Tuesday, September 23, 2025

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

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


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


Thursday, September 18, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Monday, September 8, 2025

Belgium Eclipses the E.U. on Frozen Russian Assets

Even though the U.S. has compromised the health of its federal system by consolidating so much governmental sovereignty with the Union at the expense of the reserved and residual sovereignty of the states, pitfalls exist at the other extreme too. In the E.U., as long as the states can exercise their sovereignty in foreign policy without respect to the Union, the risk exists that any one state could put its distinct political and economic interests first even if that forestalls united action that the EU could muster on the world’s stage. The risk is aggravated when government officials of a state presume to speak for the entire Union as if they were federal officials. That undercuts the point of having a union of states. The adage, Either we all sail together or we are done for, seems not well known in the state capitals, and even in the European Council and the Council of the European Union.

In early September, 2025, days after E.U. President von der Leyen publicly reopened the matter of using Russian financial assets frozen in the E.U. to pay for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction, Maxime Prévot, a government official in the state of Belgium told the media that “confiscating those Russian sovereign assets is really not an option for Belgium.”[1] Most of the €200 billions of frozen Russian funds was “held in the Euroclear depository which is subject to EU financial markets regulation.”[2] So even though “Prévot said breaching the rules even in the case of an existential war would leave Belgium and the EU exposed” as risky places for countries to deposit funds, it was the E.U. rather than Belgium to decide on whether to change the financial regulations.[3] It was for the E.U. rather than for a self-interested state such as Belgium to weigh whether making an exception would in Prévot’s words, “create huge bad impact, systemic consequences for the credibility of the European financial services.”[4] At the time, Belgium was not in charge of the European financial services. Even as Belgian officials sought to protect banks in Belgium, the E.U. was in a better position to weigh the risks to future deposits of sovereign wealth funds by other countries against the geostrategic risks should Russia take over Ukraine, and perhaps then look to some eastern E.U. states to invade next. Protecting Belgian banks should not outweigh the strategic interests of the E.U. in pushing back Russia’s President Putin from helping himself to Eastern Europe.

This is essentially an argument that more governmental sovereignty in foreign policy should be delegated to the E.U. from its states, and that state economic interests should not be allowed to forestall such policy. Putting the interests of a part above those of the whole is usually self-defeating, for the dominance of a part can come at the expense of the good of the whole when a united front is needed. Prévot could certainly express his view, but he could not speak for, much less direct, the regulation of the European financial services sector. Moreover, geopolitical interests in international relations and foreign policy do not reduce to what is best for financial regulation.



1. Shona Murray, “Belgium Will Not Transfer Frozen Russian Assets Despite Commission’s Plans—FM Prévot,” Euronews.com, 5 September, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.