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Romania Ceausescu and the Military
The armed forces, which had a history of intervention
in
politics before the advent of communist power, have been
the only
plausible threat to Ceausescu's rule since the late 1960s.
He has
frequently rotated cadres within the Ministry of National
Defense
and the top military command positions to prevent the
emergence of
strong, politically independent military leaders. And he
has
unceremoniously fired senior officers and promoted
ambitious lowerranking officers to higher posts, thereby using his
patronage to
command their loyalty.
In 1971 forty general staff officers were purged and
arrested,
conceivably for plotting to overthrow Ceausescu. In May
1974,
Ceausescu unexpectedly purged five senior commanders and
in 1976
suddenly dismissed General Ion Ionita, his long-time
political
ally. Rumors of anti-Ceausescu conspiracies or attempted
revolts
within the military circulated freely in Romania in the
1980s. In
1983 an abortive military coup d'état was reportedly
crushed and
twelve officers were executed for plotting it. Ceausescu
then made
his brother Ilie a lieutenant general and appointed him
deputy
minister of national defense and chief of the Higher
Political
Council of the Army to increase his control of the armed
forces.
Later in 1983, Ceausescu spent considerable energy
visiting
military units, apparently in an effort to reaffirm his
credentials
as supreme commander of the armed forces. Ceausescu's
handling of
this alleged revolt amply demonstrated his mastery of the
mechanisms of party and personal control over the armed
forces,
which has enabled him to eliminate potential threats
before they
become organized challenges.
Whether rumored military revolts were confirmed or not,
the
professional military had real grievances with the PCR and
the
Ceausescu regime. Many of Ceausescu's military policies
contradicted some basic interests of the officer corps,
diminished
its professional status, and served as potential sources
of
political and military friction. Some officers opposed
Ceausescu's
policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union because it
denied the
armed forces access to more sophisticated Soviet weapons
and
equipment as well as military assistance. Romanian
officers might
have been willing to accept a less independent military
policy in
return for a larger supply of higher-quality arms from the
Soviet
Union. The officer corps probably chafed at Ceausescu's
reductions
in the country's defense budget as well as the extensive
use of
armed forces personnel in domestic construction projects,
which had
a negative impact on military training and readiness.
Ceausescu's
habit of manipulating high-level military promotions to
further his
political interests and suddenly dismissing top military
commanders
also annoyed professional officers.
The importance ascribed to the Patriotic Guards in
Romania's
military doctrine and strategy served to undermine the
prestige and
professional autonomy of the regular armed forces. With
its
emphasis on the employment of irregular paramilitary and
guerrilla
detachments, War of the Entire People required the
Ministry of
National Defense to cooperate closely with the Patriotic
Guards and
supply them with equipment. The latter's requirement for
relatively
large quantities of low-technology, low-cost arms
conflicted with
the former's desire for smaller numbers of more advanced
weapons
and equipment. Although the Ministry of National Defense
had to
share its budget and resources with the Patriotic Guards,
it
exercised less than full control over them. The
considerable
independence of the Patriotic Guards led Western analysts
to
conclude that they were established, at least partially,
to serve
as a rival armed force counterbalancing the regular armed
forces.
Data as of July 1989
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