We Don’t Have Another America: Ukraine on the E.U.

On America’s Thanksgiving Day, 2025, Dmytro Kuleba, a former foreign minister of Ukraine, was asked whether Ukraine’s government officials could trust American officials negotiating with the Russian officials, given the fact that Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Envoy at the time, had recently been caught coaching Kirill Dmitriev, a top Russian official, on how to get U.S. President Don Trump on the side of Putin even though the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine was still in violation of international law, which, by the way, trumps historical reasons, such as a lost Russian empire. Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine during the 1930s would seem to nullify any imperial claims from the past. Kuleba relied to the journalist’s question with, “Not really, but we do not have another America.”[1] He was really giving Europe a wake-up call, but the problem there was not a lack of consensus, but a structural deficiency in the federal system of the European Union.

Far from being able to diagnose what aspects of the E.U.’s federal system were holding the Union back from protecting Ukraine from an American-Russian one-sided plan to end the ongoing invasion, Kuleba said rhetorically, “Isn’t it embarrassing that almost four years into the war, European leaders are still jumping from one topic to another, from sending peacekeeping forces to reassurance forces to strengthening the Ukrainian army.”[2] While it may be tempting to criticize state-level officials for being “all over the map” on what the E.U. should do regarding the American-Russian negotiations, as well as on Russia itself, moreover, such divergence of opinion is only natural. In the U.S., for instance, polling officials from the 50 states would not likely find even a consensus. For example, the leaders of Arizona and Massachusetts may have been as far apart from each other on whether to help Ukraine militarily as the leaders of Hungary and France. If this comparison itself “touches a nerve,” I contend that a festering, subterranean category mistake is the root cause of the pain.

E.U. citizens had a solid basis for being frustrated, for although “two top E.U. aides joined negotiations with Ukrainian and American delegations in Geneva . . ., European leaders have been largely side-lined from the talks.”[3] As for the Coalition of “the willing,” which consisted of 33 sovereign countries, depending on a bloc rather than on the E.U. to safeguard Ukraine’s geopolitical and military interests, or treating the E.U. as if it were a bloc, can be reckoned as borderline foolishness when up against an active theatre of combat.

Kuleba’s point in lamenting that Ukraine did not have another America in Europe may imply that the E.U. could and even should be another America capable in terms of raw power to be a counterweight to American foreign policy in the world. This is not to say that “another America” would be a replica of the United States, for the European Union, although another empire-scale federal system characterized by dual sovereignty (and thus not a confederation such as U.S.’s Articles of Confederation (1781-1789)), contains differences. For example, whereas the U.S. Senate represents the member-states at the federal level, the European Council and the Council of Ministers represent the state governments at the federal level in European Union. Yet the U.S. House of Representatives and the European Parliament are much more alike counterparts, representing U.S. and E.U. citizens, respectively. The political genus of empire-scale and level federalism of dual sovereignty (i.e., state and federal) can indeed support institutional and procedural differences in the basic, or constitutional, law. Whereas the U.S. in the twentieth century had become too consolidated, the E.U. in its first few decades in the next century has been too state-heavy, as the U.S. was for many decades since it split the atom of governmental sovereignty in 1789. Even though the E.U.’s federalism contains more safeguards protecting the states from federal encroachment than did the U.S. even when the governments of the member states selected U.S. senators, those E.U. safeguards arguably have paralyzed the E.U. on the world stage.

In particular, the veto power of each state government in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, and the refusal of every state to delegate more governmental sovereignty to the European Commission to conduct foreign and defense policy, are why the E.U. president (i.e., of the federal executive branch) and the federal foreign minister were not able to defend Ukraine from the ongoing invasion for years, and to become directly involved in the negotiations to end the invasion. Put more bluntly, by even just threatening to use the state’s veto, the governor of the E.U. state of Hungary was holding E.U. policy and power regarding Ukraine and Russia hostage. Even with regard to the frozen assets of Russia’s central bank, E.U. officials were having trouble using that as political leverage to shift the negotiations more to Ukraine’s favor. It is not that President Von der Leyen was weak or not astute politically, or naïve on defense; rather it is the case that a federal system in which governmental sovereignty is held both by state governments and the Union is incompatible with the confederal device of the state veto at the federal level.

A dean of the Global Affairs school of Boston University told me in 2024 that the E.U. was a mix of confederal and modern (dual sovereignty) federalism. I countered that the two types of federalism are mutually exclusive. To conflate the two, such as by granting the federal institutions some governmental sovereignty while giving each state government a veto over such sovereignty, is self-contradictory and thus inherently implausible. To be sure, the E.U.’s states could look at the process of consolidation of power at the federal level in the U.S. and want institutional and procedural safeguards against such federal encroachment from happening down the road in the European context, but I submit that such safeguards can exist without hamstringing the E.U. internationally.

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1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “European Decision-Making on Ukraine ‘Embarrassing,’ Former Foreign Minister Kuleba Says,” Euronews.com, November 27, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Rewarding Invaders with Profit: The Case of Russia in Ukraine

Operant Conditioning in Psychology, the theory advanced by B. F. Skinner in the 1930s, holds that punishment and reinforcement can change behavior. Positive reinforcement is more likely than punishment to see a given behavior repeated. With regard to the U.S.-Russian plan announced in November, 2025, to end the war in Ukraine, E.U. officials were concerned that if Russia would benefit from the plan, Putin would be more likely to stage other invasions in Eastern Europe. Positive reinforcement financially could make invading profitable, a point that would not be lost on government officials of countries desirous of territorial expansion.

At an international security conference held in Canada on November 22, 2025, some U.S. senators voiced concern that the plan worked out by Trump and Putin would reward aggression. U.S. Sen. Agnus King said as much during a panel discussion. The proposed plan, which the government of Ukraine was considering at the time, “rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern Ukraine.”[1] Sen. McConnell, a former Majority Leader, put out a statement on the dangers of Putin viewing the plan as a win for him.

Besides what future responses Putin might have to the positive reinforcement in having gained territory in eastern Ukraine, the moral question of whether invaders should be rewarded politically and even financially for going to war seems simple enough, especially as it can be argued that a moral duty exists for every other government around the world to make Putin and Russia pay for having invaded Ukraine. As E.U. President Von der Leyen said, might should no longer be allowed to be the decider of rights to territory.

The switch from Russia paying a price to gaining financially (in additional to territorially) was apparent from the E.U.’s vantage-point concerning that Union’s plan to make Russia pay literally for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction from the Russian financial assets blocked then in Europe. “In a dramatic reversal for the EU, the US-led plan suggests the Russian assets would be unblocked, releasee, and turned into an investment platform handled by [the U.S.]. The language implies the Kremlin would not only be spared from paying war damages in a future settlement but also benefit commercially.”[2] Two separate funds would be created from the €300 billion in “the immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank.”[3] One fund would “finance Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and another [fund] shared by the US and Russia [would] develop ‘joint projects in specific areas’”, with both Russia and the US getting the profits.[4] 

That part of the American-Russian plan for peace directly contradicts the Von der Leyen’s position that Russia should not benefit from having invaded another country in Europe. Absent a strong UN that could have acted so as to remove the Russians from Ukrainian territory (and the Israelis from Gaza), relying on disincentives so Putin (and Netanyahu) and any other officials of other governments would think twice before sending troops out. If Putin’s government is allowed to profit and gain additional territory by invading Ukraine, which the internally-weakened E.U. seemed powerless to prevent in 2025, then the fact that both Putin and Netanyahu “won” at the expense of Ukraine and Gaza even in terms of profits from investments is itself a good argument that a stronger international order was needed to stave off the worst that goes with absolutist national-sovereignty. 

Put another way, with the E.U. hampered by the state-vetoes in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., and with the international organizations such as the UN without any governmental sovereignty whatsoever, a world in which so much harm has been unleased by national governments with utter impunity and even positive reinforcements may need a world federation as Kant advocated. Such a global body would have to be capable militarily of removing an invader and stopping a genocide, rather than merely delivering humanitarian aid to civilians.

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1. Rob Gillies, “US Senators Slam Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Peace Plan as Rewarding Aggression,” AP News.com, November 22, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

COP30: Is Symbolism Enough Amid Climate-Change?

COP30 in Brazil on combatting carbon-emissions and the related global warming, the question of whether the basis of the annual conference, voluntary compliance, is sufficient and thus should be enabled by the staged meetings. Even to continue to have the conferences annually can be viewed as part of a broader state of denial, given that the 1.5C degree maximum for the planet’s warming set at the Paris conference a decade earlier was by 2025 universally acknowledged by scientists to no longer be realistic; the target would almost certainly be surpassed. It is in this context that any progress from COP30 should be placed.

The full essay is at "COP30." 

Paradigm-Change in International Relations: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine as a Primer

“We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.”[1] This statement was signed by E.U. leaders, as well as officials at the state level, and even leaders of sovereign European states such as Britain and Norway several days after U.S. president Trump had met with officials from Ukraine at the White House on October 17, 2025. If only the Europeans had been so unified in 1939; it is difficult to fathom how the world would be 14 years short of a century later had World War II not taken place. Force as a de facto decider of territory has been the default through human history. For the principle of the European political leaders to become the default would represent a step forward in our species’ political development, but the even though principle sounds great, it also looks hopelessly idyllic and not at all realistic.

As if enshrining the validity of “might makes right” in territorial disputes, U.S. President Trump had said in an interview before the meeting at the White House, Putin has “won certain property.”[2] By several media accounts, Zelensky and his travelling cadre did not take this fact well at all subsequently at the White House. Just weeks before Trump’s statement, Putin had said that “force of arms would decide the matter” if there is not a peace agreement. The notion that bombs and guns can decide strikes me as an oxymoron. Force of arms take, rather than make decisions. A robber would not say that his gun will decide to whom the desktop computer in a house being robbed belongs. Robbery does not alter ownership.

Rather than feign insight into how the conflagration between Russia, an empire, and Ukraine, a sovereign state, could be solved other than to state generally that a war between an empire and a kingdom-level country is apt to be won by the former if by force of arms, I want to put “won certain property” (as if a sovereign country’s territory can be rethought into being a country’s property) directly up against the principle that “international borders must not be changed by force.” The word must may subtly import the mentality behind “might makes right.” If so, how could the new principle be rephrased so as to sever it from values that have given “might makes right” such staying power? In debate, it is better to find one’s own presuppositions and values than import those of the opposition and merely propose an alternative interpretation.

International borders are not legitimately changed by force, as opposed to an invader has won some territory, better characterizes the underlying antipodal values and beliefs that are actually in conflict. If only the values and presuppositions of the latter way of international relations when diplomacy fails could finally be overcome by those that have been recessive: namely, that territorial gains by force will not be recognized. The latter paradigm for international relations can include severing trade, cutting off memberships in international organizations like NATO and the UN, and even the use of force to push invaders back, as U.S. President Bush did in the early 1990s in leading an international coalition to forcibly remove Iraq’s dictator’s forces from Kuwait. The use of military force is the least preferred way of enforcing the new principle over the old because force itself is still being used in relation to territory. 

Much more consistent with the European 21^st century principle is ending trade even with an invader’s trading partners and seeing that the UN remove the invader from being able to participate (reversion to observer status, without a veto-power) for violating the UN’s charter. To avoid even more humiliation, the UN should do that anyway, and for any government that has serially violated the charter (e.g., Israel). 

Successfully changing the default in international relations from the notion that invaders “win” territory and territorial claims can be decided by force of arms to the principle that territorial borders cannot be changed by force would represent not only a paradigm shift, but also a long-awaited advance in political development, and such a change could not arrive too early in the nuclear age. Both Putin and Trump can be seen as antiquated in their world-views if enough of the rest of the world decides on its own to move on. Coming up with new, distinct sea-legs for the European principle that are NOT carried over from the underpinnings of the currently dominant, antithetical dogma that might makes right, or at least that forced territorial changes are legitimate, and then operationalizing the new principle in government policy would go a long way in actualizing the new paradigm in international relations. 

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1. Euronews, “European Leaders Back Ukraine Ceasefire Proposal at Current Contact Line,” Euronews.com, 21 October 2025.
2. Kevin Liptak, “How Trump-Zelensky Meeting Turned Acrimonious over Demands or Territorial Concessions,” CNN.com, October 20, 2025.

Russia’s President Putin: Political Realism with Lies

As a former KGB agent, Russia’s President Putin could probably write a book and teach a course on the art of lying, or fabrication, as means of doing foreign policy, which manipulation being the not so subtle subtext. The tactic can be reckoned as being expedient, with the loss of value in reputational capital being assessed to be a cost worth incurring. That Putin lied to U.S. President Trump in Alaska in 2025 on the Russian’s intention to “put an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine” should have caught the American off guard, if the claim made by Kurt Volker, an American envoy to Ukraine that Putin had indeed lied to Trump about being willing to meet and negotiate with the Ukrainian president is true.[1] The American president was, in short, naïve even in being willing to meet with his Russian counterpart, especially without the president of the E.U. present too, at least to serve as a reality-test regarding Putin’s real game, for Europe had more to lose—more on the line—than did America from incursions from the east. Political realism is the theory that best fits the Russian president.

In realism, states act in their own interests, even in multilateral negotiations, rather than forsaking any such immediate interests for the good of the global order, if indeed such an order exists institutionally. Power is the name of the game, and, as Nietzsche observed, the strong have incentive to give up their position of strength to the weak (so the weak can only hope to beguile the strong into feeling ashamed ethically of using their strength). In other words, Putin still had a winning hand when it came to extending his invasion farther west in Ukraine, so why would he unilaterally offer to sit down at a negotiating table unless any such territory were to be offered to him? Equality in terms of power is the only context in which justice is possible, Nietzsche wrote, and Hume as well as Nietzsche hold that equality does not really exist; more counter-power is needed for an invaded power to arrest the insurgency of a greater power. With Putin stating that the force of arms would decide the political matter of Ukraine, the world should have realized that political realism best fit and that any common good, or world order, would be nugatory in comparison to the interests of strong, powerful states. The impotence and fecklessness of the United Nations had created the vacuum in which both Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu could blatantly pursue their respective military interests even at the expense of the civilian populations of their respective enemies. In other words, impunity, even in being able to arrest peaceful protesters in international waters, and throw them in prison, invites political realism to fill the void and come to characterize international relations. The world itself has been culpable in this by refusing to reform the UN or establish an alternative international body sans vetoes and with an enforcement mechanism of its own that could stand up to aggressors internationally, as Mo Di, the founder of Mohism, had done in China during the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty.

Political realism is dangerous, not only because states nakedly pursue their own interests without regard to the common good—that of the world—but also because the personal, emotional reactions of presidents can easily come into play. As Volker said of the effect of Putin’s lie on Trump: “He made Trump look weak and Trump doesn’t like looking weak, so this is now a personal issue for him.”[2] So Trump was considering sending long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, whether doing so was in the strategic interest of the U.S. or not. Without a world order as a viable constraint as political realist states pursue their own interests in relation to other states, political realism can easily lapse into personal vengeance and retaliation even at the expense of state interests. In short, political realism can lapse in to something much worse—and much more dangerous. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a case in point, as nuclear weapons were in the mix.

So political realism is in need of a major constraint beyond what Koehane and Nye suggest in their theory of neo-realism; especially in the nuclear age when “force of arms” is still being relied on by some state actors to settle political questions and such actors are all too willing to lie, our species should engage in a stepwise political development resulting in a world federation of the willing—countries that are willing to subscribe without a veto and even be willing to transfer some military hardware and troops so the common good has a means of clamping down on state actors who seek to invade weaker states with impunity. It is interesting that even as our species has advanced technology so much, political development has been stalled for centuries. Perhaps a new millennium can mean something, politically, such that deciding questions by the primitive means of force of arms can finally be treated as antiquated.

1. Sasha Vakulina and Shona Murray, “’Putin Lied to Trump and Made Him Look Weak,’ Former US Envoy to Ukraine Says,” Euronews.com, 6 October 2025.
2. Ibid.

Why Evangelical Christian Americans Support Israel

The Christian “belief in the ‘rapture’ of believers at the time of Jesus’ return to Earth is rooted in a particular form of biblical interpretation that emerged in the 19^th century. Known as dispensational pre-millennialism, it is especially popular among American evangelicals.”[1] This biblical interpretation is based on the following from one of Paul’s letters to a church:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”[2]

Presumably the “trump of God” in the King James version of the Bible is distinct from Trump as God, for that eventuality would raise a myriad of questions and difficulties, and at least two difficulties pertain to the verse and, moreover, to dispensational pre-millennialism as a Christian doctrine. That it was constructed only recently by Christian standards raises the question of why the idea did not dawn on Christians closer to Paul’s time. That Paul does not represent himself in his letters as having met Jesus prior to the Resurrection and Paul’s use of mythological/Revelations language, such as “with the voice of the archangel,” also provide support for not taking the passage literally. After his resurrection in the Gospels, Jesus does not have the voice of an archangel. With Paul’s passage viewed figuratively or symbolically, rather than empirically and literally, the underlying religious meaning would of course remain unperturbed: keeping the faith is of value and thus in holding on to one’s distinctly religious (and Christian) faith, this strength will be vindicated even if no signs of this emerge during a person’s life. In other words, faith in vindication is part of having a religious faith, which is not limited our experience. The Resurrection itself can be construed as vindication with a capital V, regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead empirically and thus as a historical event. In fact, a historical account or claim is extrinsic to religious narrative even though the sui generis genre can legitimately make selective use of, and even alter, historical reports to make theological points. The writers of the Gospels would have considered this perfectly legitimate, given that they were writing faith narratives and not history books. Making this distinction is vital, I submit, to obviating the risk that one’s theological interpretations lead to supporting unethical state-actors on the world stage, such as Israel, which as of 2025 was serially committing genocidal and perhaps even holocaust crimes against humanity in Gaza. In short, the theological belief that supporting Israel will result in the Second Coming happening sooner than otherwise can be understood to be an unethical stance based on a category mistake. American Evangelical Christians may have been unwittingly enabling another Hitler for the sake of the salvation of Christians, while the Vatican stood by merely making statements rather than acting to help the innocent Palestinians, whether with food and medicine, or in actually going to Gaza’s southern border (or joining the flotilla) to protest as Gandhi would have done.

The full essay is at "On the Ethics of Dispensational Pre-Millennialism."

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1. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen,” MSNBC.com, September 25, 2025.
2. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV)

The United Nations: Weak Even in Defending Itself

Besides its humanitarian work, the UN can boast of providing a situs in which officials of national governments can talk to and with each other. The best opportunity for in-person speeches and conversations annually is during the opening of the General Assembly. Even granting there being value to such communicating. the UN was not founded for this purpose; rather, it was founded to end war, and neither speeches nor in-person meetings, typically not directly between warring nations, so obviously have failed to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s occupation and genocide that may even be reckoned as another holocaust. All this aggression has come with impunity, and in this regard, the UN has failed. Even a UN official’s attempt to defend the international organization during the 2025 session of the General Assembly was weak. At the very least, the UN needed to hire some public relations firms, but even a patina of efficacy only goes so far. The staying power of such an institution is itself, I submit, a problem in that organizations tend not to get “the memo” on when it is time (and even past time) to close up and urge that another, different organization be established.

Speaking at the General Assembly on September 23, 2025, U.S. President Trump asked rhetorically, “What is the purpose of the United Nations?”[1] Later, standing next to his counterpart, E.U. President Von der Leyen, Trump answered his own question by saying, “I mean, we shouldn’t have any wars if the U.N. is really doing its job.”[2] The purpose of the UN is to end wars, and being a place where national officials can talk to and with each other is woefully below the UN’s potential in reaching its purpose. In short, a speaking forum with side talks is so far from the UN being able to stop wars and even genocides, not to mention holocausts, that Trump went on to say in his speech to the General Assembly, “I’ve always said (the UN) has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”[3] To be sure, he did not provide any suggestions on how exactly the UN could tap into its potential, hence he left the UN to rot on the vine. Any suggestions would almost certainly have had to include providing the UN with enforcement mechanisms with which to implement its resolutions “on the ground” rather than just in words, and the U.S. had a longstanding policy of resisting such proposals due to the doctrine of absolute sovereignty held by recurrent American administrations. So it is really no surprise that Trump was short on ideas that could strengthen the UN in its task of ending wars and belligerent military occupations.

It was left to General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock to try to defend the international organization, which of course is not a government. “Sometimes we could’ve done more, but we cannot let this dishearten us. If we stop doing the right things, evil will prevail,” Baerbock told the Assembly.[4] That the UN had been unable to act even when Israel was bombing UN humanitarian areas in Gaza, not to mention in stopping the genocide and perhaps even holocaust there, begs the question: exactly what right things was the UN doing, as per its role in ending wars and occupations? Clearly not enough right things such that not doing them would enable evil to prevail. With Russia’s army bombing civilian locations in Ukraine and Gaza in the midst of a full-blown genocide and arguably a holocaust given the severity of the intentional infliction of suffering besides death, if evil was not prevailing already, it would be interesting to hear Baerbock’s definition of evil. In short, his defense does not stand up to even easy scrutiny; hence his defense of the UN can be regarded as being very weak, or deeply flawed. It is a defense that could be expected of an utterly failed organization unwilling to accept reality, including the organization’s abject failure to reach its potential.

The staying power of organizations not subject to market competition is too much, given the ability of even failed organizations to stay afloat. That even a weak defense can be sufficient to keep a failed organization—failed in terms of its primary mission—going may mean that more is needed to put failed organizations out of their misery, which of course their officials would deny. In the midst of Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu easily dismissing the UN charter yet remaining members, while the UN ignores even such fragrant violations of membership, it is difficult to see how the UN has any integrity regarding even itself remaining, if indeed it ever had any.

A new international body, without certain nations having veto power and with the body having real enforcement power of its own, such that it would not have to rely on countries for actual enforcement—such reliance is also a sign of abject weakness—was desperately needed, given the large-scale aggression of Russia and Israel that had been going on with impunity for more nearly two years. This alone should be the death sentence for the UN, even with its weak attempts to defend it’s legitimacy and usefulness. Yet in terms of organizations, and even more so, institutions, momentum of the status quo is like a force of nature that is difficult even to divert.

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1. Aamer Madhani, “Trump In Speech to U.N. Says World Body ‘Not Even Coming Close to Living Up’ To Its Potentional,” The Huffington Post, September 23, 2025.
2. Darlene Superville, “Trump Says Wars Wouldn’t Happen If UN Did Its Job,” The Associated Press, September 23, 2025.
3. Aamer Madhani, “Trump In Speech to U.N. Says World Body ‘Not Even Coming Close to Living Up’ To Its Potentional.”
4. Ibid.