Vivid Foreword May 2004

FOREWORD
NATO ñ Not All iT used tO be

May 2004

If you want to understand a war, take a quick look at who is making money out of it. And the quickest of glances show that the companies which are making money out of the expansion of Nato (it's called interoperability ñ making everybody's gadgets compatible) are also those who are profiting from the military destruction and civilian reconstruction of Iraq. Everybody is happy, no? The Bechtel and Halliburton corporations are moving into Eastern Europe and Iraq and, after fifteen years of talking about it, Romania gets into Nato.

So why does it all make a rude sound, like the air rushing out of a balloon? Because the ìnewly independentî states of Eastern Europe turned themselves into a chorus of yes-men for what one US administration wanted to hear last year. No weapons of mass destruction have been found, and with Iraq sliding into chaos, the Eastern European contingents are showing themselves to be useless to varying degrees. Romanian troops are confined to base, in the hope that it will all blow over.

And the effect in Romania has not been so healthy either. In exchange for supporting the war, the United States offered this corrupt Romanian government a number of propaganda coups. One is Nato membership. Another, last year, just prior to the outbreak of war, was the declaration by the US that Romania was a functioning market economy ñ a status the EU is yet to grant.

All good news for the ruling party. And it seems that the closeness of the Nastase-Bush business club has borne other fruit, with Bechtel (of Iraq reconstruction fame) being awarded a dubious highway construction project worth billions of euro. Dubious, because among other things Bechtel is charging twice as much per kilometre as would appear reasonable. The contract was not awarded openly but under ìdirect negotiation.î What some cynical people call ìa backroom deal.î

Of course there is no evidence that a dirty deal was done, with ruling party officials receiving payoffs in exchange for Bechtel overcharging the Romanian taxpayer. But as the contract was not awarded transparently, there is no evidence that this is not what happened, and the cynics are left to speculate. We must take it on faith that this government acted ethically, presumably because they have always acted ethically in the past. Eyebrows are being raised also in the EU, which has its own guidelines on how contracts should be awarded in a democratic state.

This puts US Ambassador Michael Guest in a tricky position. Mr Guest, who has been a vocal crusader against corruption, and as such a thorn in the side of Adrian Nastase, has a role in encouraging US business in Romania. And yet he has stated that the contract Bechtel was awarded should have been tendered openly. Now that Romania is in Nato, and in Iraq, and in Bechtel's business plan, the political-business oligarchy that runs this country looks as corrupt as ever.

There is hope on the horizon, though, and it comes from the Nevada branch of the Republican Party, in the form of Lia Roberts, who has announced her candidacy for the Romanian presidency. She will campaign against corruption. She says if a Romanian gal can make it in America, she can make it at home. And she points out that Nevada is as big as Romania and Bulgaria put together. So there!

But Mrs Roberts, you didn't ìmake itî in America. You married a rich guy who died and left you all his money. In fact, tragically, you did that twice! And we haven't heard a peep out of you for the last 15 years. And you're going to take votes from Stolojan, and risk a C.V. Tudor-PSD runoff again. In which the role of the PSD will be to save the country from fascism. Again. It sounds like a set-up job.

Some political analysts, who say you're pretty cosy with the oligarchy of this country from way back, reckon that's the whole idea.

But we don't believe them. We believe Nevada is a model for what Romania could be. Nevada is mostly desert, with a couple of cities where people from other states are allowed do things they can't do legally at home, such as to gamble and sleep with prostitutes. Vegas and Reno were built by the mafia, who came to launder their money and go legitimate. Perhaps we can shift the capital to near the Hungarian border, put up a Nastase's Palace and await the German tourists.

There's a lot of dirty money sloshing around this country, and some of it is in dollars. Perhaps the Republican Party of Nevada can give us lessons in how to get it clean.