Friday, October 11, 2024

Turkey Abusing Asylum-Seekers: Implications for E.U. Statehood

Over 90% of Turkey is not located in Europe, and yet for years the sovereign state has sought accession in the E.U. in spite of Turkey’s non-European culture. That the E.U. did not act in a timely way on Turkey’s application can be taken as a de facto “no.” Reports of abuse of political-asylum seekers in E.U.-funded centers in Turkey may suggest that the country’s government has interpreted the delay as a “no,” or that the country is unintentionally thwarting its own chances on becoming a state in the union. The E.U. was hardly blameless, as the Commission casted off any responsibility for enabling the abuse by funding the centers where it was occurring.

In 2024, “Lighthouse Reports found systematic mistreatment across the removal centres managed by the Turkish government and backed by 213 million in E.U. funds.”[1] The investigation reported, The E.U. “is aware that it is funding this abusive system, with its own staff raising alarm about it internally—yet senior officials choose to turn a blind eye.”[2] Even though the E.U. had provided almost €10 billion to support the operation of the centres, the European Commission replied, “It is the responsibility of the Turkish authorities to thoroughly investigate allegations of wrongdoing and we urge them to do so.”[3] Absent was any recognition that funding the centres renders the E.U. responsible for the ongoing abuse too. Pointing to someone else to take responsibility for “unsanitary and overcrowded conditions in the facilities, instances of abuse and torture against migrants, and a patter of coercion to force detainees to sign documents of ‘voluntary’ returns to their war-torn nations” is too convenient to be ethically sound.[4]

The Commission’s claim that “all E.U. money provided for managing removal centres and voluntary returns in Turkey was ‘in full respect of E.U. and international standards” implies that the E.U. had a responsibility to see that the standards were being met.[5] “The E.U. executive [branch], however, insisted the ultimate responsibility to probe and crack down on violations of fundamental rights was up to the Turkish authorities.”[6] In short, the E.U. was trying to have it both ways. That Turkey had “its own set of legislation when it comes to recognition of refugees and migration management” does not mean that “the enforcement and protection of these formal rights remain the responsibility” of Turkey, even though a Commission spokesperson said that the responsibility follows from the legislation.[7]

That the E.U. was funding refugee centres outside of the E.U. suggests that the E.U. had done an insufficient job in handling asylum-seekers within the borders of the E.U.; essentially, the union was outsourcing its responsibility to protect its borders. That some E.U. states had recently violated the Shengen Agreement by setting up land-border check-points, to which residents in other states would be subject, also implies that federal action was insufficient. The insufficiency thus caused a weakening of the union’s rule of law, as state governments felt free to violate the Agreement.

Turkey was also working at cross-purposes with itself. If the Turkish government had any desire remaining for statehood in the E.U., using E.U. funds to violate international human rights, which the E.U. ostensibly values and works in support of, adds support to the argument that Turkey’s culture is too different to fit within a European union. Given internal threats by state governments to the E.U.’s decision-making process and rule of law, the union could ill-afford a leap in the magnitude of interstate differences in (political) culture. The continuance of the principle of unanimity applying to a significant number of federal competencies (i.e., enumerated domains of authority for E.U. law and regulations) was already running up against the recalcitrant will of Viktor Orbán of the E.U. state of Hungary. At the very least, that principle would need to be retired were Turkey to accede, which ironically would take unanimity to be changed to qualified majority voting on all matters at the federal level. In short, Turkey needed to get all of its ducks in a row, rather than to work against itself.



1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Urges Turkey to ‘Thoroughly’ Probe Alleged Abuse in EU-Funded Migration Centres,” Euronews.com, October 11, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Thursday, September 26, 2024

On International Multilateralism: A Harsh Verdict on the UN by a Former Undersecretary

Speaking at Harvard in late September, 2024, Noeleen Heyzer, a former undersecretary of the UN, related the need for multilateral governance internationally to the need for the UN to evolve. The UN Charter created a system in which both large and small nations would be held accountable to international law: a rule-based order. This would protect the weak from the strong. Yet the Security Council has been unable to end wars. The UN is, according to Heyzer, “severely weakened,” so “(t)he strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Peaceful coexistence that rectifies power imbalances was at the time sorely lacking in Ukraine and Gaza. National vetoes in the Security Council were inflicting much damage on the UN's ability to respond. The implications for the UN, she admitted to me after her talk, are not at all good even concerning whether the international organization can reform itself sufficiently to rise out of abject failure.

Four global problems demonstrate the weakness of the United Nations as a multilateral institution by which countries can be held accountable. The UN’s response to the Covid virus pandemic was slow, and entirely in effective in getting China to share vital information with the world as the disease spread. China’s national interest—and the “face-saving” cultural reflex—was a threat to the interests of the global commons—the public health of the species, which should outweigh national interests even if not every national government is convinced. The climate crisis has demonstrated that binding multilateral governance has become necessary in part because of the growing power of MNCs, which are oriented to short-term profit and pushing costs to society (i.e., externalities.[1] Cybersecurity against hackers from abroad also demonstrates that the rule of law is needed internationally. Lastly, international security, which was severely compromised by the 55 conflicts going on in 2024, demonstrates just how damaging the national vetoes in the Security Council can be to international peace. The US invasion of Iraq, Russia of Ukraine, and Israel in Gaza leave us with the unhappy conclusion that no enforcement mechanism for international law exists. Impunity has been blatant, such that international law itself risks being utterly discredited. Ignoring international law and the use of national vetoes by allies of belligerent countries preempt international law, resulting in a heightened sense of unfairness globally.

Put in place in 1945, “(t)he current international system is out of date," she said. "We face a breakdown or breakthrough. Collective rethinking to make anther historical pivot is needed," she added. Diffusion of power has occurred since the UN’s founding. Fifty-one countries were initially in the UN. By 2024, the figure had reached 193 countries as members of the international organization. “The UN needs to evolve to reflect the shift in global power from the unipolar world of the US to a multipolar world,” she said. Global stakeholders include non-state actors; they should be included, she advocated streneously. “Solidarity is an act of enlightened self-interest,” she said. 

She reported that the UN was fundamentally rethinking how it could evolve to fit the reality of the twenty-first century.  A shift from a state-centric approach to one that engages diverse actors outside of the UN was needed, she argued, to protect our global commons. Economic inequality and social injustice undercut global stability, and thus should be emphasized more in the UN, she argued, as it evolves in the future. She emphasized throughout her talk that the UN should assume more of a role in rectifying economic inequality and patriarchy in countries that are members of the UN.

Thus far, I have briefly sketched Heyzer’s argument. I turn now to critiquing it. Although addressing economic inequality was a leitmotif in her talk, she said nothing of the impact of the UN’s humanitarian work around the world in alleviating economic inequality. To be sure, that humanitarian work has been a benefit to the species, especially in terms of food and disease, and the organization’s ideals too are of value, but I contend that neither saves the organization from the verdict, which I share with Heyzer, that the UN has failed overall.

Most significantly, a vague reference to the General Assembly working on how the UN could evolve does not reflect the severity of the impotence of the Security Council and the General Assembly in regard to restraining national interests that compromise or even eviscerate collective action on the four major problems discussed above. The countries having vetoes in the Security Council cannot be expected to willingly give up their respective vetoes. Political realism says as much. So, it is difficult to see how the major problem in the UN could be solved short of the non-veto members forming a new international organization—a substitute for the UN sans vetoes.

Even such a solution leaves the impotence in enforcement untouched. Putin in Russia and Netanyahu in Israel beginning in 2023 highlight the need for international law to “have teeth” (i.e., have credible enforcement mechanisms). By this I mean something more than mere embargoes, as those of the E.U. and U.S. against Russia in 2024 demonstrate just how difficult it is for embargoes to have sufficient economic impact to result in political/militaristic change in the embargoed country. I submit that vesting UN troops with more authority in using force to stop countries like Israel and Russia within their respective sovereignties geographically would be necessary for international law to be able to live up to the name of law. Theoretically, if international law is indeed law, then political realism should include the strategic interests not just of countries, but also whatever international organization(s) promulgate and presumably enforce international law.  

After her talk, I spoke with Heyzer to present my critique, which I said I would publish. She agreed with me that the veto powers on the Security Council would not agree to unilaterally give up their respective vetoes, so the non-veto countries of the UN would have to form another international organization sans vetoes, which the veto-holding countries of the UN could join. By implication, the discussions then underway in the General Assembly to reform the UN can be viewed as superficial rather than as serious attempts to reform the UN out of its paralysis in promulgating international law. She also agreed with me that without going further to address the impotence in enforcing the UN resolutions on the UN’s willful countries that violate UN resolutions doubtless with a sense of impunity, even a non-veto substitute organization would not be a viable solution unless viable enforcement mechanisms “with teeth” could be formulated and implemented. I suggested to Heyzer that in addition to not permitting the most powerful countries to wield veto-power in the Security Council, which would not improve enforcement, the UN troops would need additional authority to literally push back or arrest countries that violate UN resolutions or verdicts of the UN’s court by invading other members other than in self-defense. She did not reply to my suggestion itself, which likely means that she did not agree with it. Instead, she said, “creative thinking is needed.” I agreed wholeheartedly, and pointed out that even though our species has developed technology and economically both in terms of fiscal and monetary policy, having learned lessons from the Great Depression so another would not occur in the financial crisis of 2008, there has not been much in the way of political development since the Enlightenment. Heyzer agreed with me on this point, and that a burst of thinking was needed in 2024 due to the four emergent threats to our collective interests internationally discussed above. As I have already stated, she said the following crucial sentence during her talk: “Collective rethinking to make another historical pivot is needed.” I submit that such a pivot would go beyond, though be related to, merely voiding the vetoes and creating a mechanism of enforcement at the extant UN. Deep political principles are reexamined and shifted around for there to be a fundamental change sufficient to constitute a historical pivot.  

Climate change alone demonstrates that continuing with the principle of absolutist national sovereignty at the expense of multilateral international governance is nothing short of foolish. Continuing to rely on the UN to address the four pressing and dire problems impinging on international relations even though the consensus is surely that the UN itself has failed in its principal missions reflects very badly on humanity in its cognitive functioning. The lack of any significant public discourse on the need for a replacement for the UN is itself a red flag, or indication that our species is akin to race horses wearing blinders. Unlike the horses, we can take ours off. I don’t believe the problem is that we have hit the ceiling of the human brain’s ability to think; rather, too many people, even among the political and economic elites, have been giving things exogenous to thinking, such as ideology, stubbornness, and sheer complacency, too much weight in being able to distort or even displace reason.  

I submit that it is telling that a former undersecretary of the UN admitted that a substitute organization would be necessary—that a former high-ranking UN official has come to the unhappy conclusion that the UN is not able to adequately reform itself, given the hegemony of the veto-wielding member-countries (which are not member-states, as some reporters erroneously claim, since the UN is an international organization rather than a federal government). The implications are indeed dire for the UN.

Simply put, unless or until another international organization or government is established for multilateral international relations funneled by an institutional structure and procedures, the international arena will continue to instantiate the state of nature. Ultimately, the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty must give way for multilateral international relations to rise from the barbaric state of nature. Although the UN’s ideals were still of value as late as 2024, it can be argued that the UN itself had dropped to the status of a dead corps still twitching, as evinced by the sheer dismissive impunity of Russia and Israel as they both ravaged exogenous territories not permitted by the UN, which also had no ability to constrain countries violating the Paris Agreement on carbon emissions. If the UN had become impotent in preventing or stopping war and in literally saving the species from possible extinction (not to mention saving coastal cities around the world), is this not a stark indication that the international organization had failed and thus that a substitute or alternative was already warranted?

That an organization that was so clearly failing would continue nonetheless to function as if it were viable and be treated as such by national leaders points to a basic flaw in the human brain. To act as if and not even cognitively recognize that the route is futile goes beyond cognitive dissidence as a mental error. The lack of any public discourse on replacing the UN after Putin and Netanyahu had so easily dismissed strictures set by the UN is itself problematic. If someone tells people not to cross a line in the sand and yet they do anyway, and with impunity, to treat the teller as at all credible is nothing short of pathological.


1. In the case of democracies, governments have an electoral interest in increasing GNP even by refusing to constrain fossil fuel extraction, refining, and consumption. Autocracies have a cash-flow interest in maximizing exports, which may include oil and conventional vehicles. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia sent its embargoed oil through Saudi Arabia and India, which were then able to sell the oil to the West without disclosing the source.


Thursday, September 5, 2024

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

On a trip to Indonesia in early September, 2024, Pope Francis signed a declaration on religious harmony and environmental protection at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta with the mosque’s grand imam. The Pope said that our species was facing a “serious crisis” bought about by war and the destruction of the environment.[1] Of war, the tremendous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and Gaza that had been taking place was doubtless on the cleric’s mind. Of the environment, climate change was undoubtedly on his mind. In addition to volcanoes and wild fires, human emissions of carbon into the atmosphere were poised to push the global temperature increase above the critical threshold of 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. What connects the two problems at the root—the source of the two problems—went unmentioned. In fact, the Pope made a statement that, if acted upon, stood to exacerbate the underlying problem: the exponential explosion of growth of the human population in the twentieth century.



1. Joel Guinto, “Pope and Top Indonesian Imam Make Joint Call for Peace,” BBC.com, September 5, 2024.


Monday, September 2, 2024

On the Reach of the International Criminal Court

Deeply hindered by the lack of enforcement mechanisms, international law can too easily be evaded or violated outright by government officials of countries who easily sense the ability to act so with impunity. Was the president of Mongolia such an official, and thus to be considered as blameworthy, when he did not have Russia’s President Putin arrested as soon as he touched down on Mongolian soil and sent to the International Criminal Court in 2024 for war crimes committed in Ukraine, including forcibly taking Ukrainian children to Russia? Is Mongolia’s acquiescence just another case of the implacable impotence of international law?

On September 2, 2024, Russia’s President Putin arrived in Mongolia. Despite “calls by the EU, the ICC, and Ukraine for him to be arrested, Putin was instead warmly welcomed.”[1] The International Criminal Court (the ICC) had issued an arrest warrant for Putin 18 months earlier, and, because Mongolia had signed the ICC Rome Statute, the country had “the obligation to cooperate with the court.”[2] In fact, the court relied on country signatories to execute the court’s decisions, “including in relation to arrest warrants,” according to ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah.[3] The E.U. position was that “Mongolia is a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC since 2002 with the legal obligations that it entails.”[4] This would seem to put the government of Mongolia in a bind, but I contend that the government acted correctly from the standpoint of international law.

The argument that the government of Mongolia was in a bind runs as follows. According to the ICC spokesman, “In case of non-cooperation, ICC judges may make a finding to that effect and inform the Assembly of States Parties of it. It is then for the Assembly to take any measure it deems appropriate.”[5] In short, the Assembly could take punitive action against Mongolia for refusing to hand Putin over to the ICC. Even so, government officials were naturally hesitant to arrest the Russian president because Mongolia was “heavily dependent on [Russia] for fuel and electricity.”[6] Also, any measure adopted by the ICC Assembly would not come with an enforcement mechanism, since the ICC relies on the countries that have signed the Rome Statute for voluntary enforcement.

The tension between Mongolia’s economic reliance on Russia and the legal obligation under the Rome Statute to arrest Putin can be dissipated on a more fundamental level by realizing that Russia was not a signatory of the Rome Statute, and thus Putin’s arrest warrant was null and void. Mongolia’s obligation was to arrest anyone from a country whose government had signed the Rome Statute and was thus under the jurisdiction of the ICC. In such a case, the ICC’s deeply flawed enforcement of punitive measures enacted by the court’s Assembly would be the major issue.

At a basic level, the ICC is binding only on the countries whose governments signed the Rome Statute. Government officials of other countries are as though in a Hobbesian state of nature with respect to the court’s jurisdiction. So government officials like Putin and Netanyahu could legally dismiss the ICC and even that court’s signatory countries; it is not a question of the latter’s non-cooperation with the court, but, rather, the court’s own jurisdiction. To hold government officials like Putin and Netanyahu accountable, the world had, at least as of 2024, to rely on the voluntary economic, political, and even militaristic efforts of countries, signatories or not, to protect human rights from war crimes and crimes against humanity.  How much humanity there is in leaving such important constraints to the varying and shifting political and economic interests of countries around the world is a question whose answer, at least as of 2024, did not yet reflect well on our species. Even the UN’s court, the International Court of Justice, lacked an enforcement mechanism for its verdicts. Russia and Israel were countries in the UN, but not even a global international organization could constrain Russia and Israel as they allegedly committed war crimes in 2024.


1. “Putin Arrives in ICC Member State Mongolia without Being Arrested,” Euronews, September 2, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Nuclear Power: Rendering War Too Dangerous in a World of Nations

Increasing integration of the global financial and business sectors and the global need to combat climate change by restricting carbon emissions are just two reasons why the impotence of the UN, which has not touched the doctrine of absolutist national sovereignty, has become increasingly problematic. The risk to nuclear technology in power-generation from war argues strongly for not only the obsolescence of war between countries, but also the benefits of transferring some governmental sovereignty from the nation-states to a global-level government, which the UN has never been. The case of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, in the midst of Russia’s invasion in 2024 is a case in point.

In August, 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notified the world that safety at Zaporizhzhia was deteriorating. A drone strike had recently hit a perimeter access road used by employees, and a fire had been set at the plant. The plant had been subject to repeated attacks since the invasion began, with both sides accusing the other of carrying out the attacks. So it is significant that the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in August, “Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing . . . the power plant.”[1] It was not as if the plant had been in a safe condition, so the escalation is significant. With both sides of the war having been blaming the other for the attacks on the plant, there was a real danger that both sides would see continued blaming as a way to ignore Grossi’s call for restraint. “I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant,” he stated.[2] Especially because of the option of simply blaming the other side, it could be said to be utopian to have confidence that those principles would be upheld in the context of the war.

In fact, as Hobbes theorized in The Leviathan, without one sovereign, whether a single person or an assembly, the chances for peace are nil, with life being short and brutish. It was in the context of the wars in the 17th century that Hobbes lived, and he wrote to obviate war by urging all political and religious power be vested in the same person or body. In Ukraine in the midst of the war in 2024, the country was not under the control of one sovereign, as the Russian incursions prove. In such a state of nature devoid of an overarching sovereign power, the danger to the nuclear plant was very real.

Given the magnitude and severity that a nuclear accident can inflict on land and human beings, taking such a risk is arguably so much to be avoided that it is worth it to countries to delegate some of their sovereignty to an international body. Although Kant advocated a world federation, by which world peace would only be possible but not probable, it is not clear whether such a federation would have any of its own sovereignty apart from that of countries. Without such a delegation of sovereignty, I’m not sure peace would even be possible, given the impotence of the UN as belligerent countries have easily been able to ignore resolutions and even verdicts from the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice.

Of course, even were a world government to have some sovereignty and thus to ability to enforce its resolutions against warring countries, Hobbes would say that unless that sovereignty is complete, with countries no longer having any, war would be likely. But Hobbes lived prior to the invention of modern federalism in Philadelphia in the 18th century, and so he could not have been able to consider the checks-and-balances feature by which a federal government and state governments can hold each other accountable or at least within limits such that neither devolves into tyranny. In the early 21st century, both the E.U. and U.S. federal systems contain internal structural and procedural checks on federal and state power, though the U.S. had come so close to consolidation by the U.S. Government that it could hardly be argued that the state governments could act as a constraint on the federal government. So splitting governmental sovereignty between a world government and national governments would not be without its own risks and weaknesses.

Even so, the conduct of war in a state of nature amid nuclear power plants is such a toxic cocktail that the impotence of the UN as against the Russian invasion (and the Israeli onslaught in Gaza) could no longer be tolerated by 2024. Dangers in advanced technology in the context of a war argue against unfettered war being tolerable by our species any longer, and the UN sans any governmental sovereignty could not be the solution, given how easy it has been for belligerent members of the UN to ignore resolutions and verdicts with impunity and even continued membership in good standing. In short, technology even aside from that which is used in weapons had fundamentally changed the danger from war to the species itself, even as the world has continued to rely on the feckless UN in failure after failure as if the status quo were working anyway. It is unfortunate that so much energy of political will is necessary for a leap in political development for the species; we are so much better at incrementalism. 


1. Saskia O’Donoghue, “IAEA Says Safety at Ukraine’s Nuclear Plant Is ‘Deteriorating,” Euronews, August 18, 2024.
2. Ibid.

Tuesday, August 6, 2024

On Europe’s Nonlinear Climatic Future

The probable impacts of climate change are anything but straightforward, and thus predictable. From the standpoint of mid-2024, huge changes could be in store for Europe and other continents. The magnitude of the shifts is particularly worthy of notice, such that the changes being unleashed even as of 2024 and especially in the decades following the 2020s will be difficult to reverse or even change even if a Green revolution were to take hold. It bears noting that in 2023, the increase in energy usage globally outstripped contribution from alternative or clean energy, such that even more fossil fuel was used to meet the post-pandemic demand. A look at Europe provides a good case study of the unstoppable magnitude of some of the changes already underway.  


I cropped Duncan Porter's photos so the area covered in the background would be the same.

Duncan Porter took a photo of the Rhone glacier in Europe on August 4, 2024. He had taken a photo fifteen years minus one day earlier at the same spot. The loss of ice is palpable, reflecting the fact that Europe was as of 2024 the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures running 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels whereas the global increase stood at 1.3 degrees higher—very close indeed to the baleful planetary threshold of 1.5 degrees.[1] In short, Europe had already crossed that boundary set by scientists, and the empirical evidence could be seen in the massive loss of ice at the Rhone glacier.

When Porter took his “after” picture in early August, 2024, Europe was in the midst of “one of the most prolonged and intense” heatwaves on record, with temperatures consistently exceeding historical averages, “with some areas experiencing unprecedented highs. This prolonged heat . . . led to significant ecological stress, particularly on heathlands, which are critical stopover points and breeding grounds for migratory birds.”[2] With temperatures at 2.3 degrees higher on average than the pre-industrial level, Europe could expect such heatwaves as a matter of course, or the new normal, with significant ecological shifts resulting.

Lest linearity be assumed, Western Europe also faced the prospect of the end of the Gulf Stream, which is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). That current sends warm ocean water  over to Northern Europe from Florida and warms Western Europe, especially during the winter. Should this current cease from an influx of melted fresh water, European winters would be much colder (think Moscow). By 2024, it had been well established that melting freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet was slowing down the Gulf Stream, and earlier than climate models had suggested. The question was when rather than if. In 2023, Politico reported, “A collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) was likely to occur ‘around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions’—perhaps as soon as 2025 and not later than 2095, said Peter Ditlevsen and Susanne Ditlevsen from the University of Copenhagen in a per-reviewed study published in Nature Communications.”[3] In other words, for Europeans sweating out the long heatwave during the summer of 2024, the perplexing news was that “Atlantic Ocean current that keeps large parts of Europe warm could come to an abrupt and catastrophic stop any time in the coming decades.”[4]

From the vantage point of 2024, prolonged heatwaves during summers and much colder winters could thus be the volatile, nonlinear climate-future of Europe. Uncharted territory is a good way to describe the possible, even probable changes in the offing. I don’t believe even scientists knew how the colder ocean water during the summers would impact the heatwaves, and how the average 2.3 degree temperature increase would impact winters that would otherwise be colder the loss of the Gulf Stream. Such interaction effects may pale next to severe heatwaves and no Gulf Stream, such that hot summers and very cold winters could run for decades through the 21st century.

Meanwhile, in North America, the Midwest was projected to get much hotter, with some places in the Southwest possibly becoming uninhabitable, while Florida and the East Coast would be cooler than otherwise if the Gulf Stream shuts down. So, Europeans were not alone in being beset with unknown interaction effects. Going into uncharted territory may be titillating, but when the reality of a changed world sets in, the excitement will likely quickly wear off. With such huge changes as the Gulf Stream shutting down, climatic shifts will be of such magnitude that shifting back would not be likely.


1. Euronews Green, “It Made Me Cry,” Euronews, August 6, 2024.
2. Luke Hanrahan, “Heathlands under Siege,” Euronews, August 5, 2024.
3. Karl Mathiesen, “Gulf Stream Shutoff Could Happen this Century, Scientists Warn,” Politico, July 25, 2023.
4. Ibid.

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Turkey on Cyprus: Sidelining the E.U.

Imagine if Japan had invaded and claimed (and successfully held) an island of Hawaii as a protectorate and a separate country due to the number of Japanese living there, and thus not as a part of Hawaii even though the U.S. recognizes all of Hawaii as a member state.  Let’s say furthermore that the UN has proposed the unification of Hawaii as a republic composed of two federated states. Hawaii would be akin to Belgium in the E.U.—a federated state of two sub-states in a federal union. This arrangement would fit with Althusius’ early seventeenth-century theory of federalism based on the Holy Roman Empire: each level of political organization is a federation. While this exists in the E.U., none of the U.S. states is itself a federation of states. So, the UN’s proposal that Cyprus be united politically and be composed of two states even as the E.U. already recognizes the entire island as an E.U. state is not outlandish to a European eye. The problem with the proposal lies instead in Turkey, and this in itself can be interpreted as an argument against Turkey’s accession to E.U. statehood.

“Speaking at an event in the north [part of the island in 2024] to mark the 50th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that [had] split the island along ethnic lines, [Turkey’s President] Erdogan ruled out resuming talks based on the Annan Plan which proposed the establishment of a United Republic of Cyprus.”[1] In rejecting the proposal, he was ignoring the fact that the E.U. recognized the entire island of Cyprus as a state in that union. He was thus unwittingly undermining the E.U. even as Turkey was still technically seeking statehood. I submit that this undermines Turkey’s chances of accession, and furthermore, that Turkey should not become a state. For at the very least, an aspiring state should respect the E.U., even and especially on matters that touch on that potential state. The case of the E.U. state of Hungary being found in wanton violation of E.U. law by the E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, demonstrates just how harmful a disrespectful state government can be within a federal union.

Erdogan’s establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is only recognized by Turkey’s government and was rejected in a 2004 referendum by more than 75% of the Greek Cypriots in the south, would, if accepted by the E.U., limit the E.U.’s common market to the south and thus create the need for customs checkpoints inside the island. While not as complicated as the case of Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. and yet also part of the Irish island—Ireland being an E.U. state—politically splitting the island of Cyprus permanently would make things more difficult for the E.U. with respect to its state of Cyprus in the south. Again, it would be a case of Turkey making things more difficult for the E.U., and yet presumably also wanting to become a state to enjoy the economic advantages of the union’s unfettered interstate commerce. This combo must surely strike Europeans as unsavory and thus as a de facto argument against Turkey joining the union. In other words, the way Erdogan was playing his hand politically with respect to Cyprus showed the Europeans that they had been right to hold off on accession talks with Turkey because its government would not make a very good state government in the union. Already Hungary was enough of a problem. That 90% of Turkey is not in Europe and the culture is not European may be what is behind not only the tension in Cyprus, but also why Turkey would be a problematic state in the European Union.

Lastly, Erdogan’s insistence on a “two state” solution for Cyprus, as if the difference between the north and south were as great as those between the Palestinians and Israelis in Israel, discounts or even perhaps dismisses the mollifying effect that Cyprus being a state in a union would have on the tensions on the island, and thus shows a lack of confidence in the E.U. in its mission to forestall war in Europe. In other words, the president of Turkey didn’t seem to have much faith in the federal institutions, including the E.U.’s court of justice, to protect minorities within the union and assuage tensions domestically, by which I mean within the union. Just as the rationale of the U.S. as a federal union of dual sovereignty was in part to use federal power to step in to stop Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, so too the E.U. has the means at its federal level mediate any excitements within the state of Cyprus. Yet Erdogan did not seem to trust Brussels enough to recognize the entire island of Cyprus as an E.U. state.

Brussels already had Viktor Orbán of Hungary distrusting the federal institutions in 2024 and actively working at odds with E.U. foreign policy on Russia even as he held the presidency of the Council of the E.U. during the last six months of 2024. Taking note of the 50th anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus then, Brussels could have done worse than formally end Turkey’s proposed accession. A house divided cannot long stand, or at least cannot prosper and thrive as it could otherwise. With Russia belligerently knocking down Ukraine, Europeans could surely have benefitted at the time from a basic or fundamental unity that at the very least includes respect for and confidence in the European Union, given its rationale bearing on protecting Europe from war within.