OPINION Bridges too low, roads too narrow - we block NATO mobility on the Eastern Flank

The Steadfast Dart 25 exercise, held in February 2025 and intended to test the mobility and reaction capacity of allied forces in the event of conflict, looked like a sinister joke on the part of our country regarding military mobility, according to a recent report by Pro TV. Basically, the cited source reiterated what the BURSA newspaper warned in the article "In case of conflict, we are waiting in vain for 100,000 soldiers from the West": the chronic inability of the Romanian state to logistically support any serious military operation on its territory.

The reason? A bridge. A single railway bridge, in the Constanţa town of Negru Vodă, under which NATO vehicles cannot fit. More precisely, 730 British vehicles, which were coming to our country after disembarking in the Greek port of Alexandroupoli and crossing Greece and Bulgaria. That vehicles, effectively, did not fit under the railway bridge at Negru Vodă. And NATO was forced to redirect its convoys, not because Russia fired a missile, but because a road in Romania does not meet the minimum infrastructure standards for the year 2025.

Did someone miscalculate? No. The situation was known to the central authorities in Bucharest. But neither the Ministry of National Defense, nor the Ministry of Transport, nor the National Company for the Administration of Road Infrastructure considered the problem important enough to prevent such an embarrassment. So, according to the cited source, the British soldiers were forced to go around and enter through Vama Veche, a route considered vulnerable to an attack from the Black Sea, bordering on the absurd, in a real conflict scenario.

What did the representatives of the Romanian state say to the cited source? That "a detour" would be made and that a "multi-criteria analysis" was needed. As if we were at a participatory urban planning workshop, not in a context of preparation for a possible war.

In parallel, the problem of the Giurgiu-Ruse bridge, one of only two permanent crossing points of the Danube to Bulgaria, has persisted for several years, although the Ministry of National Defense has been demanding the construction of a second bridge in the respective area for a long time. Promises have been made, feasibility studies are being moved from one bureaucratic drawer to another, financing is provided by the European Union, but for now we have nothing concrete, although a military analysis presented by the cited source clearly shows: if the current bridge is destroyed in a conflict, the capacity to mobilize NATO troops is paralyzed.

We are basically talking about a national security issue. However, since our country joined NATO and the EU, that is, for 20 years, the central authorities have jokingly treated the issue of road and railway infrastructure in Romania, even if in the last two years things seem to be starting to get back on track.

In the meantime, in the event of a conflict, NATO allies are prepared to respect Article 5 of the Treaty - regarding common defense - and come to our country's aid. However, they will stop in front of the Negru Vodă railway bridge or will have to detour through Vama Veche.

This is the cruel reality of the present, which General Gheorghiţă Vlad, Chief of the Army Staff, was talking about the other day, when he reported to the cited source that the Romanian Army still does not have all the necessary equipment to have a full interoperable capacity with NATO allies. The Chief of Staff mentioned the Abrams tanks that we currently lack, the automatic weapons that do not have the same caliber as Western ones, and the lack of equipment necessary for the Naval Forces.

Unfortunately, although we have trained soldiers, who are waiting for state-of-the-art tanks, and although we have sophisticated logistical systems, everything risks being held back by the road infrastructure in our country.

During this time, General Gheorghiţă Vlad, declared to Pro TV that "we absolutely must find solutions for the Danube", but CNAIR, through spokesperson Alin Şerbănescu, claimed for the cited source: "Both in peacetime and in wartime, a multi-criteria analysis is first and foremost done. You look at costs, benefits, everything related to traffic values. If it is found that the respective investment is not justified, it is not done".

Seriously? While we have a war in Ukraine? While military convoys are stuck in front of a 3.5-meter-high railway bridge?

On paper, Romania is the "pivot of NATO's eastern flank." In reality, we are a corridor with potholes. While Poland is building military highways, Germany has clear plans for strategic mobility corridors, and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, under the same Russian pressure, have created emergency plans for rapid troop transit, Romania is getting tangled in its own bureaucracy and eternal construction sites.

Poland, for example, has invested over 4 billion euros in the last five years alone in the infrastructure that connects NATO bases to the eastern border, according to data from a recent report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA). The Warsaw authorities have invested in dual-purpose road infrastructure - civil and military, they have built roads intended for heavy military traffic, while in our country military convoys participating in multinational exercises reconfigure their route on the fly, because in some areas of our country the motto of the central and local authorities seems to be "This way, no passing!".

Another example of good practice is Germany which, although it has no conflict on the border, is currently developing, through European funds, a program on military mobility, through which all strategic routes are audited and modernized, according to the same ECA report.

Fortunately for us, the war has not started and the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Transport can occupy their time with feasibility studies and detours. This is while NATO planners in Brussels are hastily redrawing maps for military mobility in the event of an armed conflict and trying to understand why a member country, on the front line of the continent's defense, cannot quickly receive a military convoy because of a banal bridge.

But that's okay. At the next exercise, maybe we'll send the allies a link to the "Romanian road guide in wartime" and a Waze map with all the pitfalls of state size. That's right, multi-criteria. It can be said that Romania is not yet ready for a conflict. And, worse, it doesn't seem to want to be.