Vasile SIMILEANU

Ever since childhood the Middle East and the Arab-Islamic culture fascinated us.
Our teachers showed us in great detail the novelty and the less known world of the Arab Peninsula.
Over the years, we learned that we have different religions, different languages and different cultures, these differentiate us and could become contradictory, thus generating conflicts.
Over the years, we were indoctrinated one against the other, without realizing that in fact we belong to the same unique world.
Some of us learned that the diversity creates the unity.
Others learned that while some of us are believers others are pagans.
We learned together that we are different, we have different aims, we have different interests, we belong to different systems: totally wrong! We are humans, keepers of the traditions, dogma, religions, cultures that represent and define us. Totally wrong, because in the times before 1989, the monarchic values were forbidden in communist Romania. While the good neighborhood relations between the Romanian-Orthodox community and the Turkish-Tatar community from Dobrogea existed for many centuries, while the students from the Arab states were more welcomed than in any other European state, when the subject of Saudi Arabia was tackled, the dialogue didn’t existed anymore.
After the opening caused by the collapse of the Communist Block, Romania begin to open its doors to the diplomatic cooperation with some states that we wanted as partners.
During our research in some of the Arabian-Islamic states, we found that the multiculturalism is accepted, that we all, even if we belong to different geographical areas, we have the same yearnings, but with specific life visions. We found the same interests for knowledge, for communication, for not being instruments and masses for manipulation in the hands of some political or economical interests groups. We learned that we must respect our values! We learned that we must promote our values! We learned that we have to learn one from another, without brutally interfering in our ways of being, of existing.
We learned that it is very easy to insult each other. We learned that some over-mediatizate clichés or patterns could have consequences on our security, on the universal heritage…
We learned that if we want to survive, we must communicate, we must prove that the multiculturalism and the unity through diversity aren’t just sterile words but strategies that must be understood and used/applied in our relations.
I tried to decode Saudi Arabia…
I don’t know how well I succeeded, but, as a geopolitician, I realized that this Kingdom has a great potential for maintaining the stability and the security in the Middle East and in the Gulf area.
I succeeded to see that we have the possibility of dialogue with a strategic partner in the field of energy resources, of cultural exchanges, in training the experts in top scientific fields and, why not, in the field of security and risk management in different conflict areas!
I succeeded to see that over the twenty years of diplomatic bilateral relations many areas of collaboration were opened.
I succeeded to meet an exceptional diplomat: HE Mr. Ambassador Abdulrahman Al Rassi!
During many meetings that we had, we agreed on coming in the geopolitical area with a paper that reflects Saudi Arabia through the perception of experts from Saudi Arabia, Romania and from other states.
How much did we succeed?
It is for you to decide!