The last Soviet troops left Romania in 1958. When Nicolae Ceausescu became leader of the nation in 1965, he distanced his country from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, forbidding exercises and deployments involving other states.
In 2005, the year after Romania gained full NATO membership, Condoleezza Rice visited Bucharest and secured four bases for the Pentagon and NATO: The Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base (already used for the war against Iraq), the Cincu and Smardan training bases, and the Babadag firing range.
The U.S. recently concluded military exercises with Bulgaria - Operation Thracian Spring - from April 22 to 28 and led joint air force exercises with Bulgaria and Romania from April 12 to 16 at the Aviano Air Base in Italy.
This February Romanian and Bulgarian government officials announced that they would accept American and NATO Standard Missile-3 interceptor installations and the troops to man them.
In 1960 Albanian leader Enver Hoxha turned against the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact allies, aligning himself with the People's Republic of China. No foreign troops or bases were allowed in the country.
Starting in 1993 the U.S. Sixth Fleet began conducting naval exercises with Albania, acquired the use of military bases there and deployed troops to a forward base it established near the port city of Durres for the war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
Last week the nation's prime minister and the chief of staff of the armed forces - after meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen - announced their willingness to host U.S. and NATO interceptor missile facilities and the soldiers who will accompany them.
Albania, along with Croatia, with whom U.S. Special Operations Command
Europe just concluded two months of air exercises for what was described as "large-scale counterinsurgency, stability and counterterrorism operations" abroad, are NATO's newest members, joining in 2009.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, American Admiral James Stavridis, was in Bulgaria on April 26 and 27 and Secretary General Rasmussen is expected there on May 20.
Even affiliating with the Brussels-based bloc demands conditions that are onerous and inflexible. NATO partners are told which Western arms manufacturers they must purchase weapons from, where their troops are to be deployed, who their friends and who their enemies are around the world. The full foreign policy orientation of candidates and members is dictated from Brussels and Washington.
NATO is a bloc that no nation has ever withdrawn from or will be allowed to leave.
Before his visits to Albania and Croatia late last month the latter said at NATO headquarters in Brussels, "My dream will come true if - one day - we could see all countries in the Balkans as members of NATO. They belong to the Euro-Atlantic Community. I hope to see their flags represented here among all other NATO nations."
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov visited Washington, D.C. at the end of April to meet with among others U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones, and pledged support for NATO and European Union membership for both Serbia and Kosovo.
At last month's NATO foreign ministers meeting in Estonia, Bosnia's Membership Action Plan was approved.
NATO's Kosovo Force is training and arming the Kosovo Security Force, an army in formation under NATO control.
With the demise of the Cold War former members of the Warsaw Pact may have hoped for a demilitarized Europe, one free of armed blocs. Instead the first and preeminent Cold War military alliance, NATO, will soon have engulfed almost every nation on the continent.
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