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| Anatol Țăranu | |
The national security strategy of any state in the standard formula represents an official view on the strategic priorities, on the internal and foreign policy objectives and measures that determine the state of national security for a particular period of time and on the methods of sustainable development of the state in the long run. Owing to the swiftly changing living conditions, the documents that define the national security strategy of the state are periodically rethought and adjusted to the new challenges. Consequently, the life expectancy of such strategies usually does not exceed several years and some of their provisions need to be readjusted to the changing living conditions.
Irremediably outdated strategy
The current national security strategy of the Republic of Moldova was adopted by a Parliament decision of 2011 and since then the situation inside Moldovan society and also the foreign policy conditions for the Moldovan state have changed dramatically, transforming the given document into an irremediably outdated one. In such conditions, we must ascertain that the development course of the Republic of Moldova during almost a decade hasn’t been subjugated to a well-thought-out strategic view and therefore witnessed chaotic deviations and arbitrary political decisions. Consequently, Moldova continues to be the poorest and most unstable European state, with most of its citizens living at or even below the poverty line and in precarious security conditions.
In the name of the truth, we should mention that an attempt was made in Chisinau in the middle of the previous decade to rethink and modernize the national security strategy of the state. In 2016, during the presidential tenure of Nicolae Timofte, a new national security strategy adjusted to the realities of that period of time was designed to respond to the main internal and external risks and dangers. That document followed the idea that the Republic of Moldova should identify a solution for security outside the one that is called neutrality, which served as basis for the document edited in 2011. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which showed that the status of noninvolvement adopted by Kiev in 2008 no longer worked, served as an impetus to rethink the national security strategy. That was a powerful signal for the Moldovan political class that was trying to assess the new international dangers and that, at the level of military security, influenced the reaching of the revolutionary conclusion that Romania and the U.S. were the main partners of the Republic of Moldova in the defense sector.
Chisinau’s attempts and Moscow’s reactions
Among the main risks to national security signaled in the document of 2016 was the unsolved Transnistrian conflict that poses a threat both to the citizen of the country and to regional security. The actions of Chisinau, coordinated with the authorities in Kiev, which led to the initiation of joint control on the border between Ukraine and the Transnistrian region, caused a wave of dissatisfaction in the separatist Tiraspol and in Moscow too. In reaction to the concerted actions of Chisinau and Kiev, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation resorted to multiple exercises staged through the Operational Group of Russian Forces (GOTR) that stays illegally in the separatist Transnistrian region, which included military training. This way, Moscow showed its military power and put Chisinau in danger. In the first five months of 2017 alone, 32 military exercises were mounted in the Transnistrian region by the Operational Group of Russian Forces, these being a cause for concern for the Republic of Moldova’s security.
According to a study conducted in that period by the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives “Viitorul”, the number of military exercises held by the GOTR in the Transnistrian region the last decade increased considerably and a part of that drilling implied the paramilitary Transnistrian troops. Also, between 2010 and 2014, the separatist military troops of the region strengthened their armament by acquiring last-generation equipment. The authorities in Tiraspol earmarked 20% of all their costs for military purposes, with the administrative line of the region from the left side of the Nistru being “supervised” by information officers of the Russian Federation under diplomatic coverage or of the GOTR.
Blocked by Igor Dodon and unblocked by war in the neighborhood
Despite the adjustment to the real situation of the national security strategy of 2016, this didn’t manage to become a viable document. Next year already, the newly elected Socialist President Igor Dodon left the Republic of Moldova without a national security strategy as he abrogated the document worked out in 2016, saying in a Facebook message that this “no longer corresponds to the substantial changes that occurred in the national, regional and international climate”. By the same message, President Dodon instructed to design a new strategy that would meet the national interests, the status of neutrality, statehood strengthening and the modernization of the country, arguing the initiation of the process of working out the national security strategy is the prerogative of the President. However, during his tenure as President, Dodon didn’t initiate the designing of a new national security strategy, leaving the Moldovan state strategically unarmed in the perspective of the future Russian military aggression against neighboring Ukraine.
Today, the Republic of Moldova is in the process of thinking up a new national security strategy that is designed to update the legal framework in the field of security in the Republic of Moldova, to realistically and precisely shape the risks and threats to the Moldovan state and society and to stipulate the methods of overcoming these. The new strategy should contain exact approaches and solutions in the current context, when a war is taking place close to the Republic of Moldova’s borders and can spill over into our borders, while the hybrid dangers already instantaneously affect the proper functioning of the state up to secession.
Assessments necessary for past and future
After thirty years of existence of the independent state Republic of Moldova, time has come to stipulate in the national security strategy a programmatic response with regard to the natural national identity of the majority population of this state, which is its Romanian character that is in full concordance with the fundamental provisions of the Declaration of Independence concerning the “historical space of national existence” of the nation. A principled assessment of the colonial past and the consequences of the Russian imperial policies of denationalization of the Moldovan Romanians in Bessarabia and Transnistria is also necessary. As principled is the necessity of rejecting the Republic of Moldova’s affiliation to the so-called “Historical Russia” and of describing the tendencies to restore the Russian empire as existential danger to the Moldovan state.
Judging by the major changes in the collective mentality of Moldovan society concerning the Union option, the new strategy should contain a solution for overcoming the existential crisis of the Republic of Moldova by assuming the Romanian identity, and the ways for the plenary cultural, economic and political integration of the Moldovan state with Romania. The fact that the economic development of the Republic of Moldova during over 30 years hasn’t yet reached the level of 1991 challenges the evolution of the Moldovan state in the current formula and requires a new paradigm of existence.
Neutrality that does not exist
In the field of defense, the new strategy cannot avoid the rethinking of the status of neutrality, which de facto does not exist owing to the illegal Russian military presence on the national territory, by reconsidering the military security by applying the solution of extension of multilateral cooperation up to entry into NATO. The overcoming of the Transnistrian secession requires to adopt an approach that would be different from the precedents, by applying the solution of reformation of the international mechanism for the mediation of the secessionist conflict by diminishing Russia’s role in this process, which turned out to be not a conflict resolution, but a conflict freezing role.
The new document should ensure, from political viewpoint, the Moldovan citizens’ trust that in the current difficult situation the state institutions will be able to fulfill one of their main duties – to protect the citizens and the territory of the country from threatening dangers in a reliable way. The constitution, by a decree signed by President Maia Sandu, of a commission for the working out of an updated National Security Strategy without which the Republic of Moldova remains an extremely vulnerable state, fully meets the current requirement. We should hope that the new version of the security strategy will not become a school exercise of its authors and will precisely reflect the new realities and methods of safely overcoming the risks and threats to the Moldovan state and society and to the life of the citizens.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.