From Dependency to Autonomy: Trump’s Rhetoric and Romania’s Civil-Military Cooperation

The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 has introduced a level of transatlantic strategic uncertainty without precedent in the post-Cold War era. His administration’s conditional reading of Article 5, its bilateral diplomatic outreach toward Moscow conducted outside established NATO channels, and its explicit demands for allied defence spending well above the 2% of GDP threshold have collectively disrupted planning assumptions that European governments had treated as fixed for decades. For Romania — a NATO member bordering Ukraine, hosting the Aegis Ashore missile defence system at Deveselu and multinational forces at Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base — these developments demanded an institutional response, not merely a diplomatic one. This article argues that Trump’s rhetoric has paradoxically catalysed a positive transformation in Romania’s civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) mechanisms, accelerating a shift from strategic dependency on the U.S. security umbrella toward a more autonomous, whole-of-society defence posture. Drawing on the Copenhagen School’s societal security framework and NATO’s CIMIC doctrine (AJP-3.4.9), the study analyses defence budget trajectories, legislative developments, and CIMIC exercise patterns observed between January 2025 and April 2026. A four-stage Reactive Resilience Consolidation Model (RRCM) is proposed alongside a critical assessment of its limits.