[Raellus]

I'm going to respectfully disagree with your assessment. Even in the mid-to-late 1980s (IRL), Romania was the red-headed stepchild of the WTO. I mentioned it before, but even non-aligned Yugoslavia got Soviet-made T-72s and MiG-29s before Romania did (in the case of the T-72, Romania didn't get them from the Soviets at all).

I think the Romanian military, built specifically for defense and not at all accustomed to operating alongside the other WTO militaries- would balk at being shipped off to war against the PRC. The gov't too, with close economic ties to [post-Mao] China, and growing civil unrest at home (if it didn't happen in '89 in the v1.0 timeline, it seems perfectly reasonable that it would begin around the time of the Sino-Soviet War, or the Soviets' demands for troops), wouldn't want to push its luck with its own military and citizenry both screaming "Hell No, We Won't Go!". Or maybe Ceausescu was about to cave in to the USSR's demands for fresh troops for the Far East Meat Grinder.

In either case, the Romanian army misjudges the Soviet gov't, believing it too preoccupied with China and the exploding crisis in the DDR, to do anything concrete about its refusal to send troops, or even regime change.

In my T2kU (which aligns closely to what's described in the official v1 history), the Romanian army launches a coup and removes Ceausescu from power in December, 1996. The Soviets were already planning an invasion of Romania to show the entirety of the WTO what the cost of disloyalty is, so the coup becomes fait accompli.