Will Moldova’s Euro-Atlantic Aspirations Lead to War?

The country continues to receive cohorts of Western military advisers, a growing network of arms and equipment donors, as well as defense agreements with the European Union and its leading states. Such excessive attention toward militarily insignificant Moldova has its reasons

Semyon ALBU, RTA: So, the electoral passions have completely subsided. All participants in the pre-election race have come to terms with and accepted the results, dispersing among various parliamentary factions. Life has returned to its usual rhythm, moving along roughly the same tracks as before. Therefore, anyone who expected that the swift replacement of a security-oriented prime minister with an economist would signify a radical change in the regime’s priorities was mistaken. Even if the economy finally receives a bit more affection from the political leadership, one of the main “sacred cows” – militarization – will be preserved, even as the “barns” grow increasingly empty. It is worth noting right away that one of the government’s first post-election decisions was the approval of an updated military strategy for the next ten years. Admittedly, it had been in development long before October, but the timing, you have to agree, turned out to be rather symbolic. Much has already been said about the document, so I will mention only the essentials: the size of the army will be increased, and military spending will rise to 1% of GDP. The armed forces will take a more active part in international exercises and missions. But the main point is that they are to be modernized and brought into full compliance with EU standards, in other words, integrated into the European Union’s security system. The new strategy fits perfectly into the broader strategic framework outlined in its “sister documents” on national security and national defense. And, by the way, no one even tries to conceal the fact that this paper was drafted with the active involvement of foreign advisers and experts, particularly from the United States, Romania, and other Western countries. Which, to be fair, makes sense, since these “invited overseers” will help implement the ambitious program of transforming the national army along Western lines. Among them, for instance, are consultants from the Bundeswehr’s expert mission – a group formally introduced during the meeting between Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatii and the new German ambassador. Over the next four years – yes, their mandate is that long – they will be tasked with analyzing our country’s defense potential. But it’s not only the Germans. Alongside them, we now have French attachés, American advisers, and British specialists – the latter were only recently revealed. Their mission will be to train our military personnel in modern tactics for countering drones. As we can see, the military reforms will proceed under the close supervision of Europe, which is shaping us into a sort of bastion on the southeastern flank of its geopolitical sphere – and it’s quite clear against whom. In fact, all the aforementioned strategic documents quite openly designate the Russian Federation as the primary threat: both in the context of its direct military presence on Moldovan territory and the potential advance toward our borders amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. These circumstances are used to justify the shift toward the concept of “active neutrality”, which envisions a sharp strengthening of the republic’s defensive capabilities. Our authorities and the experts they have on their payroll like to emphasize that allocating just 1% of GDP to defense is still a modest sum and can hardly be called militarization. Yet they conveniently forget that the national army is currently financed not only from Moldova’s own budget, but also through significant Western injections into the country’s military sector. And these injections are more than substantial, already amounting to hundreds of millions of euros. Moreover, the financial contributions are accompanied by tangible deliveries of all sorts of military equipment. In recent years alone, Moldova has received: an airspace surveillance radar (with its counterpart soon to become operational); dozens of various types of vehicles; equipment for drone interception; drones themselves; anti-tank systems; protective gear and military supplies. And this list of “gifts” is far from exhaustive. Moreover, the geography of benefactors is extremely broad and, unsurprisingly, consists exclusively of Western bloc countries: the United States, Germany, France, Romania, Poland, Lithuania… Moldova is not only accumulating cohorts of foreign advisors, a network of military suppliers, and donors, but also a set of corresponding agreements. In fact, our country became the first to conclude a partnership agreement with the European Union in the field of security and defense. Similar agreements have been signed with France, Romania, and Germany. The NATO Secretary General openly speaks of “close cooperation” with Moldova. Meanwhile, routine meetings of our Minister of Defense with Western counterparts, as well as visits from foreign officials bearing prominent stars on their epaulets, have in recent years become entirely commonplace. At first glance, the attention that major and respected partners are devoting to the military capabilities of our small country may seem excessive and inexplicable. However, it appears that several layers of reasoning are at play. First of all, this reflects the European Union’s general course toward militarization and its transformation into a military-political bloc, supported by a massive rearmament program worth hundreds of billions of euros. In this context, focusing on the defense sector of a potential new member state, especially one with a “borderland nature”, seems entirely logical. But there is also a “second layer”. As we can see, the EU has become the main force most eager to see the war in Ukraine continue and to suppress any peace initiatives. Many European figures no longer conceal that the current conflict is useful for the Union on the one hand, to exhaust Russia’s forces and resources as much as possible, and on the other, to prepare themselves for a future “hot” phase of confrontation with the Russian Federation. The fact that such a confrontation is inevitable is now being instilled into the minds of the “uninformed” domestic audience through every national media outlet. While at the same time explaining to them, in simple terms, the inevitability of “guns before butter” and the return of universal military conscription in countries where it had been abolished, for instance, in Germany. And to spark a new conflict with Moscow, or to pour more fuel on the fire already burning, Moldova is far better suited than other Eastern European countries, and everyone knows why. Here one can most easily craft a legitimate and widely comprehensible casus belli, especially since our authorities have long been telling everyone about Russian “occupational” troops and the ongoing hybrid attacks. Thus, one notices precisely which priorities are being set out in the military strategy I began discussing. These include the strengthening of air-defense systems, airspace surveillance, and electronic warfare – measures intended to repel potential strikes by the Russian Federation, which at present could only be delivered by air. Equally significant is the development of special operations forces, which are explicitly assigned, among other tasks, to carry out “direct actions”, including on “temporarily occupied territories”. We would like to believe that no decision-making center within the EU would ever wish to bring such a hypothetical scenario to life, and that all this fascination with militarism will remain an expensive but relatively harmless toy. But it must be understood that every major Western investment in seemingly unremarkable Moldova comes with a price and, if necessary, that price could very well be war.