Friday, December 5, 2025

Is Europe in Civilizational Decline?

Does the E.U. itself instantiate a decline in European civilization? So says a National Security Strategy for the United States released by the Trump administration in December, 2025. That report also claims that migration to Europe was in the process of causing European nations to face “civilizational erasure.” That is to say, the European nation-state was by the end of 2025 facing existential threats due to the E.U. and migration. The report also highlights the loss of democracy in Europe, due both to the E.U. usurping the governmental sovereignty of the states and the clamping down on voices on the right in Europe. I contend that the report contains a sufficient number of fallacies that it can reasonably be dismissed as bias ideology under the subterfuge of national security.

The report “proposes to ‘cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.’”[1] This can be interpreted as an intent to aid Orbán’s anti-E.U. strategy in Hungary and to encourage other governors of E.U. states to resist the E.U.’s exercise of even its existing exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers (i.e., as per the dual-sovereignty feature of that federal system). To hamstring President Von der Leyen’s efforts to aid Ukraine, for example, “kills two birds with one stone,” as the saying goes, because in keeping the E.U. from strengthening, Ukraine’s strength against Russia is also held back.

The report finds “subversion of democratic processes” in Europe, and claims that the E.U. undermines “political liberty and sovereignty.”[2] This would be news to the European Parliament, whose representatives, like those in the U.S. House of Representatives, are elected directly by citizens and thus represent them, rather than even their respective states (the European Council and the Council of Ministers do the latter, as the U.S. Senate does in the U.S.). So, the E.U.’s bicameralism, if anti-democratic, means that the U.S. Congress also suffers a democracy deficit such that most Congressional powers should be returned to the American member states.

Whereas in confederal systems of public governance, democracy is only at the state level, which by the way is fine because the states retain all governmental sovereignty, federal systems characterized by dual sovereignty (i.e., governmental sovereignty being split or divided between the federal and state levels, or subsystems) should have democracy at both levels, rather than just at the state level. This is true of the E.U. grace á the European Parliament, even though its powers could stand to be augmented and those of the European Council lessened so as to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the E.U. even more.

Aside from the erroneous perspective that the E.U. is itself a reduction in European democracy, Trump’s claim that European migration policies had been “transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence” also warrants critique.[3] Does the administration mean to claim that migration policies have been causing birthrates to drop? The application of reason alone can easily dispel such a claim. The same goes for self-confidence, though there may be more to the claim that mass migration dilutes national identities if enough of the new arrivals refuse to integrate culturally. Furthermore, such a dilution is qualitatively different than any from a new-found sense of identifying as Europeans, which, although coming along slowly, is facilitated by the very existence of the European Union. That is to say, even if cultural diversity within a member state is not desirable, identifying increasingly as European rather than merely by member state has the advantage of making war within at least Western Europe less likely in the future. Additionally, identifying culturally as a European can aid indirectly in efforts to enhance the E.U.’s foreign policy and defense competencies, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Surely Europeans in some of the E.U.’s eastern states would not lament feeling more European and less exclusively of their respective states if that meant that the united action of the E.U. would be more likely to be augmented to include defense without state veto-power standing in the way at the federal level. In short, criticism of migration and the E.U. should not be conflated.

As for free speech, in 2025 it came under threat arguably more as anti-genocide protesters were being arrested as if they were promoting violence rather than protesting against Israel ironically for having been so violent, and with impunity internationally. That the Trump administration had been enabling Israel’s genocide and perhaps holocaust explains why the report ignores the arrests, especially in Germany and Britain, of human-rights protestors while complaining as if Orban has been made into a scapegoat in the European Union even though he has serially violated E.U. law. His support of Russia and criticism of Ukraine, no doubt related to Hungary’s reliance on Russian energy, may have something to do with the report’s “finding” that free speech in Europe has been compromised by forces on the political left rather than the pro-Zionist right. Recently, I encountered such denialism in a coffee shop from a native South African man, whose daughter attends Columbia University. The man insisted that all of the images of destruction in Gaza have been created by AI, and that in actuality, the residents there have been eating well. Regardless of our political disagreement regarding enabling a genocide, I was stunned that his perspective was so divorced from even credible media reports. A European reading Trump’s National Security report might have the same reaction, especially concerning migration causing a drop in birthrates. Such denialism, from ideology, with even credible, mainstream journalism being relegated as illusionary, may be the real sign of a civilizational decline.

Given the impotence of the United Nations to combat the militaristic aggressiveness of Israel and Russia, the collective action that is possible by means of the E.U. can be regarded as a good thing, even though the member-states, or “nations,” would need to give over more governmental sovereignty. Due to the existence of the European Parliament, a democratic legislative chamber, a transfer of additional governmental sovereignty from the states to the Union would not mean that Europe is less democratic. In fact, adding the Parliament to state legislatures means more democracy, with democracy being able to exercise more of a check on itself (i.e., the Parliament on the state legislatures).  Of course, no political union is perfect, or ever can be, and the Parliament could stand to be given more authority in the making of law, so to strengthen the democratic institution at the federal level. Were the Trump administration really for democracy in Europe, the report would include this proposal rather than go with the erroneous claim that democracy only exists, or should only exist, at the state level. Moreover, were the Trump administration to avoid making political category mistakes, the report would compare the E.U. with the U.S., and thus be able to make helpful proposals to strengthen both unions of states. Even though Europeans may bristle at this axis of comparison, my motive in writing is to make such proposals for the good both of Europeans and Americans, for we are more alike in what we value than we sometimes realize.


1. Andrew Naughtie, “Trump Administration Warns Europe of ‘Civilisational Decline’ in New National Security Strategy,” Euronews.com, 5 December 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

A Reparations Loan or Common Debt: Undercut by State Rights

“State rights” was a common refrain by the eleven U.S. member states who sought to exit in 1861; the underlying fear was that the exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers, of the U.S., combined with the numerous accessions of new states, were already compromising the power of the eleven states to protect their economies from “encroachment.” In 1858, for instance, a tariff disadvantageous to those economies had been passed in spite of the “Southern” objections in the U.S. Senate. Had each member state had a veto, rather than just the ability to filibuster, the eleven states would have been able to protect the viability of their respective economies from encroachment by the Union. To be sure, the state rights claim that the U.S. was still just a bloc, as had been the case from 1781-1789 under the Articles of Confederation, was sheer denial, for the U.S. Constitution instituted a new kind of federalism—partly national, partly international—based on dual sovereignty, wherein both the member states and the Union have a portion of governmental sovereignty. It is this form of federalism, “modern federalism,” that the Europeans adopted in creating the European Union because the E.U. has exclusive competencies. But whereas the shift made by the Americans in the eighteenth century left the state-veto behind at the Union level, the Europeans retained the veto, which at the very least works against the effective operation of modern federalism. The arduous and much delayed task on a reparations loan for Ukraine in spite of the self-interested objection—and thus promised veto—of one state is a case in point. Even the alternative of the E.U. issuing debt faced state-level opposition, as was the case in the U.S. in the 1790s, but in that case, the self-interested states that were relatively clear of debt could not stop the issuance because none of those states could wield a veto at the federal level. This is important because back then, the American states were still widely viewed as countries by their respective inhabitants. “I must fight for my country,” General Lee told Lincoln in 1861, referring to Virginia. A refresher on American history could help Europeans cross the Rubicon to a more internally consistent modern federalism. Whether Euroskepticism or States’ Rights, the ideology, as etched into the E.U.’s Basic Law, is responsible for Van der Leyen’s headaches in getting the E.U. to put Ukraine in a position of strength against the Russian invaders.

A Union of states that allows a self-interested state to block federal action that is in the good of the whole Union is weak. So, when Ursula von der Leyen said late in 2025 that the European Commission would provide Belgium with sweeping guarantees to unblock a controversial reparations loan for Ukraine, a state official representing Belgium countered that the Commission’s proposals “do not address our concerns in a satisfactory manner. It is not acceptable to use the money and leave us alone facing the risks.”[1] That Belgium’s government could wield its veto gives “not acceptable” the ring of finality. This is despite the guarantees for Belgium consisting “of bilateral contributions by member states, a backstop by the EU budget, legal safeguards against retaliation and a new prohibition on transferring sovereign assets back to Russia.”[2] Experts could of course weigh in on how failproof these guarantees actually would be.

From the perspective of the E.U.’s federal system, the following statement made by President Von der Leyen is crucial: “We have created a very strong solidarity mechanism where in the very end the Union can intervene, because we want to make very sure to all our member states, but specifically also to Belgium, that we will share the burden in a fair way, as it is the European way.”[3] The problem is that to state officials, relying only on “the European way” was insufficient; the veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers was also felt to be necessary for self-protection. Hence Belgium’s language includes “not acceptable.” Mistrust of the E.U. may be behind at least some of the resistance of the states to agree to an expansion of qualified majority voting.

For the eleven U.S. member states who tried in vain to exit the U.S. in 1861, another kind of qualified majority voting in the U.S. Senate was deemed to be insufficient to safeguard the Southern agrarian economies based on Plantation-level slave-labor. But for the E.U.’s state-veto, we have to go back to the disastrous Articles of Confederation Between the Several States, wherein the U.S. depended on voluntary financial contributions from the states and there was no common debt. The state-veto that is justified in confederal systems by the fact that all of the governmental sovereignty is retained by the states is toxic in modern federalism because the federal level is too prone to being hamstrung even with regard to proposals that are in the interests of the whole even if not in the self-interest of each and every state. A part should not be able to upend the common good.

That Von der Leyen had to go to such lengths that Belgium would have guarantees for its financial interest in attracting sovereign wealth funds in the future is indicative of just how toxic the state-veto mechanism is, especially when Russia was succeeding in invading Ukraine for years by the end of 2025 when the E.U. was yet again proposing a reparations loan (or common debt). This point alone should disabuse any State Rights folks from clutching so tight to the veto. Also, in a union of states, sometimes a state “takes one for the team.” This is true solidarity. “Man up,” may be the relevant expression, given Belgium’s intransigence, but, then again, I’m an American, hence rather crude and thus unbecoming at a European dinner party. “Lose the veto, guys,” I would readily and flatly say amid polite, too polished conversation.

The problem is that no one likes to give up power unless in a crisis, and an invasion to the east is evidently not a crisis. It may be that, like the Schengen Agreement and the Stability Pact, an exogenous “more closer union” may need to be formed by the more federalist-leaning states, sans the sordid veto, for another budget as well as foreign and defense policy. Instead of the 55% in qualified-majority voting (QMV), perhaps 60%, which matches the percent needed in the U.S. Senate to overcome a filibuster, could be used as a compromise. This is not to say that the E.U. and U.S. should converge; the Europeans are smart to fear the sort of consolidation at the Union level that eclipses any sort of federalism, and thus needed space for the states to act as per their respective cultures and ideologies. The American case clearly demonstrates that a citizenry giving primary loyalty to the state level cannot be relied upon as a safeguard in the distant future against creeping encroachments by the Union on the sovereignty retained by the member states. Even so, whereas the U.S. by 2025 had lapsed too close to consolidation at the expense of federalism, the E.U. risked dissolution by states plying themselves away from an ineffectual, internally hamstrung Union, for no one likes to be a part of self-inflicted weakness. Nietzsche taught us this.


1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Von der Leyen Pushes Ahead with Reparations Loan for Ukraine as Belgium Maintains Its Opposition,” Euronews.com, December 3, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Entangling Confederalism and Modern Federalism: A European Quagmire

On America’s Thanksgiving Day, 2025, Dmytro Kuleba, a former foreign minister of Ukraine, was asked whether Ukraine’s government officials could trust American officials negotiating with the Russian officials, given the fact that Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Envoy at the time, had recently been caught coaching Kirill Dmitriev, a top Russian official, on how to get U.S. President Don Trump on the side of Putin even though the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine was still in violation of international law, which, by the way, trumps historical reasons, such as a lost Russian empire. Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine during the 1930s would seem to nullify any imperial claims from the past. Kuleba relied to the journalist’s question with, “Not really, but we do not have another America.”[1] He was really giving Europe a wake-up call, but the problem there was not a lack of consensus, but a structural deficiency in the federal system of the European Union.


The full essay is at "We Don't Have Another America."


1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “European Decision-Making on Ukraine ‘Embarrassing,’ Former Foreign Minister Kuleba Says,” Euronews.com, November 27, 2025.

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Empire-Scale Representative Democracy: The American Presidency

On the very day in which a health-care company’s executive collapsed in the Oval Office, with U.S. President Trump being the only person in the group standing and looking away in what looks like callous disregard instead of compassion or empathy, that president directed his Administration to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the U.S. Government had to immediately fund food-assistance, or SNAP (formerly “food stamps”) completely for the month then more than a week in, in spite of the "government shutdown." On the next day, the Trump Administration demanded that the member-states that had just paid out full November benefits to recipients “undo"  the difference between the partial and full amounts that had just been "paid out under judges’ orders” because the U.S. Supreme Court “stayed those rulings.”[1] The photo of Trump literally looking the other way while everyone else in the Oval Office is bending over the collapsed man out of concern perfectly aligns with his lack of concern for Americans going without food due to the sudden stoppage of money for food without notice. That many employees of the U.S. Government who had been laid off without pay since earlier that November would be especially reliant on food-assistance money precisely because they were no longer obtaining income (or else they were receiving unemployment compensation at less than full pay) could be understood to be a matter of callousness rather than moral sentiments from Trump simply by looking at the photo.


President Trump's emotional indifference is palpable. (source: Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

Looking at that photo, not even psychologists should conclude that a majority of the electoral (and popular) votes went to elect a psychopath. However, callousness in the face of a medical emergency can reasonably be inferred from the president’s non-verbal stance and emotionless facial expression. Had that photo been available to voters in the days before the 2024 presidential election, Trump may have lost that election. Such a hypothetical is useful ex post facto because it raises the question of whether so many voters as vote in a U.S. presidential election have enough actual information on the candidates. If the photo shocked many such voters just over a year after the 2024 election, the implication is that relying on “brand” marketing by presidential campaigns because so few voters even know people who know even just one of the candidates is deficient.

The Electoral College was established in the U.S. Constitution not only because the member-states, like those of the E.U., would retain some governmental sovereignty, but also because with even just 7 million people voting for president, so few of them could be expected to know the characters of the candidates beyond what reaches news print that a check by electors who could meet the candidates was deemed to be necessary. That the political parties captured the Electoral College such that such a check did not in fact operate means that American representative democracy as regards the federal president of the Union has been allowed to operate at a deficiency, which is to say that the elections have been vulnerable to the electorates (of the states) being misled by presidential campaigns.

In short, my point is that if even some of the millions of Americans who had voted for Donald Trump in November, 2024 were subsequently shocked a year later when they scrutinized the photo of Donald Trump being so visually inert emotionally, and perhaps even annoyed at the unwanted delay in his office, while antipodally the other people there could be seen as so obviously concerned about a guest who had just collapsed. Trump stood out so much from the others that even the president’s supporters could have been surprised, even marveling in the privacy of their own minds that they had known so little about Trump the man when they had voted for him. I am assuming that only a small minority of the electorate would favor voting for a person who at the very leeast appears to be so callous in person, for judgment, which involves not just reasoning, but also emotion, is salient in governing. The photo of Turmp in the Oval Office paradoxically demonstrates the importance of humane emotion in governance by so clearly dipicting the utter absence of emotion in a very human situation in which we would naturally expect to find spontaneous emotion. In this surreal way, Trump's repeated efforts to stop food-assistance from reaching the poor judicially and in policy can be grasped in terms of Trump as a person.

Perhaps as in the E.U., the chief executives of the U.S. member-states should nominate a candidate for federal president, with the U.S. House of Representatives, whose counterpart in the E.U. is the European Parliament, confirming or rejecting the candidate. The idea of the states' chief executives, who are themselves elected closer to the people, choosing the federal president outright was considered in the Constitutional Convention, but the proposal was unfortunately voted down in favor of the ill-fated Electoral College. The U.S. federal system can indeed be improved by borrowing some ideas from the E.U., and vice versa; this just takes some humility on both ends. 


1. Scott Bauer and Nicholas Riccardi, “Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Full SNAP Payouts as States Warn of ‘Catastrophic Impact,’” The Associated Press, November 9, 2025.

Thursday, November 6, 2025

The E.U. without Enlargement: An Oxymoron?

The political debates concerning the accession of candidate states such as Texas, California, Alaska and even Hawaii into the U.S. were long past when the issue of enlargement became salient for the E.U. due to Russia’s unilateral, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In the American case, surely no one was arguing that the U.S. without being enlarged would cease to be credible, yet in 2025, a government official of the candidate state of Montenegro said as much of the European Union. Even if Filip Ivanovic was merely using rhetoric during an interview on October 4, 2025, even that should at least make sense. Making matters worse, his comments can be interpreted as ultimatums for the E.U. even though nothing binds the E.U. to annexing any future state. In fact, given the veto-power of state officials at the federal level in the E.U., enlargement should arguably come only after internal reform of the E.U.’s basic law concerning the power of the states at the federal level.

During the interview with Euronews, the deputy prime-minister of the candidate state said, “If enlargement does not happen . . . then the very concept of the European Union loses its credibility: It’s not European, and it’s not a union anymore.”[1] I demur. That E.U. territory did not at the time extend to the entire continent of Europe does not mean that the E.U. was not European. No one would seriously contend that any of the E.U. states were not European, so it follows that the E.U. itself, consisting of those states and a federal system, was not European. As for the E.U. not being a union unless it enlarged under the pressure of Putin’s militaristic aggression in Ukraine, the E.U.’s own constitutional or basic law at the time put any such claim to rest as ludicrous. It was the deputy prime-minister’s credibility that was actually on the line from his statement.

At the time, nine possible states were officially designated by the Commission as candidates for statehood, with Montenegro being “the most advanced in implementing the constitutional, judicial and economic reforms” that are required.[2] But Montenegro being at an advanced stage does not mean that the E.U. was therefore duty-bound to annex the territory of the state as being within the Union. Even so, Ivanovic said the government of Montenegro “cannot accept” the refusal of the E.U. to extend statehood to Montenegro because the other possible states “would understand that whatever they do is in vain.”[3] Whether the government of Montenegro could or could not accept a negative decision should be irrelevant to the E.U. as it decides on whether, and by how much, and when to enlarge its territory by extending offers of statehood. Asking for something and then stating that unless it is given, the decision will be unacceptable is not the way to ask for something if the expectation is that the request will be granted.

Viktor Orban of the E.U. state of Hungary had been using the state’s veto in the European Council on proposals concerning enlargement and foreign policy. As a result of Orban’s siding with Putin rather than with the majority of other states in the Union, the Union was being back from within in being able to adequately help Ukraine to resist Russia’s invasion even though Putin’s militarism was not justified even by historical arguments because might does not itself make right. Enlarging the Union such that even more states would be able to wield a veto to styme the Union would be recipe for paralysis at the federal level, and so this consideration alone is credible in deciding when it would be best to admit new states. It is not as though taking account of the risk of being held up by a single state forestalling action on the federal level before taking up the matter of enlargement would lack in credibility. Rather, moderating the power of the individual veto, similar to how the U.S. Senate has moderated the power of the filibuster (which is based on the fact that the states retain some governmental sovereignty just as the E.U. states do), would be prudent as requisite to enlarging. Whether or not this strategy was acceptable to Montenegro is irrelevant.


1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “EU Risks ‘Losing Credibility’ If It Fails to Enlarge, Montenegro’s Deputy PM Warns,” Euronews.com, 6 October 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Friday, October 31, 2025

E.U. Citizens on the Union’s Enlargement

Having recently been presented with an E.U. citizen denying the E.U. has citizens even as he admitted that he could vote for a candidate to represent him in the European Parliament, I had my faith in human rationality restored the following day in reading of a poll of E.U. citizens on whether additional states should be added to the Union; ideology, even of the tribal sort, need not distort rationality beyond recognition. Even in the reporting of such a poll, however, the Euroskeptic, or states’ rights, ideology left its imprint. Even such an auxiliary presence is a sign of the headwind that has been facing the E.U. since its founding.

Euronews reported on 28 October, 2025 that 56% of E.U. citizens approved of adding new states. “Young Europeans in particular support enlargement. 67% of 15-24 year olds are in favour, ahead of 25-39 year olds at 63%.”[1] If the young adults maintain their optimism in the decades to come, we could expect the power of the Euroskeptic, states’ rights (i.e., anti-federalist) ideology to lessen over time. This in turn could allow the E.U. to accumulate enough additional enumerated powers, or exclusive and even shared competencies, so the benefits of united action could be realized more fully, especially in the domains of foreign policy and defense. As of 2025, it has been as if state officials had tied one arm behind the E.U.’s back even regarding existing federal competencies. The poll indicates that this could change.

The poll can also be taken as an argument for a more vigorous education prior to university and trade school, for the support for enlargement “comes to a large extent from young people and educated people.”[2] To be sure, an educated person could argue that because of the unwillingness of enough state governments to delegate additionally competencies (or even just strength those that the E.U. already had), the veto mechanism enjoyed by each state should be more restricted before additional states are annexed to the Union. It is possible, for example, to up the double majorities from 55% to 60% on major pieces of federal legislation, in place of keeping the veto-mechanism in place. Even at 27 states, unanimity is unrealistic; it could therefore be unrealistic to expect unanimous agreement with there being even more states in the Union.

The force behind retaining the veto-mechanism in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. is none other than the Euroskeptic, or states’ rights ideology that is just fine with allowing even small states to block proposed legislation even if it is in the interest of the Union as a whole. In the twentieth century, that ideology manifests as strident nationalism, which of course gave rise to war on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, old ideologies die hard even in the face of the fact of political development, such as that of several states forming a federal union of states. Such a development, especially after several decades, inherent relativizes otherwise unmitigated pro-state-oriented ideology.

That ideology is to some extend built into the poll, according to which “the most supportive Member States are Sweden (79%), Denmark (75%) and Lithuania (74%). Conversely, Austria (45%), the Czech Republic (43%) and France (43%) are the least supportive” of enlargement.[3] Although admittedly much daylight exists between 79% and 43%, and pro-E.U. advertising could be directed by the Commission to run in local media in the least supportive states on the basis of this way of dividing up the results, reporting by state is itself a reinforcement of the state-centric, Euroskeptic ideology that has held the federal legislative and executive branches back even from being able to fully exercise its enumerated powers, or competencies.

On May 1, 2025 at Yale, I met the E.U.’s ambassador to the U.S. after her talk. I pointed out that the media in the E.U. labeling the Union as a mere bloc as if the E.U. were only active in one power-domain and were temporary, was subtly undermining the E.U. itself and fortifying the Euroskeptics. To my surprise, she agreed with me, but my feedback had zero impact.  She told me that just admitting even that the E.U. has a federal structure would enrage powerful Euroskeptic officials in some states, such as Hungary. As a result, however, more uneducated Europeans could be expected to conflate the “bloc” with international organizations such as NATO and the UN, and the poll supports this point. Why expand something as weak as a bloc?

On October 24, 2025, an Oxford professor of political economy spoke at Harvard’s Center for European Studies. Whereas Yale’s Center acknowledges and so includes talks on the E.U. being intergovernmental relations only, Harvard’s political economists have been stuck in the political economy paradigm of Europe prior to the founding of the E.U. in the early 1990s. So, the professor from Oxford presented a European poll in which both the E.U. itself and the related impact of European cultural integration from the states being in a federal system were ignored. Instead, he (or the discussant) insisted that Denmark and Sweden are so different with respect to how the poor view public policy that is oriented to reducing economic inequality, even though both northern states are Scandinavian and have relatively low economic inequality, whereas every rural American is a libertarian against constraints on rising economic inequality. In other words, the interstate cultural differences are magnified when it comes to the E.U., while such interstate (mostly non-linguistic-based) differences in the U.S. are virtually ignored as if one cultural attitude spans across a continent. The European states’ rights, or nationalistic, ideology can be so exaggerated that cognition is twisted even in the minds of scholars! Unfortunately, the E.U. itself has been paying the price for this ideological denial; it is not just an artifact of ideology under the subterfuge of scholarship. Ironically, as long as the E.U. continues to pay the price from being reckoned by enough uneducated European citizens as merely a bloc (or even as nonexistent), enlargement by the accession of additional states without basic reform of the federal system would be likely to compound paralysis rather than increase the Union’s strength.


1. Gregoire Lory, “56% of Citizens Support EU Enlargement, New Eurobarometer Poll Shows,” Euronews.com. 28 October, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Monday, October 20, 2025

Corruption at the Top in France and Illinois

An important implication of the saying, a fish rots from the head down, is that it is important that corrupt heads be swiftly punished so underlings get the message that crime in public office carries considerable risk. In the matter of Ukraine’s possible accession (not merger!) into the E.U. as a new state, the old, deeply entrenched, culture of corruption in the potential state has been of particular concern in the E.U.’s executive branch, the European Commission. In both the E.U. and U.S., it’s worth asking whether some states are more corrupt than others. It is a mistake to treat all states alike in terms of where to direct federal resources and how much of a given state’s resources should be devoted to investigations of state officials. At least in 2025, Illinois and France could be said to have been “problem children” in this regard, and this doesn’t mean that Hawaii and Sweden, for example, also had as sordid corrupt cultures.

In September 2025, a state court in Paris “found Sarkozy guilty of criminal conspiracy in connection with the alleged Libyan financing of his victorious 2007 presidential campaign . . . and sentenced him to five years in prison.”[1] A day before going to prison in mid-October, Sarkozy said he would be taking a biography of Jesus and The Count of Monte Christo with him to prison, so it seems that he was continuing with his innocent-victim role in spite of the conviction and sentencing. Short of any contrition or even public recognition by Sarkozy of his own corruption, it fell on Hollande of the Socialist group to praise “the independence of the judiciary,” especially given that the incumbent, Macron, spent an hour with the convicted ex-president on the day before the Sarkozy, of the same political group, was to show up at a prison.[2] In a corrupt culture, it is natural to worry about whether judges might be persuaded that it is in their interests to reduce or rescind the sentence of a powerful political figure.

Admittedly, in notoriously corrupt Illinois, by 2025 four former heads of state had spent substantial time in prison. Otto Kerner, for example, was convicted in 1973 on 17 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and other charges related to a bribery scheme and was sentenced to three years. Dan Walker was convicted in 1987 of bank fraud and perjury related to fraudulent loans that he had obtained after leaving the high office. George Ryan was convicted in 2006 on fraud and racketeering charges related to bribes; he served five and a half years. Last but hardly least, Rod Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office in 2009, and convicted in 2011 on 18 counts of corruption. Whereas the president of the E.U. cannot pardon state officials, the president of the U.S. can, and U.S. President Trump pardoned “Blago’s” sentence in 2020 after the former head of Illinois had served eight years; the former head of France could only hope in vain for a pardon from E.U. President Von der Leyen, but corruption at the state level could end up appreciably shortening Sarkozy’s sentence, and the meeting with Macron could be a sign that their shared political group might work behind the scenes to free the convicted former leader.

Once begun and allowed to spread throughout a state, whether Illinois or France, political corruption involving money is much more difficult than a fire to put out. Companies such as Enron, Wells Fargo Bank, Arthur Andersen, and even Uber came to be known for their deeply dysfunctional organizational cultures. This does not mean that manager-groups at every or even most companies are that unethical.

It is fortunate that not every company is corrupt mentally, for changing an entrenched sordid organizational culture is very difficult at best, with plenty of strategic firings being just one part of the cure. A so-called “coach” hired by Starbucks, for example, to change the attitudes of the executives towards the employees (especially those who try to unionize) would have a full plate. Such a “coach” would find it very frustrating to “drive” talking-points; the obscenely stretched use of jargon wouldn’t get the consultant very far up against the entrenched acerbic attitudes that had come to dominate the organizational culture. Let’s just say the Pike’s Peak blend of coffee was hardly the only thing that was known for being bitter at Starbucks by 2025.



Saturday, October 11, 2025

Statehood for Canada: Hardly a Merger

The U.S. Constitution includes an open invitation for the accession of Canada into the U.S. as a state. The invitation was made before Canada spread across from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. So, were Canadians to seek statehood in the American union of states (i.e., the U.S.A.), they would have a good argument for Canada being split in to a few states rather than just one. This is qualitatively different than a “merger” between the two countries; the latter ideological conjecture is predicated on a category mistake. Such a mistake would say, for example, that Singapore and China are of the same genus politically even though the former is a city-state and the latter is on the (early modern) empire-scale. Just because both Singapore and China have foreign policies and are member-countries of the UN does not mean that a city-state is to be treated more generally as if it were the same as an empire. By “empire,” I am referring to China itself, rather than any territories it might have beyond mainland China. The Qing emperor Kangzi expanded mainland China to include some central Asian kingdoms, thus making China an empire (of kingdom-level/scale subunits). Similarly, the U.S., as well as the E.U., are empire-scale/level polities of (kingdom-level) polities, whereas Canada does not have enough such polities to qualify as being on the empire-scale, for an empire contains many kingdom-level polities.

When the U.S. federal constitution was written, Canada consisted of Lower Canada, which was French-speaking, and Upper Canada, which is present-day Ontario. There were also maritime colonies to the east. It makes sense, as Ontario hardly stretches across the continent to present-day British Columbia, that the American delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 would naturally view both Upper and Lower “Canada” together as being equivalent to an American republic being represented at the convention, both in terms of population and extent of territory. However, that Upper and Lower Canada were so culturally different, with different languages being predominant in each, had I been at the convention, I would have urged the other delegates to offer statehood as two states rather than just one. Different states having different languages is of course well-known in the E.U., and even in the U.S., German was just narrowly—by one vote—voted down as the official language of Wisconsin by its legislature. Even today, “brats and beer” have a cultural meaning in Wisconsin (e.g., grilled on the lakeside terrace just outside the Rathskeller bar at the University of Wisconsin) that simply does not exist in Illinois, even just miles from the northern border. Imagine if German were the official language of Wisconsin; the cultural differences between the two American republics would be even greater; but I digress.

When U.S. President Trump broached the idea that Canada could join the U.S. as the 51st state, some government officials at the state level in the E.U. displayed their abject ignorance of what the U.S. was and is by correcting Trump by insisting that Canada joining the U.S. would actually be a “merger” of two sovereign countries. Actually, each of the states in the U.S., as well as those in the E.U., are semi-sovereign and hold residual sovereignty (whereas the U.S. and E.U. have only delegated, enumerated powers/competencies). Neither Texas nor France is a sovereign country anymore, for both have agreed to delegate some governmental sovereignty to the federal system represented by federal governmental institutions. So the presumptuous, dismissive tone used was actually like primped arrogance on stilts during a flood, and in a Nietzschean sense be viewed as a manifestation of the will to power from resentment rather than as a factual statement.

So, when the prime minister of Canada visited the White House in October 2025, Euronews lied that the “US president even made a joking reference to a ‘merger’ between the two countries.”[1] He would not have used the “merger” to refer to Canada becoming a state. The European journalist was writing as an act of power to reduce the US as if it were equivalent to an E.U. state. Canada is not a united states; neither is Mexico. When an official from the British consulate of Chicago spoke at the University of Wisconsin in the 2000s, before Britain had seceded from being an E.U. state, I asked him about how the possible accession (not merger!) of Turkey would affect the European Union. He replied that it would be like Mexico becoming the 51st state. He was implicitly rejecting the view that Mexico would merge with the U.S., even though Mexico had incorrectly adopted the nomenclature, “The United States of Mexico.” France or Belgium or Germany could call itself a united states, but those republics are nonetheless states in the E.U., which is equivalent, as an empire-scale union of states, to the U.S.


Tuesday, September 23, 2025

A Drone Wall for the E.U.: Russian Aggression Assuages Euroskeptic States

Speaking after his meeting with U.S. President Trump in Alaska during the summer of 2025, Russia’s President Putin said that if no agreement is reached with Ukraine, the force of arms would decide the matter. In other words, might makes right, or at least military incursion is a legitimate way to decide political disputes between countries. I would have hoped that such a primitive mentality would be antiquated in the twentieth century, but, alas, human nature evolves only at a glacial pace undetected within the lifespan of a human being. In September, 2025, the United Nations was under attack from within the General Assembly because of the continuance of the veto held by five countries in the Security Council; the U.S. had just vetoed a resolution for an immediate cession of Israeli destruction in Gaza. As a former deputy secretary of the UN had admitted to me during the fall of 2024, the veto itself renders the UN unreformable; a new international organization would have to be established sans vetoes for efficacy to be possible. Even so, absent a real enforcement mechanism, such as a military force, a resolution even of a vetoless organization would merely be parchment. The impotence of the UN is one reason why NATO, a defensive military transatlantic alliance, has been valuable in the face of military threats by Russia. Yet in September 2025, after Russian drones had flown into four E.U. states, E.U. President Von der Leyen felt the need to take the lead by again stressing her proposal for a drone wall along the E.U.’s eastern border; she was not deferring to any international alliance, much less to the United Nations. I submit that Von der Leyen’s initiative is yet another means by which the E.U. can be distinguished from international “blocs,” alliances, and organizations. Unlike the latter three, the E.U. has exclusive competencies and is thus semi-sovereign (and the same goes for the state governments).


The full essay is at "A Drone Wall for the E.U."


Thursday, September 18, 2025

The E.U.’s Proposed Sanctions Against Israel: Excessive Reliance on the State Governments

To leverage the combined power, or united front, that is possible in Europe, the European Union was established in the waning years of the twentieth century. Roughly thirty years later, the power of the state governments at the federal level still compromised the leverage, especially in foreign affairs and defense. Even in sanctioning trading partners, even qualified majority voting in the Council of the E.U. can be said to have negatively impacted the ability of the E.U. Commission, the executive branch, to leverage the political muscle of the E.U. against other countries. State-level political agendas could essentially hold any possible leverage hostage. It may be worth thinking about why a qualified majority vote in the Council of the E.U., which represents the state governments, rather than in the E.U.’s parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, was necessary for trade sanctions to be applied to duty-free imports from Israel. That state-level political or economic interests could possibility trump applying economic leverage to stop Israel’s genocide and holocaust in Gaza, as well as Israel’s military attacks on other countries in the Middle East can be an indication that the state governments have too much power at the federal level. For if the E.U. is only an aggregation of states, without the whole being more than the sum of the parts, then the whole sans the aggregate cannot very well enact leverage on foreign actors abroad, even those whose behavior has been nothing short of atrocious.

On September 17, 2025, the European Commission released its proposal to sanction Israel “for its ongoing military assault in Gaza, as well as deepening occupation of the West Bank, which Brussels says breach the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”[1] Regarding that treaty, I contend that the E.U.’s state governments should not have any say on the consequences for Israel because the treaty is between the E.U. and Israel. As trade is an exclusive competency of the E.U., only federal institutions, which include the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice, rightly have sufficient jurisdiction (i.e., competence) to terminate the Agreement due to the violation or sanction Israel economically (as the Agreement is economic in nature).

Moreover, developing the habit of distinguishing distinctly federal governmental (i.e., executive, legislative, and judicial) institutions from other E.U. bodies that represent the states would not be a bad idea for the European political elite, many of whom have been in fear of even using the term federal because of what that might provoke in Euroskeptic states such as Hungary. That fear, I submit, is likely overblown, and it subtly undercuts the E.U. itself, especially in it being a whole beyond a mere aggregation of states.

The E.U. Commission, subject to judicial review by the ECJ, determined that Israel had violated the Agreement. The decision to act against Israel was based on “’the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza following the military intervention of Israel, the blockade of humanitarian aid, the intensifying of military operations,’ including the ongoing ground offensive, according to the European Commission.”[2] Such a credible finding against Israel does not justify state governments intervening through their access at the federal level through the European Council or the Council of the E.U. on suspicion that the E.U. president and her commissioners were acting out of prejudice against Israel. This in turn is clear from the fact that the proposed sanctions also apply to ten members of Hamas, in addition to two Israeli ministers, Security Minister Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich “for their role inciting violence in the West Bank.”[3] The Agreement, of course, only holds for Israel, rather than Hamas, so that the proposed sanctions extend to Hamas demonstrates that the Commission was “bending over backwards” to be fair in such a one-sided war that it is not really a war, but, rather, a genocide and even a holocaust of cruelty wherein death is not deemed as “punishment” enough according to the utterly fallacious theory of collective justice. 

E.U. President Von der Leyen said the week before the announcement of the proposed sanctions, “The horrific events taking place in Gaza on a daily basis must stop. There needs to be an immediate ceasefire, unrestrained access for all humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.”[4] She continued, “We propose to suspend trade concessions with Israel, sanction extremist ministers and violent settlers, and put bilateral support to Israel on hold . . .”[5] I submit that it would be difficult for the justices at the ECJ to find bias in her rationale or remedy, or, moreover, with her legitimacy in taking such a decision for the E.U. as a united front even though some state governments were at odds with her decision. 

The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and yet only if one of the two largest states in opposition vote in favor of the sanctions would they pass. The E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, was pessimistic, noting at the time, “The political lines are very much in the place where they have been so far.”[6] But that is at the state level; things might have already changed in the European Parliament, whose representatives not only represent European voters, but also have the interests of the E.U. itself, including its treaties with other countries, in mind. 

That the bias woven into the federal-level fabric of the E.U. in favor of the state governments over E.U. citizens could inhibit the E.U. from taking even an economic stand against a genocidal government indicates that the state governments have too much power at the federal—and it is federal—level of the European Union, such that reform in the Union’s basic or constitutional law is warranted. If such is the case, care should be taken so too much power be taken away from the state governments such that they could not even defend their retained sovereignty from undue encroachment by the feds. Americans could afford to take a lesson on that, for a one-size-fits-all public policy becoming monopolistic at the expense of differences between states, whether American or European, does not bode well in any empire-scale union.  


1. Shona Murray, “EU Moves to Sanction Israel over Gaza, West Bank Humanitarian Crisis,” Euronews.com, September 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

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