Irregulars
A Romanian view of Americans abroad
By Vivid writers: Jim Rosapepe and Sheilah Kast
Jim Rosapepe, who was US ambassador to Romania between January 1998 and February 2001, and his wife Sheilah Kast, have written Dracula is Dead, a book which primarily records their impressions of Romania during their time here. Some excerpts:
Posted: 13/11/2009
"In general, our opinions are good, because we wanted to see the Americans in the right way. We were very ready to like them, and it was very difficult for any American to contradict this impression. "But after five or six years of getting to know the Americans - in Romania, the USA, Europe, and throughout the world - I can say that I managed to see them as part of two very different categories. Some of them, either through education or their own beliefs, think that the whole world has to be organized according to the American system, which is the only good system of organizing, and that the world is only going to be a happy place when it resembles America - in whole, and in every way, down to the smallest details. These people are only happy with airports if they look like the ones in the Midwest United States. And they consider a country civilized only if it has highways, even though they cannot see any development from the highways. If they see warehouses at the entrance to a town, as well as billboards, and can go to a McDonald's once they reach town, and get a scotch on the rocks at their hotel, they think they're in a good place and are happy. Like a snail, they carry all their habits with them. And whenever things are not exactly this way, they withdraw a little and pull back into their shell. This is not good.
"The second category of Americans I have met are completely different. These are people who preserved something of the old America. They don't come from the America of the downtown or of the malls. They come from the America of the pioneers. They live in cities, and they might do their shopping at malls, but they wish to do something different when they travel. These people have experienced in Romania and other former Communist countries the forgotten sensation of discovery, of discovering new territories. Only this time, they were not going into territories with no civilization. On the contrary, they were going into their own past and into the origins of civilizations.
"These Americans are, first of all, curious people, because they want to know about something different. And what is even more important about their mentality is the fact that they understand there can be people who are different from Americans, who will probably also speak a different language than English. To find out there are different cultures and different habits is, they believe, a good thing. They don't want to bring everybody the American way of life. They want to find something new.
"But here something specific about the American people enters. And this is related to America's type of culture. They don't limit themselves to contemplating. They are not tourists, dreamers, or writers. They roll up their sleeves and start to work. And they begin to do not whatever comes along, but the most difficult things. And this is the greatest surprise for these old countries and especially for the countries in southeastern Europe: They give the people they meet the gift of team spirit, which they learned in school, at the university, or in the neighborhood. These Americans love those whom they encounter, and even if in the beginning they look strange, they end up being loved by them. I'm very happy for having had the chance to meet such Americans."
The birth pangs of democracy in Romania did not keep Constantinescu from spending part of 1991 as a visiting professor at Duke University. Back in Bucharest, he continued to combine politics and academics: In 1992, he became rector of the University. He also ran for president, and lost.
Constantinescu was taken seriously by political conservatives - for example, by diplomats from Western Europe and by Republican members of the U.S. Congress, like Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, and Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Romania, David Funderburk, who publicly blew the whistle on Ceauflescu's cruelty and stupidity in the early 1980s.
Constantinescu understood English fairly well, and could speak well enough in casual conversations. For more serious topics, he was more comfortable with an interpreter. At dinner that night, his daughter Norina was drafted for that duty.
Constantinescu has an academic's flair for imposing a structure on the randomness of life. That's what academics do, especially scientists like Constantinescu - observe a confused world and come up with a theory that explains it, or at least describes it. Constantinescu is skilled at such formulations, talking in paragraphs and sometimes in chapters.
Early in the NATO action in Kosovo, he declared, "For the first time in history, we're going to be on one side for the entire war." The press tends to love such sweeping statements, as do outside audiences (like diplomats). They don't play as well with fellow politicians in the trenches.
As president, he seemed obsessed by the power of the old Securitate-business crowd which has dominated much of Romania's economic life since 1989. He talked about it in a way we seldom heard from other politicians, mixing analysis with outrage. He was right. Not all of the Securitate alumni were brutal thugs. Some were among the most ambitious and able Romanians of their time. When the system changed in 1989, they seized the moment - and a lot of state property. To anticommunists who feared a rear guard action to protect totalitarianism, they were a threat which never materialized. To academics like Constantinescu, they were special interests lining their own pockets and blocking modernization.
He also directed some of his irritation at American business interests looking for special deals from the Romanian government. When he visited the Untied States in 1998, his speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce included a denunciation of companies with bigger net worths than Romania's entire gross domestic product looking for sovereign government loan guarantees. On another occasion, he had similarly withering words for the U.S.-Romania Action Commission, a bilateral group aimed at improving the business and development climate in Romania. The president had been out inspecting flood damage all day. The whines from the business group that evening did not sit well with him. He essentially told them to "suck it up" - not at all what the group's chair, former United States Defense Secretary William J. Perry, expected to hear.
We're not on Plymouth Rock any more
In Romania's continuing quest to understand all things American, the nation's interest in Thanksgiving seemed to grow year by year. The third Thanksgiving we lived in Romania, we began and ended the day on live television, telling viewers how easy it is to cook a turkey - highly ironic, because neither of us is great shakes as a chef. Both TV anchors asked what the holiday means, what the menu is, why turkey, any special recipe for it, what other traditions, what about the Canadians, etc.
The morning show on Antena 1, which we did together, was a big production. It was hosted by a genial young musician named Horia Brenciu. Like most television anchors and interviewers in Romania, he does a lot of his own producing (arranging interviews, planning the questions, ordering the logistics, etc.) and speaks very good English, but, of course, needs to speak Romanian on TV for his audience. On cheerful, fast-paced shows where information is secondary to entertainment, by the time a question is asked and translated, the host is ready to move on after very brief answers given in English, which are then translated. The key concept is to smile a lot and not worry too much about what you say.
So after we'd talked about Pilgrims and Indians and family feasts for a few minutes, we assumed we were moving to a new topic when Horia asked us for a typical Romanian name. We looked at each other, and came out with "Radu." Immediately, an attractive production assistant appeared on the set to hand Horia a large wicker basket. Inside, with a big red bow around his scrawny neck and his legs tied together beneath him, was a live turkey. Horia bestowed on him the name we had chosen. We were pretty sure Radu had been sedated, but we still felt very sorry for him. The conversation continued, Horia was happy, and we smiled a lot while keeping an eye on Radu in his basket on the table in front of us. His wattle throbbed to his racing heartbeat. Then his eyes closed for a long time, and Sheilah thought, This little bird is so scared, he's about to have a heart attack and die on national television. This sequence, including her apprehension, repeated itself several times. Radu didn't make a peep.
Toward the end of the segment, when they played some music on a toy nearby, Radu perked up and tried to stand. This is a tough maneuver when your legs are tied, and he did not succeed. But at least we figured he was not on the verge of death. As we said our on-air goodbyes, Sheilah thought they wouldn't really give Radu to us, but they did. What could we do but accept, and smile?
Out at the car, Jim's driver was all set to put the turkey-in-a-basket in the trunk, but Sheilah was sure he'd panic in the dark. So she held the basket on her lap as we drove over the potholes, and Radu alternated between wide-eyed observation and close-eyed stress. When we got home, he flapped about as we approached the door, so Sheilah set the basket down outside the kitchen door and went to find help. When Sheilah encountered the unflappable butler Julius a few minutes later, she explained that we'd been given a turkey, to which Julius calmly replied, "Oh, the one by the door," as if there's a live turkey with a red bow in a basket at the door every day.
We untied Radu and he started strutting. He was really quite elegant. After he wandered around bleating for a few minutes, we carried him into the big garden and put out water and cornmeal, which he didn't touch all day. At nightfall, Mihai chopped up an apple - presumably, Radu was the only turkey in Romania with a professional chef preparing his food. Mihai wanted to clip his wings so he couldn't fly away (actually, turkeys can't fly). In any event, our friend Hermina argued he was too smart to leave such comfortable digs.
Radu spent most of the next afternoon burrowed inside a bush. We assumed this meant he was cold, but Hermina insisted that turkeys "in the village" live outside all winter. Of course, Hermina was also assuming that, at some point, we would give the word to Mihai to transform Radu into dinner, which we had no intention of doing. But the next day, we weren't quite sure what to do with him. Sheilahe-mailed the head of GSO, the buildings section of the embassy, who put her troops to work constructing an impressive turkey residence to shield Radu from the cold. By the time it showed up the following day, though, Sheilah had concluded that Radu was not cut out to be a resident of the terrace. Though he seemed to ignore whatever food we laid out for him, he left multiple telltale reminders of his presence wherever he strutted. In short, he was making a mess.
We moved his splendid new residence down to the lower patio, a bit away from the house, but still near grass and the few roses that were still in bloom. Then we laid trails of dried corn leading to his new residence, so he'd get the idea. He didn't. He continued to hang around the terrace, making the occasional mournful noise. At times, he would look expectantly at the French doors.
On the third day, Sheilah figured it out: He wasn't looking in the window; he was looking at the window. Staring at his own reflection, he evidently thought it was another turkey. In other words, Radu was lonely! That clinched it. Sheilah phoned a friend whose Romanian cousin-in-law on the farm had taken her live turkey off her hands the previous Thanksgiving. That turkey, it was claimed, was still enjoying a happy retirement in the country.
"Amy," Sheilah said, "when can Cousin Doru come for Radu? No strings attached. I'm not insisting that he can't turn Radu into a protein source. I just don't want to know."
Another typical Thanksgiving in Romania.
President Constantinescu, Romanian Ambassador to the US Mircea Geoana, President Clinton, and Jim Rosapepe in the White House in 1999.
Romania's European future
Why has Romania successfully rejoined Europe? Two of the chief reasons are that it was invited to by the EU and by NATO. In the United States, we tend to think of the EU as a free trade zone and NATO as a defense alliance. We're not wrong, but, particularly to Romanians, these two memberships mean far more than that.
Why did joining the EU generate such enthusiasm in Romania, while the IMF or even the World Bank, which were pushing similar policies, generate indifference at best and fear and hostility at worst? The answer is the difference between a bank and a family. To most of us, a bank is controlled by someone else and is looking out for its own interests. We want to take advantage of its loans, but also to be out of debt as soon as we can. We're happiest when we've paid off the loan and gotten out from under the bank's restrictions.
In contrast, when you make a decision to marry, you are joining a family as a partner, not as a supplicant. You see the relationship as permanent, not transitory, and you see it primarily as a social, not an economic, transaction, though it has substantial economic components. That's the EU. It's a family - and a prosperous one at that. Visas represent an interesting, practical example of how the EU creates ties that bind emotionally.
On the day before the 2008 U.S. election, Jim was interviewed live by Romanian television on the roof of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, across the way from the White House in Washington, D.C. The reporters had two questions:
"Are Americans too racist to elect Barack Obama president?"
Check that one off as a no.
"If elected, would Obama allow Romanians to visit the U.S. without visas, as they can throughout Europe?" A tougher question.
At that time, only visitors from about three dozen countries, primarily Western European ones, could come to the United States without visas. Romania is not one of them. However, because Romania is a member of the European Union, and a key EU principle is the free movement of people, Romanians can travel all over Europe withouta visa.
"Why is it OK for us as Romanians to travel to France, the U.K., and Germany visa-free, but not to the U.S.?" they ask. Part of Romanians' concern about U.S. visas is practical. Thousands of Romanians want to be able to easily visit their new grandchildren, attend college graduations, work with business partners, and study at colleges in the United States, just as they do in Europe.
But it's also symbolic and emotional. Romanians do not understand why they are treated differently by their American and European allies - why their soldier sons can lose their lives, as they have, serving beside American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but can't visit America.
It's a measure of how far Romania has come in twenty years that Romanians are kept out of our country by U.S. visa rules, not Ceauflescu's border police, who shot those trying to leave the country. The difference in visa rules between the U.S. and the EU dramatizeshow effective the EU has been in building a real European community, while the United States, all too often, needlessly alienates our friends. From the Romanian point of view, NATO membership is about security - military security and, probably more important, psychological security.
This is a dimension that Americans should find easier to understand in the post-9/11 world. Romanians know well that they suffered forty-two years of Communism, not because of a strong indigenous Communist movement, but because Russian tanks "liberated" Romania from the Axis powers at the end of World War II. So whether or not there is likely to be a Russian military threat to Romania in the foreseeable future, or ever, the psychological security that comes from being part of the Western alliance is of enormous importance to Romanians, from the top levels of government to those in the most remote village.
We often heard Romanians argue that NATO membership would also encourage U.S. and other foreign investment. Frankly, we thought that view was mistaken. We rarely heard a potential U.S. investor even ask about Romania's NATO status, and the major increases in foreign investment in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic came before, not after, they became NATO members. Similarly, countries in Western Europe that are not NATO members - Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland - prospered economically and attracted substantial foreign investment throughout the Cold War, and have since.
On one occasion, Jim argued this point with a well-informed Romanian. Finally, the Romanian became so agitated with Jim's reluctance to agree that he blurted out, "Well, I wouldn't invest in Romania until we become a member of NATO." That, we think, is the real point: that Romanians' confidence in the long-term economic and military security of their country was tied closely to becoming part of the NATO alliance.
The most important argument, however, for Romania joining
NATO was that NATO membership represented integration into the West in all aspects. Thus, by joining NATO, Romania made a broad national commitment to a set of values, institutions, and relationships that are important from the point of view of the United States and those in Romania who wanted Romania to lock in its democratic progress. Joining NATO emboldened the proponents of these policies and demoralized its opponents.
The real guarantor of Romania's continuing progress, though, is the attitude and commitment of the Romanian people. Governments can be cynical or even double-dealing, but ordinary people tend to have more long-term views and orientations. The fact is, according to every poll we've ever seen, the Romanian people are the most pro-NATO, pro-American, and pro-European Union population in Eastern Europe. That's why Romanian leaders across the political spectrum supported NATO and EU integration - the people wanted them to. Romania is not yet the place most Romanians, or other Europeans or Americans, want it to be. Too many retired people can't support themselves in dignity on their pensions. Too many young people leave to work in Italy and Spain because they can't find good jobs in Romania when they graduate from school. And too many Romanians of all ages worry that they have lost the security of socialism without gaining the prosperity of capitalism.
But few would like to go back to the days of Ceauflescu - of food shortages and secret police, of few choices in the stores and fewer on television and in the press. Democracy and good inter-ethnic relations have taken such root that Romanians have taken them for granted. Most important, Romania is a nation of
well-educated, hardworking people who know where they want to go and have a plan to get there.
That's why we titled this book Dracula Is Dead. In the last twenty years, Romanians have proved to the world, and more importantly to themselves, that the myths which oppressed them for centuries (not just during the Communist years) are just that - myths. Assumptions of isolation and powerlessness, which too often defined Romanians' view of themselves and their country, are no more real than Dracula.
Today, as they enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, Romanians are free, and they know it.
More information from www.draculaisdead.com
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