Analysis | Romania’s Infrastructure Diplomacy: promoting stability in a tense region
“Medium and small powers are increasing the sophistication of their tools across the spectrum of infrastructure diplomacy, albeit sometimes without as much publicity. Romania, one of the largest economies of NATO’s eastern flank, is such an example.”
Antonia-Laura Pup
While most of the literature on infrastructure diplomacy is focused solely on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a geopolitical landscape in which supply chains and critical systems interconnect us across cultural and ideological divides, states all over the world practice expanding their diplomatic toolbox to include more strategic infrastructure projects. Discreetly, and in a tense region, Romania is one of them.
What is infrastructure diplomacy and why should we care about it?
The strategic value of infrastructure in geopolitics is not new. Pipeline diplomacy has been used since 2003 in the case of the Caspian Sea and oil diplomacy has been a central foreign policy issue in the Middle East. However, the concept of “infrastructure diplomacy” was coined in the late 2010s, being primarily used in literature to describe China’s endeavors to portray infrastructure development as a means to achieve wider diplomatic or foreign policy objectives. By assisting partners in the construction of infrastructure projects, such as ports, power plants, energy grids, pipelines, or schools, states have bolstered their own political and economic influence, fostered new alliances and strengthened old ones. This domain has expanded into other forms such as railway diplomacy or even stadium diplomacy, demonstrating the importance infrastructure plays in diplomacy today.
Infrastructure diplomacy has become fundamental in bolstering soft power today. One of the most popular examples of this is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a vast project through which the Chinese government has contributed to the establishment of infrastructure networks across Asia, Africa, and Europe. This flagship initiative has boosted Chinese economic and political influence, particularly in the countries which lack other investment opportunities, like the ones in Africa, Central Asia, or the Western Balkans. However, ten years after the launch of the BRI, some analysts are beginning to draw attention to the limits of this gigantic infrastructure diplomacy project. For example, BRI partner countries are beginning to experience debt distress and in some cases, projects are of poor quality and cannot be used. However, China’s appetite for overseas foreign direct investment still exists and is rising despite these shortcomings.
Other countries, like Japan and South Korea, are also diversifying their diplomatic toolbox by financing infrastructure projects outside their own regions. India is tying infrastructure diplomacy with its development cooperation policies by investing in energy, social, and connectivity projects in order to thrive in the competitive landscape of the Indo-Pacific region. Even the European Union has become aware of the geopolitical value of major infrastructure investments against a security landscape characterized by great power rivalry, unveiling its own flagship initiative in 2021. Through Global Gateway, the EU alone mobilized 300 billion EUR for connectivity projects in the priority areas of digital, climate, transport, education, and energy.
However, as argued by a recent article in Foreign Affairs, we now live in an era in which infrastructure influences geopolitics through the complexity of the systems that connect us. Thus, it is not only states with global power ambitions that must learn to augment their statecraft through infrastructure diplomacy. Medium and small powers are increasing the sophistication of their tools across the spectrum of infrastructure diplomacy, albeit sometimes without as much publicity. Romania, one of the largest economies of NATO’s eastern flank, is such an example.
Empowering the Republic of Moldova through robust connectivity projects
Supporting the Republic of Moldova on its European path is a key foreign policy project of Romania. Through this opportunity Bucharest has developed its own “ideational diplomacy,” as Răzvan Foncea called the promotion of the success story of an EU member state to the acceding states. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Republic of Moldova became a collateral victim, blackmailed by Moscow with an existential weapon: Russian gas, on which Chișinău depends to endure its harsh winters. Romania has become an instrumental actor in connecting the Republic of Moldova to the gas platform of the European Union, and through the Iasi-Ungheni gas pipeline has managed to provide the energy resources for Moldova to resist Gazprom’s blackmail.
Continuing the path of limiting energy dependence on the Russian Federation, in April 2024 the Moldovans started work on connecting their electricity grid to that of Romania, through a high voltage line connecting Isaccea to Chișinău. Other connectivity projects that Romania promoted in the Republic of Moldova include the Union Highway, the first highway that will directly connect the two countries, as well as the “digital union” memorandum, through which the two countries have agreed to work together towards implementing new technologies in the public sector.
At the Three Seas Initiative Summit in 2023, hosted by Romania, the Republic of Moldova was invited to become an associate member of this political format, and has now submitted 13 connectivity projects to pitch for both public and private investors. The projects include the construction of infrastructure for hydrogen energy, the development of the Chișinău International Airport, and the Ungheni-Chișinău-Odesa highway.
In addition to important connectivity projects and joint participation in action forums, including the Moldova Support Platform initiated by Romania, Germany and France, Bucharest supports Chisinau in its accession to the European Union through training sessions on EU affairs for workers in the public administration.
Green Energy Corridor project’s powerhouse is in Bucharest
Another example of Romania’s use of infrastructure diplomacy is the Black Sea energy project. This regional cooperation project formed between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, and Romania will transport electricity from Azerbaijan to Europe via a submarine cable across the Black Sea. The initiative has a strong sustainability component as these countries work together to reduce carbon emissions and increase renewable energy access in the region. This joint venture’s headquarters will be in Bucharest and is likely to contribute to Romania’s image as a “gateway to Europe’s Green Energy Future,” as Natia Gamkrelidze of Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School puts it.
Romania is consolidating a leadership position in the field of clean energy through its strategic partnership with the United States under which small modular reactors (SMRs) will be built by the American company NuScale in Romania by 2029, marking a regional first in the use of this novel technology. In conversations on green energy at the EU level, Romania has been a staunch advocate for considering nuclear energy as green energy, and that philosophy is now empowered by concrete measures and investments.
The untapped potential: from infrastructure to policy entrepreneurship
While Romania is sharpening its profile as a regional champion of infrastructure diplomacy, the same cannot be said about Bucharest’s norm entrepreneurship at the multilateral level. This is a missed opportunity. Romanian policymakers, including the future President elect, should match this growing economic potential with a more robust soft power strategy. Building on the success of the Romanian-Moldovan partnership for supporting the latter’s EU accession, Bucharest should be more vocal in Brussels for assuring that the next Von der Leyen Commission will consider enlargement a priority, not only for the Republic of Moldova, but also for Ukraine and the Western Balkans, which would add greater security in a region where the Russian Federation’s shadow looms large.
Revitalizing the Eastern Partnership — a more robust platform for investment in the Western Balkans — and embracing the Three Seas Initiative are policies that Bucharest should pursue vigorously. These would drive away the region’s appetite for Chinese and Russian investments and attract new partnerships. Synchronizing more coherently the regional needs with Ukraine’s reconstruction is another such policy, as Romania is already set to become a hub for transporting the materials needed to rebuild Ukraine.
Furthermore, Romania needs to place a greater emphasis on designing a strategic communications strategy to maximize its influence both in its neighborhood, but also at the Euro-Atlantic level. Acknowledging that, 17 years since joining the European Union and 20 years since joining NATO, Romania is no longer just a beneficiary but a facilitator and provider of Euro-Atlantic security and norms, should be the start of this modernized strategy.
Antonia-Laura Pup is a Fulbright Student at the Security Studies program of the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a teaching assistant at the department of Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) at the same higher education institution. She currently researches how states react towards China’s growing influence in the Black Sea region. She advised the former President of the Committee of defense in the Romanian Parliament.
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