Romania is not an independent country but an American colony, like England, France and Germany

Romania has been an American colony since at the very latest 1996, but really since Ceaușescu was executed.

Donald Trump Jnr's former girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle is merely doing the same things other American ambassadors did, but doing them without plausible deniability. She does vehemently deny saying what she is accused of saying but her denial isn't plausible.

Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucauld said, so hypocrisy and deniability are very important.

We all know that no politician becomes prime minister or reaches the Cotroceni Palace without passing through a vetting process by Washington and the CIA. Following his victory, Nicușor Dan immediatly joined Donald Trump’s Peace Council and held extensive high-stakes negotiations over American strategic deliverables - showing he understands that his survival relies on being a reliable vassal.

If Kimberly Guilfoyle felt comfortable boasting at an Athens dinner party that the U.S. orchestrated the downfall of Romanian Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan's government, it proves that Washington treats allied leaders like chess pieces.

"Sovereignist" influencer Oana Eftimie accurately notes that while USR politicians accuse AUR and PSD of treason by getting rid of Bolojan at Miss Guilfoyle's behest, in fact laws and contracts always favour foreign interests.

Larry Watts tells me that a number of leaders, like Kadar of Hungary, Jaruzelski of Poland and Kekkonen of Finland were KGB agents but what does it mean being a KGB agent when you're a head of state?

Dan Nicusor is not a CIA agent, nor was Klaus Iohannis, nor any of the other Romanian leaders, as far as is known, but they are, in effect, American agents because they have to be.

Politicians who are not prepared to play America's game, like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Calin Georgescu in Romania, come to a sticky end.

Every aspect of Romania is run for the benefit of foreigners.

Look at the current boom in renewable energy, a fashion which was imposed on Romania by the European Union. The financing comes from abroad, the equipment (turbines, solar panels) is manufactured abroad, and the ultimate profits are sent abroad. Romania provides the land, the bureaucratic headache and the grid capacity.

The legally ironclad profits negotiated by finance lawyers are ultimately paid for by Romanians through their monthly electricity bills but the very hefty legal fees do stay in Romania.

Foreign construction companies, most of which are brazenly corrupt, use legal claims and litigation as a profit engine to make as much money as possible from the state, using predatory Bucharest lawyers, leaving the Romanian taxpayer to cover massive cost overruns, interest payments and legal fees. How much claims in total cost the Romanian state each year nobody has the faintest idea. Certainly over a billion euros but it could be much more. We just don't know. 

It's the fault of of the Romanian state. As Schiller said: "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

In a wider way it's the fault of European compliance laws.

It's the same story with defence projects except they are shielded from scrutiny by being confidential, allowing cost overruns, inflated material billing, and high-margin profits to be funnelled abroad while local subcontractors do the work.

Romania, like most countries in the world, exists in an American-controlled information space and the media sedulously foster the narrative that Russia is a threat to Europe and somehow even Iran and China are.

None of these things are true but people with good jobs in foreign companies believe it. The waiters and taxi drivers see more clearly, which is why they voted for Georgescu.

Talking about threats from Russia and so on is for the suckers. Really it's about making money, of course, for corrupt local companies and especially for corrupt international ones.

Good foreign construction companies avoid entering the Romanian market because of its well-deserved reputation for intense corruption and for being chaotic. That means that the investors that do come in from outside are the worst ones.

As for defence contractors they are all as bad as each other and should be nationalised but their dirt is not specific to Romania. Romania is just an extreme example of the way the world works.

One group of people profit more than any other from all this. They are the lawyers.

AI and data will one day produce a law driven, risk-averse culture even here but it will be a very long time, and not in my lifetime, before doing business in Romania is for the risk adverse.

Political parties in Romania, from the ex-Communist PSD (a socialist party run by multi-millionaires which was once the anti-American party) to nationalist parties like AUR etc are all equally keen, as we saw with the Kimberly Guilfoyle affair, to bid for American largesse (rather as clients in princely states in British India competed for British favour).

If countries which were once great powers, like Great Britain and France, are under the American heel, there's no point in Romania hoping to decide her own destiny.

When empires come to an end it happens sooner than anyone would have imagined.

Remember that the British built New Delhi in the 1920s, not expecting to be leaving in 1947.

When American hegemony over the non-white countries is broken, as it will be, perhaps soon, that doesn't mean that American hegemony over Europe will cease upon the midnight.

I think it will continue however badly America behaves to its vassals until America decides truly to become America First, meaning isolationist.

As Neagu Djuvara told me Europe has lost her vital spirit, is in great decline.

I remember speaking to the girlfriend of the British ambassador during the 2000 American election between Gore and Bush. She was in favour of Bush for fear that, under Gore, America might become isolationist. She was young and probably echoed the views of her boyfriend who wasn't and the British diplomatic corps but there was also a widespread fear in 2000 that Bush would be an isolationist.

If only.

What Romania and Europe, of course, need is an end to the war with Russia as soon as possible on almost any terms and, if it's possible, a modus vivendi with Russia and good relations with China, Iran, the Houthis, and other actors who have alienated the Americans, but without antagonizing a vindictive America.

But Oana Eftimie is of course right. Nicușor Dan is not an independent actor on the global stage; he is a manager of a strategic border state and does his job well by making sure the pro-peace parties do not enter government.

Note that a presidential counsellor was present at the dinner with Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Much as I wish that Romania could be a neutral country outside NATO it's not going to happen. Romania doesn't have any real freedom of choice. It has to do what Romania has always done throughout history: kiss the hand that strikes her. And give it defence, energy and construction contracts.