Professional Affiliation
Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
Expert Bio
Dr. Eliza Gheorghe is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the Belfer Center's International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom. She holds a doctorate in International Relations from the University of Oxford. She writes on reactive proliferation within alliances, nuclear technology transfers, nuclear sharing, and smuggling networks.
Eliza was a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies (2011–2014), a George Abernethy predoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Center in Bologna (2013–2014), and a postdoctoral fellow at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University (2014–2015). She has taught classes on international relations, U.S. foreign policy, and nuclear proliferation. She holds an M.A. with distinction in Security Studies from Georgetown, where she was a Fulbright scholar.
Wilson Center Project
Romania and the Bomb: Bucharest’s Nuclear Acquisition Strategy during the Cold War
Project Summary
The project examines Romania’s Cold War acquisition of nuclear technology from Western suppliers during the period of détente. This first account of the Romanian nuclear weapons program is based upon multi-archival research that relies extensively upon recently declassified documents from both sides of the former Iron Curtain. It complements supplier-centric explanations of nuclear assistance, and restores agency to recipient countries, in this case Romania. The project argues that Romania was an ‘international nuclear entrepreneur’ which turned to the West for atomic assistance because Moscow delayed transfers of the technology they had requested. However, Romania then discovered that this Soviet policy of ‘denial by postponement’ contrasted with more positive attitudes in the West. Over this period, Romania managed to secure nuclear technology thanks to its ingenuity and its political entrepreneurship with the West. In particular, Romania obtained assistance in exchange for its good offices to the United States in the Vietnam War and during the Sino-American rapprochement, as well as by playing West European nuclear suppliers off against one another.
Major Publications
‘Atomic Maverick. Romania’s Negotiations for Nuclear Technology, 1964-1970,’ in Cold War History, Vol. 13, Issue 3, 2013, 373-392.
‘Building Détente in Europe? East-West Trade and the Beginnings of Romania’s Nuclear Project, 1964-1970,’ in European Review of History, Vol. 21, Issue 2, 2014, 235-253.
‘Nicolae Ceaușescu’ in Steven Casey and Jonathan Wright (eds.), Mental Maps in the Era of Détente and the End of the Cold War, 1968-1991 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 60-80.
