Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“The commitment of Washington’s European allies to democracy is increasingly fragile, if not hypocritical, as Vice President J D Vance highlighted in his speech to the Munich Security Conference last month. That problem is most acute in Romania. In the first round of the country’s presidential election on November 24, 2024, Calin Georgescu, the candidate of a right-wing populist party, unexpectedly led the field. In addition to having populist social views, Georgescu is an outspoken critic of NATO. His ‘apostasy’ on that issue makes him especially unacceptable to Romania’s political establishment and its U.S. supporters. … The response of the beleaguered establishment forces was to get the country’s election commission, which the PSD and PNL dominated, to nullify the first round election results.” (03/06/25)