Building on earlier articles published in the Journal of Cold War Studies by James G. Hershberg and Zoltán Szoke, this article discusses Romania's involvement in the attempts to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the Vietnam War before and after the Tet Offensive. The literature concerning the Romanian channel (codenamed Packers ) is negligible thus far. Part of the reason is that even though official U.S. documentation on Packers has been available for two decades, relevant Romanian documents were only recently declassified by the archive of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The new evidence from the Romanian archives completes the picture of what was, in effect, the last U.S. chance to begin negotiations over Vietnam without compromising the initial U.S. position. The conversations between Romanian Deputy Foreign Minister George Macovescu and Vietnamese Communist leaders on the eve of the Tet Offensive offer a much more detailed inside look at Hanoi's negotiating position in December 1967–January 1968. The Romanian documents also show the crystallization of the Vietnamese position of March 1968 with regard to opening talks and the San Antonio formula.

Romania's position regarding the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the culmination of almost a decade of increasingly autonomous moves vis-à-vis Moscow. Based on new evidence from the Romanian archives, this article paints a more complete picture of Nicolae Ceauşescu's reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, placing it in the context of the international system and especially the Sino-Soviet split. Following the invasion, Romania remained just as committed as before to the goal of ensuring its maneuverability on the world scene, especially with regard to sovereignty and independence. Although Romanian leaders tried not to provoke the Soviet Union outright, they did not back down on important issues concerning Sino-Romanian relations and did not embrace Moscow's call for a common Warsaw Pact foreign policy. Romania did agree to certain compromises, but only because Ceauşescu believed that Romania would remain largely unaffected by them.