania specifically, what do you see as the key challenges, infrastructure challenges, and what are the plans in motion on the horizon to remedy some of them?

AC: One priority is increasing the role of the Danube in all aspects, which also means growing its role as an infrastructure chain of sorts that could provide for military mobility, but could also be very useful for economic purposes.

Now, obviously, infrastructure has a dual use. So there is that. The other challenge is crossing the mountains. I know this sounds odd for the American public, but yes, this has been a challenge in our region, particularly because Eastern Europe has not seen big developments in infrastructure, considering that they were USSR satellite states. And the transition from the former USSR state to a market economy and to a member of the EU has been difficult. And you have priorities, and infrastructure was not always a priority. So crossing the mountains and building infrastructure that actually connects the nodes of importance [is a challenge].

You mentioned, for instance, Kogălniceanu. There are other places where we have training sites, where we have military equipment. There is Bucharest, which is the main capital, but is also the main hub for everything that goes strategically and everything that connects the east with the west and north to south.

So, in connection with the Danube, and in connection to building up the corridor from the Baltic to the Black Sea and down to the Mediterranean Sea, I think making sure that Bucharest is connected, especially through the infrastructure that connects to the Mediterranean, to Greece, but also to the Black Sea, is highly important. Building the bridges between Romania and Bulgaria is one thing that is of high priority because that basically connects to important NATO countries at the Black Sea that need to be connected by default. So, that’s going to be the third priority that I would list for the next few years.

NK: The question of the Danube, that really stood out to me in the report because, I think Romania and Bulgaria share this natural border, which is the Danube River. It’s something like 600 plus kilometers long.

And I did find it shocking that there’s only two bridges connecting this huge area, which does seem, like you point out, it’s a critical route for potentially US and NATO convoys coming from Greece through Bulgaria.

So can you go into a little bit more detail about why the Danube is such a critical point for potential NATO operations in the future?

AC: Well, I could even point to why we have this case, where we have very few projects that are specifically related to the Danube role as only for economic reasons as a critical infrastructure.

We have something called the Danube Commission, which was established in the interwar period and after World War II had Russia in as a member because the USSR was basically a country that was a riparian state for the Danube, considering Moldova and considering Ukraine.

So, all that basically meant that all infrastructure projects of importance, of strategic importance, needed to go through the Danube Commission, which was a place where you would discuss how the environment, how everything else related to the Danube, and how the major establishment of the Danube as an infrastructure would basically go into the next projects.

Guess who would say no to anything that would connect the countries that were former USSR allies or that would establish the Danube as a corridor for development, for economic development and potentially for military mobility in the future? That country was Russia because it could do that.

So right now we have this situation on the southern part of the Danube, which is particularly the place where we have a border with Bulgaria, but also the place where Serbia is involved as a member of the Danube infrastructure projects because it is also a riparian state.

That part of the Danube is not developed. So there is an economic involvement, there is an economic impetus. Serbia, for instance, has wanted to do more with the Danube since forever, but it didn’t really go into infrastructure projects because of its own reasoning. And at the same time, we were not necessarily on board with Bulgaria because of our own development problems. So there’s a complexity at play that has to do with Russia’s role in the Danube Commission, that has to do with our own political prioritization, if you will, and that has to do with the Russian influence in the Balkans and beyond.

And that includes also the influence in Romania and Bulgaria, of course.

NK: Right. And are there plans in the next half decade to remedy this vulnerability?

AC: Yes. Romania has basically established several projects that have to do with connecting Bucharest to the Danube, and Bulgaria and Romania together have at least two projects that are discussed within the funding from the European Union framework that could come alive, I think, in the next five to ten years. Hopefully sooner, because we do have a war in the Black Sea right now, which is pretty close to Romania and Bulgaria.

NK: So as you mentioned, I think context is everything, right? It’s easy to say from the American perspective, “Oh, why aren’t there better connections? Why aren’t there better roads through the mountains, as you mentioned?” But of course, the economic reality, the political realities after the end of the Cold War, were very different in former Warsaw Pact countries.

So I’ll switch gears a little bit, since this project came about as a reflection about NATO and its role in shaping transatlantic relations, I want to go back to the beginning. So Romania joined NATO in 2004, which arguably, was not that long ago, as you mentioned, and is in the living memory of many generations in Romania.

How would you assess Romania’s role in NATO in the last 21 years? And what did it mean then and how has it changed now?

AC: For Romania, being a member in NATO was basically securing our borders and making sure that we are going away from Russian influence and we’re diminishing at least the exposure that we were having towards Russia. In Romania we consider Russia to be the number one threat to our security. That basically translated into an umbrella.

So NATO was something external at the very beginning. We are under the NATO umbrella, therefore we are safe. It was also a very expensive umbrella. Soldiers lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq to join NATO. That was the price that Romania paid. We are very, very grateful for everyone who has joined the fight, not only because that was a fight to sustain the War on Terror and all of that, but also because that was a way for us to actually be respected in the NATO family.

And as we went into NATO, that was the first important pillar for Romania being in NATO. Now, with the Ukrainian threat growing in the Black Sea, which we have thought is going to determine the war, and starting with the Russian invasion in Georgia in 2008, Romania became more anxious, and it started to be more vocal within NATO.

It started to build bridges with countries like Poland and countries like Turkey, which are our strategic allies in the region, particularly because we saw Russia becoming a revisionist power that wants to build back what it used to have, that wants to basically go back to the territories that it had under the USSR and beyond—maybe even go to having what it used to have during the Cold War era, which influenced all over the Eastern European countries.

With that in mind, we started building diplomatic frameworks, but we also looked at protecting our borders in a very practical way. We have been less into spending for weapons. We have been less than Poland, for instance. We have not been into the same pace of spending, and we have not looked at the very practical elements of military necessities. This is also because our economy was not comparable to that of Poland and other states. But we have placed orders. We have worked with the US. We have trained our soldiers with the US so that we have capabilities ready to go when needed.

And I think now the Hague summit is very, very good for us because not only did we realize that we need to do more for our infrastructure, but we have the means to dedicate more to defense spending. And at the same time, it is a plus for us as a frontier country on the eastern flank that the Western Europeans realized this threat as well. Because that was one problem that we always had within the European Union, and not only us, but all the countries in Eastern Europe, considering the Western Europeans did not necessarily see Russia as a threat and built bridges with Russia, which was pretty much not in sync with our interests at the time.

NK: In your view, what would you like the American public or American audiences to understand about Romania’s contributions to transatlantic security, to NATO, and why preserving alliances like this is so important to this day?

AC: I would say that you cannot build a secure environment at home if you don’t have good allies. And good allies are those that you share values with and you realistically are able to go to fight a war with. Romania has proved that it could go to war together with the United States even before it was a member of NATO. So from that, I think, we can conclude that Romania is a good ally.

Now, beyond that, I would say that while Romania is a small country, it has always tried to look at the region, at the place, the geographical space it is in as a way of integrating and in pursuing integration. We know that the Black Sea region is a geopolitical node because we have been here.

We have seen empires crossing this part of the world and empires collapsing in this part of the world. We know the Balkans. So, we know how disintegration works. Because of that, we understand that we cannot just focus on our region. We have to look beyond the region to understand the world and to understand our threats.

So I think to the American public, while it may be difficult to look at Romania on the map because it’s a small place, I think they should look for the way they connect with the world, and they will see the oceans and how they spread in the seas. And they’ll find Romania along the Black Sea shores, which is a very, very important sea these days.

NK: Antonia, thank you so much for your insights today, for taking the time to speak with me, and for joining us on The Ties that Bind.

AC: Thank you very much.

Image: Facebook | Naval Support Facility Deveselu