Showing posts with label Articles of Confederation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles of Confederation. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2026

The European Civil Protection Pool: Insufficient for the E.U.'s Civil Protection Mechanism

The European Civil Protection Pool (ECPP) was established in 2013 to provide emergency response personnel and equipment to combat natural and man-made disasters in Europe. The Pool is the central component of the E.U. Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM). However, the ECPP depends on voluntary contributions from the state governments and even extends beyond the E.U. to include ten European sovereign states. The reliance on voluntary contributions, as well as the distended coverage beyond the E.U. have a weakening impact on the ability of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, to respond to raging forest fires, as were out of control in several southern states during the summer of 2026. Heat-wave after heat-wave plus decades of those states allowing deadwood to accumulate in the forests (the same error had also exacerbated the massive 1988 fire in Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks in Wyoming) provided a “perfect storm” for raging fires by July. Even the Commission’s emphasis on prevention had not been enough, given the reliance on the states, literally to have enough brush and dead trees culled prior to the hot summer. I contend that the Commission having to rely on the states (and even ten other countries!) to contribute personnel and equipment in the ECPP program, which is in line with the Commission’s typical coordinative approach, is out of step with the E.U.’s actual federal system of dual sovereignty because a mere coordinating role fits what Althusius, in his 1603 text, Political Digest, calls non-plena foedus (non-full federalism: all governmental sovereignty is at the state level).

With hundreds of thousands being “forced to evacuate their homes as flames spread across several regions” of the E.U., questions were being raised in late July, 2026 “over whether Europe’s crisis management systems [were] adapting fast enough.”[1] In two E.U. states alone, more than 120,000 hectares had burned. Even though E.U. President Von der Leyen wrote at the time, “My thoughts are with the firefighters who bravely battle the flames and with all those [people who have been] evacuated,”[2] her first administration had put the emphasis on preventing rather than fighting fires under the assumption that if the fires are prevented, then not much effort and money would be needed to combat fires once they are underway. The problem, however, was not limited to a faulty policy-orientation at the federal level. Crucially, the European Civil Protection Pool in the UCPM relied on voluntary contributions from the states, and even other countries beyond the purview of the Commission! To be sure, several states, along with Turkey, sent firefighters and equipment to the fires, but not soon enough for the fires to have been extinguished when they were small. That the massive scale of the fires could have been anticipated as a result of climate change lays even more culpability on the Commission both in regard to its emphasis on prevention and its unwillingness to propose a federal firefighting force of personnel and equipment under the direct authority of the Commission.

In the early U.S., the Articles of Confederation, in force from 1781-1789, and prior to that, the military alliance, also relied on voluntary contributions by what were sovereign countries known generically as “states” because their permanent forms of government had not yet been decide. General Washington’s complaints to the Continental Congress for want of men and supplies merely frustrated the delegates from the countries whose respective governments had sole discretion on how much to supply to the cause of independence.

From its founding in 1993, the E.U.’s states have shared governmental sovereignty with the federal governmental institutions, including the European Parliament, whose elected representatives represent E.U. citizens rather than the states, and the Commission. Even in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, qualified-majority voting on a significant number of federal enumerated powers, or competencies, represents a transfer of some sovereignty from the states to the Union. The E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, also limits state sovereignty, and thus even the authority of the highest state courts. Accordingly, the Commission’s role should go beyond coordinating voluntary contributions from states.

To be sure, it could be argued that it took the U.S. more than a century to treaty a federal income tax, and for the U.S. federal military to outgrow the preponderance of the state armies (the Guards). Even as of 2026, the federal president was obliged to return the state armies to their respective commanders-in-chiefs—the governors of the still semi-sovereign states. Regarding forest fires, it was not until 1849 that the U.S. Department of the Interior was created, and not until 1916 that the U.S. Park Service was established and began fighting forest fires, and not until 2026 that the federal Interior Department launched the U.S. Wildland Fire Service to consolidate what had been decentralized efforts.

In 2026, the predicted impact of a hotter climate on forest fires was obvious in the E.U., even though astonishingly some politicians were still peddling climate-change denial. Referring to “lots of new parliamentarians in the European Parliament” and state-level politicians who were being “being very vocal against climate science and climate action,” Teresa Ribera, the E.U. Commission Vice President, warned at the end of July, 2026 that those politicians were “lying to people” and putting lives at risk.[3] It’s like telling people that they can drink as much whiskey as they want and then drive a car, she added. Perhaps that goes a bit too far, but her point that denying natural science is stupid and even destructive is valid, given all the data and the actual fires that year. She could have added that ideology trumping knowledge is itself dangerous. Volunteering at a San Francisco film festival in California during the summer of 2026, I was stunned when two young lesbian women walking out of the film on my first shift chastised me with, “it doesn’t work that way,” because I had just remarked that the sex scene in the film was homosexual; the label fits because both women in the scene have vaginas. Obviously, the mental state of one or both of those characters does not render the physical act in the scene heterosexual, but this fact didn’t stop the young lesbians from decrying my statement as “inappropriate” from the standpoint their ideology. An elected representative saying, “I don’t believe in climate change,” is just as culpable from the standpoint of knowledge.[4]

Suffice it to say that for several reasons, the E.U. could not patiently wait out a century or more to federalize a fire-fighting capability beyond merely coordinating voluntary contributions from states and other European countries. The expedited basis with which to shift from a state-centric power standpoint to a more balanced federal system does have the advantage of being able to learn from another political union with the same (dual-sovereignty) genus of federalism and thus avoid that union’s over-consolidating federal legislation during the twentieth century. In other words, the Commission could be given more authority with which to directly send personnel and equipment to fires without fear that the E.U. would be on track toward a centralized federal state at the expense of the cultural and political interstate diversity that exists in any empire-scale federal union.

Sunday, June 28, 2026

E.U. Emergency Assistance to Venezuela: Coordinating Federalism

Whereas when the U.S. responds to natural disasters abroad, the resources of all 50 states are combined in a federal-level response, the E.U.’s Civil Protection Mechanism limits the federal level to coordination and instead relies on the states to deploy resources, including personal. I contend that the European arrangement is more in keeping with federalism than is the federal-only arrangement of the Americans. Moreover, involvement at both federal and state levels reflects and facilitates one of the benefits of federalism, wherein each level has the strength to act as a check on the other. Programs in which the federal level coordinates and the state governments deploy can help keep a federal system from lapsing into a “one-size-fits-all” consolidated rather than federal system. The U.S. could stand to take a lesson in this respect.

Severely impacted by earthquakes of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude and with more than 50,000 people still missing, Venezuela welcomed the first E.U. emergency responders on 27 June, 2026. Deploying “rescue teams and other emergency assistance to Venezuela,” the European Commission relied initially on eight states who actually did the deploying, with the Commission only coordinating for a united response.[1] In other words, the eight states “mobilized for deployment through the E.U. civil protection mechanism.”[2] Separately, the E.U. “also activated its Copernicus satellite service to ‘emergency mapping mode,’ which provides free of charge data in cases of natural and man-made disasters around the world.”[3] The E.U. thus acted on its own with regard to one program while being limited to activating and coordinating state-level deployments in another program. In other words, it was not a federal-only show.

To be sure, direct involvement of state governments abroad could potentially destabilize federal foreign policy and even undercut it, as was the case when Viktor Orbán of the E.U. state of Hungary visited Russian President Putin in Moscow as the Van Der Leyen administration was attempting to pressure Putin into pulling his troops and weapons out of Ukraine. It can be asked, therefore, whether the government officials in Caracas would feel obliged to the E.U. or to any of the state governments as a result of the emergency assistance. If the latter, then limiting the Commission to merely coordinating, rather than sending its own personnel and resources, could be risky in terms of the E.U. being able to negotiate with foreign governments in regard to federal foreign policy.

Assuming the risk is nugatory, then the benefits of the federal-level institution merely activating and then coordinating to the federal system itself could be realized without much of a drawback. The federal level in a federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is divided between the two levels (i.e., not a confederation, in which the states are fully sovereign) is in an excellent position to coordinate, including taking the decision to activate a program, and the state-level governments are well suited to deploying personnel and resources, and the benefit to those states in terms of federalism lies in taking part rather than remaining on the sidelines while federal agencies act and thus gain power that could, if aggregated over time, result in an unbalanced federal system in which power at the federal level enables it to dominate the state governments such that the latter could no longer act as a check on the power wielded at the federal level.

When the E.U. activated its two programs to help Venezuela with the Commission restrained to coordinating state-level deployments, the U.S. was about to celebrate 250 years since thirteen British colonies in North America declared themselves to be sovereign countries. Those countries did not even ratify a treaty that established a confederation of continued national sovereignties under the Articles of Confederation until 1781, and then to delegate some of their respective governmental sovereignties until eight years after the commencement of the Articles. By late June, 2026, however, when the Commission activated its two programs for the benefit of Venezuelans by relying on state-level deployments in one of the programs, the American federal system of dual sovereignty had gone severely off-track due to too much of an imbalance of power between the Union and the states. The consolidation of power by the U.S. at the expense of that of the state governments impaired the ability of the latter to act as a check on abuses of power at the federal level. It is in precisely this respect that the Commission’s coordinating role is so important, lest the E.U. follow its American cousin towards a lopsided federalism, for balance is a key feature of this system of public governance.


1. Lucy Davalou, “Europe Send Search and Rescue Personnel to Venezuela in Response to Massive Quakes,” Euronews.com, 27 June, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Friday, April 24, 2026

On Retaining the States’ Veto-Power in the European Council: Sovereignty vs. Democracy

Both the filibuster in the U.S. Senate and the veto in the European Council reflect the act that the respective states were sovereign and retain a portion of that governmental sovereignty that has not been delegated to the respective Unions. But whereas the American filibuster is compatible with a federal system based on dual-sovereignty (states and union), the European veto is not; rather, each state having a veto is at home in a confederation, which is characterized by the states retaining their sovereignty rather than having given up some in becoming a state. In April 2026 shortly after Viktor Orbán had lost his bid for re-election in the E.U. state of Hungary, the E.U.’s foreign minister argued publicly that the states’ veto in the European Council (and the Council of Ministers) runs contrary to the democratic principle of majority rule. The prerogative of retained and residual governmental sovereignty was essentially being pitted against a fundamental principle of democracy.

Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s foreign minister, castigated the requirement of unanimity in the European Council (in competencies, or enumerated powers, in which qualified majority voting does not apply) because the votes of 26 state governments can be hijacked by a single holdout. Her assumption is that majority-rule rather than the rule by one (holdout) is fundamental to democracy, whether direct or representative. Referring to the vetoes that had been exercised by the then-outgoing governor of the E.U. state of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, Kallas pointed out that the Council doing what only one state wants, “not what the 26 [others] want . . . is not really democracy.”[1] In fact, one-state rule can be thought of as autocratic rather than democratic. If so, then it follows that the remainder of sovereignty retained by the states as veto power is antithetical to democracy. Although both principles are valid in a federal system characterized by dual-sovereignty rather than all sovereignty being retained by the states, I contend that a sufficient recognition of the retained sovereignty of the states lies in the voting method by qualified majority, and furthermore, that such a method is not in conflict with democracy because even a super-majority is majority rule.

To be sure, the E.U.’s basic (constitutional, or government framework) law provides “a legal pathway to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting. However, . . . such a shift itself requires unanimous consent.”[2] Such a blatant “Catch 22” suggests that the state governments were exploiting a conflict of interest in devising and approving the pathway as if they were states in a confederation, which, unlike modern federalism, according to Kenneth Wheare’s Federal Government, involves no transfer of limited sovereignty (i.e., enumerated powers) to the federal level. That the hamstringing non-qualified-majority-vote policy and legislation at the federal level could easily have been foreseen indicates a proclivity to put the interests of their own states, and the states altogether, above federal initiatives for the good of the whole, which is more than merely the sum of the parts. In fact, the veto itself may imply that the whole is merely such a sum.

Qualified-majority voting enables sufficient unity at the level of the whole and enables the federal level to exercise its exclusive and shared competencies, or powers. Kallas said, “we need to be united and able to take decisions.”[3] So unity should not be so total that decisions cannot be taken and implemented at the federal level, which consists not only of the European Council (and the Council of Ministers), but also the Commission, Parliament, and supreme court (i.e., the ECJ), which are not so beholden to state-level interests that can differ from the interests of the whole, as represented by the Union.

The counter-argument made by Charles Michel (interestingly at the time of Kallas’s interview) in favor of keeping the veto in the Council that he had chaired from 2019 to 2024 is spurious. Firstly, he undercut his argument against the pressing need to shelve the veto mechanism by predicting that the European Council would be not be more unified on Ukraine following Orbán’s departure because other governors “share elements of his political stance, including on Ukraine.”[4] Slovakia, for instance, could easily step into Orbán’s shoes. This prediction makes Kallas’ point even more urgent!

Michel went on to claim that “the ‘European Dream’ depends on collective agreement among all 27 member states.”[5] Such would be the case were the E.U. a confederation of sovereign states, such as the Articles of Confederation were as the treaty made by the sovereign countries forming the U.S. until 1789, but the E.U.’s federal level enjoys exclusive and a shared-portion of competencies, or enumerated powers, and such sovereignty does not depend on unanimity at the state level because the states are not fully sovereign. The political-type category mistake in which a modern federal system of dual sovereignty is supposed to be a confederation was ultimately responsible for why Britain seceded from the Union; as prime minister, David Cameron mischaracterized the E.U. as but one of the “networks” of which Britain had joined. It is no wonder that a significant number of the Brits chaffed at even the limited governmental sovereignty that the E.U. itself enjoyed at the expense of full state sovereignty.

Michel’s “European dream” involves yet another problematic claim. “If you stop trying to involve every [state],” he said, “you risk weakening the EU’s weight on the international stage.”[6] This statement incorrectly assumes that any state on the losing end of a qualified-majority vote in the Council is not involved in the process, and that the E.U.’s very credibility on the world stage is not undercut when one state hinders federal action in foreign and defense affairs. Even as Russia continued to invade Ukraine for over four years, that the E.U. could not support Ukraine militarily made the Europeans look weak and unprincipled on such an obvious case of unprovoked military invasion.

Moreover, I dispute Michel’s utopian fantasy that 27 governors of states with differing interests, both economic and geopolitical, will nonetheless be unanimous enough on specific federal policy and legislative proposals for the principle of unanimity to be viable (i.e., workable enough) for the E.U. to exercise its own competencies that are subject to unanimity. Put another way, for the states to have delegated a significant amount of governmental sovereignty to the E.U. and yet selfishly, as per state-specific interests, to hold onto unanimity on many important matters being considered in the federal-level councils constitutes wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too. Such a capricious mentality does not deserve credibility on the world’s stage.

To be sure, Michel warned against governors misusing (to excess) the veto-power of their respective states in the Council, noting that the veto should only be used as it was intended to be used, “only when vital [state] interests are at stake.”[7] Given that the authority has been up to the governors themselves whether to use their power, however, an expansionist wielding of the vetoes should have been anticipated at Lisbon. Besides over-valuing even petty interests, as if they should outweigh the interests of the whole (Union), governors could easily invent such interests in solidarity with a foreign foe of the E.U. and thus undercut the Union itself on the world stage. I am referring here to Orbán’s relationship with Russia’s President Putin—Orbán even went to Moscow, undercutting President Von der Leyen’s policy against Putin’s militaristic aggression unprovoked in Ukraine.

The Von der Leyen administration was wise in looking outward to the credibility of the E.U. and its long-term functioning as a federal rather than state-centric system of governance, whereas Michel was entrenched in a status quo premised on fallacious arguments and even a category mistake. Ironically, for the need to expunge the veto-power from the federal-level councils after the departure of Orbán to still be felt as pressing, Michel’s prediction of no increase in cohesion among the governors was significant. Unfortunately, as an impetus to even needed political reform, the abstraction of a prediction pales in comparison to the actual use of vetoes, such as Orbán’s veto of the loan to Ukraine.


1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Orbán-Style Vetoes Undermind E.U. Democracy, Kaja Kallas Tells Euronews Hoping for Reset,” Euronews.com, 24 April 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Angela Skujins, “European Council Should “Think Carefully” before Removing Unanmity, Says Michel,” Euronews.com, 24 April, 2026.
5. Ibid.; italics added for emphasis.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Friday, March 6, 2026

E.U. Statehood for Sovereign Countries

Even as the E.U. struggled to come up with foreign policies on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran in March, 2026, the union must have been cogent enough then for the Icelandic government to set a date at the end of the summer to have a referendum on whether to seek statehood. The term for this is accession, not merger, for an empire-scale union such as the U.S. or E.U. contains semi-sovereign states rather than co-scale and co-equal “partners.” By implication, to liken a state in one such union to another entire union is to make a category mistake that can be thought of in historical terms as making the claim that a kingdom is equivalent to an empire (of kingdoms). Both the E.U. and U.S. are federations composed of early-modern scale kingdoms and republics.[1] This is not so in the cases of Mexico and Canada. In fact, the U.S. has an open invitation for Canada’s accession (rather than merger).[2] People who presume that it was arrogant for the U.S. founders to invite Canada to accede as a state forget that the U.S. was formed by sovereign countries that became semi-sovereign states.

As the E.U. expands, it too draws on sovereign countries to become states through the process of accession (rather than merger). The planned referendum in Iceland was not on a merger of two countries. Iceland had submitted to the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, an application for accession in 2009, but then unilaterally halted the process in 2015 even though 11 of the 33 “chapters” had been completed. As a sovereign nation, Iceland could indeed unilaterally stop the process, and when the Icelandic government announced the date for the upcoming referendum, the Commission could at most welcome the announcement. In doing so, a spokesman for the Commission said, “Iceland is a close and valued partner of the E.U. . . . Our cooperation is already strong and wide-ranging and we look forward to continuing and further strengthening our close cooperation with the Icelandic authorities.”[3] The word partner connotes distance as in the sense that Iceland is a sovereign country rather than an E.U. state. The word is problematic, however, in that it implies an equivalency. Even just in Iceland having submitted an application, a lack of equivalency is inherent to the relationship. Moreover, accession itself lacks equivalency because Iceland could become a state in the E.U., and no state is an equal partner with the union in which the state is a part, for a part and a whole cannot be equivalent.

The same held in the case of the U.S., which was formed first as a military alliance and then as a confederation of sovereign countries, and only on March 4, 1789 as a modern (i.e., dual sovereignty) federation of semi-sovereign states and semi-sovereign federal governmental institutions. In other words, the Articles of Confederation, which was ratified in 1781, was for a union of sovereign countries. Therefore, just as the U.S. was formed in 1776 (and continuing under the Articles) by sovereign countries, so too was the E.U. formed by sovereign countries. In both cases, sovereign countries, such as Iceland in 2026, because semi-sovereign states and thus parts of political unions. Accession itself is a distinctly political process.


1. See Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Trans-Atlantic Comparisons (Seattle: Amazon, 2017)
2. Because Canada has expanded West since the 18th century, Canada would most likely accede as three or four U.S. states rather than just one.
3. Gregoire Lory, “Iceland Plans August Referendum on Resuming EU Membership Negotiations,” Euronews.com, 3 March, 2026.

Monday, February 16, 2026

Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?

Is a more perfect Union in Europe in America’s national interest? On the American holiday in 2026 that principally honors George Washington, whose eight-year commitment as the military commander-in-chief to the cause of freedom for the 13 new sovereign republics that had been members of the British Empire (and would forge a comparable political Union[1]) was decisive, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the E.U. state of Hungary to deliver “a message of support from the Trump administration to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” who was behind in the polls in his re-election campaign.[2] At their press conference, Orbán and Rubio “signed an agreement on energy cooperation and hailed what they described as a ‘golden age’ of bilateral relations.”[3] E.U. officials were nowhere in sight; it was as if Hungary were still a sovereign state rather than a semi-sovereign E.U. state. An implicit question untreated by the media in the E.U. or U.S. is whether bilateral relations between the U.S. and individual E.U. states, as if the E.U. were nonexistent, was still in the U.S. national interest, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.


The full essay is at "Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?"

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Mutual Cooperation as Insufficient as E.U. Defense Policy

The words mutuality and cooperation have positive connotations politically, whereas divisive and exclusive do not. To be sure, mutual cooperation has the drawback of relegating competitiveness, which can foster greater efficiency and effectiveness. In the policy domain of defense, however, wherein nuclear weapons live, competition between weaponized polities can be dangerous and thus not worth any improvements from competing. The Cold War in the twentieth century attests to the superiority of mutuality and cooperation at the international theatre wherein polities act as sovereign militarized entities. Within a federal Union, however, relying on the mutual cooperation between states is, I contend, woefully deficient and inadequate. In fact, relying on states to assume the burden of defense can lead to the violent break up of a Union, as was dramatically demonstrated in what some Americans have called the War between the States (1861-1865), but is more accurately called the war between the U.S.A. and the C.S.A.(the Confederate States of America). Two political unions of very different balances of power between the respective federal and state levels of governance. It is precisely with this historical example in mind that the comments made by E.U. (Commission) President Von der Leyen at the Munich Security Conference in February, 2026 should be analyzed. Relying in going forward from that time on the E.U. states to build up their respective military forces, or militias in American-speak, under the assumption that those states would mutually cooperate military is a very risky strategy for the E.U. at a time in which its cousin across the Atlantic Ocean was pulling back from Europe in terms of military protection.

Von der Leyen’s notion that the E.U. could rely on its states in defense (as well as foreign policy) must contend with reservations previously made by Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary General, on Europe being able to defend itself without American cover at least in the medium term. Specifically, Rutte had opined just a month earlier, “if anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t. We need each other.”[1] Still the aggressor in Ukraine, Russia’s Putin was still a reality check on European “deams” of self-sufficiency in defense. Even so, Von der Leyen limited the E.U.’s enhanced defense-capabilities to reliance on its member-states. “I believe the time has come to bring Europe’s mutual defence clause to life,” she said. “Mutual defence is not optional . . . it is an obligation.”[2] She was referring to Article 42.7 of the E.U.’s basic law, which “states that ‘if an E.U. [state] is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other E.U. [states] have an obligation to aid and assist it by all means in their power.’”[3] This article is similar to Article 5 of the NATO international alliance. Besides ignoring the qualitatively and quantitively closer integration of states in a federal Union, copying the article of an international alliance leaves open the greater possibility—one that was foreseen by the American Founders on that Union being in part to prevent internecine wars between the states—that E.U. states could utilize their bolstered militaries to fight each other rather than just cooperate in a mutual action to push Russia out of Ukraine. In other words, Von der Leyen’s decision to rely on Article 42.7 rather than propose a federal army capable of united action beyond mutual cooperation (and to aid in the cooperation of the state militias) ignores the qualitative difference between a federal Union of states (i.e., European integration) and an international alliance. Besides the greater likely of conflicts between states in a Union, the E.U.’s foreign policy competency could lead to offensive rather than merely defensive united action, as for example could have been waged in Ukraine to push the Russian troops out in the first months of that invasion. In other words, the fact that governmental sovereignty in the E.U. is divided, albeit too unevenly, between the E.U. and the state governments means that relying on mutual cooperation between the states for military action is insufficient and even arguably contradictory. The latter treats the E.U. as it were like the U.S.’s Articles of Confederation, under which the 13 states were sovereign countries. Even without the dual-sovereignty that the E.U. federation enjoys, General Washington was (barely) able to hold together a continental army rather than rely on the mutual cooperation of the armies of the 13 American countries in that Union. How much more should the E.U. have a federal army, as per the dual-sovereignty-feature of its federal system! Lest it be countered that the E.U. states were still sovereign in 2026, the voting method of qualified-majority itself represents a transfer of sovereignty to the federal level, as a state could (and has) found itself on the losing side of those votes.

Finally, there is the danger in relying on the states to develop their own nuclear-weapons capability rather than assigning control of those weapons to the federal level institutions, including the European Council, which represents the state governments at the federal level directly. As Rutte said about European sufficiency in defense, “You’d have to build up your own nuclear capability” because “you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck!”[4] 

I would simply, add, good luck with Vickor Orbán of the E.U. state of Hungary having nuclear weapons as leverage against other states and even the ECJ and the Commission as they try to punish the Hungarian government for violating E.U. law. Moreover, good luck trying to minimize the chance that any E.U. state might use its strengthened military might to invade another state, with no federal army to push back the aggressor. Especially in the context of years of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Von der Leyen’s misjudgment in stopping at Article 42.7 is startling, especially as her speech came shortly after Mario Draghi’s speech urging more federal competencies in the E.U. to strengthen the federal system from being too dominated by its states at the expense of united action that goes beyond even mutual cooperation.


1. Alice Tidey, “Von der Leyen Rebukes NATO Chief over ‘No Security Without US,’ Calls for European Mutual Defence,” Euronews.com, December 14, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

A Reparations Loan or Common Debt: Undercut by State Rights

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Entangling Confederalism and Modern Federalism: A European Quagmire

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


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


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

Sunday, June 29, 2025

E.U. Flag Day

Both the E.U. and U.S. have their respective flag days during the month of June—on the 29th and 14th, respectively. This isn’t the only thing that the flags have in common, and what sets both off from the flags of the states. I contend that these similarities and difference regarding political symbols can function as markers for what both unions are as complex polities of polities even as ideologies seek to obfuscate and dissimilate, even dismissing or ignoring the history of both unions. In other words, flags don’t lie; people do.

The first flags of the E.U. and U.S. were both used by their predecessors, rather than being created in 1993 and 1789, respectively. These dates mark when the states gave some of their governmental sovereignty to the union-level judicial, legislative, and executive branches. The first E.U. flag had been used by the European Communities since 1986, and the first U.S. flag had been used beginning in 1777 by the alliance’s Second Continental Congress, and, moreover, under the Articles of Confederation, under which each of the 13 member countries was sovereign after having been colonies in the British Empire until 1776. Crucially, the Declaration of Independence declared the independence each of the 13 colonies, which even while colonies had been in a military alliance like modern-day NATO.

The original E.U. and U.S. flags. The sheer paralellism is astonding, especially given how differently the two unions are perceived today by the general public on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The E.U. flag contains stars representing its 12 original states and the U.S. flag contains stars representing its 13 original states because all of those states had been sovereign countries and still retained some governmental sovereignty. In fact, in 1993 and 1789, respectively, the states still held most of the governmental sovereignty, with the federal governmental institutions, or branches, being much restricted in their respective exclusive competencies and enumerated powers.

The parallelism itself is astounding, especially given the tendency in Europe to perceive the E.U. incorrectly as a “bloc” or international organization like NATO and NAFTA, and in America to perceive the U.S. like France with a large back-yard rather than an empire-scale union of semi-sovereign polities. This is precisely why the history of the two flags is so important to know, for treating the U.S. as if it would be a state in the E.U. rather than on the same level and scale as the E.U., and treating the E.U. as if it were a temporary “bloc” of sovereign countries for a single purpose like trade or defense as if a trade agreement of military alliance incur rather basic yet invisible category mistakes.

The basic, or qualitative difference between the unions and their respective states can be grasped by the fact that the E.U. flag’s twelve golden stars, “explicitly, and in contrast to” the flags of the states, represent the states and “the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony,”[1] which are especially important at the union, empire-level because empires are inherently heterogenous (i.e., interstate differences in culture, norms, and values as well as dominant ideologies) whereas the states themselves are relatively homogenous. Rather than a difference in degree, the difference is that of a leap, given that there is a leap in geographical scale between that of a state and a union of many such states. 

That the stars in the E.U. flag are in a circle better stands for unity than does the arrangement of the 13 stars in the original Star-Spangled U.S. flag, but the circle configuration was in the Betsy Ross version, which although not the official flag, was consistent with the specifications in the Flag Act of 1777. The parallelism between the stars in the Ross flag and in the E.U. flag is very strong.



The Betsy Ross Flag, a close up of part of that flag, and the E.U. flag. The close up and the E.U. flag are directly parallel, with only the color of the stars differing. The stars on both flags stand for states.

The value being placed on unity and solidarity at the federal level is more crucial than at the state level, and this is reflected in the fact that the state flags not only do not have stars representing sovereign and then semi-sovereign polities therein, but also do not symbolically highlight unity or solidarity. 

In short, unity and solidarity, which by the way are put at risk by relying too much on the principle of unanimity in having state vetos at the union level, are more valuable at the federal level in an empire-scale union of states than at the state level. Therefore, empire-scale governance contains, or should contain, dynamics that do not exist at the state, or (early-modern, rather than medieval) “kingdom” level, such as in managing diversity of state preferences at the union level.  Interstate differences are more salient in union-level governance than regional differences are in state-level governance, and early-modern federalism, as distinct from confederalism, treats the two levels as qualitiatively different as a result. To conflate them is thus one hell of a category mistake, and yet people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean do it much too often, given the reasoning potential of the human brain. Yes, ouch! Just for added fun, let's put corrective braces on the crooked teeth of "Brexit" and add some disinfectant mouth-wash to extirpate the bad odor from former British Prime Minister David Cameron's erroneous statement that the E.U. was just one of the international networks that Britain had been in. 

Before the United Kingdom seceded from the E.U., it could be said that the ideological and cultural differences throughout the empire-scale union bearing on political decisions needed to be managed in the European Council, the Council of the E.U., the European Parliament, and the European Commission dwarfed the differences between the four regions or provinces of the United Kingdom that had to be managed at the state level there. Put another way, whereas the original E.U. flag has stars representing the states, the state flag of the United Kingdom does not have stars representing its regions. Nor, for that matter, does the flag of Germany have stars representing its 15 regions. 

The governmental dynamics at the scale of former and existing E.U. states are in crucial respects qualitatively different than the unique dynamics that empire-scale unions of such states must have in order not to fall apart due to pressure from state differences seeking their own expressions yet while there is unity at the union level. This is the balance that renders federalism itself an unstable form of government, yet the best suited form to empire-scale unions of states. Contrasting union from state flags warns us not to conflate state with union-level governance, and thus states with unions of such states.


1. Andreas Rogal, “European Flag Celebrates 40 Years as Symbol for EU and Predecessor,” Euronews.com, June 29, 2025.


Saturday, March 15, 2025

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.


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

Saturday, December 7, 2024

Euro-skeptic Anti-Federalism: An Institutional Obstacle in the E.U.

On December 6, 2024, the E.U. finally—meaning more than twenty years after negotiations had begun—reached a free-trade agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The deal would cover 780 million people, but the completion of the negotiations between the E.U. president and those of the South American countries was “just a first stage before a long process”[1] that would require passage by a qualified majority vote—meaning 55% of the E.U. states and 55% of the E.U. population—in the E.U. Council and in the European Parliament and in enough state legislatures. Presumably if enough state ministers for trade in the E.U. Council vote yes, their respective state governments would go along and also be sufficient for final passage. I contend that the requirement that enough state legislatures also vote yes on the deal is excessive.

The most obvious point to be made concerning the excessiveness is that the state governments were directly represented in the E.U. Council, so for those governments then to need to approve the E.U.’s treaty is at best duplicative, and, at worse, enabling opposition yet another means of thwarting final passage. Moreover, the treaty is that of the E.U., rather than any of the state governments because the E.U.’s executive branch negotiated the trade deal. To be sure, the presence of non-trade terms in the deal, including binding commitments by the South American countries to stop illegal deforestation, explains why the Commission did not have exclusive competency, which the Commission had as of 2024 in commercial policy as when President Van der Leyen had the Commission enact tariffs on imports from China.  Even though the trade deal with four South American countries did not fall under the Commission’s exclusive competency (i.e., domain of authority), this only means that the E.U. Council and the Parliament had to approve the treaty too; non-exclusive competency does not mean that the state governments must or even should approve federal legislation (and E.U. treaties with other countries).

A subtle reason can also be cited for why the E.U. is too fettered by the excessive role of the state legislatures in being required to pass a federal trade treaty. Specifically, the ongoing Euroskeptic, or states-rights (or “nationalist”), ideology, which had been so unproductive for the E.U. precisely because of the extent of sovereignty that the states retained (i.e., had not already delegated to the federal union), relishes the duplication of the state governments’ power in passing federal trade treaties as indicating that the E.U. had remained merely an alliance of sovereign countries. Before Britain seceded from the Union, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to the E.U. as just one of the networks to which Britain happened to belong. With such a jarringly unreal notion of what the E.U. was politically, it was best that that state seceded. The state of France had not been wrong in halting Britain’s accession in the early 1970s.

In short, a bottom-heavy federal system awash in an anti-federalist ideology can really be paralyzing at the federal level. At the very least, having an excessive number of institutional hurdles for a bill (or trade treaty) to become law undermines the legislative process. Moreover, even dissolution is more likely to occur when the state governments wield a lot of power over federal legislation.  

This may seem trivial or even silly, but words matter because language can feed (and starve) an ideology. Let’s unpack the following passage from Euronews on the proposed trade deal: “Negotiators from the Latin American bloc were assembled . . . with the EU trade negotiation team to iron out the deal, that will cover 780 million people between both zones. But the deal will need a sign off (sic) from EU 27 member states.”[2] That European and American journalism often referred to the E.U. as a “bloc,” even though an informal grouping of sovereign countries does not have a constitutional (i.e., basic law) court, an executive branch, and a bi-cameral legislature whereas the European Union contains the governmental European Court of Justice, the E.U. Commission, the E.U. Council (like the U.S. Senate, representing the states), and a (lower) Parliament, implies that in using the word “bloc” to describe four South American countries as the Mercosur group, and we might think too of the BRICS countries, those trade groups are of the same genre as a federal union. That both the E.U. and U.S. cases of “modern federalism” include dual sovereignty, wherein two governments have domains in which they are sovereign for a given territory, nullifies the appellation of “bloc” or “zone” to either union, even if anti-federalists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been in denial concerning this point.

At an academic talk at Harvard’s Center for European Studies in which the dean of Boston University’s School of Global Studies said that the E.U. does indeed have a federal system, a Harvard graduate student dismissed this point and, in “asking” a question, insisted that the E.U. is only an alliance of countries. I then asked the dean to confirm her judgment that the E.U. is not an alliance, which she did. Yet I doubt whether the Harvard graduate student had enough intellectual humility to let this point sink in. In fact, at another talk at the Center, another graduate student, who had been present at the visiting dean’s talk, insisted that economically, a Swiss (county-sized) canton could be compared to “a red or a blue state,” including Texas and California. That speaker, from MIT, had said that in looking at the economic inequality between rural regions and a metropolitan city, E.U. states should be compared with U.S. states rather than with the U.S. overall (as there is no focal city of the U.S.). That the European graduate student ignored this and implied that Switzerland is a United States of Europe (and thus as equivalent to the E.U. even though the latter treats Switzerland akin to a state in trade matters and free movement sans borders) stunned me. I had been thinking of applying to be a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, but the stubborn, jejune disrespectful attitude of the two graduate students, as well as their abject ignorance and yet presumption concerning federalism theory, convinced me to cancel my application, for I was already too old for the grief (and passive aggression). Also, I was not about to buy an airline ticket to the E.U. only to be dismissed as a stupid American for claiming that the E.U. has a federal system of government and is thus not a “bloc” or “zone” equivalent to four countries in South America that have a trading relationship.

Given the excessive ability of state governments in the E.U. to styme federal legislation and treaties, misconceiving the E.U. as a “bloc” or “zone” can cement the anti-federalist systemic bias and thus render the E.U. itself as too paralyzed even with respect to federal policy, regulations, law, and treaties that are at the level of the E.U. and thus proper to it, with the state governments having direct federal access through not only the E.U. Council (of Ministers), but also the European Council, which sets the overall political priorities for the Union. Officials of the state governments sit on both councils, and may even have excessive influence over the political parties (not groups!) in the European Parliament. That one of those parties, the European People’s Party, has nonetheless been labeled as a “group” rather than a party from a state-level perspective is yet another instance of how federal law-making must brace against a head-wind of federal illegitimacy.

Lastly, it bears remembering that thirty years from the U.S. having instituted a federal system characterized chiefly by dual sovereignty in 1789 (before which the U.S. was an alliance, or confederation, unlike the E.U.!), the American state governments had too much sovereignty for the good of that union, given the multiple “Brexits” in 1861. To be sure, Lincoln was better off than General Washington had been in fighting a war, for Lincoln’s Union had dual-sovereignty whereas Washington had a confederation (i.e., the state governments were sovereign until 1789).  Connecting the dots for my European friends (and those Americans who are awake concerning the E.U. even existing), the E.U. in 2024 was of the same federal genre or type as the U.S. had been since 1789 but not since 1776! Now this should get several Harvard graduate students from Europe scratching their heads.


1. Peggy Corlin, “Von der Leyen Clinches E.U.-Mercosur Trade Deal, in Face of French Opposition,” Euronews.com, December 6, 2024.
2. Ibid, italics added.

Saturday, June 1, 2024

The E.U.: Pulled in Two Directions

European integration has proceeded in fits and starts since Robert Shuman proposed the European Coal and Steel Cooperative in 1950 so Europe could keep an eye on Germany’s military in the wake of World War II. Euroatom and the European Economic Community came in 1957, and the EC, which consisted of the three organizations, existed until 1993. Since then, the European Union too has progressed step-wise, with some steps backwards, such as when Britain seceded from the Union. Whereas the U.S. made the leap from a supranational alliance, the Articles of Confederation, to a federal government all at once in 1789, the way of the E.U. in terms of dual sovereignty and adding states has been incremental. Perhaps throughout its 31 year history, as of its federal election in 2024, the E.U. was being pulled in two directions. Some forces have led the E.U. to gain competencies over time, whereas other forces could be described as “states’ rights,” anti-federalist, or Euroskeptic tendencies. If dominant, those forces would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the federal union, whereas the former forces would lead to its consolidation. After thirty years, the U.S. too was more subject to the centripetal forces than those for ever closer union. From the subsequent history of the U.S., it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether the E.U. too will lean so close too to political (and economic) consolidation too by the time that union is over 200 years old. Like Europeans today, the Americans of the 1820s would never have dreamed that the federal level would be so dominate over the states, which were still regarded as countries.  

That more sovereignty to go to the E.U. on defense was being debated in the weeks before the E.U. election in 2024, with the E.U.’s People’s Party, a proponent of the E.U. defense being expanded to include air defense, being projected to win in the European Parliament, and Russia’s Putin still invading Ukraine and making threats against Europe, even the governments of the largest E.U. states were supporting the additional transfer of governmental sovereignty to the federal government in order to protect the E.U. from its eastern menace. It is significant that whereas the U.S. began as a military alliance of thirteen sovereign countries, the E.U.’s antecedents were economic in nature (even though the E.U.’s pillars extended beyond the economic domain). Even so, it could have been predicted in 1993 that the E.U. would eventually handle both defense and interstate commerce, as those are typically handled at the empire-level in empire-scale unions. This was so in the British Empire, for example, and the U.S. federal government inherited the imperial-level powers of the British king.

It is important to resist the easy conclusion that the E.U. was poised in 2024 to take a step towards ever closer union, for the E.U. was also subject to forces to the contrary. According to the Euronews Super Polls, one thing looked certain a week before the E.U. election: “after the 6-9 June elections, the European Parliament will have a clear right-wing majority.”[1] That majority would be keener on having the state governments get back some of the governmental functions (i.e., governmental sovereignty) that had been delegated to the federal government incrementally since 1993.

It is important to take account of the role of international forces on the two contending political forces in the E.U. that bear on its degree of integration. I have already alluded to Putin’s Russia as prompting concern by E.U. citizens for more federal competencies in defense (e.g., an air defense). The American government’s support of Israel as it continued to ignore and violate the “cease and desist” rulings of the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice, was undoubtedly causing Europeans to question a global order in which the U.S. would continue to be relied on as the global “police.” European values in favor of international law would not be protected by relying on the Americans. The possibility of the former U.S. president, Don Trump, returning to office meant that an American administration could actually enable and even strengthen the positions of Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel was not lost on E.U. citizens as they prepared to vote in early June, 2024. The E.U. not only being able to defend itself militarily but also have military sway in the global order could naturally result from these forces from abroad.

Going in the other direction, away from increasing E.U. competencies, or enumerated powers in Ameri-speak, the failure of the E.U. to handle the mass immigration from Africa was feeding into the increasing popularity of the “right-wing” European parties in the Parliament. How could the E.U. handle more exclusive competencies if it could not handle its existing functions? More to the point, stubborn anti-federalist, or “nationalist,” resistance to doing away with the veto in the European Council ironically fed the E.U.’s functional difficulties with its extant competencies. Just as the veto in the U.S.’s Articles of Confederation stymied the American Continental Army against the British Empire, so too the refusal of E.U. state governments to agree that more E.U. competencies must be decided by qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity has resulted in a less-than-functional federal government. In the wake of Israel’s refusal to abide by the verdicts of the International Court of Justice (even though the UN founded Israel!) for an immediate cessation of the invasion of Gaza, that the E.U. had to rely on state governments on whether to recognize Palestine is a real testament to the inutility of the veto at the federal level (e.g. in the Council of Ministers, as well as the European Council).[2] In words used for American basketball, the federal recognition of Palestine should have been “a slam dunk.” That it was not signals that something is very wrong with the E.U.’s federal system, and in particular with how decisions are taken at its federal level.

So, heading into their federal election in June, 2024, E.U. citizens were subject to conflicting forces, and thus to opposing political movements, some for and others against ever closer union. My point is that contending forces and questions of federal-level functionality have existed throughout the post-World War II period of European integration. Fits and starts, rather than all at once.  Even in the U.S., the shift from a system in which the state governments held most of the sovereignty to one in which the federal institutions do has been gradual. The difference is perhaps that Europeans do it piecemeal formally in terms of basic law, whereas the progression has been more by case law in the U.S. Essentially, this means that Europeans have had to decide on what Americans call constitutional amendments more often—amendments (i.e., changes to basic law) that are more significant for the federal system as a whole than the American amendments (after the Bill of Rights) have been. This is why the impact of contemporary international forces is so relevant to the E.U. as a still-changing federal system of dual sovereignty (i.e., not confederal, as in the Articles and the EC).

1. Sergio Cantone, “Super Poll Q&A: Is EU-Wide Conservative Coalition Losing Momentum?” Euronews.com, June 6, 2024.
2. Skip Worden, “Euroskeptic Federalism Obstructing the E.U.’s Recognition of Palestine,” The Worden Report: International Relations, May 27, 2024.

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