The Romanian defence bonanza is a feeding frenzy

"Corruption has evolved, it has become much more refined. We no longer find situations where someone takes a bag of money or an envelope in the middle of the street. Instead, there has been a shift toward hiding these amounts through consulting contracts, payments through offshore accounts, or consecutive commercial transactions." Laura Codruța Kövesi, then head of Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate, in an interview with ProTV September 30, 2015

The corruption involved in Romanian defence contracts is particularly hard to uncover and no doubt particularly widespread because defense contracts are confidential for reasons of national security. The bonanza in defence spending is going to involve very widespread corruption of a kind that hasn't been seen for years. 

In 2025 Romania spent almost €9 billion on defence, over 2% of the country’s GDP,  most of which goes to Western defence contractors. A lot of money is stolen at the level of sub-sub-contracts to Romanian companies. 

This is where politicians come in. The whole thing makes a great deal of money for their friends and associates. 

The new PSD-dominated government will busily award contracts after a hiatus of five months when there was no government to sign off on contracts. (It is also required to sign off on incredibly large amount of cash the judges have awarded themselves for pensions but that's another story. That's why other parties didn't join the government.) 

The USA gets a very good deal indeed because it spends only about $200 million a year on defence in Romania. The American empire in Romania is more than self-financing. It makes the American economy a very big profit as well as providing America with an obedient satellite in a strategic position. 

The term "deep state" comes from Turkey where it described a network of military officers and intelligence agents close to NATO that were more powerful than the government. Organised crime is in the mix too. The phrase was borrowed by a Swedish academic Professor Ola Tunander to describe the security state in Sweden, which had close covert links to NATO even though Sweden was neutral. The Swedish deep state achieved the entry of Sweden into NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

NATO is, of course, the American empire, so I don't think it's fanciful to describe it as the military extension of the U.S. deep state, at least until the advent of Donald Trump but still today.

The Romanian deep state includes the various very powerful secret services and their alumni reaching back to the Securitate of communist days, as well as the generals. All of these, including the generals I'm afraid to say, are often corrupt. 

But is the American sector very much less corrupt? 

None of this as far as the actors in the defence sector are concerned is about fighting for democracy or other ideals. That's just the shop window. It's about power and money.