ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Romania's main foreign policy orientations, in order to emphasize its allegiance to Western powers and organizations. It focuses on its official vision as well as actions in what concerns the Black Sea region and Black Sea co-operation in general. The chapter examines some Romanian bilateral relations on a case-by-case basis, in order to assess whether they can create the climate of a good neighborhood necessary as a premise for regionalization. Romanian foreign policy elites, profoundly embedded in a realist, geopolitical apprehension of international politics, in the haste to bandwagon with the Western powers, played the regional card in logic of expected consequences, as opposed to a logic of appropriateness. The Romanian policy of assuming a leadership role at the Black Sea is undermined by at least one important, objective factor, namely: there are at least three other powers that have greater regional leadership resources than Romania: Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.
