BY Aram Bakshian Jr. POST IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST –

Robert Kaplan describes a country uniquely defined by its troubles.

Robert D. Kaplan, In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond (New York: Random House, 2016), 336 pp., $28.00.

PRINCE METTERNICH once remarked, “the Balkans start at the Rennweg.” The Hapsburg monarchy was a major player in the region for several centuries, not least as the sovereign power in Transylvania, a major part of modern-day Romania but Austro-Hungarian turf until the death of the dual monarchy after World War I. Romania itself is the quintessential Balkan country, a badly tossed salad of racial, religious and cultural bits and pieces. Like most of its neighbors, Romania is still struggling to reconstitute itself as a cohesive modern nation-state along Western European lines. Unlike neighbors such as Bulgaria, Moldova and the Ukraine, however, Romania has a vestigial link to the West that goes back nearly two thousand years.