A European Army: A More Perfect Union

At the Munich Security Conference in February, 2025, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy bluntly asserted, “I really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be created.”[1] He could have said in 2023 after Russia’s President Putin had sent tanks and bombs into Ukraine; instead, the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S. that was the trigger. “Let’s be honest,” Zelenskyy continued, “now we can’t rule out that America might say ‘no’ to Europe on issues that might threaten it.”[2] At the time, Trump was planning to meet with Putin to end the war without Britain and a number of E.U. states at the table. After all, they had failed to push Putin off Crimea in 2014, and even in 2025, they were not on the same page on how to defend Ukraine militarily. Amid the political fracturing in Europe, Ukraine’s president was urging that the E.U. itself have an army, rather than merely the 60,000 troops for which the union was dependent on the states. Even on being able to borrow on its own authority, the E.U. was hamstrung by the state governments that were more interested in retaining power than in benefitting from collective action. It is difficult to analyze Zelenskyy’s plea without including the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology that was still eclipsing the E.U. from realizing a more perfect union.

At the security conference, Zelenskyy put is finger on the problem: “Europe has everything it takes. Europe just needs to come together and start acting in a way that no one can say ‘no’ to Europe, boss it around, or treat it like a pushover.”[3] With foreign policy splintered—still residing primary at the state level—the E.U. could only stand by while Trump and Putin easily excluded Europe from at least the initial talks to end the war. Instead of throwing darts at the two easy external targets, Europeans could alternatively look inward in order to get the root of the problem as to why Europe was not as powerful as the size of its population would warrant. Europe just needs to come together. Even what seems like Europe coming together may really just be a perpetuation of the splintering, or fracturing, motivated by a states’ rights ideology that has compromised the E.U. since its beginning in the early 1990s.

Rather than meeting in the European Council to respond to Trump’s upcoming talks with Putin, the E.U. state of France invited ten “European leaders” to Paris “to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strengthen their common position amid the accelerated peace process being promoted by [Trump].”[4] With Britain included, the meeting could not even be considered to be of the E.U.; in fact, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U.’s Commission, and Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council were to be merely on hand, rather than chairing the meeting. Even if the two were in charge of the meeting, the inclusion of Britain would at the very least be awkward.

In short, the parts of the federal system were in charge, while the representatives of the whole were being treated as mere appurtenances. This structure itself belies collective action whose benefits could rival those of the U.S. Rather than defer to von der Leyen and Costa, the governor of the E.U. state of France presumed that his state should take the lead in uniting Europe militarily even beyond the European Union. Concerning any resolved future military action to help Ukraine against Russia, not even von der Leyen could be relied on to reconcile any disagreements on implementation that include Britain, and as merely one of the parts, France’s Macron was in no position to weld authority over the other parts and Britain beyond chairing the meeting.  

It is no wonder that Trump and Putin decided to exclude Europe. In fact, had the two men wanted to sideline the usual fractured suspects in Europe, von der Leyen and Costa could have been invited instead of the governors of the E.U. states. In such a scenario, it would really be indicative of a problem if the governors of some of the E.U. states would meet on their own anyway—even though two of the E.U. presidents would have seats at the talks. This sordid, self-aggrandizing mentality has benefitted from the political agitation of Euroskeptics (i.e., states’ rights in American parlance), but the problem is that of state officials—and their respective governments—too desirous of holding onto power rather than agreeing to delegate some of it to the federal level—by which I mean along with qualified majority voting there rather than unanimity wherein the states can retain their power at the expense of collective action, and the benefits thereof.

Zelenskyy was on target: a European—meaning the E.U.—army was needed, and not just because of Trump or Putin. A federal system in which state officials relegate federal officials—presidents no less—not only puts the interests of (some of) the parts before that of the whole, but also imperils the federal system itself from being able to sustain itself as a going concern. For Europeans, its well past time to look within rather than focus on Trump in utter disgust.

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1. Joshua Posaner, “Zelenskyy: ‘The Time Has Come’ for a European Army,” Politico, February 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Jorge Liboreiro, “Macron Hosts European Leaders in Paris as Trump Pushes for Peace Talks on Ukraine,” Euronews.com, February 17, 2025.

Russian Electricity Hits a Financial Curtain

On February 8, 2025, the E.U. states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania turned off all electricity-grid connections to Russian and Belarussian supplies of electricity, thus reducing revenues for the belligerent country and its ally. Electricity would thenceforth merge with the Continental European and Nordic grids through links with the E.U. states of Finland, Sweden, and Poland. Europe was taking care of its own, for a price of course, while Russia was increasing trade with China and other countries to make up the difference from decreasing trade with Europe. In short, it can be concluded that unilaterally invading a country has economic consequences that diminish and reconfigure international business.

At the time, European media played up the “geopolitical and symbolic significance” of the “severing of electricity ties.”[1] To these, economic significance could be added. No longer could officials in Russia’s government count on the stable revenue to help finance the military incursion into Ukraine. The economic interdependence between Russia and the E.U. was decreasing. Moreover, the philosophy of international business, which maintains that increasing commercial ties, including trade and foreign direct-investment, reduces the probability of war because such conflict would come with a financial cost. In fact, decreasing economic interdependence can itself make war more probable as there is less to lose financially from going to war.

Moreover, taking the E.U. and Russia as empire-scale countries that in themselves can be viewed as regions in the world, a financial curtain replacing the Iron Curtain of the Cold War could be said to be the “big picture” of which cutting off supplies of Russian electricity is just a part. In the age of nuclear weapons, a financial divide between the E.U. and Russia (and Belarus) could give rise to dangers of much greater magnitude than even Russia’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Even though the view that if enough international business is established between two or more countries, war can finally be obviated has been shown to be faulty, eliminating trade and foreign direct-investment makes it easier politically for countries to go to war over other matters.

In short, the severing of business relationships can be viewed on the macro economic-geopolitical level on which the severing of ongoing business contracts can itself be viewed as a political weapon and, together with other severings, as part of larger economic wedge between even regions of the world. At that scale, as the world wars of the twentieth century demonstrate and perhaps pre-figure, war can be of a magnitude that the weapons unleased are nothing short of horrendous. Drawing an economic line roughly between Europe and Asia can have very significant geopolitical and military implications. Perhaps it is owing to human nature that we are more prone to drawing such lines in which economic relations are severed than to reinforcing economic interdependencies in spite of the fact that they do not obviate war. It takes some time for a spider to weave its web, especially if the spider happens to be named Charlotte, but only a moment for such a web to be destroyed.

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1. Daniel Bellamy, “Baltic States Cut Russian Electricity Ties, Ending Decades of Reliance,” Euronews.com, February 8, 2025.

On the Establishment of Israel: Return to Haifa

Return to Haifa (1982) is a film in which the political element of international relations is translated into personal terms on the levels of family and individual people. The establishment of Israel by the UN is depicted in the film as being accomplished not only incompetently, but in negligence of likely human suffering. In fact, the suffering of the indigenous population may have been intended, given the operative attitude towards those people as animals. That the human being can be so dehumanizing in action as well as belief ultimately makes victims of all of us, even across artificial divides. This is precisely what the film depicts, with the victims being the active characters while the real culprits remain for the most part off-camera. The viewer is left with a sense of futility that can be undone by widening one’s view to include the antagonists, who are not passive. It is not as if fate inexorably brought about the Nakba (or even the scale of the atrocities in Gaza in the next century, which, as the film was made in 1982, cannot be said to be anticipated by the filmmaker—though perhaps it could have been).

The full essay is at "Return to Haifa."

On the Establishment of Israel: Farha

The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, being in the wake of the Nazi atrocities, was arguably viewed generally then as something that the world owed to the Jewish people. Perhaps for this reason, the UN did not take adequate measures on the ground to safeguard the Palestinian residents. In retrospect, the possibility, even likelihood, that people who group-identify with (or even as) victims consciously decide to become victimizers should have been better considered. The film, Farha, made in 2021, illustrates the sheer indeterminacy, and thus arbitrariness, of human volition when it issues orders to the body to be violent against other rational beings. Channeling Kant, it can be argued that the decision to shoot a family that poses absolutely no threat impurely out of hatred based on group-identity fails even to treat other rational beings as means—to say nothing of as ends in themselves. The unadulterated deplorability in being unwilling even to use another person as a means to some selfish goal, preferring instead to kill rather than respect the otherness of another person, grounds the verdict of the culprit being less than nothing. In another film, The Brutalist (2024), Laszio, the Jewish protagonist, erroneously concludes that Jews must surely be less than nothing, given how they were treated not only in Nazi Germany, but also in Pennsylvania even after the news of the Holocaust had reached the other shore. Whether brutality or passive-aggressive prejudice is suffered, however, turning one’s victimhood into victimizing is ethically invalid, for such a callous reaction fails to treat other rational beings as ends in themselves, and may even be so severe as to fail to treat them even as means.

The full essay is at "Farha."

On the Potential of International Business to Render War Obsolete: The Case of Russian Gas

In a graduate-level course on international business, a professor sketched out the political-economic philosophy of international business, whose mantra is that if two or more countries have enough trade and foreign direct-investment, those countries would be less likely to go to war. In short, economic interdependence, thanks to international business, can render war obsolete and thus greatly enhance the human condition. Decades after I had taken that course, a business professor at the same university wrote extensively on the role that business can play in facilitating peace. Unfortunately, that economically-sourced theory of international relations downplays or ignores that the reasons or rationales for going to war and the decisions taken by a government for military-strategic reasons during a war can trump the (especially immediate) economic benefits from international business, whether in terms of imports, exports, or foreign direct-investment by foreign firms at home or by domestic firms abroad. This can occur even though revenue from taxes or state-owned enterprises having to do with trade and foreign-direct investment can help a government in fighting a war. The case of Ukraine cutting off Russian natural gas from traveling through Ukraine in pipes to the E.U. as of January 1, 2025 is illustrative of vulnerability in the theory of international business as a way to world peace.

In not allowing the 2019 transit deal between the Kremlin-owned gas company, Gazprom, and Ukraine’s Naftogaz to be renewed for 2025 and beyond, the Ukrainian government faced “the loss of some $800 million a year in transit fees from Russia, while Gazprom [stood to] lose close to $5 billion in gas sales.”[1] At the time, Russian forces were making further incursions in eastern Ukraine, so the Ukrainian military could have used the military hardware that $800 million could have bought, especially with isolationism soon to gain a foothold in the White House. Furthermore, that Gazprom had “recorded a $6.9 billion loss, its first in more than 20 years, due to diminished sales to Europe,”[2] suggests that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, largely for a noneconomic, imperial reason, had come with some economic costs. Put another way, Putin’s regime could have used the $5 billion in gas sales to the E.U. to help finance the invasion. International business was clearly not foremost two either government in the war. Rather than the pipeline reducing the chances of war when it broke out in 2023, the international commerce would become a casualty of war. Although international business benefits states, to reduce state interests in political realism to economics misses a lot and thus can lead to bad predictions regarding war and peace.

As for the E.U., at first glance it would seem that Europe would be less supportive of Ukraine in its war, including financially and in terms of sending military hardware because the Ukrainian government had just cut off Russian gas from reaching the E.U. in the middle of winter. Fortunately, the E.U. had anticipated the geopolitical strategic move by seeking out other sources of natural gas, such as the U.S., so the Russian gas through Ukraine only “represented about 5% of the European Union’s total gas imports, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.”[3] A spokeswoman for the European Commission said at the time, “The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin to (central and eastern Europe) via alternative routes . . . since 2022.”[4] Taking into account the continuing pipeline through Turkey, the E.U. had reduced “Russia’s share of its pipeline gas imports down from over 40% in 2021 to about 8% in 2023, according to the European Council.”[5] I submit that even if the E.U. had not prepared for the rather obvious decision of Ukraine’s government not to renew the transit deal with Russia in the midst of the Russian invasion, non-economic, geopolitical interests would have continued to fuel the E.U.’s desire to support Ukraine militarily, for fear of Russian inroads in eastern and even central Europe can easily be understood to trump even the economic benefits from international trade and foreign direct-investment with Russia.

In short, states are foremost political entities; not that they and the people who run them are not motivated by the economic benefits arising from international trade and foreign direct-investment, and these can admittedly make a difference on close calls on whether to go to war, but geopolitical considerations are primary. War and the effects thereof go beyond economics and business. A town being occupied, whether in Ukraine or Gaza, has existential implications for the people therein that extend beyond how trade is being impacted. In fact, as Israel has demonstrated toward Gaza, economic resources can be weaponized such as by withholding food and other humanitarian relief so as to kill off a population. Such a goal is not economic in nature, and international business is not sufficient to override such ideological goals, or even hatred itself. The limits to peace through economic interdependence stem from precisely this point: hatred goes beyond economics, so the latter can only go so far in constraining the former. The problem, in other words, is not that international trade and business haven’t been extended sufficiently to insure world peace, but that hatred can override economic self-interest.  

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1. Kosta Gak, Alex Stambaugh, and Anna Cooban, “Ukraine Ends Supply of Russian Gas to Europe,” CNN.com, January 1, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi Against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must typically resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis went beyond citing ethical principles to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 Urbi et Orbi (i.e., to the city and the world) address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian kingdom of God, both as a concept in the Gospels and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the instinctual ways of our species as worldly. In other words, there is value in terms of international relations from people being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.  Celebrating Christmas can be a means of bringing to mind what the Jesus in the Gospel narratives stands for and represents, which in turn stands as an alternative, which Gandhi realized, for how international relations can be done even by very human, all too human, and thus flawed, political leaders desirious of God's mercy.

Russia's attack against Ukraine on Christmas, 2024 (source: AP)

On Christmas Day in 2024, “Russia launched a massive missile and drone barrage . . . , striking a thermal power plant and prompting Ukrainians to take shelter in metro stations on Christmas morning.”[1] Specifically, over “70 rockets, including ballistic missiles, and over 100 attack drones were ued to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”[2] In short, Putin’s strategic objective was to leave Ukrainians without electricity. Because he chose to do so on Christmas, which many Americans strangely call “happy holidays” or just “this holiday,” prompted Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to write, “Putin deliberately chose Christmas for an attack. What could be more inhumane.”[3] Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, described the inhumanity as “(d)enying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas.”[4] That many urban Ukrainians had to spend Christmas morning in underground subway stations rather than at home celebrating Santa’s bounty and enjoying fellowship for its own sake is indicative of just how little respect Putin had for Christianity; his utter lack of respect for Ukrainians was by then well known.

On the same day, Pope Francis “urged ‘all people of all nations’ to find the courage . . . ‘to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions’ plaguing the world, from the Middle East to Ukraine, Africa to Asia.”[5] This language in itself is rather lame, or vague—a statement to be expected from any pope. That he “called for an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, . . . ‘particularly in Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.’”[6] This statement could be expected to be received by the people the world over like a repeating recording, which is to say, as more of the same impotent normative language to which both Putin and Netanyahu had been so terribly unresponsive.

Fortunately, the Pope added a line seemingly too utopian to matter, but with arguably huge effect in terms of changing perspectives around the world. The pope “called for reconciliation ‘even (with) our enemies.’”[7] Such compassion is two degrees of separation from the ruthless killing of civilians in Ukraine and Gaza—in the latter, 1,200 Israeli deaths and a few hundred hostages do not ethically justify killing over 44,000 residents of Gaza, as if they had all been culpable in the attack by Hamas. I suspect that both Putin and Netanyahu easily dismissed the pope’s distinctly Christian valuing of compassion extended even to—and I would argue especially to—one’s detractors and enemies. In doing so, Putin in particular, who claimed to be Christian and enjoyed the political alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy, could be seen from around the world as a hypocrite.

That the pope was not just extoling compassion, which is a moral virtue, but also invoking Jesus’s preaching on loving one’s enemies—which both as being based in love, which is deeper than ethical conduct, and being specifically oriented to one’s enemies—renders the invocation theological in nature. One thing about theology is that it can be applied in ways that moral principles are typically not.

For example, Timchenko wrote that the attack on Christmas was “a depraved and evil act that must be answered.”[8] What is binding on Putin and Netanyahu theologically is also binding on “the good guys.” Timchenko’s claim that the attack must be answered in retributive vengeance flies in the face of having and showing compassion for one’s enemies. Timchenko cuts off even the possibility of this by claiming that vengeance must take place as the response. At least Putin and even Netanyahu might have admitted that reconciliation by showing compassion to the respective enemies was possible. Unlike in ethics, where Timhenko can be distinguished normatively from Putin and Netanyahu because only the latter two are responsible for having harmed and killing innocent people, the spiritual value of the Jesus preachment in the Gospels to love thy enemies (and detractors more generally) by being compassionate rather than aggressive towards them applies to everyone. Why? Jesus's claim that loving one's enemies applies to anyone who seeks to enter the kingdom of God, the experience of which is possible at any time, reflects the religious belief that the spirit of God's mercy applies to every one of us, as what we all deserve in terms of divine justice is worse than what we actually get from God, which, as God is existential love, is life.  It is no accident that God's mercy was a lietmotif of the pope's homily on hope in the Midnight Mass that Christmas. 

Although by the end of 2024, the Israeli government had certainly blown any good-will that Gaza residents would show in kind to a sudden two-degrees-of-freedom switch by Israel to showing compassion to that enemy, had over 44,000 Gaza residents not been killed and over 2 million left homeless (and even bombed at least once while staying in tents), a cycle of reconciliation could have been initiated by the Israeli akin to how Gandhi treated even the British who had imprisoned him. Such a cycle, wherein serving the residents would naturally have resulted in good overtures by the residents to even Israeli troops, is that which Jesus preaches in the Gospels for how the kingdom of God can be at hand already and spread like a mustard seed grows.

To contrast the way to world peace through individuals reconciling by being compassionate with detractors with Putin’s attack on Christmas is to see Putin (and Russia’s government) as two steps removed, and thus especially sordid. That Putin regarded himself as a Christian, especially considering that Paul had written that faith without works is for naught, only adds hypocrisy to the two degrees of separation between inhumane treatment of others and being compassionate to one’s enemies. The pope’s Christmas Day speech thus helped the world to situate not only Putin, but every other militarily aggressive head of government in the world. We, the species that has been described as killer angels, are indeed capable of holding both poles in mind simultaneously.

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1. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Lucy Davalou, “Pope Francis on Christmas Day Urges ‘To Silence the Sound of Arms,’” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.

Israel Invades Syria Preemptively without Declaring War: A New Norm?

In the wake of the downfall of Syria’s Assad in December, 2024, that he had used chemical weapons against civilians in rebel areas against international law not only means that the victors of the coup would have ready access to chemical stockpiles, but also justifies other governments in breaking Syria’s national sovereignty by bombing the locations at which the noxious chemicals were being stored. This does not justify, however, governments hostile to Syria invading the country and destroying its military. Otherwise, the norm could be established, as valid, that any time there is a coup in a country, it is “open season” (a hunting expression) for any government in the world to snatch up territory and destroy the military. Although absolute sovereignty, which ignores international law, is too much, presuming a country with a new government to be valid prey goes too far in the other direction. I contend that both absolutist and nullified national sovereignty are contrary to the interests of the whole—the global order—wherein the protection of human rights (and thus international law) is in the interest of humanity especially given the horrendous destructiveness that a government can have against its own people and other countries in the nuclear age.

Just after the Assad regime folded, the BBC reported, “Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of [Israel’s] efforts to neutralize military assets [in Syria] after the fall of the Assad regime.”[1] Fifteen vessels were docked at the port of Latakia. Israel also announced, moreover, that “its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarized buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.”[2] Just three days after that announcement, CNN reported that Israel had struck "nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out . . . 90% of Syria's known surface-to-air missiles."[3] Essentially, the Israeli government was taking advantage of the momentary weakness of a transitioning foreign goverment to rid a sovereign nation of its right to a military. 

Israel’s defense minister said Israel wanted to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel.”[4] Because Syria had not been militarily active against Israel, the threat was not actual, but only potential. Israel said it invaded Syrian territory “to prevent attacks on its citizens.”[5] Israel had “a long history of seizing territory during wars with its neighbors and occupying it indefinitely, citing security concerns.”[6]

Israel invades Syria, taking the highest mountain there. (Source: CNN)

It seems that Israel no longer felt the need to bomb and invade another country during a war, as neither the media nor Israel would admit that bombings and an invasion constitute war. The implication, should Israel’s actions to rid another country of its military become the norm internationally, is that it is ok to eliminate the entire military (i.e., not just chemical weapons) of any country that finds itself in a brief interregnum following a coup (or power dispute) and whose military is even just potentially a threat or even just a security concern. This essentially opens the door to unfettered aggression anytime another country’s government is temporarily weak. Is it not the case that national sovereignty includes the right to have a military, or is that right conditional on the approval of the Israeli government? 

Such a squalid, opportunistic norm would not only violate international law, but would fall under the theory of political realism wherein states follow their own strategic interests unfettered by international norms or law. Hobbes’ state of nature is also relevant, as Israel’s military aggression against another sovereign country follows the dictum that might makes right. Syria had not ceased being a country, and the mutually-agreed-upon demilitarized zone was so obviously contracted, and thus violated, by Israel’s ground invasion that situated military forces in the zone that no justification save the law of the jungle could be sited by the Israeli government.

That Russia had unilaterally invaded Ukraine in 2023 and was still doing so as Israel was attacking and invading Syria could be enough to give the underpinning norm some de facto grounding to potentially become de facto valid, or at least more widely acted upon and with impunity. During Israel’s invasion of Syria, the media in both the E.U. and U.S. notably did not refer to the military action as a war, as would be expected when one country bombs and invades another country. With both Russia and Israel acting as kingdoms seeking empire militarily, it could be concluded that the “modern” twenty-first century was not fundamentally different than world history, as evinced by the Qing Dynasty (especially Emperor Kangi) in China, the ancient Romans, the Mongols, Alexander the Great, and the various European colonial empires. 

After all, even with the promise of genetic engineering, human nature was still pretty much unchanged since the incremental changes through the process of evolution during the long, prehistoric hunter-gatherer stage. Put another way, human nature has been a constant from the ancient military invaders to Russia and Israel in the (technologically) “advanced” 21^st century. In political-military matters, the raw power opportunism in modernity belies any claim to political development in international relations, even taking into account the impotent UN. 

It seems unfathomable even to contemplate whether international relations were gradually returning to the dark ages of the state of nature in which aggression and political realism—essentially self-interest--are the only real guidelines. The trajectory unleashed by Russia and Israel in the century following two world wars—the second having ended with two nuclear bombs—does not bode well for humanity, whose exploding population and related energy pollution could render the question of unfettered international aggression moot. 

At the very least, it is not at all antisemitic to label bombing and a military invasion as a war—and an unprovoked one at that, seeking the total destruction of another (sovereign!) country's military. A world of preemptive strikes based on security concerns to rid undesireable countries of their very defenses may be what humanity may be heading for since the U.S. invaded Iraq at the beginning of the “post-modern” century ostensibly to remove weapons of mass destruction. It seems to me that the emerging norm being foisted on the world by Israel and Russia is itself a weapon of mass destruction.

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1. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet,” BBC.com, December 10, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Mick Krever, "Why Israel Captured Syria's Tallest Mountain Just Hours After Assad Fell," CNN.com, December 14, 2024.

4. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet.”
5. Rory E. Armstrong, “Israel Strikes Syrian Military Sites While Troops Move into Golan Heights Buffer Zone,” Euronews.com, December 10, 2024.
6. Ibid.