Istoricul american Larry Watts, autorul celebrei lucrări apărute în traducere românească anul acesta la editura Rao – Fereşte-mă, Doamne, de prieteni /With Friends Like These (*),  preda un curs la Masterul de Studii de Securitate al Universităţii din Bucureşti, Facultatea de Sociologie. Cursul se intituleaza, sugestiv, „Dilema de securitate a României în timpul Războiului Rece”.

Larry Watts este autorul a numeroase studii şi lucrări de specialitate şi a mai predat în cariera sa la RAND Corporation, Hans Seidel Schtiftung, U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management etc. Alături de Larry Watts, vor mai preda la acest prestigios program de master, Dan Dungaciu, Directorul Institutului de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale al Academiei Române, Iulian Fota, consilier prezidenţial pe probleme de securitate, Nicu Sava, fost ambasador al României în Elveţia, prof. univ. Ilie Bădescu, Radu Baltasiu, Directorul Institutului European de Studii Etnice al Academiei Romane şi alţi experţi în domeniul securităţii militare şi non-militare.

Pentru înscrierea la acest Master se poate consulta: http://www.sas.unibuc.ro/index.pl/studii_master_ro.

(*) With Friends Like These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War against Romania (review)
Mediterranean Quarterly – Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2011, pp. 115-118

Duke University Press

Project M– USE – Mediterranean Quarterly – With Friends Like These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War against Romania (review) Project M– USE Journals Mediterranean Quarterly Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2011 With Friends Like These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War against Romania (review) Mediterranean Quarterly Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2011 E-ISSN: 1527-1935 Print ISSN: 1047-4552 Reviewed by Symeon Giannakos Larry L. Watts: With Friends Like These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War against Romania. Bucharest, Romania: Editura Militara, 2010. pages. ISBN 978-9733208365 (hardcover).

Graduate students taking courses on the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s may recall classroom debates on Romania’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Was Romania a state defiant of its oversized neighbor, or was it simply playing the role of maverick afforded to it because its ideological commitment to socialism could not be questioned? In With Friends Like These, Larry Watts argues convincingly that Romania was indeed a defiant state, and it was actually the Soviet propaganda machinery that cultivated the notion that Romania was a loyal fraternal socialist state indulging in demonstrative politics for public and international consumption. Soviet propaganda aside, Romania’s secret services became convinced that those of the Soviets — the KGB — considered Romania “a target as hostile as any Western country.”

Symeon Giannakos
Mediterranean Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2011