The E.U. on Ukraine: On the Human, All Too Human

On August 17, 2025, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U., as a precursor to both of them meeting with Don Trump, president of the U.S. on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Von der Leyen had decided to accompany Zelensky to Washington in part to potentially play interference should the U.S. president again publicly berate Zelensky to his face and in part to protect Zelensky should Trump’s position/pressure be too pro-Russia (i.e., pro-Putin). To virtually all Europeans and to many Americans, Trump’s verbal outburst at Zelensky in the Oval Office had been shocking, especially as it seemed to be pre-meditated and orchestrated. Taking emotional advantage of the head of a state being invaded by the empire-scale Russia can assuredly be reckoned as being a bad host, and even low class for the president of the empire-scale United States. International relations do indeed contain a very human element, and in fact leaving it out of an analysis of an international situation is nothing short of negligent.

The full essay is at "The E.U. on Ukraine."

President Obama's Proposal to Rescue States: Unattended Problems in American Federalism and Human Sustenance

In 2011, President Obama proposed "to ride to the rescue of states" that had borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to continue to pay unemployment benefits during the economic downturn. His plan was to "give the states a two-year breather before automatic tax increases would hit employers, and before states would have to start paying interest on the loans." Many of the states had begun the recession with "too little money in their unemployment trust funds'" Those states "quickly ran through what little they had as unemployment rose and remained stubbornly high month after month. With their own trust funds depleted, 30 states borrowed $42 billion from the federal government to continue paying unemployment benefits." These states were facing an estimated $1.3 billion in interest payments to Washington due in the fall of 2011. The President’s proposal also included raising the minimum taxable wage base from $7,000 to $15,000 in 2014. "The rate of the federal portion of the unemployment taxes would then be lowered, so the proposal would not raise federal taxes on states that do not owe the federal government money. But it would speed the rate at which states that do owe money repay the federal government, and allow states to collect more unemployment taxes to rebuild their trust funds if they do not lower their tax rates." By February, 2011, eighteen states had already raised their minimum taxable wage base to $15,000 or more, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Iris Lav, an adviser at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the unemployment system was “a constellation of problems" that needed to be solved." She added that the near-term problem was the economy, and "both the interest payments and the principal repayments are [were] cutting into employers, and it [made] great sense to postpone them." The larger question was how to "get states to solvency.”[1]

Analysis of the proposal:

The proposal itself makes sense from the standpoint of getting thirty states out of a tight fix at the time. The debate on whether taxes should go up in 2011 or 2014 was less important than attention to the larger structural fault-lines, which are only hinted at in the President's proposal to ease up on States in debt at the time due to their participation in the unemployment compensation system. To be sure, it is important to note that having extended the length of unemployment-compensation's term to cover the length of the recession following the financial crisis of 2008 required either higher taxes or more debt. Both Reagan's and (George W) Bush's tax cuts had not paid for themselves, so a tax cut, especially during the severe recession, would not have covered the bill. What is good for people and companies facing high tax bills is not necessarily in the public good, and thus good public policy. Even so, I want to stress the larger structural fault-lines that are implicit in the President's proposal, for subterranean tensions rarely reach the surface of a society's consciousness. 

First, under the proposal, the "rescue" was to be limited to the states' respective debt from paying unemployment compensation; neither the Federal Reserve nor the U.S. Government would have been able to come to the rescue of the states concerning their entire deficits and debt. In fact, due to the "crowding out" tax effect, the more that the U.S. Government takes in, the less the state governments can politically raise taxes to cover their respective deficits and debts. Moreover, implicit in the notion of coming to the rescue of is the dependence or lower position of the rescued. In a viable federal system, neither the federal government nor state governments is subservient to the other, for otherwise both could not serve in the systematic role as a check on power. 
Perhaps the "cooperation," or intermixing, of the two government systems (that of the states and that of the federation) in the unemployment system is problematic because it gives the U.S. Government a way to dominate the states. According to Jacobs and Karst, “It is the preservation of the balance between the central authority and the constituent states that is the essence of federalism.” Yet, “[i]n the American federal structure the central authority is stronger."[2] Rescuing thirty states attests to the overweening power of the federal head, and thus the imbalance that is so problematic in the long term to a federal system of checks and balances.[3] 
Ken Wheare claimed in his text, Federal Government, that maintaining at least one autonomous domain for the states is sufficient for a viable federal system of dual-sovereignty. I disagree; a state with one power and otherwise "surrounded" by a federal government with many is not de facto semi-sovereign even if so de jure. In his text, Wheare's statement is utterly inconsistent with his other contention that the two systems of government in a federal system must be able to act as a check on each other. Balance is simply not possible if the state governments have only one or even a few areas of sovereignty whereas the federal government has many and can even pre-empt states from legislating in an area in which the federal legislature has no intent to play an active role legislatively!
To the extent that President Obama's proposal was debated in terms of rescuing the thirty states and whether to raise taxes in 2011 or 2014, the discourse failed the opportunity to include the broader questions pertaining to what is necessary to preserve the American federal system; the superficial debate meant blindly sitting by once again while the political consolidation of a diverse continent proceeded full throttle ahead to a "one size fits all" federation.  The building pressure from the unaccommodated natural diversities would go on, likely to explode one day. 

Second, the fitness of the unemployment-compensation system itself, being limited to helping the unemployed for discreet periods often shorter than a recession, is not touched on in the proposal. For instance, the X-weeks limit of compensation as the program's default could have been addressed, as it treats "convenient" things like food, rent and utilities as though they were optional commodities that could be skipped after the Xth week on unemployment-compensation. In short, the matter of necessities being conditional warranted debate because of the underlying assumption that the very survival of a human being is (or should be) conditional. Doubtless it is in Hobbes' state of nature, but even he accepts a right of self-preservation even under a Leviathan. In other words, the natural urge to preserve oneself is not conditional, so a conditional government program covering basics is not natural or in sync with human beings.  
Relying exclusively on business to bring an economy to full employment is problematic in that that goal has rarely been achieved anywhere without government to pick up the slack. From the standpoint of survival as a human right, laissez-faire economics is thus insufficient. To be sure, the recognition of survival as a human right, as is the case in the E.U., requires higher taxes than are necessary in simply treating survival as a conditional matter. This broader debate and thus the broader fault-line are typically ignored as Americans debate incremental or temporary changes in legislative or executive proposals bearing on public policy.

1. Michael Cooper and Sheryl Stolberg, "Obama Plans to Rescue States with Debt Burdens," The New York Times, February 8, 2011.
2. Jacobs, Francis G. and Kenneth L. Karst, “The 'Federal' Legal Order: The U.S.A. And Europe Compared A Juridical Perspective,” in Integration Through Law: Europe and the American Federal Experience, Mauro Cappelletti, Monica Seccombe, and Joseph Weiler, eds., Vol. 1, Methods, Tools and Institutions. Bk. 1, “A Political, Legal and Economic Overview” (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 169-244, p. 171.
3. Skip Worden, Essays on Two Federal Systems: Comparing the E.U. and U.S., and American and European Federalism: A Critique of Rick Perry's "Fed Up!" 

Homeless “Campers” Starting Wildfires: Outside the Social Contract

Nederland, Colorado. A town in Boulder County that had embraced marijuana dispensaries for profit, found itself just outside a wildfire that burned 600 acres in July, 2016. Two homeless men were charged with fourth-degree arson for failing to put out their camp fire. The townsfolk reacted in anger, pointing to the increasing number of homeless people in the nearby national forest. Officials had been forced to deal with “more emergency calls, drug overdoses, illegal fires and trash piles deep in the woods.”[1] Some residents urged the U.S. Forest Service to crack down on the homeless by imposing tighter rules on camping, or banning it altogether in certain parts of the woods most popular with the homeless. An analysis drawing on the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English philosopher can be employed to reveal a broader perspective on the problem.

In his masterpiece, Leviathan, Hobbes theorizes that people in the state of nature once made a social contract wherein they ceded their political freedom to a sovereign, who could forestall civil strife and war. Self-preservation is the dominate motive here. In agreeing to give up some freedom to a system of laws and police, agreeing to be bound by them, people believe themselves more likely to survive.

Social-contract theory more generally is not limited to the political dimension. In living in society, people agree to give up some of their economic self-sufficiency that comes from living off the land. Economic interdependence comes from specialization of labor, trade, and even the use of money. In an economy, people are interrelating parts rather than being wholly self-sufficient. As recessions and the loss of particular industries demonstrate, being a part in an economy is not necessarily best for a person’s self-preservation.

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that people for whom the socio-economy—a system of interdependence—does not make self-preservation more assured would head to a forest to live off the land. The homeless in the national forest near Nederland can hardly be blamed for doing what is necessary to survive. Hobbes maintained that people have the right (of self-preservation) to fight off execution even though the punishment is issued by a sovereign who rightly holds all political (and theological) power.

To be sure, a state of nature in a forest located next to a modern society may be inherently problematic. That one homeless man camping long-term in the national forest outside of Nederland asked a forest official when the trash would be picked up points to the problems entailed—problems that would not exist were we all in the state of nature. If modern society can no longer tolerate people living in the state of nature, then places must be found for the extricated humans within the socio-political economy consistent with their self-preservation.

In the E.U., the operative principle is solidarity. Social policy is the typical means by which governments implement the principle wherein self-preservation is taken to be a human right that a society is obligated to protect. In the U.S., the principle is scant—eclipsed perhaps by that of economic liberty within interdependence. Hence, the safety net within American society has gaps. It is only natural for people falling through them—for whatever reason—to seek self-preservation outside of society. It is also natural for people accustomed to the safety in society to fear the human landscape outside of society, where liberties given up in society are taken back up. These liberties are feared by the people in society as they have given them up in exchange for safety. Therefore, we can see, using Hobbes’ theory, that it is in the interest of the residents of Nederland to petition the government of Colorado to accommodate the forest people back in society rather than continue to fight their nearby presence by pushing them further away from society.

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1. Jack Healy, “As Homeless Find Refuge in Forests, ‘Anger is Palpable’ in Nearby Towns,” The New York Times, August 21, 2016.