Like more than half the traffic lights in Bucharest, this one on the busy corner of Boulevard Nicolae Balcescu is dead. In the freezing fog, sputtering Rumanian-made Dacia sedans are lurching every which way, horns honking. On the sidewalk, pedestrians slog through ankle-deep mud and slush past an armored personnel carrier, guarded by shivering young soldiers fingering the triggers of their Kalishnikov rifles. At a kiosk nearby, 50 customers jostle for the meager pile of Romania Libera newspapers. Two doors away, a line of more than 100 shoppers shuffles toward a butcher's counter offering only hamburger. "One hour, maybe two, to...
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