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June 16, 2004

A circuitous route to studying international security? Just mesh business, high technology and the military - PhD Candidate Sorin Lungu

Growing up in communist Romania, access to new information from outside the country’s borders was impossible. However, the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1989 coup was a time of great change and new opportunities, especially for Sorin Lungu, then a third year mathematics student at the University of Bucharest. The post-1989 changes, coupled with the study of mathematics and his analytical and quantitative foundation, provided Sorin the opportunity to study international economics at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Sciences and become a broker with the Romanian Commodities Exchange in 1992.

Serving as an exchange broker for two years, Sorin had the opportunity to understand the relationship between politics and economics as he attended meetings with a wide variety of senior government officials, parliamentarians, academics, media representatives, and business owners. His work also played to his interest in international affairs by allowing him to organize the visit to Romania of other brokers from around the world.

In August, 1993, Sorin was admitted to the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he began his service as a junior diplomat in February, 1994. “Things done as a broker do not seem really so different than the first duties assigned to a junior diplomat,” he said, which probably helped him progress rapidly from being a desk officer to a member of the Romanian delegation for the 1996 Individual NATO-Romania Dialogue.

During his tenure in the Romanian Foreign Service, Sorin engaged in two academic programs: one of diplomatic nature at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy in Vienna (1994-95), and the other of military nature, an MA program in Regional Security Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (1997-98). His time at Monterey was important for both professional and personal reasons. Professionally, he said, the program “exposed me to a comprehensive curriculum that sharpened my assessment skills by providing the necessary tools for approaching the intricacies of the political, economic, and military structures and institutions of Western Europe from a strategic perspective.” Personally, it was here that he met his future wife, Angela Maria, whom he married in September, 1998. Because he married a non-Romanian citizen, Sorin had to leave the Romanian Foreign Service due to the then existing Romanian laws. Even though his career as a diplomat had ended, his time there provided him with functional skills that would allow him to adapt very well to studying international security and defense studies.

Prior to entering Fletcher in the fall of 1999 as a “PhD Direct Admit,” Sorin’s experience was interdisciplinary yet sectoral. His had professional training in mathematics, economics, diplomacy, and military studies, yet it missed a vital component: business and high technology. Fletcher was an ideal choice for him to explore his passion. “Against that background,” he said, the school “provided me with the opportunity to be part of a cross-disciplinary program of professional education in international affairs that seemed to be tailored to a very large extent of my needs. I had the freedom to choose my fields of study in a manner that I considered would give me the analytical tools that I was looking for.”

His interests are, as he says, “related especially vis-à-vis the current and future developments of US-European relations in terms of business, defense, and leadership [in both politics and industry]. He considers “that examining the evolution of high technology policies, corporate sector ‘cultures,’ international security strategic thinking paradigms as well as perceptions of each other that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic since the final days of the Cold War and developed throughout the 1990s are key in providing a better understanding for the growing strategic rift between the US and its European allies.”

Sorin completed his comprehensive exams in international security studies, international business relations, and European affairs in October, 2001, and he is currently living in Wiesbaden, Germany, where he is working on his dissertation, "European Defense Market Integration: The Aerospace Sector in 1987-1999," under the supervision of Professor Robert Pfaltzgraff, Jr. His thesis “examines the correlation between Europe’s ability and willingness to organize technological and industrial interdependence (in both military and civilian sectors) since the late 1980s and the Old Continent’s elites’ quest for a larger degree of strategic independence in international affairs, especially during the 1990s.” It also proposes “a new framework of analysis that must bridge the fields of international security studies, political economy, and international business relations—areas of research that scholars have kept artificially separated for too long.” Sorin considers that the relevance of his doctoral project derives from the prospect that “it may bring fresh thinking when examining an old question—the relationship between technology, wealth, and power among the transatlantic partners—in an international security environment fundamentally different from the Cold War years.” His PhD dissertation defense is scheduled for March 29, 2005.

After Fletcher, Sorin intends to pursue a career in consulting, work for a US government agency, or perhaps even enter academia.

Posted by jessica at June 16, 2004 10:21 AM