George Friedman, expert în geopolitică și fondator STRATFOR, a început o călătorie documentară în cateva țări din Estul Europei, iar rezultatul – în cazul României și Moldovei – este, cel puțin pentru noi, destul de semnificativ.
Când privești în oglinda construită de ceilalți, nu doar că afli lucruri noi pe care nu le știai despre tine însuți, dar găsești lucruri vechi pe care ti le refuzai să le accepți.
Nothing in their history tells Romanians that they rule their fate or dominate their soul. Everything in their history is a lesson in how fate masters them or how their very soul is a captive of history. As a nation, Romanians have modest hopes and expectations tempered by their past.
Avem o țară divizată de geografie (niciuna din cele trei regiuni istorice nu este ușor de apărat), ne ascundem în Europa, însă datorită poziției noastre geostrategice, istoria ne va ajunge din urmă, fie că vrem sau nu vrem.
Istoria noastră comunistă este prezentată, prin specificul dictaturii lui Ceausescu (mai represă decât celelalte regimuri din Est și cu o relativă autonomie față de Moscova), ca “it was as if the price that Romania had to pay for autonomy was to punch itself in the face continually”.
Entuziasmul nostru pentru UE și NATO se bazează pe anumite iluzii despre viitorul nostru (cum fi protejați) și anumite răni din trecutul nostru (întotdeauna ne-am negociat cu cei mari suveranitatea):
Romanians yearned to become European simply because being Romanian was too dangerous.
Problema ar fi că NATO este o alianță slabă, consensuală, dependentă de umbrela americană, iar UE este un sistem propice pentru țările dezvoltate, iar nu pentru cele, cum suntem noi, în curs de dezvoltare.
It is difficult to for an outsider to see the specific benefits of NATO and EU membership for Romania. But for the Romanians, membership goes beyond the specifics.
O altă problemă care ne macină este Rusia, iar ambițiile ei recente de-a revedeni un jucător activ în acest spațiu ne trezesc temeri și fantasme specifice Războiului Rece.
The Romanians emerged from a world of horror, some of it of their own making. They fear themselves perhaps more than they fear others. For them, becoming European is both a form of therapy and something that will restrain the demons within and without. When you live with bad memories, you live with the shadows of reality. For the Romanians, illusory solutions to haunting memories make a great deal of sense.
It makes sense until war comes, and in this part of the world, the coming of war has been the one certainty since before the Romans. It is only a question of when, with whom and what your own fate will be when it arrives.
În cazul Moldovei, problemele sunt mai accentuate:
Moldova is a country in need of explanation, two explanations in fact. First, there is the question of what kind of country Moldova is. Second, there is the question of why anyone should care.
Moldova is not just a strategic chip. It is a place where people live, caught between their Romanian heritage and their Soviet past. It is a mistake to think of Moldova simply as part of the Romania that had been taken by the Soviets, which once freed from Soviet domination would simply rejoin Romania.
The Moldovans feel that Romanians look down on them, and so Moldovans resent them.
The real issue behind the complex politics is simply this: What is Moldova? There is consensus on what it is not: It is not going to be a province of Romania. But Moldova was a province of Romania and a Soviet Socialist Republic. What is it now? What does it mean to be a Moldovan? On this question I could see no consensus. There are nations that lack a state, like the Kurds. Moldova is a state that lacks a nation. Nation-building in Moldova is not so much about institutions but about creating a national consensus about the nation.
But where being European is a general goal in Romania, it is hotly disputed in Moldova.
This is not to say that Moldova cannot evolve a sense of nationhood and identity. But such things take a long time to create and rarely emerge peacefully.
Soluția lui Friedman pentru Moldova este următoarea:
Moldova was once part of Romania. It was once part of the Soviet Union. Moldova makes a great deal of sense as part of something. The Soviet Union is gone. Europe has more problems than it can handle already; it is not looking for more. Romania is still there. It is not a perfect solution, and certainly not one many Moldovans would welcome, but it is a solution, however imperfect.
Nu mi-a fost ușor să citesc cele două articole, la fel cum nu este simplu să chestionezi asumpțiile și miturile care îți formează oglinda în care te privești pe tine însuți.