A brilliant mini-portrait of Joe Biden from the former American Ambassador to Romania:
On the 20-minute drive into the city, he quizzed me on Romanian
attitudes, the status of various government leaders and the inside
story on Romania’s foreign policy toward Slobodan Milosevic, who was
still in power next door in Yugoslavia. Because Biden has known all the
major Romanian leaders since the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the
questions were Ph.D. level, not Romania 101. That was remarkable in
itself since he is no specialist on Romania; he could do the same,
landing in dozens of nations around the world...
...In most of our meetings, Romanian leaders reiterated their strong
interest in joining the NATO alliance. At lunch at my house with
opposition party leaders, one of them said that NATO membership was
important to their country for a reason I’d never heard before.
“If we’re in NATO, we won’t have to worry about NATO attacking
Romania over our relations with our Hungarian minority the way you
attacked Yugoslavia,” he said. “Since Turkey has been in NATO for
decades, you let them do what they want with the Kurdish minority.”
Biden, visibly angry, rose from his chair, leaned across the table, and said: “If that’s why you want to get into NATO, I’ll make sure you never do!”
Read the whole thing. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
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