Moldovan parliament adopted in its first reading a bill that allows the republic’s air force to shoot down invaders of its airspace and envisages the purchase of aviation equipment for this purpose caused a moderate sensation, KW wrote in an article this week, according to Kyiv Weekly. It looked like Cisinau seeks to spend eight national defense budgets to purchase eight second-hand U.S. fighter jets
The possibility of attracting Moldova to joining this a “fighter jet pool” with neighboring Romania should not be discarded. The eight used U.S. F-16 fighter jets sold to Moldova cannot effectively defend the country. But by arming Romania and Moldova with similar military hardware it would be possible to set up a joint servicing base, organize the joint training of fighter pilots in the airspaces of both countries and, finally, basing joint operative teams at Romanian and Moldovan airfields. In this case the capacity of the Moldovan Air Force is not of particular significance. More importantly, they are meat to be integrated into European security and defense systems.
Given such prospects even if the U.S. hands over those US $240 mn to Moldova in the form of a gratuity it still comes out ahead seeing is this is a relatively low price to pay for “killing two birds with one stone”: coverage by the European ABM defense system and drawing the neutral Moldova into NATO’s sphere of influence. However, it is quite probable that this money will be granted in the form of a long-term credit, which could serve as a guarantee of the permanency (or immutability) of the foreign policy course of Cisinau regardless of the results of the elections.
The U.S. can even allow Moldovan officials to spread the wealth among one another by pocketing part of the money to guarantee that the aforementioned law will be passed in the second reading without any visible obstacles. But the question is how will Russia react to this given that the Kremlin’s main objective is to hold Moldova within its sphere of influence?, the article concludes.
