BUCHAREST, Romania -- Assuring and directly enabling our NATO allies and partners with quality, responsive, and engaged forces, is a key component of U.S. Army Europe's "Strong Europe" strategy.
In building towards this goal, relationships matter. One of these essential relationships is the one which exists between the United States and Romania.
Romania's commitment to NATO has been proven under fire. As one of the alliance's 28 member nations since 2004, Romania repeatedly answered NATO's call, sending (to date) over 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other contingency operations. Most recently, the Romanian government approved a defense spending increase to two percent of their GDP which is further testimony of Romania's long-term relevancy in NATO.
Adjacent to the Black Sea, astride the Danube River Delta, and sharing a common border with Ukraine, there is no questioning Romania's strategic importance to the alliance when it comes to deterring aggression.
Opening a new chapter in this already strong relationship, the USAREUR Office of the Inspector General traveled to Romania's capitol of Bucharest to meet with the Control and Inspection Corps, Feb. 24-26. The CIC is an IG-like organization within the Romanian Ministry of National Defense.
These first-ever talks between IG partners officially initiated the USAREUR OIG's Engagement Campaign, part of USAREUR's NATO-Ready Line of Effort.
The purpose of these talks was to increase familiarization with organizational commonalities, plan future combined IG training events to mutually enhance effectiveness, and strengthen interoperability by laying the ground work for a combined USAREUR/CIC inspection of a future USAREUR training exercise.
In addition to the approval and recommendation of the EUCOM IG, history played an important role in identifying the Romanian CIC as the test bed of USAREUR's fledgling IG military-to-military engagement program.
The long history of the CIC dates back to 1910 when Romanian King Carol I, by royal decree, created the Army Inspector within the Ministry of War. A century later the organization remains but the functions have evolved along a similar line of those within the U.S. Army's IG Corps.
Today, the mission of the CIC is to conduct systemic evaluations of the politics, processes, programs, structures, and resources of the Romanian Ministry of National Defense.
During the visit, the USAREUR IG Team, led by Col. David Carstens, USAREUR Command IG, met with numerous Romanian CIC counterparts, most notably the Chief of the CIC, Maj. Gen. Ariton Ionita (former Romanian Land Forces Commander) and his Deputy, Col. Aurelian Alexandru. Much of the engagement was conducted at the CIC Headquarters, not far from the King Carol I National Defense University.
Both groups discussed doctrine, best practices, requirements and lessons learned. Equally important, the Leaders of the CIC and USAREUR IG laid the groundwork for future engagements, training, and combined inspections.
Relationships matter in a "Strong Europe" and new relationships within the NATO Alliance are formed one step at a time. This first step in IG engagement between the USAREUR Office of the IG and Romanian CIC promises to be a strong and enduring one."
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About us: U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned in its 51 country area of responsibility to advance American strategic interests in Europe and Eurasia. The relationships we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for multinational contingency operations around the world, strengthen regional partnerships and enhance global security.
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