Visit to Nowhere. Why Sandu’s US Trip Is a Failure

Sergey Cheban Today is the second and last day of the visit of a large Moldovan delegation headed by Prime Minister Maia Sandu to the United States. Before the trip, a government press release referred to the scheduled “numerous meetings with U.S. officials, entrepreneurs and representatives of the diaspora”. But so far it’s only known about the conversation of Sandu with US Vice President Mike Pence and some contacts between Interior Minister Andrei Nastase and the FBI: the official asked the Bureau to help with the prosecution of the leaders of the former regime. At the same time, the main purpose of the visit that is to meet with the US Secretary of State could not be achieved. During the arrival of the Moldovan delegation, Mike Pompeo went to the Arabian Peninsula to handle the consequences of the drone attack on the Saudi oil refineries. This is Sandu’s second unsuccessful attempt to reach out to Pompeo. The September meeting with the head of U.S. Department of State was widely announced in the Moldovan media, and it affected the Moldovan Prime Minister when the meeting was canceled. So now the government acted more cautiously, not telling about the visit ahead of time. However, it was not possible to avoid annoying inconsistencies: the details of the trip (including a meeting with Pompeo) became known to the media, which naturally did not pass by the new failure of Sandu. Recall that the visit of the Prime Minister was supposed to be much more ambitious since the program had numerous meetings with representatives of the American establishment and was planned for five days. Now it’s down to just two. We can already say that the outcome is minimal. After all, the banal statements from the US Vice-President about “support for democracy in Moldova” are not why you take a large delegation of ministers and advisers to Washington. It is clear that the cancellation of the meeting with Pompeo can be written off as force majeure, but the problem, in fact, is much deeper. Apparently, Chisinau simply could not interest Washington, going with a bare agenda and lack of specifics. They tried to conceal emptiness of the visit with high-profile meetings but this clearly did not work out. The sad outcome of Sandu’s American tour is partly due to the barely concealed haste in preparing it. The government was clearly trying to head off Dodon’s upcoming visit to the United States, as well as to balance the geopolitical activity of the President in the Russian and European directions. By and large, the ‘American failure’ of the government is a symptom of the main and most dangerous ‘challenge’ of the pro-European bloc. ACUM simply does not have a coherent strategy and a clear plan of action in the domestic and foreign arena. The only skill that the government has demonstrated over the past hundred days is to beg for money from international partners. ACUM used to talk a lot and passionately about the European way of development and reforms, and therefore became a professional opposition. In this capacity, the pro-Europeans felt comfortable and at ease. And now, having received the real power, they simply aren’t able to proceed from words to business. It is not surprising that the government is most helpless in the American direction. The EU is still putting a good face on the matter, catering to its protégés in Chisinau. This trick will not work with Washington: they value only ‘real politics’ and expect specific proposals from Chisinau. No one will just mess about with the pro-European bloc. Therefore, Pompeo left to solve the crisis in the zone of strategic interests of the United States, and did not stay to have meaningless conversations with the Moldovan Prime Minister. Such negligence and unprofessional approach is still evident in all the work of the new government: in the criminal prosecution of officials of the Plahotniuc era, and in the investigation of the theft of a billion and corruption schemes, and in carrying out reforms. They can exist all they want with constant instructions from Brussels. But if in the future one of the international partners again finds something more useful to do than to communicate with the dysfunctional government of Moldova, we should not be surprised.