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.