Furthermore, only large-scale programs—defined as those valued at more than €100M—require parliamentary approval, but even when parliament is required to weigh in, the Ministry of National Defense decides what they see. I was told at least once that the military prefers to be less than forthcoming about systems’ total expected life-cycle costs, to avoid spooking politicians with an even larger up-front price tag.[8] And for programs valued at less than €100M, there is no explicit need to secure parliamentary approval at all.[9]
Finally, Romania suffers from limited expertise on defense issues in the non-military government bureaucracy, and especially in formats that are independent of the military. The government’s main defense think tank, Institutul pentru Studii Politice de Apărare și Istorie Militară (ISPAIM), is subordinated to the Ministry of National Defense. And while the defense college is ostensibly there to train civilian government staff so they can conduct effective oversight, the reality is that the military ends up training the civilians to think like they do.[10]
The Ministry of National Defense also has a direct presence throughout key elements of the Romanian state bureaucracy. One former senior Air Force officer indicated that the defense ministry has its own coordination offices embedded in key national security ministries, e.g. foreign affairs, finance, and economy. If he needed something from the Ministry of Finance, he could call and be sure to reach another military officer.[11]
Some of this is inevitable. The line between “expert who knows how things work on the inside” and “insider with major conflicts of interest” is blurry in the best circumstances, and liaison offices to smooth cooperation across areas of different functional expertise make sense. But even assuming no ill-intent, it is easy to see how the end result is a defense establishment that is essentially being asked to self-regulate.
Ultimately, the cross-party consensus on defense issues, the military’s ability to exploit the institutional arrangements that govern defense policymaking, and the lack of technical civilian defense expertise in non-military organizations have created an environment in which military decision makers are able to design, execute, and implement defense programs in relative isolation, without political input or robust public debate.[12] These programs are then presented to parliament for up-down votes in which the strength of the cross-party consensus on defense issues, and politicians’ reluctance to be seen as denying the military necessary resources, means they are essentially always approved. The result is that American-style defense politics (like legislative committee hearings, politicians writing letters to demand answers from service chiefs, Congress forcing the Air Force to keep the A-10 in service or the Navy to buy more F/A-18s) are essentially non-existent.
Implications for Research & Policy
The Romanian experience holds lessons for researchers and policymakers. They need to pursue more detailed cross-national case studies. By traditional metrics, Romania does not raise civil-military red flags, and it sits in a blind spot for typical academic approaches to the subject. Still, there is ample evidence that its defense acquisition policy lacks robust civilian oversight. But to identify this kind of shortcoming, researchers must look under the hood and trace actual policy processes, map out granular institutional structures, and evaluate how civilian control is exercised on a day-to-day basis, even when questions about the use of force or high-level political stability are not in play. At the policy level, it suggests that American policymakers should not understand supporting defense reform in NATO allies as a purely military-to-military exercise. Rather, the U.S. needs to engage NATO allies in Eastern Europe, like Romania, in the political and social aspects of policymaking, to help foster a new generation of staffers and bureaucrats with the technical expertise necessary to effectively manage defense acquisitions.
To address this, U.S. policymakers could consider a range of options, all of which would be designed to build human capital outside of military institutions, to strengthen civilian and political oversight capabilities. In-country advisory missions could embed technical advisors within allied ministries of defense and focus on training civilian and political staff. It may also be valuable to expand pathways for promising defense and foreign policy professionals abroad to study at American professional military education institutions. By focusing on non-military students, these programs could help cultivate a community of expertise in allies overseas that is better-positioned to execute an oversight function. Finally, the U.S. could consider developing opportunities for foreign non-military staff to embed with Department of Defense or Congressional structures to gain firsthand experience with acquisition planning and political oversight. These opportunities could be modeled on existing congressional fellowship programs which fund opportunities for staff from non-profits and other outside organizations to work directly on Capitol Hill in a policy capacity. Direct legislature-to-legislature working groups, designed to build capacity in defense oversight could also achieve some of the same goals.
