Borders with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have defenses and are guarded, and there is some effort to patrol the Black Sea coastline. Borders with the Soviet Union and Hungary are not controlled except at highway and rail crossing points. Because the Danube River forms the greater share of the controlled borders, much of the patrolling is done by boat.
During the 1950s and early 1960s frontier or border troops were subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and were difficult to distinguish, except in their deployment, from that ministry's security troops. During the latter part of the 1960s authority over the border forces passed to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, but the move was apparently accomplished over a period of time, and the decree formalizing the transfer was not published until September 1971. The commander of the frontier troops is one of the major operational commanders under the minister of the armed forces and is on a level with the chiefs of the military regions, the air and air defense force, and naval forces.
Regulations defining border areas to be controlled and describing the authority of the forces were amended in late 1969. The border strip is a prohibited area, which is fenced in some places and often patrolled. On level, dry ground, it is sixty-five-feet wide but, where the borderline crosses marshy or rugged terrain, it may be widened enough to afford the troops easier access and control.
A border zone varies in width but extends into the country from the strip and includes towns and communes. Frontier troops have overall control within the zone. They are instructed not to interfere more than necessary with usual human activities in it and to cooperate with the local police, whom they do not supplant. Although they are paramount in the zone, they are not restricted to it and may work fifteen or twenty miles into the interior if necessary.
Troops are charged with controlling people, goods, and communications at the border and preventing unauthorized passage and smuggling. The major port city of Constanta, on the Black Sea coast, is listed as an exception to most of the border control regulations. Its city territory does not have a border strip, nor is it within a border zone. The regulation is presumably intended to facilitate port and shipping operations and to keep the more stringent controls inland from the port so that they do not interfere with international trade or tourist traffic.
Romania is a member of the Warsaw Pact, having joined when the pact was created in 1955. It also has bilateral treaties of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with each of the other pact nations. Since each pact member has signed one of these treaties with all other members, all are bound to come to the assistance of any other that is attacked. In practical terms all are bound to the defense of any pact member in any conflict in which it might become involved since, no matter how it started, the other country would be branded the aggressor.
Pact members commit a substantial portion, or all, of their fully trained and equipped units to the pact's use. Committed units are considered to be part of an integral force. Romanian forces have a role in pact plans but, because they have failed to participate in several recent pact maneuvers, Western observers have expressed doubt that the organization would depend upon effective Romanian cooperation during the first phase of a major conflict or for any participation in an action such as the Czechoslovak invasion of 1968.
At the time of the pact's inception, leaders of the various member states were preoccupied with the security of their countries and their regimes. A threat from the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was real to them, as was danger from dissident elements within their own borders. It is doubtful whether in 1955 any one of the leadership groups seriously considered that its regime might—by itself or in deference to the wishes of its people—undertake economic or social practices or deviate from the ideology in ways that could be considered dangerous to the solidarity of the alliance. By 1965, however, Romania had embarked upon an independent course, to the extent that it, like Czechoslovakia, had reason to fear that it could be the object of retaliatory pact action.
In his Bucharest Declaration of July 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu—who at that time was head of the party but had not yet taken over as chief of state—announced that he considered the Warsaw Pact a temporary alliance and that it would lose its validity if NATO were to cease functioning. Then, in 1968, Romania openly supported the Czechoslovak government, denounced the pact's invasion of that country, and did not participate in it. Since that time Romania has not permitted other Warsaw Pact forces either to hold exercises on its soil or to cross it for maneuvers in another country. As a result, Bulgaria can send forces to other Eastern European countries only by air or by way of the Black Sea and the Soviet Union. Pact exercises held in Bulgaria during the summer of 1971 were performed by Bulgarian troops; other countries, including Romania, sent observers.