Richard Nixon

With the US presidential elections coming up, let’s cast our look back in time to the first visit by an American president to Romania: Richard Nixon, at the beginning of August 1969, less than two weeks after the moon landing. This was also the first state visit by an American president to a socialist country.

Cristina Mateescu, 01.11.2024, 14:00

With the US presidential elections coming up, let’s cast our look back in time to the first visit by an American president to Romania: Richard Nixon, at the beginning of August 1969, less than two weeks after the moon landing. This was also the first state visit by an American president to a socialist country.

For Romania’s then leader Nicolae Ceausescu, this was an immense foreign policy success. After coming to power in 1965, he had continued on the path initiated by his predecessor, steering the country further away from the Soviet Union to pursue a more autonomous foreign policy. Most notably, Ceausescu publicly denounced the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, when troops from four fellow Warsaw Pact states moved into Czechoslovakia to crack down on a programme of reforms. Despite being itself a member of the Warsaw Pact, Romania refused to take part in the invasion and its leader vehemently condemned it, earning a lot of sympathy from the West.

Richard Nixon’s visit to Romania may be seen as a reflection of this, while also marking a shift in US foreign policy, that of forging closer ties with socialist countries based on the idea of “realpolitik”; this new spirit of realism meant that countries governed by different ideologies and social systems could cooperate in areas where they had a shared interest.

President Nixon was received with great enthusiasm in Romania, not only by the country’s officials, but also ordinary citizens, with 1 million people reportedly taking part in the welcome events. The Romanian press of the day gave wide coverage to his visit, including Radio Romania, whose archive contains extensive live reports from the official festivities held.

Romania went on to host three more American presidents: Gerald R Ford in 1975, and, after the fall of the communist regime, Bill Clinton, in 1997, and George W Bush, in 2002 and again in 2008.