Drumul către alianţă: provocări geopolitice şi proiecte regionale
The Road to Alliance: Geopolitical Challenges and Regional Initiatives

Summary/Abstract: On March 3, 1921, the Convention on Defensive Alliance was signed between the Kingdom of Romania and the Republic of Poland. This was to become a key pillar in the overall efforts leading to the establishment of the first regional defence system in Central-Eastern Europe, which would be further extended by integrating the Little Entente (1921) and the Balkan Entente (1934). The Romanian-Polish alliance was the result of a longstanding strategy developed by Bucharest and Warsaw based on practical considerations imposed by both common interests and shared security needs, as well as by the growing uncertainty of the geopolitical order newly emerged at the end of the First World War. The new strategic map of Europe shaped at the Paris Peace Conference forced the two states to identify different forms of cooperation in the field of security and defence to tackle the challenges of the new regional geography and secure the postwar territorial status quo. Various regional projects developed by Romania and Poland in the aftermath of the Great War facilitated this goal. The main concern was to find a counterweight against the danger of a revanchist Germany and a rising Bolshevik threat but, also important, to prevent a possible alignment between Germany and Bolshevik/Soviet Russia. Under these circumstances, the Romanian-Polish alliance was presumed to be a central component of a potential strategic and military construct imagined by Romania and Poland. Despite the final outcome, the idea of the bilateral defence alliance demonstrated an accurate understanding of the geopolitical realities that required a close defensive partnership between Romania and Poland as the key factor in ensuring the defence along the Eastern flank.

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