With countries and marriages, some unions work, others don't

The anti-system, pro-EU party USR (Save Romania Union) is the anti-system party that young Romanians with degrees and the Western European media like. 

But to many Romanians the EU and the Nato seem the system from which Romania needs saving, so there is another sort of anti-system party, the so called sovereignists. 

Some members of the USR left to join the sovereignists but many of the ones who remain want 'more Europe'.

Romanians believe in European integration because, like Auberon Waugh in England, they prefer being ruled by foreigners to being ruled by their own politicians. 

They have a point.

The EU is very corrupt but Romania is much more so. 

A French bank director twenty years ago complained to me about Romanian corruption. I asked her if France were not corrupt and she answered, truthfully, 'Yes, we French are corrupt but we are corrupt in an intelligent way. Romanians are corrupt in a stupid way.'

Justin Trudeau called Canada 'the first post-national nation'. Europe will be the first post-national continent. 

I don't want Europe to be post-national, more integrated or more united. 

I want it to be much less united. 

Unification of several states into one is often disastrous. 

The unification of Germany was a catastrophe that led to the two world wars. 

Italian unification did nothing good and much bad. 

Yugoslavia was the same. 

Czechoslovakia is not missed.

Spain, however, seems to work. She has an imperial mindset.

Belgium, on the other hand, is an unhappy marriage. 

The United Commonwealth of Lithuania and Poland did not last forever. 

It was partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia, having earlier partitioned the Ukraine with Sweden. 

The union of Great Britain and Ireland was very problematic but Home Rule might well have prevented an independent Ireland

The union of England and Scotland has been very beneficial for both parties. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, John Smith and Tony Blair it was imperilled by devolution but will survive for a long time to come.

An Oxford educated Lithuanian friend who spent a year in Romania writing about the Romanian business world said Romania was an example of unsuccessful nation-building. I don't agree. 

The unification of Romania, which was largely the achievement of two Frenchmen, Napoleon III and Clemenceau, has been much more successful than Yugoslavia.

A united Romania has done much less harm than other unions, though Transylvanians would be happier were Vienna still their capital. 

It is very sad, however, that most of the Germans have left, some deported after the war, some bought by West Germany from Ceausescu, some leaving in 1990. 

The proportion of Hungarians has become much smaller. 

I am a conservative, not a nationalist. Austria Hungary was a European Union that worked, as my friend Helen Szamuely said. 

Empires do work, but the historic compromise with Hungary in 1867 whereby Austria Hungary came into existence empowered a crazy Hungarian nationalism.

The Hungarians restrained Austrian foreign policy until 1914 when they agreed to the invasion of Serbia.

The British empire did a world of good but also harm. 

Palestine was arguably our most fateful mistake, unless you wish the USA did not exist.

The massacres in the Middle East now are entirely the consequence of our policy. 

The Russian empire was renamed the Soviet Union and condemned other empires  without Westerners noticing the contradiction, but finally ceased upon the midnight on December 31, 1991.

The American empire is the most powerful today but will President Trump bring it to an end and make his country a republic again? 

It does not look like it to me, judging by his recent actions. He wants peace in Ukraine but elsewhere makes war.