BUCHAREST: The decision this week by Romania's government to open its air space to NATO warplanes is the most difficult any of the country's postcommunist governments has taken since the death of Nicolae Ceausescu. For the moment NATO initiated its air strikes against Serbia what can only be called a bout of "Serbomania" has gripped the country. What I mean by "Serbomania" is an extremely unbalanced, biassed, almost neurotically emotional pro-Serbian attitude, one completely lacking in any serious or reasoned critique of NATO' military action.

What is more curious about Romania's outburst of "Serbomania" is that, not many months ago, the country was locked in a "NATO-mania" all its own. Indeed, up to the outbreak of this war, joining NATO was not only official Romanian policy, but enjoyed massive public and media support. According to surveys, about 90% of Romanians backed NATO membership. Most newspapers and broadcast media enthusiastically welcomed the prospect of NATO enlargement in the hope that Romania would be invited into the club. When, in 1997 at NATO's Madrid summit, Romania was turned down, public enthusiasm cooled. But that does not fully explain the open hostility toward NATO that is now on the march.

It is not only that, today, many Romanian journalists and columnists agitate against NATO or have taken the Serbian side. What is most striking is the rationale people invoke for supporting Serbia. By and large, the all-pervasive view here is that of Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington who predicted that international politics after the Cold War would become a"clash of civilizations". Accordingly, many people here see the Balkan conflict as a struggle between "Western civilization" and the "Orthodox-Slavic" one in which Serbia and Romania belong.

Ethnic cleansing and the plight of the Kosovar refugees, who are Muslim, doesn't seem to trouble anyone's sleep; nor is the ruthlessness of Slobodon Milosevic, who, after all, is no Orthodox patriarch, but a cunning ex-communist apparatchik, condemned in any way whatsoever. Reasoned arguments have evaporated from the pages of newspapers, which instead denounce NATO for waging war on "heroic" Serbia and play on public sympathy for the suffering of "our Orthodox brethren".

An outstanding Romanian journalist, Cristian Tudor Popescu, a deputy editor-in chief of Adevarul the newspaper with the widest national circulation, went so far as to write that "Human Rights" are nowadays merely a tool that the West uses in its bid to control the world. The United States, he goes on, is out to destroy the independent nation-states worldwide so that it can expand its economic and cultural hegemony. Serbia, it seems, is just one of the first targets in an ongoing campaign of subjugation.

So, the argument goes, Romanians must join with the Serbs and Russians in an anti-Western front. Somehow these people forget that Romania has always prided itself on being an "island of Latin culture surrounded by a Slavic sea". Moreover, unlike the Serbs or Bulgarians, Romanians have always perceived Russia as their arch-enemy, sentiments made white hot up during the communist era.

Of course, most Romanians are Greek-Orthodox, as Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Russians are. Yet, during the past two centuries this has not prevented them from fearing the Russians, patronizing the Bulgarians, and envying the Greeks. And if the Serbs enjoy a higher status in the national psyche, I suspect that this has less to do with the alleged "Orthodox brotherhood" than because people remember that both Tito and Ceausescu treated Russia as a common threat to their attempts to secure a more independent political way.

Indeed, the weakest explanations for why nations hate or love each other are to be found in "history" or "civilization": both are easily twisted by cynics and opportunists in order to meet the "national interest" of the moment. "Serbomania" and "NATO-phobia", instead, reflect deeper local fears. Many Romanians compare Kosovo with Transylvania, where ethnic Hungarians make up the majority of the population. They believe that, if Kosovo is stripped from Serbia, Transylvania could one day leave Romania.

But even if Serbia eventually loses Kosovo, it won't be because the West wanted that to happen. It will come about because the Serbian government, by its cruelty and intolerance, destroyed any hope of a peaceful coexistence between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. Such, fortunately, is not the case in Romania, where representatives of the Hungarian minority are important members of the ruling coalition government. Many people, however, are today gravely disappointed in that government because of the country's dire economic conditions, and so have turned against everything the government does or says.

Of course, not all important public voices belong to the "Serbomania chorus": in mid-April, a number of outstanding intellectuals published a manifesto standing up for NATO officially and urging the Romanian government not to backtrack. But most people, it seems, will continue to listen to the siren song of "Orthodox brotherhood" so long as their economic plight remains so severe. So "Serbomania" is just another symptom of a huge uncertainty; it exposes the deep insecurity many people across Eastern Europe feel about their countries, their pasts, their futures and, ultimately, about themselves.