Prospects for Civil War in an E.U. State: The Case of Slovakia

As the E.U. was heading toward legislative elections in 2024, the shooting of Slovenia’s prime minister could have served as a wake-up call concerning the silent benefits of having a union that is political, and thus governmental, rather than merely an economic “bloc.” Were civil war likely in Slovakia, given the aggressive political division there, being a semi-sovereign state rather than a fully independent country meant that explicit and implicit buffers existed that could stave off such war. Considering that an assassination had been the trigger for World War I, having a federal system that could quell aggression within a state is no small benefit.

In 2004, Slovakia became an E.U. state, which means that some of its governmental sovereignty went to a federal level. Slovakia’s velvet reputation for having split peacefully from the Czech Republic in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 may have masked the ensuing stark political reality under Prime Minister Vladimir Merciar, when Slovakia “found itself at a crossroads, stuck between becoming an autocratic regime with close ties to organized crime or a state based on the rule of law.”[1] In 1995, the country’s secret service kidnapped the president’s son. In 2004, Robert Fico’s political career as a “social democrat fighting corruption and unbridled neoliberalism” was just beginning.[2] Yet after becoming prime minister for the first time in 2006, he was accused “of graft and involvement in the Penta Gorilla affair, Slovakia’s biggest post-communist corruption scandal.”[3] In his second stint as prime minister, he and his government “mainly focused on influencing the judiciary, . . . stopping corruption trials and silencing independent media.”[4] He spoke against the E.U. and Ukraine in the midst of the Russian invasion. With all of the press that Viktor Orban of Hungary was receiving for taking the same positions, it was easy to miss Fico’s stances in the E.U.

Together, Fico and Orban can be viewed as a minority stance in E.U. foreign policy in favor of Russia. With such policy requiring unanimity at the federal level, this minority had the potential of hamstringing any foreign policy at the federal level regarding Russia’s aggression. E.U. states would be free to work at cross purposes, and the power of a united front would be missed. This is an argument for applying qualified majority voting to E.U. foreign policy. Such a stance is more evident than another benefit that the E.U. provides to the states—a benefit highlighted by Slovakia.

The shooting of Fico in May, 2024 stemmed from a climate of hateful political polarization in the state. In the wake of the shooting, some fear of a resulting civil war was voiced in the media. Even though the European Steel and Coal Cooperative had been formed to stave off war between states (most notably involving Germany), the less obvious benefit of the E.U. in being able to step in to stave off war within a state has received little attention. The potential benefit for Europe as a whole resonates with the suggestion made by France’s Macron that the defense capability of the E.U. itself be strengthened. For it to be any good, its deployment would have to be decided by qualified majority vote rather than unanimity. Otherwise, Hungary could use its veto to enable Fico’s party to put away its opposition militarily.

A related benefit of the E.U. with respect to Slovakia does not depend on any additional governmental sovereignty being shifted to the federal level. The fact that some sovereignty had already been delegated to the E.U. by its states means that the likelihood of a civil war in a state is buffered, and thus reduced, simply by being in a federal union that has a legislature, executive branch, and a supreme court. Any one of these governmental branches could take action against Slovakia were civil war to break out. Financial levers alone could do the trick, but so too could informal conversations in the European Council, in which the states themselves, through their respective governors, are the members. As nervous as the E.U. officials are about a war just outside the E.U. is, the prospect of war within the E.U. would surely be galvanizing.

Furthermore, within Slovenia, simply viewing itself as a state rather than a sovereign country could work against forces that would otherwise provoke a civil war. In other words, being a state in a political and economic union is itself a moderating force with respect to political polarization getting out of control. In the early U.S., Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania were doubtless on the minds of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in making sure that the U.S. president would be able to call the armies of the then-sovereign states into action to put down rebellions in the future semi-sovereign states. So, there is precedent for the E.U. calling on state militias to quell any rebellions in any of its semi-sovereign states, and even for bolstering a federal military force. As E.U. citizens and residents headed to the polls in 2024, it would be a shame were they to take the E.U. for granted. Going even further, it would be a shame were they to miss an opportunity to voice support for an ever more perfect, and thus strengthened rather than hamstrung, union.

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1, Keno Verseck, “Robert Fico Shooting Highlights Slovakia’s Deep Polarization,” Deutsche Welle, May 17, 2024.
2, Ibid.
3, Ibid.
4, Ibid.

Exfoliating a Hero: On Lincoln's Unconstitutional Overreaching

Lest we get carried away and inadvertantly enshrine our leaders with mythic laurals, it is worthwhile to peel back our societal "remembering" of past figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, who have become larger than life.

Lincoln was a moderate, promising merely not to spread slavery. In his address after being sworn in, he promised not to go after slavery where it existed. Accordingly, radical abolitionists complained. Even so, the 1860 campaign had been viewed, at least in the south, as a referendum on the southern way of life. Lincoln received only 40% of the vote; he was not even on the ballot in ten states.  There were just 33 states in the union at the time. Lincoln's victory suffered from a deficit of legitimacy in some quarters. In fact,he was burned in effigy at a state capitol in the south. With free Kansas becoming a state, the slave states felt that their respective abilities to defend their way of life in the general councils of the union would become even more truncated or dilute. Berift of a sense of influence on general matters that concerned themselves, the confederating republics felt they had no alternative other than secession.

On Feb 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis became President of the Confederate States of America. At his swearing in, Dixie, which had been composed by a northerner, was played. The two sides in the continental dispute were closer than they perhaps realized. Both Lincoln and Davis, for example, were from Kentucky originally.  According to the Confederate constitution, Davis had a line item veto and would have had a six year term had the confederacy lasted that long. Astonishingly, international slave trading was outlawed. Even so, there were fundamental differences involved in the dispute. Ironically, had the southern states freed the slaves before firing on Fort Sumpter--depriving Lincoln of his motivational tactic midway through the way--perhaps something resembling the southern way of life in a loose confederacy would have prevailed. The United States would have been left to consolidate to its heart's content.

On the way to his inauguration, Lincoln declared that he would rather be assassinated than to see even one star removed from the flag. Such a stance reflects the "all or none" mentality that accompanies political consolidation. In spite of Lincoln's line in the sand, the War between the Confederated States and the United States began at 4:30am on April 12, 1861.  Technically, it was a war between a federated alliance and a federal government. The opening act was bloodless, even as the war to come was the bloodiest in American history. Siloh alone matched the casualties at Waterloo, and there would be 27 more to come. 51,000 men lost their lives in the three days at Gettysburg alone. The contest between the old and new federal forms exacted a heavy toll in human loss and suffering. Who would have thought that contending distinctions in political theory could be so bloody. Of course, might does not in itself make right, although the passion of the unjustly oppressed can bring about victories disproportionate to the relative lack in number. Furthermore, in this particular case, the respective populations in the federations and the industrialization of several of the union's states gave the forces of modern federalism an advantage not necessarily sourced in the nature of the type.

At the time, the union states had a combined population of 21 million while the confederacy had only 9 million, 4 million of which were slaves and thus not in the fight. In spite of the fact that so many southerners volunteered to enlist that a third of them had to be sent back home, the confederacy was perhaps destined to lose the bellum given the tremendous disadvantage in terms of population. That the conflict lasted until 1865 may point to the extent of resentment that had been allowed to build up throughout the slave states against what was viewed there as an “intrusive” federal government. For example, the devisive tarriff that had nearly caused South Carolina to secede in 1832 was reimposed by the U.S. Government in 1858. As in 1832, the tax was to finance northern industrialization. The states producing cotton and/or rice were left not being able to defend their interests in Washington. Accordingly, that distant government was viewed as encroaching and increasingly foreign. The root of the festering dispute went far beyond the issue of slavery.

To the confederate citizens, the cause involved the rights of their republics as well as their property rights. Slaves, being viewed as property by their "masters"--a decadent conception of slavery unknown to ancient understandings--were thus in play as part of the wider and deeper southern concern with self-determination, which the southerners identified with their respective countries and associated ways of life. Even Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863 (almost two years into the war), applied only to slaves in the states that had already left the union (rather than to the five slave states that had remained).

The confederate states were not subject to U.S. law as long as they were part of the confederacy rather than the union. Lincoln's proclamation was thus extra-constitutional, and thus without immediate effect other than to motivate an increasingly weary northern citizenry and armed forces. To be sure, Sherman freed slaves as he blazed a trail to the sea. However, even without the proclamation, he would have deprived the confederates of their "property" along with their other means until they surrendered. Slavery was not outlawed in the United States until 1865, when the thirteenth amendment was ratified by the states (the former confederate states excluded even though they had been re-afixed to the union).  There was some duplicity involved in, "Welcome back to the union! But unfortunately your vote doesn't count yet because you don't agree."

Fundamentally, the "north" and "south" interpreted the United States differently. This is what the war was really about, and the issue went all the way back to the contentious debates in the constitutional convention in 1787. The delegates had hotly debated whether the proposed General Government would consolidate power via "general welfare" spending and the potentially unlimited taxation, irrespective of the question of slavery. The people who wanted to secede viewed the U.S. as more like a confederation than a modern federal government. That is, confederates viewed their states as countries and the U.S. more as an alliance having only strictly defined enumerated powers that a national government. Robert E. Lee, for example, was offered command of the union army. He refused and went with Virginia. He could not draw his sword, he said, against his native country. Virginia had to come first; there was never any question about that. Such a view of Virginia and the other republics was to fade even as they still retained residual sovereignty at least into the twenty-first century.

In general, the southerners feared that the federal government would usurp more and more power from their countries; as things turned out, the fear was not without foundation. Even then, Lincoln declared war against the confederated states even though the U.S. constitution clearly stipulates that Congress is the governmental body in the U.S. Government that declares war.  As the president is the commander in chief, there is a conflict of interest in that office also declaring war. So technically speaking, the war was not constitutional, and thus legal.  Lincoln also suspended habeus corpus, though the constitution allows for this in time of rebellion.  To keep the Maryland from seceding, he locked up thirteen of the state's legislators without trial. 

Chief Justice Taney, who had four years earlier concurred with the Dred Scott decision, said that Lincoln had gone too far beyond the constitution in the powers he was exercising. Taney was on firm ground on the declaration of war. Even so, astonishingly, the president simply ignored the chief justice. From the standpoint of an independent judiciary with teeth, Lincoln was laying a precedent very dangerous to the republic.

Because the judiciary has no means of enforcing its decisions by force, the branch depends on the other branches, and, indeed, the people, resisting the temptation to contravene a judicial decision. The basis of the resisted temptation rests on the court's legitimacy, for the judiciary has no troops of its own. In fact, Bickel refers to the court as the “least dangerous branch” for this reason. Lincoln’s precedent in simply ignoring the court put at risk the system of checks and balances that resides in the separation of powers in the federal government. Fortunately for us, Lincoln’s treatment of the Chief Justice's effort to hold the executive branch within its proper constitutional sphere, as though Taney were a mere bystander, has largely been forgotten.  Yet the expediency of an imperial presidency has indeed been on display since Lincoln as Congress has gradually lost power to the commander in chief. The danger is real, and Lincoln's precedent could yet be used by an ambitious commander in chief who has his or her eye on another country to invade. 

Ironically, Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions at the beginning of the war ironically to save the union could be viewed as confirming the charges made by the confederates against the encroaching nature of the federal government.  Lest we miss the lesson as we remember the bloody war 150 years later in 2011-2015 from the standpoint of the victors, we might take note of the susceptibility of power itself to consolidate, ultimately in one person—indeed, even in a hero. The consolidating proclivity is as much a danger in the modern American empire today as it was in ancient Rome.  

Source: Ken Burns’ The Civil War (PBS)

Legislation of the U.S. Government during the Civil War: A Case of Unconstitutional Governance?

Lest history be forgotten, it may come around again to bite us when we least expect it.

During the war between the Confederate States and the United States of America, The Legal Tender Act required debtors to accept “greenbacks,” the U.S. Government’s paper currency. The National Bank Act barred state banks from issuing notes, giving the U.S. Government a monopoly on paper currency. Finally, The Internal Revenue Act imposed a federal income tax and other levies. Henry Brands asks, however, whether “greenbacks” fall under the U.S. Constitution’s wording that the federal government can “coin” money. If money was in coin specie when the constitution was written, the meaning could be widened to include new means without necessarily extending the power of that government beyond what was intended.

Brands also asks, “Did the proscription against state bank notes follow from the [interstate] commerce clause, from the elastic clause, or from Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase’s imagination?” The fact that state banks had been issuing notes even as the U.S. Government was minting silver and gold coins points to, or illustrates, the dual sovereignty element in the American federal system. Ironically, for nearly the first hundred years of the United States (as alliance, confederation and finally a modern federal system), the states had more currency power than do the state governments that use the euro in the E.U. 

In terms of the interstate commerce justification of barring state banks from issuing notes, that justification does not reach such notes being used within a state’s borders. In terms of interstate commerce, mandating a common currency can be covered by the clause. As per the example of the E.U., it is possible to have both a common currency and currencies particular to certain states. In fact, it is possible, as per the European case, to have the particular currencies displace the common currency in the state of the particular currency. However, if, for example, the euro cannot be used in Britain, this restriction of the common currency in a state would detract from the common market (i.e., out-of-states would be discriminated against).  So while the U.S. commerce clause could be interpreted as allowing for state currencies, any such currencies could not be mutually exclusive with the common currency.

As for the income tax, Brands avers that it “seemed a patent violation of the constitutional ban on ‘direct’ taxes not proportioned to population.”  Indeed, a constitutional amendment was deemed necessary for the purpose in the twentieth century. The unlimited potential of the U.S. Government to raise revenue by taxation was not missed on some of the delegates at the constitutional convention in 1787. They worried that that government would crowd out the governments of the states, which would also depend on revenue. These fears were not without foundation. By the twenty-first century, state governments were under popular pressure not to increase taxes in large part because of the taxes already being taken by the federal government.

In general terms, these federal laws enacted during the Civil War can be interpreted as evincing various degrees of encroachment of the U.S. Government. It was such expansion of power that had been in mind when the confederated states seceded from the United States. Even though Lincoln’s 1860 platform affirmed protecting slavery where it existed at the time, southerners feared that the reach of the federal government would continue unabated. The result, they feared, would be the eventual loss of their self-determination and way of life.  This concern transcended the issue of slavery. Accordingly, the states would have perhaps been wiser to free the slaves then fire on Fort Sumpter—the underlying issue would have been made more transparent thusly. Even in the twenty-first century, the trajectory of the U.S. Government in going beyond its enumerated powers is an issue even if other issues tend to get first play.

Source: Henry W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900 (New York: Doubleday, 2010), p. 13.

The E.U. as Peace-Maker: Bringing in Serbia and Kosovo

Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement on April 19, 2013 bearing on how much autonomy Kosovo would allow Serb cities in return Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s remaining authority in the cities.[1] Kosovo had seceded from Serbia in 2008, and the ensuing conflict kept both states from joining the European Union. As it turned out, the prospect of accession gave both Serbia and Kosovo enough incentive to reach an agreement. Indeed, only a few days after the agreement had been reached, the governments of Serbia and Kosovo approved it. Such swiftness indicates how strong of an incentive accession can be for belligerent republics in Europe. The E.U.’s deployment of this “carrot” is fully in line with the main objective of the European Union: to prevent war in Europe. According to the New York Times, the accord is thus “an important victory” for the E.U.[2] An even further victory in line with the E.U.'s most important purposes would be to internalize both Serbia and Kosovo so any future interstate conflicts could be peacibly resolved. 

In the wake of World War II, the European Coal and Steel Cooperative was formed in order to keep an eye on Germany’s use of iron, should the Germans seek to re-militarize. The EEC was also formed to obviate war in Europe, and the E.U. inherited this central aim. Accordingly, it is fitting and proper that, as Kosovo’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Petrit Selimi put it, “The incentive of joining the E.U. played a huge role in clinching an agreement.”[3] The E.U. thus played a role in forging greater peace in Europe. In fact, the negotiations took place in Brussels, according to Catherine Ashton, the E.U.’s secretary of state. “It is very important,” she told reporters, “that now what we are seeing is a step away from the past and, for both [Kosovo and Serbia], a step closer to Europe.”[4] Days after the agreement was signed, the European Commission recommended to the European Council  that talks start on Serbia’s accession. Belgrade had “taken very significant steps and sustainable improvement in relations with Kosovo,” the Commission announced. The Commission also noted that as Kosovo had met all its “short-term priorities,” talks toward a Stabilization and Association Agreement, a precursor to Kosovo gaining statehood, should commence.
Bringing both Serbia and Kosovo into the Union would represent a more permanent means of forestalling war in Europe. As this depends too on how much power the E.U. has in reconciling conflicts between the states, giving the federal government sufficient competencies in this regard would also represent a step toward sustained peace in Europe. While the prospect of accession has been shown to be enough of an incentive for a meaningful agreement to be reached, better still is the incorporation of trouble spots into the European Union, where more pressure can be brought to bear on any bellicose states such that any nascent conflicts between them can be peaceably resolved. Indeed, the E.U.’s competency, or enumerated power, to remove state obstacles to a common market is in part geared to forestalling potential conflict between discriminating states. This is also a reason behind the interstate commerce clause in the American system.
Lest a fixation on any of the contemporary crises hitting the E.U. inculcates a pessimism that is destructive to the Union and thus ruinous to its more basic purposes, it should be helpful to keep an eye raised to one of those fundamental aims of the project. Given the two major wars in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century, it is wise to keep perspective regarding the role of the E.U., both directly and indirectly, in obviating war.

1. Dan Bilefsky, “Serbia and Kosovo Reach Agreement on Power-Sharing,” The New York Times, April 20, 2013.
2. Ibid.
3. Vanessa Mock and Gordon Fairclough, “Serbia Ready for EU Accession Talks,” The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2013.
4. Ibid.