Quo Vadis Republic of Moldova? 31 Years of Independence

Abstract

Since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on August 27, 1991, by the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, a new state with a foreign policy agenda has appeared on the international stage, which has undergone a series of transformations over the last 31 years. During this period, under the pressure of infighting and the increasingly tense political situation, the young state tried to pursue the defense of its national interests at a global level. The Republic of Moldova is a small state in the east of the European continent that needs to achieve a robust foreign policy in order to develop as a state. The geographical location of the Republic of Moldova involves achieving a balance between following the European path of the state and maintaining a peaceful relationship with the Russian Federation. The study of foreign policy is an ever-changing phenomenon in how interactions between states, institutions, and individuals determine an international system characterized by dynamism. The decisions elaborated by the politicians in the perspective of advancing and promoting the national interests on the superficial level constitute the theoretical basis of International Relations. Specialists in the field had an increased interest in foreign policy when they sought to explain the choices made by national leaders regarding interstate relations and to predict the political decisions and positions that may arise in the future. Having this increased interest from the specialists in International Relations, it was tried to develop a special branch exclusively focused on explaining the foreign policy structures through the prism of cognitive processes that discover the role of the human factor and the decision-making process in determining the foreign policy behavior. However, specialists admit the failure of the Theory of International Relations in creating a meta-theory of Foreign Policy Analysis, the latter becoming a sub-field of International Relations. In this regard, we have identified the point of intersection that connects FPA and TIR as being represented by the theories elaborated within the traditionalist and behaviorist approaches. The first approach is associated with the vision of realistic theory, respectively focuses on the state-centric approach that states act as rational actors in the spirit of protecting and promoting the national interest. The aim is to maintain and possibly strengthen a state's power, integrity, and autonomy within the international system. If realists seek to provide a universal explanation of the external policies and behavior of all sovereign states through the interdependence between the concept of power and the national interest, on the other hand, the partisans of the behaviorist movement follow the attitudes, preferences, and actions of human decision-makers in order to discover behavioral patterns and develop on their basis "objective laws" after which statesmen are led in various political contexts. Thus, we will draw attention to the theories mentioned above in evaluating the spectrum of foreign policy at all levels of the political organization of the contemporary world: human, national, regional, and finally, international. The article aims to carry out a retrospective analysis of the significant aspects that influenced the external path of the Republic of Moldova, among them, highlighting the internal situation within the state as a result of social, economic, and political processes, as well as the international conjunctures between the great actors of the system. In the analysis, we will follow the follow-up of the foreign policy tendencies to position themselves between the two worlds, both geographically and politically, represented by the Western and Eastern parts of Europe - the first represents the continuation of the political dialogue with the European Union, the consolidation of the position within the Eastern Partnership, as well as the intensification of the European integration process; the latter being the maintenance of bilateral relations with the Russian Federation in advantageous terms.