President Von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address: Outsourcing the E.U.'s Strength

E.U. President Von der Leyen’s 2026 State of the Union address can be characterized as a bricolage of concerns “all over the map,” with proposed significant outsourcing of responsibilities to the international level. A notable opportunity cost that goes along with her approach is the political benefit that could have been gained by alternatively focusing on internal reforms to the E.U.’s governance structure and processes. Outsourcing internationally adds to this cost of a missed opportunity to sell internal reforms by making the E.U.’s federal level look weak. Even referring to the E.U. as a “bloc” and proposing an “associate membership” for Canada saps rather than strengthens the European Union.

Rather than proposing that qualified-majority voting apply to foreign policy and defense, President Von der Leyen “proposed a brand-new mechanism fashioned on NATO’s Article 4 that member states would trigger in the event of a hybrid attack.”[1] She thus ignored the E.U. itself, addressing instead the relationship between the E.U. states and the international alliance. By implication, the E.U. itself is weakened rather than strengthened. This is ironic, for she also said, “And in the cold fragility of today’s world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans.”[2] Voiding the veto power of the state governments in the European Council and the Council of Ministers on defense would go towards providing such true sovereignty at the federal level; outsourcing to NATO would not.

Similarly, the president “offered to create a tailor-made status of ‘associate membership’ to bring Canada even closer to the bloc.”[3] Such a “status” would undermine the equality between Canada and the E.U. that is implied and thus proper for “an ‘alliance for the future’ to deepen EU-Canada cooperation in such areas of economic security, intelligent manufacturing, cutting-age technology, defence, energy, critical minerals and batteries, as well as the Arctic region.”[4] Canada’s tension with the U.S. on tariffs and the E.U.’s interest in retaining Greenland provide the subtext behind the proposed deepening of “EU-Canada cooperation,” but the president overreached in suggesting that cooperation itself should or does entail any sort of membership, and as if the E.U. were a bloc rather than a political union of states, and the word “membership” does not apply to states. In short, cooperating with another country is not to say that it is or should be a member or state, and in fact being a part even with an associate status is inconsistent with the equality that is implied in “E.U.-Canada cooperation.” Ironically, rather than the E.U. coming up on top as having Canada as a possible associate member, the E.U. is weakened because in having members the union is self-relegated as if it were merely an international bloc of countries like BRICS.

Thirdly, even though President Von der Leyen “framed the summer of 2026 as the ‘summer of truth’” in terms of “wildfires, retreating glaciers, water shortages, crop losses and extreme heat that have wrecked havoc” in the E.U., with the continent warming twice as much as the globe as a whole, her response was to be a European Heatwave Plan, which would “address early-warning systems, health preparedness, urban adaptation, and protection for vulnerable groups.”[5] Federal legislation bearing on the states could have been proposed that goes far beyond mere preparedness. Again, she was unwittingly enervating the Union by putting the states out in front, in the driver’s seat as it were.

With the military threat from a belligerent Russian president to the east, climate change from above, and a distancing U.S. administration to the west, and the prospect of the accession of additional states at home, the E.U. could no longer afford the veto mechanism that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán had so abused with impunity at the cost of the common good of the E.U., but the State of the Union speech did not include the rather obvious reform to qualified-majority voting on all competencies. Furthermore, no substantial federal legislation was proposed in defense (even of Ukraine), foreign policy, and to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions throughout the E.U. Such a reform, which gives the E.U. some more governmental sovereignty even at the expense of that of the state governments, could put the E.U. in a strengthened position internationally such that the Union could pressure the U.S. administration to ease up on Canada in terms of tariffs. A strengthened E.U. could arguably be better for Canada than getting an associate membership status in a Union misconstrued (and thus internally weakened) as an international organization.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro and Marta Pacheco, “State of the Union: Five Takeaways from Ursula von der Leyen’s Speech,” Euronews.com, 16 September, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

U.S. Defense Contractors under Pressure

In a republic, which is characterized by representative rather than direct democracy and includes checks on even the elected representatives, private interests, such as corporations that manufacture weapons purchased by the government, undue the very legitimacy and public good of a republic when the elected (and appointed) public officials capitulate to those interests because those interests are of a part rather than the whole. The profit calculus of a defense contractor is not necessarily in line with the national interests of the country in which the corporation operates. Furthermore, acquiescing to the relatively narrow private benefit of corporations places an elected official in the position of possibly betraying one’s constituents and even the national security—the public good—of the whole, the country. It is in the political (and even financial) interests of such officials to hide or obscure their motives in voting on a defense budget by using “real threats abroad” as a subterfuge to increase defense spending going to contractors in payment for more weapons. The threats may be real or not. How would an electorate possibly know without access to classified information? Adam Smith wrote of his concern that governments and capitalists would collude to shortchange labor. The collusion can also be at the expense of an electorate and even a republic itself. In response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question on what sort of government the U.S. Constitutional Convention had just proposed, Ben Franklin is said to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The People may be at a considerable disadvantage without realizing it if distant collusion is financially and politically sufficiently concentrated and furtive under subterfuges of public-policy ideals.

During the summer of 2026, when the U.S. was attacking Iran militarily and supplying Israel with weapons, the stockpiles of the U.S. War Department’s munitions were being diminished to the point that the Pentagon began to pressure defense contractors “to accelerate production of weapons.”[1] Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell issued a statement on August 8, 2026 directed to the companies to urge them to adopt a “pace the threat demands.” Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg had recently written to the CEOs “giving them no more than 21 days to submit plans to ‘drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capacities.’”[2] Although it makes no sense to drive schedules or to characterize them as aggressive, the corporate-speak and military-mindset melded into the same sentence symbolize a fusion that U.S. President Eisenhauer, the general who had led the Allied D-Day invasion in World War II, had characterized as the U.S. military-industrial complex. Even though Feinberg wrote to the CEOs, “Years-long development cycles are not acceptable. . . . We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now,” it is more likely in the larger picture that the proverbial tails were waging the dog, meaning that the private companies generally called the shots, with the Congress and President complying.

With U.S. budget caps constraining defense spending by the federal government “from about $528.2 billion in fiscal 2011 to $496.1 billion in fiscal 2015, instead of a previously projected increase to roughly $598 billion,” for example, “the Pentagon’s top contractors sent an army of more than 400 lobbyists to Capitol Hill [in the spring of 2015] to press their case for increasing the nation’s spending on military hardware, in a massive effort costing tens of millions of dollars of [the defense contractors’] own funds from April to June alone, according to an analysis of public lobbying data by the Center for Public Integrity.”[3] Even though causation cannot be derived from positive correlation, private companies would not spend so much money—Lockheed Martin Corporation alone spent $3.5 million and sent 56 lobbyists to Congress on defense spending—were a payoff in terms of more federal spending for contracts not desired and even expected.[4] In December 2015, Congress approved $573 billion for defense ($496.1 billion for the previous fiscal year). As any farmer might say, such an increase is not chicken feed; neither, I might add, did it occur by accident, for the private corporations receiving defense contracts did not take kindly to the budget caps.

Similarly, in 2026, ramping up production of Patriot interceptors, for example, which had fallen from 2,330 before the attacks on Iran in 2026 to 1,030 when the cease-fire that April took effect, to between 759 and 827, a decrease of at least 65%, and of THAAD interceptors, which had fallen from 452 to between 232 and 262, was very much in the financial interests of the corporations making those interceptors. It was as if the Pentagon were saying to children playing outside on a hot summer day, you need to hurry up and finish your ice-cream cones so you can have more. Such an order is hardly an order. Just imagine adults furtively acquiescing to how much ice cream the children want ostensibly by pressuring them to quicken the pace of eating when actually the children have been paying the adults to spend more on ice cream.

Beyond the political and foreign-policy interests (and ideology) of the Trump Administration in supporting Israel both directly in its militancy in Gaza and Lebanon and indirectly by attacking Iran, the financial interests of the companies that sell military hardware to the Pentagon should not be glossed over, for without such interests, it is difficult to say how militaristic the U.S. Government would be abroad, even given the financial power of AIPAC. To be sure, Ukraine, a country still being invaded by Russia without provocation, was at the time very much in need of anti-missile interceptors. Within 24 hours of Feinstein’s statement, “13 people were killed and some 90 others were wounded [from] Russian attacks” on Ukrainian cities as the Kremlin intensified its bombardment.[5] It bears remembering, however, that the existence of normatively justified uses of American weapons abroad is a boon to defense contractors. Like the financial “lobbying” by AIPAC, which is difficult to justify in terms of legitimate uses of American military power abroad, justified uses of American weapons such as in Ukraine—a country being invaded rather than invading—do not mean that those companies do not have a disproportionate influence on how much money the U.S. Government spends on defense. In fact, contractor spending on political campaigns can leverage legitimate uses to pressure member of Congress and even the federal president to contract even for weapon production for more questionable uses.

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1. AP News, “Pentagon Pushes Defense Companies to Boost Weapons Production after Concerns of Depleted Stocks,” APnews.com, August 8, 2026
2. Ibid.
3. Alexander Cohen, “Top Defense Contractors Spend Millions to Get Billions,” The Center for Public Integrity, August 5, 2015 (accessed August 9, 2026).
4. Ibid.
5. Malek Fouda, “13 Killed in Ukraine and 90 Injured as Russia Intensifies Overnight Bombardment Campaign of Ukrainian Cities,” Euronews.com, 9 August, 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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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

Strength in Numbers: The European Union in Foreign Policy

One of the chief benefits of having an empire-scale union of states is the sway, or influence, abroad that comes with strength of numbers. Dwarfing the foreign-policy of a state government, and even of an informal bloc of a few states plus others outside the union, an empire-scale united-policy enacted to influence other countries can make the delegation of the additional governmental sovereignty to the federal level worth losing some state power abroad. I contend that this lesson can be gained by examining the European-Russian relation during the month of May in 2025.

On May 14, 2025, the E.U. “agreed to impose a new round of sanctions against Russia, threatening to slap on another one if the country continues to refuse the 30-day unconditional ceasefire proposed by the White House and the ‘Coalition of the Willing’.”[1] The White House refers to the U.S., another empire-scale union of states, but the “coalition” is a more nebulous construction; it consisted of three E.U. states plus Britain, which had seceded from the E.U. and was thus separate. One of those states, Germany, threatened Russia with immediate sanctions only to see Putin continue his military invasion of Ukraine. When a person’s “line in the sand” is so easily and quickly crossed, that person should re-evaluate one’s own vantage-point for what it is. Even a small bloc of states plus a former state is not sufficient to stop a Russian bear in its tracks. It is no accident, therefore, that the E.U. lost little time in announcing its own sanctions against Russia. The lesson is that the state leaders should have put the E.U. commission in the driver’s seat in the first place, rather than demonstrate the need for collective action that the E.U. could provide.

Macron of the E.U. state of France said on May 12, 2025 that an “unconditional ceasefire is not preceded by negotiations” but he could do little to back up that statement, given that Putin had just dismissed an immediate unconditional ceasefire without paying any price.[2] That an informal coalition, or bloc, had “previously demanded a full ceasefire a precondition to starting negotiations” meant nothing to Putin.[3] Continuing to make military progress on the ground in Ukraine, he had no incentive to respond to the bloc, but to the extent that Russia could suffer from sanctions from the E.U., Putin would have more reason to take an ultimatum seriously.

That the governors of three E.U. states chose to exercise their retained power in foreign policy rather than go through the Commission points to a vulnerability of the European Union from foreign policy being a shared competency while the state governments hold most of the governmental sovereignty in the union. It is very tempting to a state leader to grab media attention by taking the lead in a foreign policy that the E.U. could do with more power internationally.

There is also the conflict of interest in a bottom-heavy federal system wherein state leaders resist delegating enough authority to the federal level so it can function effectively, especially with regard to international relations. The E.U. had a foreign minister at the time, and a federal president, and yet three state leaders decided to spearhead a push for Russia to agree to an immediate ceasefire anyway. Their approach was doomed from the start because Russia could easily dismiss the threats from a few states even though the U.S. was on board on an immediate ceasefire.

So, it is problematic that once the E.U. effectively took over from the bloc of a few states, the need for the state level institutions to take a lesson and be willing to give the E.U. more authority to make and enforce foreign policy, as by applying qualified-majority voting to such policy, was not grasped in the public media and discourse. Lest there be any doubt concerning the power of a small bloc of (large) E.U. states, Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media: “Macron, Metz, Starmer and Tusk were supposed to discuss peace in Kyiv. Instead, they are blurting out threats against Russia . . . You think that’s smart, eh? Shove these peace plans up your pangender arses.”[4] Ouch!  I submit that the E.U. announcing additional sanctions would not be taken as the blurting out of threats was taken, in part because of the much greater power of the E.U. vis á vis Russia. Macron, Metz, and Tusk looked like the three musketeers, with Starmer as a former fourth, relative to the E.U.’s institutions.

Unfortunately, the state level of governance had held back those institutions from being able to leverage the “power in numbers” in foreign policy that could otherwise be realized by the Commission with oversight by the Parliament and the European Court of Justice, and with a check by the involvement of the states at the federal level. Too much of a check by the latter, including taking the lead and ignoring the shared competency of the Commission, was detracting not only from a more perfect union, but one that could have enough sway internationally to operate as a real check on Russia as well as Israel.

Put another way, as the Trump administration was warming up to Russia and Israel, the world could ill-afford to have the Europeans resorting to informal blocs of a few E.U. states due to institutional clutching of power at the state level and a lack of leadership there for the good of the whole (E.U.) over state politicians’ self-interest for power and stardom. The breakdown of the international order, with the UN being politically impotent to stop Russia or Israel in their excessive aggression, means that Europeans could ill-afford continuing to allow their state officials to styme action at the E.U. level on the world stage.

Euroskeptics have feared the advent of a huge “federal state” without realizing that hamstringing E.U. institutions on competencies that are shared with the states only hurts the European Union itself. In other words, compromising a federal system because it is wrongly assumed that for such a system to exist (and thus that the E.U.’s system has not been federal from the start), there must be a massive state at the top, leaves Europe vulnerable to a real massive state—that of Russia.

This is not to say that Europe must also have a massive state; ironically, that the E.U. has a federal system enables there not to be a massive state covering the E.U.’s territory, for dual-sovereignty can and should be balanced such that neither the federal nor the state level dominates the whole federal system. In his book, Federal Government, Ken Wheare denies that such a balance is necessary to an ongoing and stable federal system of checks and balances. I disagree. Under his theory, the federal level of the E.U. could gain so much authority that the state governments are utterly dominated and still the federal system would work. I disagree. Whereas the U.S. federalism could be better balanced by having the states empowered to act as a check on the federal institutions, E.U. federalism could be better balanced by having the federal level gain additional competencies, with the states benefitting from the resulting collective action while still having enough sovereignty to check the federal institutions. Whereas the U.S. could benefit by increasing the formal involvement of the state governments in foreign policy in Washington, the E.U. could benefit by increasing the formal involvement of the E.U.’s president and foreign minister in crafting and enforcing foreign policy to defend Europe from aggressive powers abroad, whether they are empires in themselves or sovereign states.

It is telling that a year before Macron returned to his state capital of Paris empty-handed (just as Merz headed back to Berlin empty-handed) after Putin had dismissed the state-level demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Macron had given a major speech on the need for Europe to defend itself. “In the next decade,” he had said, “the risk is immense that [Europe] will be weakened, even relegated.”[5] The clear conclusion for us in contrasting those two events is that the state governments should formally allow the E.U. to take the lead in foreign policy rather than have state leaders attempt to “steal the thunder” by charging out in front as if by instinct with the federal officials tasked with foreign policy only able to look on. Yes, Virginia, the E.U. does indeed have a federal system, but this does not mean that transferring more governmental sovereignty on foreign policy (and defense) to the federal level would necessarily turn Europe into a federal state as Euroskeptics fear; the sort of federal consolidation that has occurred over centuries in the U.S. can be avoided even as Europeans lend greater balance to the E.U.’s federal system.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU Agrees New Sanctions on Russia and Threatens More If Putin Refuses Ceasefire,” Euronews.com, 14 May 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Shaun Walker, “Vladimir Putin Rejects Ceasefire Ultimatum Proposed by European Leaders,” The Guardian, May 10, 2025.
5. Clea Caulcutt, “Macron Warns Europe ‘Can Die’ in Alarmist Speech on Protectionism, Geopolitical Threats,” Politico.com, April 25, 2024.

Rearm Europe: What’s in a Name?

The children’s adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” ignores the fact that words can cause psychological pain, which in turn can trigger physical fights that break bones. My point is that words do matter—whether applied to people or social, political, and economic entities. An appellation can promote or disparage, and even frame a political debate. When deciding what to call something involves a category mistake, the violation of logic is typically to passively insist on a particular ideological view such that it will gain currency in a society or at a global level without people being aware of the ploy (i.e., that they are being manipulated). An ideology never sits still in a human mind; the innate tendency is expansionary. As in the belief in Hinduism that attachment to both good and bad karma must be stopped before a person can be liberated (moksa) from the cycle of reincarnation (samsara), both good and bad ideologies held by a person involve the urge to proselytize, even by stealth. The E.U. itself has been especially subject to this phenomenon, and the harm to the union itself is seldom if ever discussed. Words are definitely used as subterranean weapons in open view in the context of ideological warfare.

On March 21, 2025, the E.U.’s Commission—the federal executive branch—“confirmed it would phase out the term ‘Rearm Europe” to describe its multi-billion initiative to rearm Europe after backlash from the leaders of [the E.U. state governments] of Italy and Spain” on account of the name being “excessively charged and risks alienating citizens.”[1] That the federal executive branch of the U.S. would hardly heed such an objection from two large member-states is just one indication of the shift toward consolidation in that federal union since it was thirty-two years-old. It should not be inferred that either the U.S. in 1821 or the E.U. in 2025 could be characterized as a “bloc,” which refers to “a temporary combination of parties in a legislative assembly” or “a combination of persons, groups, or nations forming a unit with a common interest or purpose.”[2] Neither the E.U. nor the U.S. is a combination, as both have federal legislative, executive, and judicial governmental institutions, and neither union is for a common interest or purpose, as federal legislation in both unions involve more than one policy area. The EEC and the Articles of Confederation could qualify as economic and military blocs, as both were single-purpose and sovereignty was retained by the countries.

And yet, the media company, Euronews, which is oriented to the E.U.-level rather than being focused on the state level and the intergovernmental relations there, incessantly refers to the E.U. as a bloc. For instance, in reporting the new name of “the plan to ramp up defence capabilities and production across the bloc will be known as ‘Readiness 2030,’” Euronews uses the word bloc even in referring to a program that the Commission rather than a state was spearheading.[3] I contend that the word-choice enervates the E.U. itself.

When David Cameron was the prime minister of the E.U. state of United Kingdom, he referred to the E.U. as one of the networks that Britain happened to be in. When the people of that state voted to secede from the union, taking back the governmental sovereignty that had been delegated to the federal level in the E.U.’s basic law was a significant reason. So based on one of the rationales for seceding from the union, Cameron’s use of “network” to name the E.U. is erroneous. In fact, he was making a category mistake because a federal union wherein governmental sovereignty is divided is not a network of sovereign states.

Nor does the fact that federal law in the E.U. includes directives to be implemented by state governments, and the Commission’s proposal to relax the debt-limit on the states is oriented to the states being able to spend up to €650 billion mean that the E.U. is thereby a bloc. Initially the U.S. heavily relied on state armies, and even after about 250 years, the states have armies even though the federal president could call on them for temporary use. Moreover, residual sovereignty still applies both in the U.S. and the European Union. Regardless of how much power is on the state and federal levels, dual sovereignty itself distinguishes modern federalism from confederalism.[4]

To be sure, the relative amounts of governmental sovereignty held respectively at the state level and at federal level in a federal system wherein sovereignty has been divided according to the federation’s basic (i.e., fundamental) framework do matter. In the case of the E.U. in 2025, and of the U.S. before the twentieth century, dissolution is a risk that goes with the state governments having a lot more authority and power than does the union itself at its federal level. This risk became very real in 1861 in the U.S., when some of the member-states tried to exit the union. When Britain seceded from the E.U. to take back the sovereignty being exercised at the federal level, the risk that other states might follow was essentially the risk of dissolution. Given this risk facing the E.U. as it watched Russian military aggression in Eastern Europe just beyond the E.U.’s eastern border, coordinated military effort by the E.U. could not afford the enervating connotations that go with referring to the modern federal system as just a bloc. It is no accident that Euro-skeptic political ideologues want a weakened E.U, and this is precisely the point of intentionally mislabeling the E.U. as a bloc.

Such erroneous naming can be used as anti-federalist, and anti-E.U. fodder by Euro-skeptic state officials desiring to take back more sovereignty from Brussels even though the E.U. was even by 2025 too “bottom-heavy.” Because the E.U. Parliament has elected representatives of E.U. citizens rather than officials from the state governments, the alleged democracy deficit has not represented as much risk of dissolution as has the erroneous notion that the E.U. is a mere network or bloc, from which state governments can easily leave as if the E.U. were NATO or a trade agreement. Euronews implies as much in the using the following parallelism in referring to Russia’s “necessary capabilities to launch an attack against an EU or NATO member state.”[5] A federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is split between the state-level and the federal level is qualitatively different than a military alliance. Treating the E.U. as if it were an international organization like the UN or a military alliance like NATO, ignoring the fact that the E.U. law and ECJ decisions are binding on the state governments and that the E.U. has three federal branches—executive, legislative, and judicial which together do constitute a government—keeps the E.U. from being able politically to redress the “bottom-heavy” imbalance of sovereignty, so the deliberate mislabeling by association increases the risk of dissolution. For it is easier for an E.U. state government to leave the UN or NATO than to secede from a federal union wherein governmental sovereignty is split up between two governmental systems—federal and state—or, it is easy to accuse the Commission of not being succeed at its competencies when the mislabeling keeps the executive branch from getting the authority needed and to accuse the European Council and Council of the E.U. of paralysis because the states won’t replace the principle of unanimity with qualified majority voting on important matters because the E.U. is just a bloc.

The false parallelism between the E.U. on the one hand and NATO and the UN on the other, as if the E.U. were an international alliance or organization (of sovereign countries), plus labeling the E.U. as an informal bloc oriented to only one policy-domain makes it more difficult for the governmental institutions at the federal level to justify getting enough authority to be able to competently exercise the competencies that they have, and this includes reducing the application of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., for those two federal institutions, made up of state officials, hold the Commission and the Parliament back as those state officials exploit both personal (i.e., their power) and institutional (i.e., state power) conflicts of interest at the expense of the benefits that could otherwise be had from achieving adequacy in the collective efforts of the union. With Russia invading Ukraine, tying one hand behind one’s back is not the best strategy for the E.U. as it seeks not only to help Ukraine, but also protect the union itself from any future aggression from the east. It may be hard to see how a name can be a subtle but heady head-wind for the E.U., but the union has indeed been incurring the costs, even the opportunity costs of the foregone benefits of collective action.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025.
2. The Merriam-Webster dictionary.
3. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025, italics added.
4. Kenneth Wheare, Federal Government.
5. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025.

The E.U. and U.S. on Defense and Foreign Policy: Helping Ukraine

In March, 2025 after the U.S. had direct talks with Russia on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. stepped up its game in helping Ukraine militarily. This was also in the context of a trade war between the E.U. and U.S., which did not make transatlantic relations any better. The E.U.’s increasing emphasis on military aid to Ukraine and the related publicity inadvertently showcased how federalism could be applied to defense and foreign policy differently that it has in the U.S., wherein the member states are excluded, since the Articles of Confederation, when the member states were sovereign within the U.S. confederation. Although both manifestations of early-modern federalism have their respective benefits and risks, I contend that the E.U.’s application of federalism to the two governmental domains of power is more in the spirit of (dual-sovereignty) federalism, even though serious vulnerabilities can be identified.

Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s foreign minister, “pitched an ambitious plan to mobilize up to to €40 billion in fresh military support for Ukraine, which, if achieved, would represent a twofold increase from the defence assistance the European Union provided” in 2024.[1] Whether premised on the assumption that Russia would not agree to a truce or that Ukraine would need additional leverage in negotiations, “the Kallas initiative” put the E.U.’s defense and foreign policy in the spotlight globally. Lest it be assumed by assuming an exact likeness to the U.S. federal system that the E.U.’s defense and foreign policy areas were exclusive competencies (i.e., domains of enumerated power) at the federal level, the E.U.’s state governments, including their respective foreign ministers, played a significant role in the actual provision to Ukraine of artillery ammunition, missiles, drones, and even fighter jets. This arrangement, which includes overall federal coordination and significant funding, resembles the directive, which is a federal law that requires the state governments enact legislation to implement the content of the federal law. That Kallas, the federal foreign minister, took “into account” non-lethal provisions, including “training and equipment for Ukrainian brigades, . . . to ensure the participation of neutral” state governments shows just how much of a role the E.U. states had at the time in defense and foreign policy.[2]

Marco Rubio, Kallas’ counterpart in the U.S., would not have even consulted with state governments in coming up with an initiative regarding Ukraine. That approach, wherein foreign policy and defense are completely federalized, does not reflect modern (i.e., dual-sovereignty) federalism, whereas the shared competencies of the E.U. do. This is not to say that every enumerated power or federal competency should be shared. In fact, that the principle of unanimity applied to foreign policy and defense in the E.U. represents a serious vulnerability. Essentially, the requirement that every state government consent treats modern (dual-sovereignty) federalism as if it were confederalism, where the states hold all governmental sovereignty. Similarly, David Cameron, a prime minister of the ex-E.U. state of Britain, confused the two in stating that the E.U. is just another international network.” Given this category mistake, the E.U. was better off after Britain seceded from the union. Even the linguistic subterfuge of “Brexit,” as well as Kallas’ strange job title as “high representative” rather than foreign minister, attests to the vulnerability inherent in obfuscating (early) modern federalism with confederalism.

In short, involving the state governments in foreign policy and defense federal policy and legislation applies federalism more so than does consolidating those two domains at the federal level, and yet giving each state government a veto not only renders the federal system vulnerable to being exploited and paralyzed from within, but also treats a federal system in which two systems of government each have some amount of sovereignty like a confederation in which the states retain sovereignty.

The U.S. could improve how it manifests federalism by having the heads of the state governments represent them in the U.S. Senate, just as the heads of the state governments in the E.U. sit in the European Council. Additionally, the U.S. member states could play more of a role in the implementation of foreign policies and defense, such as in receiving money from the Pentagon to send machinery from the states’ respective militaries (called militias) to countries that are to be supported militarily. The federal level could then act as a check on corruption in the implementation. To be sure, giving the state governments veto-power would carry the check-and-balance feature of federalism too far. So both the E.U. and U.S. could stand to improve their respective federal systems towards ever perfect union—neither one being a trading “bloc” or confederation.

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

On the United Technologies-Raytheon Merger: The Macro Level of Analysis

In analyzing a merger, incorporating the macro context is vital. For very large mergers, for instance, public policy concerns inevitably surface even if they are typically ignored not only in merger analyses, but also by in societal and even governmental public discourse. Analysis at this level takes a societal standpoint, including on the relationship of business and government. This does not diminish the salience of firm-level analysis, for even how the respective organizational cultures would mesh is very important to a functional merged company. This is even true regarding the respective business-ethics climates, for it is not a given that a healthy organizational culture dominates an unethical one.

In June, 2019, United Technologies “doubled down on the aerospace market with an all-stock deal to merge with defense contractor Raytheon Co., after UTC executives early chose to exit from the escalator and air-conditioning businesses.”[1] The anticipated combined company, “valued at more than $100 billion after planned spinoffs, would be the world’s second-largest aerospace-and-defense company by sales behind Boeing.”[2] The annual revenue for 2019 would be $74 billion. UTC’s CEO at the time estimated a billion dollars in cost-savings. Additionally, spending on research could be increased.

On the macro scale, the merger would intensify the consolidation in the aerospace and defense industry. Better terms from supplies and the Pentagon had been putting pressure on contractors “to cut costs and invest more of their own money in new technologies, such as space systems and cyber security.”[3] Consolidation has a major drawback, however, in that competition and thus trade can be stifled. Society, through its government, rather than consolidated industries must resolve anti-trust problems, and this is difficult when those industries have significant power over legislative bodies and regulatory agencies. Hence, for example, anti-trust law had not been applied to the five largest American banks even after their complicity in the financial crisis of 2008. In fact, the bankers were able to use government funds to pay themselves bonuses!  So the question can legitimately be raised whether anti-trust law even can be enforced when the consolidated company or industry is not in favor.

If very large consolidated companies can rebuff regulatory attempts to constrain or limit those companies, then even very unethical managements can enjoy perches of power that are worrisome from a societal standpoint. In the late 1990’s, for example, Hughes Aircraft merged with Raytheon Missile Systems. In 2002, dioxane, a carcinogenic chemical that Hughes Aircraft/Raytheon had been using as a solvent, was discovered in the ground water under South Tucson, Arizona. Previously, Hughes had used cancer-causing trichloroethylene since 1981, and several local residents had won settlements on that chemical from Hughes.[4] Perhaps Raytheon’s management fail to use adequate oversight over Hughes, especially given that company’s track record, or was the purchasing company tacitly involved. Something to ponder for a company on the cusp of growing substantially through another merger in 2019, for an environmentally callous group to be so big would indeed be a big deal.

At the company level, a board of directors subservient to management or even a sordid corporate culture, such as that of Enron, can be enough to thwart efforts to clean up from unethical conduct. Wells Fargo, for instance, faced an entrenched corporate culture in “efforts” to stop charging customers for unordered products. Plutocracy, or the rule of wealth, at a governmental level means that such companies can not only continue acting unethically but also extract monopoly or oligarchic rents. In the case of the defense industry, the increasing power of the major contractors can even result in pressure on lawmakers to go to war when diplomacy would have been a better route. Indeed, a government’s spending can become loop-sided in favor of defense because the major contractors are powerful enough to demand it because it is good business. Hence U.S. President Lyndon Johnson kept the Vietnam conflict going in large part because he was getting kick-backs from certain contractors. In short, from being able to evade anti-trust enforcement to being able to pressure or pay off presidents in favor of military engagements, consolidated defense contractors can be said to have too much power. 

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[1] Cara Lombardo and Doug Cameron, “Merger to Create Aerospace Giant,” The New York Times, June 10, 2019.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Tony Davis, “South-side Tucsonans Mobilize for Another Water-Pollution Struggle,” Arizona Daily Star, April 16, 2017.

Federalizing State Warheads in the E.U.: The Problem of Excessive State Power in a Federal System

Only months after Donald Trump became the federal president in the U.S., an idea, “once unthinkable,” was “gaining attention in European policy circles: a European Union nuclear weapons program.”[1] The arsenal in the state of France would be “repurposed”—which is to say, federalized in American terms—to protect the European Union rather than merely one of its states. The command of the weapons, as well as the funding plan and defense doctrine, would be federal. Even though the question of whether the E.U. could continue to count of American protection—there being dozens of American nuclear weapons in the E.U.—was at the time most tantalizing, I submit that the matter of federalism in the case of the E.U. is salient too.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

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[1] Max Fisher, “Fearing U.S. Withdrawal, Europe Considers Its Own Nuclear Deterrent,” The New York Times, March 6, 2017.