Five years ago, the North Atlantic
Treaty Alliance put Deveselu, an otherwise obscure village in southern Romania,
on the geopolitical map. Elements of the US anti-ballistic shield system were
set up, whereby Washington aims to defend its NATO allies in Europe. The Aegis
Ashore system also includes a radar installation in Turkey, four US Navy
battleships fitted with anti-ballistic systems in Spain, a command center at
the Rammstein airbase in Germany, as well as a second terrestrial interceptor,
similar to the one in Romania, set up in Poland. It’s a big day for everyone,
President Klaus Iohannis said in May, 2016, attending the inauguration event
alongside NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg. The head of state
highlighted the purely defensive purpose of the shield and its role in
strengthening NATO collective defense.
Bucharest officials also underscored
that the anti-ballistic system is not targeting Russia. At the time, Moscow
said it didn’t consider the shield a threat to its offensive nuclear potential,
although it announced it would respond to the Americans’ actions by modernizing
its own ballistic system. In turn, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Arms
Control, Frank Rose, insisted the system in Deveselu is primarily aimed at
ensuring protection against short- and medium-range ballistic threats coming
from the Middle East, more particularly from Iran, which continues to test and
deploy a whole range of military capabilities with possible targets in Europe.
The US State Department sees the installation in Deveselu as a major
contribution to NATO’s anti-ballistic defense system and an expression of the
United States’ firm commitment to European and Euro-Atlantic security, as well
as of the robust nature of the Romanian-American Strategic Partnership signed a
decade ago. T
he system in Deveselu, Minister Bogdan Aurescu has said, is a
project that I’ve seen through from its very beginning, as I was Romania’s
chief negotiator for this project. The Romanian official said the contribution
of the current White House leader, Joe Biden, at the time vice-president in the
Obama administration, was instrumental. The Foreign Minister also praised the
recent participation of President Biden in the virtual summit of Central and
Eastern Europe NATO member states, on which occasion the United States
expressed its firm decision to protect countries on NATO’s Eastern Flank. (V.P.)