Rearm Europe: What’s in a Name?

The children’s adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” ignores the fact that words can cause psychological pain, which in turn can trigger physical fights that break bones. My point is that words do matter—whether applied to people or social, political, and economic entities. An appellation can promote or disparage, and even frame a political debate. When deciding what to call something involves a category mistake, the violation of logic is typically to passively insist on a particular ideological view such that it will gain currency in a society or at a global level without people being aware of the ploy (i.e., that they are being manipulated). An ideology never sits still in a human mind; the innate tendency is expansionary. As in the belief in Hinduism that attachment to both good and bad karma must be stopped before a person can be liberated (moksa) from the cycle of reincarnation (samsara), both good and bad ideologies held by a person involve the urge to proselytize, even by stealth. The E.U. itself has been especially subject to this phenomenon, and the harm to the union itself is seldom if ever discussed. Words are definitely used as subterranean weapons in open view in the context of ideological warfare.

On March 21, 2025, the E.U.’s Commission—the federal executive branch—“confirmed it would phase out the term ‘Rearm Europe” to describe its multi-billion initiative to rearm Europe after backlash from the leaders of [the E.U. state governments] of Italy and Spain” on account of the name being “excessively charged and risks alienating citizens.”[1] That the federal executive branch of the U.S. would hardly heed such an objection from two large member-states is just one indication of the shift toward consolidation in that federal union since it was thirty-two years-old. It should not be inferred that either the U.S. in 1821 or the E.U. in 2025 could be characterized as a “bloc,” which refers to “a temporary combination of parties in a legislative assembly” or “a combination of persons, groups, or nations forming a unit with a common interest or purpose.”[2] Neither the E.U. nor the U.S. is a combination, as both have federal legislative, executive, and judicial governmental institutions, and neither union is for a common interest or purpose, as federal legislation in both unions involve more than one policy area. The EEC and the Articles of Confederation could qualify as economic and military blocs, as both were single-purpose and sovereignty was retained by the countries.

And yet, the media company, Euronews, which is oriented to the E.U.-level rather than being focused on the state level and the intergovernmental relations there, incessantly refers to the E.U. as a bloc. For instance, in reporting the new name of “the plan to ramp up defence capabilities and production across the bloc will be known as ‘Readiness 2030,’” Euronews uses the word bloc even in referring to a program that the Commission rather than a state was spearheading.[3] I contend that the word-choice enervates the E.U. itself.

When David Cameron was the prime minister of the E.U. state of United Kingdom, he referred to the E.U. as one of the networks that Britain happened to be in. When the people of that state voted to secede from the union, taking back the governmental sovereignty that had been delegated to the federal level in the E.U.’s basic law was a significant reason. So based on one of the rationales for seceding from the union, Cameron’s use of “network” to name the E.U. is erroneous. In fact, he was making a category mistake because a federal union wherein governmental sovereignty is divided is not a network of sovereign states.

Nor does the fact that federal law in the E.U. includes directives to be implemented by state governments, and the Commission’s proposal to relax the debt-limit on the states is oriented to the states being able to spend up to €650 billion mean that the E.U. is thereby a bloc. Initially the U.S. heavily relied on state armies, and even after about 250 years, the states have armies even though the federal president could call on them for temporary use. Moreover, residual sovereignty still applies both in the U.S. and the European Union. Regardless of how much power is on the state and federal levels, dual sovereignty itself distinguishes modern federalism from confederalism.[4]

To be sure, the relative amounts of governmental sovereignty held respectively at the state level and at federal level in a federal system wherein sovereignty has been divided according to the federation’s basic (i.e., fundamental) framework do matter. In the case of the E.U. in 2025, and of the U.S. before the twentieth century, dissolution is a risk that goes with the state governments having a lot more authority and power than does the union itself at its federal level. This risk became very real in 1861 in the U.S., when some of the member-states tried to exit the union. When Britain seceded from the E.U. to take back the sovereignty being exercised at the federal level, the risk that other states might follow was essentially the risk of dissolution. Given this risk facing the E.U. as it watched Russian military aggression in Eastern Europe just beyond the E.U.’s eastern border, coordinated military effort by the E.U. could not afford the enervating connotations that go with referring to the modern federal system as just a bloc. It is no accident that Euro-skeptic political ideologues want a weakened E.U, and this is precisely the point of intentionally mislabeling the E.U. as a bloc.

Such erroneous naming can be used as anti-federalist, and anti-E.U. fodder by Euro-skeptic state officials desiring to take back more sovereignty from Brussels even though the E.U. was even by 2025 too “bottom-heavy.” Because the E.U. Parliament has elected representatives of E.U. citizens rather than officials from the state governments, the alleged democracy deficit has not represented as much risk of dissolution as has the erroneous notion that the E.U. is a mere network or bloc, from which state governments can easily leave as if the E.U. were NATO or a trade agreement. Euronews implies as much in the using the following parallelism in referring to Russia’s “necessary capabilities to launch an attack against an EU or NATO member state.”[5] A federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is split between the state-level and the federal level is qualitatively different than a military alliance. Treating the E.U. as if it were an international organization like the UN or a military alliance like NATO, ignoring the fact that the E.U. law and ECJ decisions are binding on the state governments and that the E.U. has three federal branches—executive, legislative, and judicial which together do constitute a government—keeps the E.U. from being able politically to redress the “bottom-heavy” imbalance of sovereignty, so the deliberate mislabeling by association increases the risk of dissolution. For it is easier for an E.U. state government to leave the UN or NATO than to secede from a federal union wherein governmental sovereignty is split up between two governmental systems—federal and state—or, it is easy to accuse the Commission of not being succeed at its competencies when the mislabeling keeps the executive branch from getting the authority needed and to accuse the European Council and Council of the E.U. of paralysis because the states won’t replace the principle of unanimity with qualified majority voting on important matters because the E.U. is just a bloc.

The false parallelism between the E.U. on the one hand and NATO and the UN on the other, as if the E.U. were an international alliance or organization (of sovereign countries), plus labeling the E.U. as an informal bloc oriented to only one policy-domain makes it more difficult for the governmental institutions at the federal level to justify getting enough authority to be able to competently exercise the competencies that they have, and this includes reducing the application of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., for those two federal institutions, made up of state officials, hold the Commission and the Parliament back as those state officials exploit both personal (i.e., their power) and institutional (i.e., state power) conflicts of interest at the expense of the benefits that could otherwise be had from achieving adequacy in the collective efforts of the union. With Russia invading Ukraine, tying one hand behind one’s back is not the best strategy for the E.U. as it seeks not only to help Ukraine, but also protect the union itself from any future aggression from the east. It may be hard to see how a name can be a subtle but heady head-wind for the E.U., but the union has indeed been incurring the costs, even the opportunity costs of the foregone benefits of collective action.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025.
2. The Merriam-Webster dictionary.
3. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025, italics added.
4. Kenneth Wheare, Federal Government.
5. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025.

Corporate Governance and Political Activism: The Case of Ben & Jerry's

When a company’s management decides to take a partisan position publicly on a political issue, especially one that is contentious, decreased revenue, whether from potential or actual consumers individually who disagree with the company’s position, or from an organized boycott from groups that stand against the position. Anger may be a stronger motivator than ideological agreement, in which case any increase in purchases would be less than the lost revenue. This asymmetry itself is interesting from the standpoint of human nature, and strongly suggests that CEO’s steer their respective companies, which managements operate on behalf of the stockholders anyway, away from taking controversial positions on social or political issues that do not directly and significantly pertain to the bottom-line (i.e., profitability) in the short- or medium-term. In short, wading into societal issues is, generally speaking, not good for business. What then about a company like the ice-cream manufacturer, Ben & Jerry’s, which from its inception had social/political activism as a salient part of the company’s mission?

Both the initial two owners and all subsequent owners, which includes Unilever, which bought the company in 2000, could not have become owners with the understanding that they were buying (into) an apolitical company, so the fiduciary duty of management was not breached. That Unilever fired Ben & Jerry’s CEO, Dave Stever, in 2025 because he had continued the subsidiary’s very public political activism presumably because it included criticism of U.S. President Trump is, let us say, complicated. I contend that the firing constitutes a breach of contract even though that contract contradicts the principle of corporate governance in part but not enough to justify allowing the firing to stand legally.  

On March 18, 2025, the management of Ben & Jerry’s accused the subsidiary’s parent-company of violating the ice-cream-maker’s “independence on social policy issues.”[1] It is precisely because a parent-company has the legal right to control the management of a subsidiary.

Unilever had informed the management of Ben & Jerry’s on March 3^rd that the latter’s CEO was being removed “without consulting directors because of his commitment to the ice-cream maker’s social mission and brand integrity, not because of concerns about his job performance.”[2] Unilever’s managers had “repeatedly warned personnel” at Ben & Jerry’s “not to defy” that management’s “efforts to ‘silence the social mission’” of the subsidiary.[3] Unilever’s management blocked the management of Ben & Jerry’s from honoring of Black History Month and opposing the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, “a U.S. permanent resident” who had been “active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.”[4] It was not as if the subsidiary were supporting a “KKK (i.e., racist) month” and gang activity coming across the border from Mexico and hitting streets in the U.S.; nevertheless, the positions that Ben & Jerry’s management wanted to take were controversial in nature, though it is not clear that either position would have lost the subsidiary much revenue. 

The issue, I submit, comes down to corporate governance. Ordinarily, when a company buys another, the former gets to control the latter. It is not like a federal system wherein two governing bodies have at least some governmental sovereignty over the same territory; rather, corporate governance is top-down. The question is whether, in buying Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever’s agreeing to recognize and go through an independent board tasked with safeguarding the political and social activism that were so much a part of the ice-cream brand was valid. In refusing to go through that board and in accusing the management of Ben & Jerry’s as defying the Unilever management, the latter was taking the position that as the owner of the subsidiary, Unilever could unilaterally cancel the agreement.

Prime facie, to sign off on a clause in a legal contract and while presuming the legal right to unilaterally invalidate said clause without notifying the counterparty of the escape clause before the signing is odious and unethical (the technical term being sneaky). The practice could be considered a form of lying because the standard understanding of a legal contract is that all parties signing it accept that they are bound to it and thus cannot legally violate it. Kant reasoned that promise-breaking is unethical because if such a policy were universalized, making a promise (or an agreement) would not make sense because no one with any sense would sign a written contract. The logical contraction itself offends reason and is thus unethical because it is by the use of reason that we assign value to things.

Another ethical issue is whether it is fair that Unilever fired Ben & Jerry’s CEO even though plans were in place to spin off the subsidiary later that year. In February, 2025, the subsidiary’s management had “accused Unilever of unilaterally banning [the subsidiary’s management] from publicly criticizing [U.S. President] Trump, ostensibly because of the ‘new dynamic.”[5] Given the spin-off plans, this could very well have been the motive in firing the CEO because even a few months more of political speech could be dire for Unilever financially, given the president’s penchant for payback. Using corporate governance to stifle political dissent is, however, questionable ethically as well as from the standpoint of democracy. The ethical issue would be exacerbated were Unilever’s board-members or its CEO supporters of President Trump. In terms of democracy, an elected president’s de facto control of companies with respect to wiping out political dissent is obviously problematic because of the importance and right of free-speech in maintaining a republic. Of course, Hitler’s political use of companies to locate political dissent and even to find Jews didn’t face any such obstacles.

As important as ethics and political freedom are, the core issue in this legal case pertains to corporate governance itself. Specifically, do property rights, such as a parent company has in being able to control any of its subsidiary companies, trump even a written contract by which a parent company has agreed that subsidiary’s management can be protected from certain exercises of control by the parent company’s management or board? This is the pertinent question in this legal case.

Noting that a person putting one’s labor (or money, which represents labor in part) into something renders it legitimately one’s own property, John Locke saw property rights as existing in the state of nature, whereas Thomas Hobbes did not; in the contentious seventeenth-century Europe, he advocated that a political sovereign be given a monopoly on political (and religious) power in part to protect the property of people so they would not kill each other over it (though the sovereign could of course take over the property without providing a justification). In the antebellum southern States in the USA wherein slaves were considered property, those slaves had no rights against their respective owners. It is ironic that a case of humans-as-property illustrates the epitome of property rights, and yet such rights in themselves, at least in a society, have a legitimate basis. My point is that while we may not like where the doctrine of property rights can take us, modern corporate governance is on a sound footing philosophically.

Unilever’s breach of contract may, however, run aground because a system of property rights is for practical purposes based in a legal framework, wherein a breach of contract is not legal even though particular circumstances may admittedly justify it ethically and even legally. The question of whether Ben & Jerry’s CEO could legally “defy” the board or management of Unilever because officials representing the latter signed a legal contract mandating the use of the independent board centers on whether that clause can be considered to be legally valid and thus binding even though it “defies” the doctrine of property rights upon which corporate government itself rests.

I contend that the clause is legally enforceable. It is not as if that clause were in “boiler-plate” small-print that the lawyers at Unilever missed. It is not as if the clause contains an escape sub-clause for Unilever, for Ben & Jerry’s management (and lawyers) would have flagged it as undercutting the very point in having the clause in a legal contract. Moreover, the willful unilateral decision by a party to a contract that it no longer binding is offensive to law itself, which is an important foundation for a free society, l’etat est moi is a different story. In fact, it is as if the board or management of Unilever were saying, we are above the law, or we are the law. Either premise guts the basis of a legal system, and thus of corporate governance too. Such a governance system in the private sector is based on a legal system even more fundamentally than on property rights because even such rights are premised on a legal system (even though Locke disagreed). Regardless of what holds in the state of nature, the rights of property in a society are granted by law, which requires the existence of a legal system unless law is the will of a political sovereign. This is why it is so important that the President of the United States recognize the constitutional validity of judicial decisions bearing on a president’s will, for otherwise that will could easily become law and no legal system would be needed; the republic would collapse into dictatorship.

That a republic, including federal republics wherein smaller republics also exist—the E.U. and U.S. being notable examples—can (and have) become autocracies demonstrates just how tenuous democracy can be. Property rights, too, may be tenuous, especially in autocracies even though eminent domain exists in republics. To be sure, the lack of legal restraint on a regime of dictatorship, for the state’s will is the law, means that property owners are not typically monetarily compensated for the loss of their respective properties taken by the state. The legally contracted legitimacy of the independent board protecting Ben & Jerry’s social-activist-brand intangible asset is in relative terms not much of an affront to property rights as instantiated in corporate governance.

I have argued that Unilever’s representatives signed the contract of the merger-agreement means that the independent board is not even not much of an affront. In effect, Unilever’s property rights regarding  Ben & Jerry’s explicitly excluded the right to ignore the independent board. As a principle to be derived from this case, it can be maintained that corporate governance does not necessitate or require an absolutist doctrine of property rights. The very existence of the state, whether democratic or autocratic, means that absolute property-rights do not and cannot exist. Therefore, a purchaser of an asset agreeing by legal contract to restrict one’s rights with respect to the use of the asset is legally valid and thus should not be vitiated by later appeals to the doctrine of property rights. In renting house, the house’s owner typically agrees in the lease to restrictions on entering the house. The state may mandate this restriction to protect renters even thought their use of a rented property is not ownership. That is, use-rights can trump property-rights in certain respects short of the right to assume ownership of the property, and the existence of such restrictions on property rights does not destroy property rights as a prominent part of a legal system.

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1. Jonathan Stempel, “Ben & Jerry’s Says Parent Unilever Decided to Oust Ice Cream Maker’s CEO,” Reuters, March 18, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The E.U. and U.S. on Defense and Foreign Policy: Helping Ukraine

In March, 2025 after the U.S. had direct talks with Russia on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. stepped up its game in helping Ukraine militarily. This was also in the context of a trade war between the E.U. and U.S., which did not make transatlantic relations any better. The E.U.’s increasing emphasis on military aid to Ukraine and the related publicity inadvertently showcased how federalism could be applied to defense and foreign policy differently that it has in the U.S., wherein the member states are excluded, since the Articles of Confederation, when the member states were sovereign within the U.S. confederation. Although both manifestations of early-modern federalism have their respective benefits and risks, I contend that the E.U.’s application of federalism to the two governmental domains of power is more in the spirit of (dual-sovereignty) federalism, even though serious vulnerabilities can be identified.

Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s foreign minister, “pitched an ambitious plan to mobilize up to to €40 billion in fresh military support for Ukraine, which, if achieved, would represent a twofold increase from the defence assistance the European Union provided” in 2024.[1] Whether premised on the assumption that Russia would not agree to a truce or that Ukraine would need additional leverage in negotiations, “the Kallas initiative” put the E.U.’s defense and foreign policy in the spotlight globally. Lest it be assumed by assuming an exact likeness to the U.S. federal system that the E.U.’s defense and foreign policy areas were exclusive competencies (i.e., domains of enumerated power) at the federal level, the E.U.’s state governments, including their respective foreign ministers, played a significant role in the actual provision to Ukraine of artillery ammunition, missiles, drones, and even fighter jets. This arrangement, which includes overall federal coordination and significant funding, resembles the directive, which is a federal law that requires the state governments enact legislation to implement the content of the federal law. That Kallas, the federal foreign minister, took “into account” non-lethal provisions, including “training and equipment for Ukrainian brigades, . . . to ensure the participation of neutral” state governments shows just how much of a role the E.U. states had at the time in defense and foreign policy.[2]

Marco Rubio, Kallas’ counterpart in the U.S., would not have even consulted with state governments in coming up with an initiative regarding Ukraine. That approach, wherein foreign policy and defense are completely federalized, does not reflect modern (i.e., dual-sovereignty) federalism, whereas the shared competencies of the E.U. do. This is not to say that every enumerated power or federal competency should be shared. In fact, that the principle of unanimity applied to foreign policy and defense in the E.U. represents a serious vulnerability. Essentially, the requirement that every state government consent treats modern (dual-sovereignty) federalism as if it were confederalism, where the states hold all governmental sovereignty. Similarly, David Cameron, a prime minister of the ex-E.U. state of Britain, confused the two in stating that the E.U. is just another international network.” Given this category mistake, the E.U. was better off after Britain seceded from the union. Even the linguistic subterfuge of “Brexit,” as well as Kallas’ strange job title as “high representative” rather than foreign minister, attests to the vulnerability inherent in obfuscating (early) modern federalism with confederalism.

In short, involving the state governments in foreign policy and defense federal policy and legislation applies federalism more so than does consolidating those two domains at the federal level, and yet giving each state government a veto not only renders the federal system vulnerable to being exploited and paralyzed from within, but also treats a federal system in which two systems of government each have some amount of sovereignty like a confederation in which the states retain sovereignty.

The U.S. could improve how it manifests federalism by having the heads of the state governments represent them in the U.S. Senate, just as the heads of the state governments in the E.U. sit in the European Council. Additionally, the U.S. member states could play more of a role in the implementation of foreign policies and defense, such as in receiving money from the Pentagon to send machinery from the states’ respective militaries (called militias) to countries that are to be supported militarily. The federal level could then act as a check on corruption in the implementation. To be sure, giving the state governments veto-power would carry the check-and-balance feature of federalism too far. So both the E.U. and U.S. could stand to improve their respective federal systems towards ever perfect union—neither one being a trading “bloc” or confederation.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Kallas Pitches Plan to ‘Potentially’ Mobilize €40 Billion in MilitaryAid for Ukraine,” Euronews, March 14, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Poverty Impeding Development

In the 1980s, the advent of some newly-industrializing countries (NICs) in east Asia, such as Taiwan and South Korea, was generating excitement around the world that the gap between the least developed countries (LDCs) and the developed countries (DCs) then had a viable bridge through foreign direct-investment; that is, what had been a dichotomy was becoming a spectrum. The hope that globally-circulating capital might raise even the LDCs out of poverty. Of course, there was scarce any thought that the combined pollution of an economically developing world would raise global air and sea temperatures above 1.5C. Human beings are too near-sighted for that, and, of course, there is the allure of profits and higher salaries and wages. Also, the sheer inexorability, or stubborn persistence, of poverty in scaring off rather than being lifted up from foreign-direct investment may have been minimized by the hope. Roughly forty years later, Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics spoke on the theory that economic opportunities are impacted by how much wealth a person has at the outset—the alternative theory being that the opportunities are just as good for the poor as for the rich because differences are due to exogenous (i.e., outside) factors. The micro-level condition of a country’s poor impacts the attractiveness of a country to foreign direct-investment.

Poor people are more likely to be doing casual, self-employed work than running a small business or raising livestock, according to Bandiera. Wage-labor tends not to go to the poor. Sustenance-level casual work, which is not as regular as wage-labor, is typically not enough to accumulate savings, which could be spent on training or education, or to buy livestock or equipment to increase production of crafts such that economies of scale might be realized. A bimodal structure thus emerges with equilibria being at subsistence level and middle-class, but not in between them. In terms of public policy, craft-oriented small-business loans can perhaps increase the number of poor people who can enter the interim space between the two equilibria. Only governments would be willing to take the risk, and should be willing to make sure that the loans are not spent on consumption, for pressing consumption needs are part of the reason why the poor do not save money on an ongoing basis.

Similarly on the macro level, the Asian NICs were distinguished from the LDCs in Latin America in the 1980s because only the former group had governments strong enough to withstand the political pressure from the people for increased government spending for consumption. Strong states, even if they are authoritarian rather than democratic, can resist popular pressure to exhaust government coffers by expanding entitlement programs. That by 2025 several E.U. states had deficits and debts greater than the limits prescribed by the Stability and Growth Pact and those governments faced no real accountability from the E.U.’s federal government adds support to the argument that democracy may be at odds with sustained and balanced fiscal policy unless, as the U.S.’s Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed, the citizenry who vote (i.e., the electorate) are educated and virtuous.  

In terms of business, enterprises in LDC’s tend to be smaller than those in developed countries (and NICs). Smaller organizations are less competitive in trade because they cannot realize the benefits of economies of scale. Such organizations also have less job-specialization and job variety. Bandiera even referred to the labor of such companies as a “disassociated group of self-employed.” Additionally, the CEOs of those enterprises tend to be managers more so than leaders, meaning that those CEOs spend more of their time oriented to functions inside the organizations and less time oriented to external stakeholders and even society as a whole. Visionary leadership is something that the head of a small business in a developing country cannot afford.

Even in business schools in developed countries, the business field of business environment has a place similar to that of Pluto in the solar system. Situating the field of business ethics within business environment is logically and conceptually dubious—but not to worry; few “scholars” of business ethics have actually studied philosophy, of which ethics is a subfield. One business ethics “scholar” at MIT told me in 2024 that ethics is actually situated in sociology rather than philosophy. Being in the humanities, I only smiled and wished her well. Rather than copy the business systems of developed countries, perhaps LDCs should grow their own varieties. The question is perhaps whether the governments should first not only invest in infrastructure, but also underwrite small-business loans to a sufficient portion of poor households before enticing foreign direct-investment. After all, forests develop in stages.

A European Army: A More Perfect Union

At the Munich Security Conference in February, 2025, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy bluntly asserted, “I really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be created.”[1] He could have said in 2023 after Russia’s President Putin had sent tanks and bombs into Ukraine; instead, the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S. that was the trigger. “Let’s be honest,” Zelenskyy continued, “now we can’t rule out that America might say ‘no’ to Europe on issues that might threaten it.”[2] At the time, Trump was planning to meet with Putin to end the war without Britain and a number of E.U. states at the table. After all, they had failed to push Putin off Crimea in 2014, and even in 2025, they were not on the same page on how to defend Ukraine militarily. Amid the political fracturing in Europe, Ukraine’s president was urging that the E.U. itself have an army, rather than merely the 60,000 troops for which the union was dependent on the states. Even on being able to borrow on its own authority, the E.U. was hamstrung by the state governments that were more interested in retaining power than in benefitting from collective action. It is difficult to analyze Zelenskyy’s plea without including the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology that was still eclipsing the E.U. from realizing a more perfect union.

 

The full essay is at "A European Army."

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1. Joshua Posaner, “Zelenskyy: ‘The Time Has Come’ for a European Army,” Politico, February 15, 2025.

2. Ibid.

E.U. Defense: The State Governments Exploit a Conflict of Interest

Sometimes lemons can make use of political gravity to become lemonade. Of course, behind the lemons are human beings, who are of course innately economizers, political actors and moral agents. When accosted by proposals that additional governmental sovereignty be delegated from state governments to the federal level, state-government officials feeling the gravitas of narrow self-interest are inclined to resist even if the transfer is in the political and economic interest of the union as well as all of its states. I am of course describing a drawback that goes with state governments having too much power in a federal system, whose interests are not always identical with those of a particular state or even those that pertain to the state level as distinct from the federal level. I submit that a federal system in which such dynamics are ignored in favor of focusing on particular issues, such as the E.U.’s increased need for defense given Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, can gradually slip “off the rails” toward dissolution or consolidation. By ceding the E.U. itself (i.e., the federal level) additional authority, including for revenues and expenditures, the European Council, which is composed of the state governors, could “kill two birds with one stone,” as that saying goes. Those birds would be unbalanced state power in the E.U. at the expense of a common purpose, and Russian President Putin’s military adventurism in Eastern Europe.

One casualty of excessive state power in a federal system is accountability that the federal institutions could exercise on state governments whose officials willfully violate federal laws and regulations. Those officials, I submit, are all too acclimated to turning the “lemon” of being held accountable in the federal system into “lemonade” by turning a proposal made by a branch of government at the federal level for more authority at the expense of the power of the state governments (and thus of their respective officials!) into a proposal to suspend the federal measure of accountability on the state governments. In short, the state governors would be saying to the federal officials: You want more federal power? We reject that and will exercise the requested power ourselves and we need you to waive a federal constraint, which some of us have been violating, in order for us to exercise the power. I contend that this is how the following can (and should) be interpreted and understood.

On February 14, 2025, the President of the E.U.’s executive branch, the Commission—a name that seems more imposing than The White House—announced that she would “propose to activate the escape clause in the [union’s] fiscal rules in a bid to ‘substantially’ boost member states’ defense investment.”[1] Alternatively, the federal president could have carried through with her earlier proposal to increase the E.U.’s own authority in defense, thus enabling the union to benefit in terms of security from collective action instead of each state doing its own thing. Arguably, such collective action would be necessary should the U.S. back off from defending the E.U. against potential and actualized threats from Russia.

From the perspective of a governor of a state in the E.U., the benefits from going beyond coordinating to pool military defense at the federal level are less important than gutting the federal requirement (in the Stability and Growth Pact, which is really a federal law rather than a pact) that state fiscal deficits be “under 3% of GDP and debt under 60% of GDP” of a given state.[2]  Seeking to obviate the Commission’s Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP), which includes penalties, including fines, on violators, the governors meeting in the European Council had only weeks earlier stated a preference for putting the EDP on ice so the states could increase their defense spending (and not have to pay fines) instead of enhancing the Commission’s defense competency (i.e., enumerated power) at the expense of the remaining sovereignty that the states still had.

Eight states—Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia—were in violation of the limits on deficits and/or debt. It is no coincidence that the governments of the E.U. states of Poland, Italy, Greece and the Baltic states had been requesting that the Commission review the required limits on state deficits and debt. It also no coincidence that at the “informal” session of the European Council held only weeks earlier, the state officials considered lifting the required limits to be “among the least controversial options on the table.”[3] Waiving being held accountable is of course not controversial for the people who would otherwise be held accountable. Relative to the Council, the power of the Commission and the Parliament individually and even combined was insufficient to object, citing both a federal system’s need that state governments be held accountable when they violate federal law and regulations and the defense-benefits from the collective action in energizing the E.U. competency on defense.

Put another way, to the E.U. state governors, removing the federal constraint on state spending that is not covered by tax revenue and resisting the delegation of additional governmental sovereignty to the federal government are more important—both for self-interested reasons—than strengthening both the union’s federal system, such that the federal level could effectively hold violating state governments accountable and thus make federal law real rather than mere parchment, and the union’s ability to stand up militarily as a unit rather than conglomeration to Putin, especially as the U.S. was sending clear signals of a desire to pull back from defending Europe from Russia. The triumph of narrow, private-benefit-delimited—self-interest over the good of the whole—in this case, Europe—and the related (i.e., not coincidental!) political weakness of federal officials to be a check on the exploitation of the conflict of interest at the state level are themselves (and especially together!) internal threats to the viability of the European Union. Lest the threat be presumed to be solely external, from Russia being militarily in the Ukraine, E.U. citizens could have done worse than exchange their binoculars for microscopes, at least for a while.  

1. Alice Tidey, “EU Commission to Activate Fiscal Escape Clause to Boost Defence Spending,” Euronews.com, February 14, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The Patriots for Europe Party: On Anti-Federalism

At a party meeting in Madrid, E.U. on February 8, 2025, the Patriots for Europe party sent out the message of wanting to be the new normal in the E.U., as against the default of the “mainstream” parties, which include the Renew Europe party and the European People’s Party—the president of the E.U. being in the latter party. The Patriots party’s banner, “Make Europe Great Again,” shows a kinship to U.S. President Trump’s MAGA movement, but the E.U.-specific planks are significant and thus should not be dismissed. As is the case with any large political party, the planks can be a bit like a tossed salad, with even disparate ingredients being in the mix. I contend that this makes it difficult to discern the will of the voters who vote for a party in terms of how much support there is for a particular policy. As a result, if a party is like a grab-bag of various policies, one such policy could be enacted without much of a democratic will behind it.

The Patriots for Europe party’s officials had high hopes for their party at the party meeting. At the time, the only sitting governor at the state level was Viktor Orban of Hungary. In the E.U.’s parliament, the party held only 89 seats, but this was enough to make the party third after the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats party (S&D). The Renew Europe had slipped in the last federal election. To gain more seats, and more governorships at the state level, the Patriots for Europe party had taken positions on a variety of issues, so as to attract more single-issue voters.

André Ventura, the leader of a political group in the E.U. state of Portugal, said at the Patriots’ meeting, “We have to reconquer a Europe that is ours and that belongs to us. A Christian Europe.”[1] That E.U. society had long before become secular was not the point; rather, the party was against the contentiousness of anti-assimilation Muslim immigrants from Africa, and especially their refusal to accept free-speech even on matters of religion. Therefore, this plank should not be confused with the revivalism of evangelical Christianity in the 1740s, wherein a conversion experience was newly stressed as part of the litmus test for whether a person is or is not a Christian. In 2025, calls for a Christian Europe were really about going back to the days of a relatively homogeneous E.U. culture. By relatively, I mean to account for the expected cultural differences that exist from state to state in any empire-scale federal system.

Indeed, one of the main benefits of federalism is that the system is able to deal with those differences without the polity being rent asunder by political conflicts between individual states. In calling for the return of governmental sovereignty to the states, which means even doing away with qualified majority voting at the federal level, even cultural differences within a more narrow Christian European society could throw a confederated (rather than dual-sovereignty-based federated) E.U. against the rocks within a decade. At least some governmental sovereignty must be delegated by the states to a federal government (rather than a confederated council) for conflicts between states to be resolved before they become insurmountable.

Diluting its anti-federalist, states-rights political ideology, the Patriots for Europe party was also against federal regulations because they stifle business, the Green Deal for the same reason, and LGBT rights because they are progressive. For example, Andrej Babis criticized the parties in power then in the E.U. for imposing “regulations that strangle businesses and [E.U.] citizens.[2] A pro-business voter could thus vote for the PfE party in the European Parliament and a social conservative could vote for the party so transgender men would not be allowed to be on women’s sports teams and use women bathrooms in the E.U., while still believing that returning the delegated federal sovereignty to the states would destroy the union. Yet because the party contains that plank, voting on business-interests or social ethical interests would make it more likely that the E.U. could be vitiated. Put another way, being pro-business or anti-trans does not mean that someone is a Euroskeptic to the point that the E.U.’s governmental sovereignty should be vitiated.

Therefore, with regard to whether the E.U. should continue to have a federal system characterized as “modern federalism,” with dual sovereignty being its basis, or become a confederal inter-governmental council wherein governmental sovereignty is fully vested in the state governments, something more than merely voting for an variegated party is necessary. A referendum on the question could be put to the E.U. citizens, for example. Just because pro-business voters would be inclined to vote for the Patriots for Europe party to see a drawback in federal regulations does not mean that they reject the E.U. having some delegated governmental sovereignty. This argument can be interpreted as claiming that direct democracy can be applied to significant political issues where it cannot be assumed that the voters of a major party agree with every plank. For it is one thing to contravene specific federal policies and even laws, and quite another to fundamentally change the type of an extant federal system.

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1. Paula Solder, “’Your Time Is Over:’ Far-Right Leaders Take on the E.U.’s Mainstream Parties,” Euronews.com, February 8, 2025.
2. Ibid.

On the U.S. President as Chief Executive

As the chief executive of the U.S. Government, the president is tasked with executing the law—the passage thereof involving both the Congress and the presidency. It follows that a president cannot legally stand in the way of appropriated federal funding of projects and programs once such allocations have become law. For otherwise, a president could simply ignore appropriations passed by the Congress and signed into law by a previous president. The powers of the unitary executive would reach dictatorial proportions. Within roughly one week of being sworn into office for his second term in 2025, U.S. President Trump decided to pause all foreign aid, and “grants, loans and other federal assistance . . . to ensure spending is consistent with Trump’s priorities.”[1] Those priorities, I submit, would properly have influence on bills in Congress that were not yet laws, as per the legislative veto-power of the presidency and the ability of a president to put pressure on members of Congress by speaking persuasively directly to the American people. The value of leadership available to a presiding role should not be ignored. In terms of symbolic leadership befitting a presider in chief, refusing to enforce laws sends the wrong signal. To be sure, delaying rather than cancelling funding that has already been appropriated as law may fall within reasonable discretion that goes with the executing, and thus executive, function. However, the size, or magnitude, of the federal spending being held up but not cancelled may test the test of reasonableness. This may also be so if the political dimension—that is, the salience of political judgment in the issues involved—is significant.

President Trump “issued an executive order for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.”[2] At the time, the United States was the world’s largest international-aid donor; in 2023, $68 billion was spent for this purpose. That number includes “everything from development assistance to military aid.”[3] Interestingly, military funding for Israel was exempted from the delay even though the ICC had issued a warrant for Israel’s sitting prime minister for decimating the civilian population of Gaza, the International Court of Justice (the UN’s court) had ruled the occupation and military attacks by Israel to violate international law, and Amnesty International had found sufficient, credible evidence of genocide perpetuated by the Israeli government. If this exception to the U.S. president’s 90-day delay—and Trump unfroze Biden’s hold on the delivery of the 2000lb bombs to Israel because, Trump said, that country had bought them—reflects Trump’s foreign-policy priorities, then the matter of selectively delaying foreign aid cannot be reckoned as merely technical in nature; rather, the salience of the political dimension means that even a 90-day delay could be unreasonable without Congressional consent in the enacting of resolutions or even law.

With regard to pausing grants, loans and other federal assistance—excepting Medicare and Social Security benefits—again the sheer scale of the funding involved and the salience of politics in the decision to delay test the limits to what is and is not within the reasonable purview of executive discretion in executing federal law that includes federal spending. “Diane Yentel of the National Council of Nonprofits said the order could stop cancer research, food assistance and suicide hotlines.”[4] If so, even a significant delay could be unreasonable as well as contrary to the law concerning SNAP (federal food-assistance to 42.1 million individuals as of the fiscal year 2023) because—to put it bluntly—an awful lot of people need to eat on a daily rather than a monthly basis. Again, the president’s political-ideological judgment here is arguably debatable (hence suggestive of a Congressional legislative role even in the delay): delaying food assistance to Americans while exempting military aid to Israel from delay. Both, and especially juxtaposed, are contentious politically (i.e., ideologically). Furthermore, the memo delaying domestic financial assistance, “signed by acting OMB chief Matthew Vaeth, calls on government agencies to temporarily pause their financial assistance [programs], so they can review spending that could be impacted by the various orders Trump has signed” relating to diversity programs, “woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”[5] It is difficult to square such overtly political reasons with a technocratic delay in the execution of laws. Of course, this is a judgment call, for the length of the delay is also a relevant factor. Aside from the financial assistance to Americans bearing on sustenance, a few month’s delay may be reasonable, but both the scale of the foreign and domestic funding and especially the political rationales for the delay arguably make the delay a significant political matter rather than merely an executive function in implementing law.

My assessment should not be assumed to be in line with my own political ideology, for I oppose affirmative action programs as being contrary to merit and woke “thought-police” as being repugnant to free-speech liberty; I am not obliged to “give my personal pronouns” (in fact, “one” is the neuter third-person singular pronoun in English). I assume, moreover, that we are all human, all too human in fact, and thus that none of us have a monopoly on truth to be imposed on others. My point here is that the use of reason to dissect even a controversial issue, such as presidential power in the U.S., should not cower to the bullying force of the mind’s own ideology. Incidentally, this point is vital in distinguishing between scholarship and opinion-pieces.

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1. James Fitzgerald and Ana Faguy, “White House Pauses Federal Grants and Loans,” BBC.com, January 28, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The Tech Industrial Complex

Democracy, Plato and Aristotle both theorized, is a governmental system that is most susceptible to the mob—meaning mob-rule. Accordingly, the Electoral College and the appointments of U.S. Senators by state governments, the latter being the case from the establishment of the U.S. Constitution to a few decades into the twentieth century, were meant to limit any damage from momentary passions of the People to the U.S. House of Representatives. The governments in the United States, like those in the European Union, are republics in which democracy is a part rather than the whole. What neither Plato nor Aristotle could foresee in their agrarian city-states is the threat to democracy by plutocracy—the system of government in which private wealth rules. It is less understandable why the American electorates have ignored repeated warnings of the threat, especially as governmental power has concentrated at the federal level since the war between the CSA and the USA in 1861.

Much like U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had done “in 1961 when he expressed concerns about the ‘military industrial complex’ in his farewell address,” President Biden said in his address, “’an oligarchy is taking shape in America’ as power and money become more concentrated in the hands of the few.”[1] Biden “criticized the ‘tech industrial complex’ and social media, where ‘the truth is smothered by lies for power and for profit.’”[2] It seemed likely in 2025 that Biden’s warning would not eventuate in any policies oriented to breaking up the concentrations of private wealth, which I submit are inherently incompatible with a democracy. Simply put, seeing billionaires visibly chatting with government officials during President Trump’s second swearing-in presents a picture that may suggest that the influence of private wealth on public policy (and thus government officials) had gained such a foothold that the confluence could be shown brazenly without fear that the American people might vote for candidates campaigning on enforcing anti-trust law and raising the effective tax-rates on billionaires to the point that, with anti-trust, being so rich from an oligarchic business would not be possible going forward.

Tech titans amid the incoming administration: Just the visible tip of an iceberg. (Getty)

Besides Elon Musk, perhaps the richest billionaire in the world at the time, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (Facebook) as well as the titans of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft could be seen on television in front of, and amicably chatting with the incoming administration's Cabinet secretaries. Musk was chatting with Trump's proposed secretary of defense in spite of the conflict of interest in Musk owning SpaceX. Zuckerberg could feel comfortable being seen chatting with secretaries and President Trump’s adult sons in spite of his power to minimize political dissent on social media. With 90 days to decide whether to close down or sell Tik Tok, President Trump expressed interest in a news conference in the evening of his second inaugural in letting rich Americans buy into a 50/50 joint venture that would allow China to continue Tik-Tok operations in the United States. Were Zuckerberg or Musk to invest enough that they could exercise control on the company through the American half, the investments could put the two social-media titans closer to achieving monopoly control over social media in the United States. 

The real power evinced in the inaugural ceremony was in the seating area where the Cabinet nominees, the tech titans, and Trump's business-oriented relatives were sitting. At one point prior to the arrival of Trump himself, all of the living former U.S. Presidents, Democrats and Republicans, were looking across the aisle at the cadre of Trump’s nominated cabinet secretaries, the billionaire tech titans, and Trump’s business-family. Those former presidents undoubtedly knew where the real power was, and perhaps they were surprised to see the public-private collusion so brazenly visible. After the ceremony, hidden from the public’s view at the lunch in the Capitol, members of Congress, “Cabinet nominees and business titans within Trump’s inner circle” mingled.[3] The luncheon was an “opportunity that VIPs use to mix and mingle with members of the administration and advance their policy priorities. Apple CEO Tim Cook [was] seated between Donald Trump Jr and [U.S. Senate] Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.”[4] I submit that most such mingling takes place behind closed doors, even and especially in regard to the writing of laws. It is not uncommon for Congressional committee to use language written by the companies to be regulated.  

Lest President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers to democracy from the military-industrial complex be replaced by Biden’s warning of a tech industrial complex as if the former had gone away on its own,  President Trump promised in his second inaugural address, “Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen.” Lest it be forgotten, President Biden has approved weapon-sales to Israel even as it ravaged the residents of Gaza on a scale that openly deified international human-rights law. Rather than assuming that Eisenhower’s problem was only existed in the second half of the twentieth-century, the American people in the twenty-first century would not be wrong in perceiving the tech industrial complex as being on top of the continuing military industrial complex. How many such complexes must there be before a existential threat to democracy itself be recognized and combatted? The sheer power of huge sums of private money, such as the influx of Elon Musk’s millions in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and the magnitude of the discretion that Zuckerberg showed he had in unilaterally firing fact-checkers on his social-media company, can indeed be peeled back to reveal just how much the American voters could be manipulated on whom to vote for and even what issues to focus on. Rarely, if at all, did a candidate for federal office propose applying anti-trust law to the social-media’s big companies in the U.S.—an oligopoly. Nor was there any traction from the few voices in Congress suggesting that maybe the U.S. Government should stand up to military contractors by refusing to buy weapons for Israel and give that country’s government money to buy even more American weapons. The shop was open for business; human rights be damned.

The point is seldom made in American public discourse that had the U.S. Government enforced anti-trust law, including stopping tech giants like Facebook and Twitter from peremptorily buying up potential new-entrants in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a billionaire class would not have been so large, and thus such an implicit threat to democracy. Just in how social-media company financial (and political) interests can be tacitly presented to manipulate internet users in feeds without the voters realizing it, the reason why Biden’s warning was not likely to be heeded at the ballot box can be understood. I submit that the televised images of tech “competitors” sitting together at Trump’s second inaugural points to an inter-related oligopoly instead of a competitive market (wherein new entrants are not bought up). But this is not all that we can take away from having watched the ceremony; we could also see the billionaires amicably chatting with likely high officials in Trump’s second administration, with Musk’s SpaceX having a financial interest in being NASA’s exclusive space-sub-contractor, and with Musk’s “X” and Zuckerberg’s social-media giant having a financial interest in what the Trump administration does about Tik-Toc. 

Extreme personal and corporate wealth literally in front of government officials at the inauguration in democracy's own Capitol Rotunda. 

My point is that, had the inherent threat that having billionaires poses to a viable republic been grasped by the American public, then governmental power would have been used such that the Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other tech managerial-visionaries would not have been able to become billionaires in the first place. As of 2025, and perhaps even back in 1961 concerning the military contractors, the proverbial horses were almost certainly already out of the barn. Thus, the electoral grass-roots energy going forward from 2025 needed to upset the proverbial apple-cart being steered by individual teckie billionaires to advance the financial interests of their respective companies in the halls of American government would be, realistically speaking, virtually unattainable. One of the most remarkable visuals from President Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony was that of the former presidents all looking over at the billionaires' very visible nicities with the incoming Trump officials and Trump's financially-inclined scions. The former presidents looked like bystanders rather than as pillars of power in themselves even though power had presumably been given to them by the People. I’m just glad that it does not fall to me to get the horses back in the barn. Ultimately, the American People since World War II are to blame for not having minded the proverbial shop as a going concern, for they should have known from the Titanic that most of an iceberg is hidden from view under water. Yes, I think people should know that, even with respect to icebergs in the ocean of political economy. Perhaps, though, I think too highly of popular sovereignty, which, unfortunately, is admittedly quite vulnerable to being manipulated. Both the manipulation itself and the sources are very difficult for the public to detect. Whether through social and/or mass media, even just a few very rich people or a large company, or a network of large corporations with  oligopolistic shared financial interests can frame what is debated, and keep out what is not. It is precisely because detection is so rare that the visuals coming out of Trump's second inaugural are so important, for they give us a rare glimpse of the nature and dynamics of real power in America.

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1. Chris Megerian and Colleen Long, “Five Things To Know about Biden’s Farewell Address that Also Served as a Warning to the Country,” APnews.com, January 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Michelle Shen, “Trump Attends Congressional Luncheon Where Key Politicians and Business Leaders Mingle,” CNN.com, January 20, 2025.
4. Ibid

GDP Per Capita in the E.U. and U.S.: Changing Perceptions

Historically speaking, the E.U. and U.S. are relatively large in territorial expanse and population, so it is only to be expected that significant economic (and cultural) differences exist from state to state in the respective unions of states. In Europe, some medieval kingdoms have relegated to being but regions in E.U. states. Holland, for instance, is a region in The Netherlands, which in turn is a E.U. state. The same can be said of Bavaria (and England, were the United Kingdom still a E.U. state). To compare the economic inequality in such a region with the inequality in the E.U. (or U.S.) over all would be deeply misleading. For example, rural/urban economic patterns that pertain to an economy containing one major city do not translate into the multiple rural/urban patterns that exist in a modern (empire-scale) union of states. In short, scale matters, especially in how we make use of mathematical averages.  Comparing GDP per capita is a case in point; states should be compared with states.

Although recent studies had suggested that upward mobility was higher in the E.U. than in the U.S., the GDP per capita in the latter was significantly more in the latter than the former. To be sure, the gap is less “when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP)—which accounts for cost-of-living differences.”[1] Also, comparing the E.U. and the U.S. misses out on the significant differences between states in each of the empire-scale unions; such differences in turn can be used to compare individual states in one union with individual states in the other.

It is difficult to believe that in “the third quarter of 2024, Mississippi’s GDP per capita was €49,780, just €1,524 less than Germany’s at €51,304.”[2] That the industrial base in the latter state greatly exceeded Mississippi’s industry makes the respective numbers all the more perplexing. Because the E.U. average GDP per capita was €40,060 as compared to the U.S. average of €80,023, a person might begin to wonder whether a false economic-equivalence has pervaded both the American and European general perspectives. Certainly geographically, Americans may be surprised how much smaller Europe is than North America (and, accordingly, the E.U. in relation to the U.S.).  The GDP per capita comparisons may thus be like superimposing geographic maps at the expense of previously-held perspectives and assumptions of equivalence.

This is not to say that every E.U. state was poorer than every U.S. state; Luxembourg’s €125,043 is more than New York’s €107,485.[3] Nevertheless, it is significant that the figures for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain are less than those of West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, and South Carolina—each of these being below the U.S. average. It would not be at all surprising to read that these figures are incorrect, but, then again, the generally-held false geographical equivalence that Americans and Europeans naturally hold concerning the E.U. relative to the U.S. may, as a phenomenon of a false assumption of equivalence, exist economically too.

Were I to attempt an explanation—not being an economist—I would want to look at whether the relatively higher tax rates in the E.U. discourage economic activity. I would also want to investigate the extent to which the shorter work-week in Europe may also be a factor in the relatively lower GDP per capita. Furthermore, the relatively generous social policies in many E.U. states may also discourage the long-term unemployed from filling job openings, thus reducing factory efficiency and output and lowering per capita averages. Lastly, I would want to know just how much the different PPPs decrease the gaps of GDP per capita. I suspect, however, that all of these possible factors operate only on the margins, rather than explaining the entirety of the differences, given the magnitudes of the differences. It may simply be that hoch Kultur and the higher population (urban) density in the E.U. carries with it the false assumption that the E.U. must be as economically productive per person as in the U.S.

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1. Servet Yanatma, “How Do America’s Poorest States Compare to Europe’s Largest Economies,” Euronews.com, January 6, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.