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Dr. Nawaf Salameh, Founder & Chairman of Nawaf Salameh Family Office, emphasizes the unique opportunity Romania has to deepen its strategic and commercial ties with the United States.

Some important visitors from the United States will be arriving in Bucharest this month, which, I hope, will allow our leaders to have a better picture of America than the largely self-generated, speculative and indeed vitriolic and panic-stricken one that some prefer to have dominating the news these days.

First, a bipartisan (majority Republican and opposition Democrat) coalition will be arriving 15 April for meetings with Romanian officials. A few weeks later, Donald J. Trump Jr., businessman and son of the President of the United States, will also make a short visit.

For Romania, these visits are also a chance to provide our perspective on recent security-related and economic developments. In doing so, it is vitally important that we listen carefully to the Americans as well. Indeed, we need to get better at this, for the simple reason that, at a time of momentous change in the world, the United States remains by far both the world's most powerful and important country, and our best ally. Now, more than ever, with people from Moscow, China, and yes, from Brussels and Paris giving vent to their own unrealistic and potentially dangerous ambitions, we must think clearly and cooly, and put aside our personal, individual interests for the sake of our country.

Such opportunities for dialogue with the US have been all too rare of late, particularly since the cancellation of the Romanian presidential election in December - which, however one looks at it, revealed to the world some deep problems in our bureaucracy. We all know the problems we face in this respect, and that in some sense we still have not completely shaken the psychological legacy of the Ceausescu era. This is understandable, even to outsiders.

The key is what we do now, moving forward, and to recognize that progress means undertaking comprehensive and sometimes challenging reforms.

This is not easy. We know this.

America, too, faces serious and by now well-documented problems in this regard. But rather than retreat from the task, President Trump, as is his way, is dealing with them head-on, with the kind of courage Americans and indeed any free people have the right to expect from their elected leaders. We can learn much by, finally, paying attention, using our own eyes, and learning "the new American grammar," as some have noted. We should also discard the comfortable but blinkered prisms of earlier eras, which were provided by circles pursuing their own narrow agendas, not that of our people.

Indeed, our own experiences in this regard will, I trust, be informative and, to the extent they are offered honestly and freely, can serve as the basis of a dialogue and cooperation on the civilizational issues that confront us all, and about which American Vice President JD Vance spoke so eloquently at the recent Munich Security Conference.

I am a businessman. I understand that, as important as interstate security relations are, it is in fact in the commercial realm that the most enduring ties between peoples are forged, where common interests are given expression in the most concrete form, shorn of the illusions that are often an inescapable element of diplomacy. In the commercial realm, reality and the bottom line must, and do, prevail.

Consequently, I strongly believe that the key to the future of Romania is to develop strong, comprehensive commercial ties with the United States, because these ties-reflected in myriads of ground-truth decisions and deep cultural relationships among peoples-are the most beneficial and stable. Moreover, they can help insulate our US-Romania bilateral relationship from the ups and downs of the current moment.

This is why I have created the American - Romanian Business Roundtable, in cooperation with the Jones Group in the United States, to promote strategic, long-term cooperation among US and Romanian businesses in critical areas of vital interest to our country, including the energy and defense industrial sectors. Developing our Romanian capacity in these and other industries, in tandem with the unique creative capabilities and know-how of American business, will be key to Romania's modernization and enhancing its economic capacity.

Moreover, I believe that US-Romanian commercial ties, if fully developed, will have precisely the reformative effect we need to exert on our own bureaucracy. They will do this by demonstrating the need for, and benefits of, responsiveness and cooperation in public-private relations, to the benefit not only of "consumers," but of producers and workers in our own country, providing jobs and enhancing the stability of our communities.

To this end, we must consider how to make our country more attractive to US investment. One way to do this is, of course, to take on our full share of the defense burden. Rather than trying to short-change our security, we should increase defense spending, in tandem with our US partner, to a level commensurate with the actual threats we face. This will also encourage us and our NATO partners to make realistic appraisals of the emerging strategic situation.

We should also adapt an idea promoted by some of our NATO Allies in their own countries regarding financing of military bases. That is, we should ensure that our own MK military base is completely financed and therefore make it easier for the United States-which has for decades shouldered the burden of the defense of Europe yet now confronts newer, emerging strategic challenges in the far East-to commit to a long-term presence there.

We should also repeat more forcefully in this respect that the goal of our commitment to MK is the defense of actually existing NATO territory, and not to have the base serve as a means to expand it or project power into non-NATO areas-a counterproductive fantasy that too many in Western Europe continue inexplicably to promote in Ukraine. And we should unambiguously support the United States in its effort to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

We will soon hold our rescheduled Presidential elections. It is my fervent hope that by remembering who we are as Romanians and thinking clearly about the world, we will be in a better position to pursue closer strategic commercial and broader ties to the United States - because, at the end of the day, it is in the vital national interest of Romania to do so.