21 august 1968 – Apoteoza lui Ceausescu by Lavinia Betea

(see Smith 2005 and Hoogensen Gjørv 2012) It marks a Kuhnian “paradigm shift” (Kuhn 1962) from a so-called “unipolar moment” of international peace (Krauthammer 1990) to a completely new context where even the very notion of security needs to be endlessly reassessed. The ‘War on Terror’ brought about a completely new arrangement of the world order and new priorities in the delicate balance between freedom and security. Less than a month after the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement policy makers and lay people were struck by 9/11 and its consequences. If this did not suffice, regional in fights and NATO bombings barely had to stop completely before the world, and the region with it, was caught by a more – or at least seemingly – consequential event. SEE was precipitated into the most unstable historical phase since the end of the Second World War (WWII). The period 1991–2001 has been, indeed, a turbulent decade for the world and the region. The revolution in Romania, the toppling of Zhivkov in Bulgaria and the “Balkan wars of the ‘90s” (Naimark and Case 2003) are just a few of the dramatic developments that shocked South-Eastern Europe (SEE) in the following years. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, the collapse of real socialism in Eastern Europe and, more relevantly to this essay, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact (1) could be said to stem from that symbolic event. On NovemEuropeans celebrated the 30 th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The years in which the Warsaw Pact existed were years of peace in Europe - (Gennady Yanayev quoted in Baev 2017, 143)

The Warsaw Pact was a child of its Era, it served to guarantee the security of the member states, playing the part of an instrument for the maintaining of the “military and strategic balance”.

21 august 1968 – Apoteoza lui Ceausescu by Lavinia Betea