A century later, Romanians cannot complain to have the same sort of bad luck in terms of their foreign policy. We're full members of NATO and of the European Union, we have dozens of signed treaties and participations in all sorts of international and regional bodies, and aside from internal political embarrassment, we present ourselves relatively well on the global scene. Our insecurities stem from the East and are largely shared by most of our new-found European friends.

While Russian tanks might never again plow through Bucharest, a lot of our energy does come from there, and it pretty much equates into the same level of potential danger. The European Union receives 25% of its oil and gas from Russia, in varying national degrees. Diversifying our sources of energy, especially in view of Russia's strong-arm energy tactics over the past years, represents one of the priorities of the EU. The only geographically-bound solution is to get our supplies from other countries via the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, through fledgling democracies such as Georgia. Having Georgia join NATO, therefore, becomes a necessity, however much of a distant objective it might seem at the moment. Add to that the problem of Transnistria, a half-assed Kaliningrad through which all manners of trafficking takes place –from humans to drugs and weapons, and one might start to understand why a body of water called the Black Sea starts to gain importance.

A Black Sea strategy therefore needs attention and action, regardless of who proposes it and how it is carried out. It needs to rise above declarations and political posturing, and it has to mean business within Romania’s own ability to project its interests abroad. The problem is that aside from a number of military engagements, that very ability has been quantified in little or no activity over the past two decades. We are barely starting to draft out a long-term plan for our interests, and there is little hope that further administrations and politicians will stick to it, rather preferring to use foreign policy as a means of grabbing a few more votes at home. A recently released 10-year strategy on Romanian foreign policy barely rises above declarations of intention, reeks of policy-by-committee, and hardly has any sort of pinpointed goals. In short, it is boring, long-awaited, and of little consequence.

To quote Edward Lucas in the Economist, “in Romanian politics, smears and scandals are common-place.” That’s probably the reason why we have not been able to deal with our own back yard, let alone the problems around the Black Sea. And it is unfortunate, given Russia’s increasing xenophobia and Gazprom-powered bullying/foreign policy. To use Bismarck-ian tones, we have lived in mortal fear of Russia’s interests, yet we flip-flopped on a grandiose scale when it has come to taking action against it. In this sense, a Black Sea strategy, coming from a relatively weak state, and incased in a 10-year whitewash of a document, is quaint and irrelevant.

It’s not that we’re missing out on making foreign policy, it’s that we are late even in defining our own interests, regardless of how obvious they have been over the past years. The conclusion? Tie me up and call me Natasha.