On the E.U.’s Participation in Negotiations on Ukraine

One of the anticipated benefits of the E.U.’s federal system that augmented the movement to form a political union is that more power could be applied in international negotiations by the Union than by any one, or five, of the state governments. For this to work, state-level elected officials have to give federal officials enough room to be able to negotiate without being manhandled and even dominated. At the federal level, petty jealousies between officials of particular institutions should not obscure the established practice worldwide that the executive branch conducts negotiations internationally. So, in inviting the E.U. to participate in peace-talks on the Russian invasion, Ukraine, the United States and Russia were on solid ground diplomatically in calling “on the EU to appoint a single representative.”[1] That the Europeans not only blew off this “request” but also expanded the number of European political entities participating in the negotiations can, I submit, be legitimately answered more directly by Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia by withdrawing their invitation and proceeding to negotiate as a triad.

On 13 November, 2026, the E.U. rebuffed the request for “a single European envoy,” preferring instead to approve an assortment of different political entities to represent the E.U.—even going beyond the E.U. itself by including Britain and NATO.[2] The prime minister (i.e., governor) of the E.U. state of Italy lamented the preference for a “’disarray’ of voices in the peace process” as she spoke in favor of a single European envoy.[3] “Instead, EU leaders opted to expand the existing negotiating group, adding Italy and Poland” because the latter state had complained about western states making decisions on behalf of eastern states.[4] That large western states, specifically France and Germany, had included themselves in the talks must have triggered Poland’s defensiveness. This is one reason why in a federal system, states generally leave international diplomacy to federal officials. Put another way, the very fact that internecine squabbling between states was occurring is good reason why the request for a single E.U. envoy is reasonable.

The governor of the E.U. state of France may have aspired to leading the negotiations on behalf of the E.U., even sidelining the E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas. Whereas she had standing to represent the Union because she was a federal official, no governor of a state can legitimately speak for a Union because state officials are not federal officials and the interests of a state are not those of the union of which the state is a part. Not even the direct political involvement of states at the federal level, through the European Council and the Council of Ministers in the E.U., justifies a state’s governor or other state officials assuming a federal role, especially if by sidelining officials who are federal.

Aside from the inclusion of some E.U. states, the Europeans at the meeting tasked with selecting an envoy seem to have had trouble drawing within the lines concerning the E.U. itself. Euronews reported that the “European Council, European Commission and NATO” would be represented.[5] NATO and the E.U. are distinct, however; in fact, the two political genres into which they can sorted are qualitatively different. The E.U. is a federal union of semi-sovereign states—with the federal level having some sovereignty too—whereas NATO is a military alliance (i.e., not even a federation). Furthermore, within its genre—what Ken Wheare calls modern (i.e., dual sovereignty) federalism—the E.U. has a federal government, complete with legislative, executive, and judicial branches and their respective institutions. As per the international norms of diplomacy, only the executive branch of a government—not particular legislative chambers—can represent the entire government internationally. Therefore, even listing “the European Council, European Commission” as if the two were of commensurate legitimacy in the upcoming peace negotiations abroad is misleading.

The federal official tasked with chairing European Council sessions failed to distinguish between the Council’s role in setting policy at the federal level and the Commission’s role in representing the E.U. internationally, including in settling international disputes. That official, Costa, said, “The president of the European Council represents the European Council and represents the Union when it comes to the common foreign and security policy at the level of head of state and head of government.”[6] But that the European Council’s purview included foreign and security policy at the time does not imply or extend to active participation in international negotiations, as the Council is not the Union’s federal executive branch. Costa’s claim that the “president of the European Commission represents the Commission, and the Commission represents externally the Union in community issues”[7] flies in the face of the long-standing norm in international affairs that executive branches can represent more than just that branch and thus can negotiate international agreements. For example, in giving her State of the Union speeches, President Von der Leyen was not limited to discussion the condition of the Commission itself; she could legitimately speak on behalf of the Union. The same is true in the U.S., where the chief executive can legitimately represent the Union rather than just the White House and federal regulatory agencies. Costa’s emphasis on “the level of head of state and head of government” in the Council means that his chief orientation is to the important function of the state governments being able to protect their turf against federal encroachment, and thus political consolidation at the expense of federalism. In other words, his role is more limited than is that of the head of the federal executive branch with respect to representing the Union in international negotiations.

Von der Leyen also went too far when she said, “We decide on who represents us, and that’s what we’ve done today, and how we are being represented to 27 sovereign countries plus the E.U. institutions.”[8] Prying off the last part first, governments, rather than their specific institutions, are represented in international negotiations. Furthermore, that the 27 E.U. states were sovereign countries is just patently false. I’m surprised that the highest federal official would error so obviously. Exclusive competencies (i.e., enumerated powers) and even the authority that is federal in shared competencies, and even the authority to pass directives, which states implement, mean that the E.U. itself has some portion of the entire governmental sovereignty that resides in the federal system of governance. Even the voting mechanism of qualified-majority voting at the federal level means that the states were no longer sovereign counties, for a state government would be subject to a federal law or regulation passed by qualified majority vote even though the state government opposed it in one of the Councils. For example, Germany had to go along with the Commission’s use of its exclusive competency on trade in applying tariffs on China even though Germany fiercely opposed them.

Lest differences in degree along the interval of an attribute of a political genre be fallaciously concluded to mean that two genres actually exist, it should be observed that just because the enumerated powers, or competencies, at the federal level of the E.U. in 2026 were considerably more circumscribed than the powers of the U.S.’s federal institutions does not mean that dual sovereignty only applies to the U.S., and therefore that European states were still sovereign countries rather than semi-sovereign states. A federal system has states. Coining the obfuscating verbiage, member, as if the “member countries” were still sovereign does not obscure the fact that republics in a federal Union are states. Nor does the misappropriation of the word bloc as a label for the E.U. mean that the E.U. is a temporary coalition of countries.  

In conclusion, the fact that not only Russia, but also Ukraine and the U.S. called on the E.U. to select a single envoy, or negotiating representative for the Union, means that the request is credible and reasonable. Perhaps it could even be said that Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. were united in having lost patience with the petty jockeying within the E.U., especially in regard to state-level usurpations of a federal prerogative. With riots occurring in his state, Macron of France could not afford to lead, let alone participate in the E.U.’s international negotiations as if he were an E.U. official. 

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU Leaders Bring Italy and Poland into Ukraine Peace Talks Team as Kallas Fights for Spot,” Euronews.com, 13 November, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

The UN: Climate Change as a Health Emergency

Hitherto, climate change had been characterized primarily as a matter of science and political economy wherein the latter was lagging behind the former. As the ongoing accumulating of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans were finally having a significant impact on the planet and us in the mid-2020s, breaking the grip of the oil industry and the related consumer demand for fossil-fuel energy proved to be too much for the UN’s annual “COP” summits because any agreements at them were nonbinding on governments. So at the commencement of the COP31 summit on November 9, 2026, the UN’s Climate Change Executive Secretary adroitly shifted the characterization of climate change to one of health, and more specifically healthcare systems—something presumably more manageable. Unfortunately, the focus on health put symptoms and effects ahead of addressing the causes of global warming.

Simon Stiell, the Secretary, labeled the “climate crisis” as “a global health crisis,” and added that it is a crisis “of pandemic proportions.”[1] But to say that health was by 2026 impacted by the effects of global warming, such as more people suffering heat-stroke during the relentless heatwaves in the E.U. during the summer of 2026, is not to say that climate change is even primarily a health crisis. Rather, the crisis is one of pollution, which in turn is fueled by profits and the related political connections that protect the polluting companies and the oil industry. Furthermore, the percentage of deaths that summer that can be traced back to global warming does not come close to being characterized as a pandemic. The rhetorical hyperbole is itself a stretch, for “(b)urning fossil fuels and human-caused climate change” were only “linked to an estimated 3.3 million deaths annually through outdoor air pollution and extreme heat, according to the Lancet Countdown 2026.”[2] That the global population was over 8 billion is enough to put 3.3 million into a realistic perspective—hardly constituting a pandemic. Moreover, Stiell’s attempt to redefine the problem of climate change as a health crisis mistakes symptoms for the underlying problem, which more accurately could be characterized as the failure of the world to hold governments accountable for missing “green energy” targets. Just because the “COP” summits have failed does not mean that climate change is or can be sufficiently addressed as a health crisis.

Whether or not climate change was “battering health systems and infrastructure” as Stiell contended, his assurance at COP31 that health would again be a central issue did not address the pressing need to attend to the causes of climate change. To be sure, he did point out the hard choice of whether to “accept ongoing fossil fuel cost pain for families, firms, and governments,” but to say that “that includes health systems” sidesteps the politically difficult choice itself.[3] Admittedly, rising “temperatures, drought and heavy rainfall can contribute to heat-related illness and mortality, wildfire smoke and poor air quality, malnutrition and food insecurity, injuries, and changing risks of water- and vector-borne diseases such as cholera, malaria and dengue,” but the key word here is contribute.[4] What about the increased flooding and fires themselves? Health is impacted from these, but so too are other things.

It is easy enough to get carried away with health effects, and even reduce the problem of climate change to health itself, especially given that getting governments to push through laws that restrict fossil-fuel-sourced energy had proved too difficult. It is much easier to urge governments to invest more in their healthcare systems. Just because the COP summits, and thus the world, had failed over a decade to get governments to clamp down on fossil-fuels so the target of 1.5C would not be breached does not mean that fortifying healthcare systems would be enough to reverse the concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere. Asking whether people “have safe water after a flood” is important at a local level, but a global focus on a symptom-oriented, tertiary question effectively signals our species’ surrender on addressing the problem of climate change itself.[5] Crying wolf that a pandemic was already in progress only discredits the attempt itself to shift off the causes of climate change onto something more easily addressed by governments. 

In “recalibrating” to focus on health policy, expediency and avoidance of hard political decisions can thus be inferred. Put another way, continuing the insufficient responses to reducing carbon pollution, with the globe already expected to warm beyond the 1.5C target set by the UN within even just a few years of 2026, could be expected to bring health systems to their breaking-point anyway. Perhaps the focus of COP31 should have been on the need for enforcement power beyond the nation-state level on noncompliant governments, or on practical politics, such as setting up a global fund to support candidates for national office who campaign on curtailing fossil-fuel use sooner rather than more conveniently later. Even just expanding from a focus on healthcare systems to include ways in which governments can fortify shores from rising sea-levels and even move entire towns would be better than turning COP31 into a summit on healthcare.

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1. Marta I. Iribarren, “Climate Crisis Now a Health Emergency of ‘Pandemic Scale,’ UN Climate Chief Warns,” Euronews.com, 9 November 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

North Korea and the E.U. on Human Rights

In the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, Jesus uses the metaphor of a mere sliver of wood in another person’s eye being objected to by a person who has an entire plank in one’s own eye to criticize the hypocrisy that can occur with self-righteousness.[1] In international relations, it is much easier to see abuses of human rights in another country than in one’s own. Mixing metaphors, it can be said that people in glass houses should not throw stones because one may come back to bite. Generalizing from particular abuses of human rights, the refusal of national governments to give up some governmental sovereignty so an assembly “with teeth” could go in and arrest abusers within a country in violation of protecting its residents’ human rights means that we are all guilty of insufficient political action. The UN pales next to such an assembly, yet, at least as of 2026, it is the best we have.

In 2025, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said “that human rights in North Korea” had “shown no improvement over the past decade and had in fact worsened in many cases.”[2] Nevertheless, on 5 November 2026, North Korea’s state media “lashed out at the European Union over its draft UN resolution addressing human rights” abuses in North Korea.[3] The fact that the country’s dictatorship had long been accused of “running prison camps and severely restricting freedom of expression and access to information” and the UN General Assembly had passed resolutions against North Korea every year since 2005 did not phase the North Korean government officials who accused the Europeans of submitting a draft resolution that is a “farce” and a “politically-motivation provocation” by “flagrantly distorting the human rights policy and situation of the DPRK.”[4] Even the use of such hyperbolic language discredits the Korean response. Even the veneer of official government-speak was lacking in Korean response: “The EU had better mind its own business, instead of hyping up the non-existent ‘human rights’ issues.”[5] The Koreans were on more solid ground, albeit again steeped in exaggeration, in retorting: “In cities across Europe, from Paris to Brussels . . ., streets are filled with demonstrators from all walks of life demanding such elementary rights as the rights to existence.”[6] Although the rioting has pointed to deep frustration, protesting the deplorable condition of some schools and for a livable wage is not comparable to protesting, were it allowed in North Korea, against so many citizens being held in political prison-camps in forced labor.

The response of the North Korean government would have been more credible had the media statement included the paralyzing impact on the E.U. of political differences between E.U. states on how (or even whether) to respond politically and economically to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and officially-condoned violence against Palestinian property-owners in the West Bank. Ironically, North Korea could claim the moral high ground in that respect. Whereas the E.U. had an ongoing trade agreement with Israel in 2026 even though Israel was violating the human-rights stipulation, North Korea did not recognize the state of Israel, and even considered it to be a “terror project” engaging militarily in crimes against humanity while being supported politically, financially and militarily by the U.S. so the crimes could go on with impunity. Even the E.U.’s lack of sufficient unity on Israel effectively enabled the genocide and violence by Israelis in the West Bank. North Korea could even have pointed to the stubborn refusal of the governors of E.U. states to give up the veto that each held in the European Council and the Council of Ministers as keeping the E.U. to adopt a policy critical of Israel with economic sanctions.

Therefore, North Korea’s reply to the E.U.’s draft resolution critical of North Korea could legitimately have suggested that the Europeans focus on standing against the genocide and, as a way to begin to take up that task, to reform the E.U.’s basic law by eliminating the state veto in the two federal councils that represent the state governments. The conflict of interest facing governors of states unwilling to give up their veto power at the federal level could have been exposed as itself unethical, and indirectly as standing in the way of the E.U. opposing Israel. As bad as the human right violations likely were in North Korea at the time, it is interesting that the North Korean dictatorship was out-performing the E.U. in regard to opposing the perpetuation of crimes against humanity by the Israeli government. That the U.S. was actively enabling Israel even militarily during the genocide and decimation of entire cities in Gaza supports North Korea’s point that the West did not hold a monopoly even just in standing for human rights. Rather than pointing fingers, the E.U. and North Korea, and even the U.S., could alternatively have been working together where practicable to take out or at least weaken state actors committing crimes against humanity within their borders with impunity. Because such cooperation was in short supply, whereas pointing fingers was more attractive at least through 2026, the rationale for an international, semi-sovereign political body with sufficient military muscle to combat abusers of human rights can be understood.

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1. See Matt. 7:3-5 and Luke 6:41.
2. Gavin Blackburn, “North Korea Tells EU to ‘Mind Its Own Business’ after Draft UN Resolution on Human Rights,” Euronews.com, 5 November 2026.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Foreign Policy Alignment in E.U. Enlargement

Threating the E.U. or U.S. as a club and thus as having members rather than states is as erroneous as it is arrogant. Even though the E.U. states are members of the European Council and the U.S. states are members of the U.S. Senate because both federal bodies represent states rather than federal or state citizens, nether the U.S. nor the E.U. has members per se; rather both unions have states because those unions have federal systems. Nor is either political union a “bloc,” as the latter is actually a temporary group of sovereign countries rather than a federal government of semi-sovereign states or even just an alliance. Linguistic semantics matter because they can impact expectations; less is expected of a bloc than a federal union of states. For one thing, the latter, which is theoretically permanent, involves more of a bonding between the polities. To be united, states cannot not be so opposed to each other that passing federal law and regulations faces insurmountable ideological opposition in the chambers in which the states are represented and thus are the members, especially if each one wields a veto! Two words: Viktor Orban. The E.U. is justified, therefore, in insisting on general agreement with the E.U.’s foreign and military policies before approving the accession of a candidate state.  

Asked on 3 November 2026 about the prospect of Montenegro’s statehood in the E.U. including “a 15-year transition period,” Montenegro’s E.U. Minister Maida Gorcevic replied, “We don’t want second-grade membership inside the European Union, because that wouldn’t be fair and that wouldn’t be full membership as well.”[1] Even her aspirations for “full membership” were insufficient, for statehood is something more than being a member of a network or organization of countries. In implying that the E.U. constituted such an arrangement, Gorcevic was unwittingly undercutting the E.U., and in particular its potential in the areas of foreign and military policy. So too had Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, when he said that the E.U. is just a network to which Britain happened to belong. States do not happen to belong as semi-sovereign states to a political union such as the E.U. or U.S., so Cameron committed a category mistake in how he characterized the European Union. So too was Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, in early November 2026, when he spoke on the open breach between his government and the European Commission: “We have to agree with each other, the European Union and Georgia, that we want to se a democratic rule of law-based, human-rights based, economically strong and sovereign Georgia in the European Union.”[2] He added that the Commission’s request that the Georgian government repeal laws that were at odds with the rule-of-law requirement of statehood “interfered with the principle of sovereignty.”[3] Even though Georgia was sovereign at the time, the Commission’s “interference” was in line with the fact that as an E.U. state, Georgia would no longer be fully sovereign because the E.U. itself holds a portion of governmental sovereignty in exclusive and even shared competencies.

Denying the dual-sovereignty feature of (early) modern federalism in either the E.U. or U.S. instantiates a political category mistake with respect to two different types of federalism, which Ken Wheare refers to as modern federalism and confederalism in his text, Federal Government. By the way, neither of Althusius’ plena and nonplena types of federalism, discussed in his text, Political Digest (1603), anticipates modern (dual-sovereignty) federalism, which would not be invented until 1787 in Philadelphia out of political compromise at the American Convention.

Because states do not just happen to belong to a federal union that is both political and economic, as well as being active in social policy, looking out for a degree of basic ideological fit when accessing whether candidate states should be granted statehood is legitimate. The arduous negotiations that took place over years between 2016 and 2020 so Britain could secede from the Union, as well as Viktor Orbán’s use of Hungary’s veto in the European Council when the Commission was sanctioning the state for its rule-of-law violations at home as well as its violations of E.U. law attest to the importance of fit between an incoming state and the other states as well as their Union. A more perfect union means that the federal governmental machinery must not be stymied or even held ransom by a state’s government due to ideological disagreement with a federal policy or, even worse, a refusal to recognize the portion of governmental sovereignty that has been delegated through Basic Law to the Union.

The chair of the European Council, Antonio Costa, wrote in November, 2026 of enlargement in the following terms: “The ambition to join the European Union must help overcome historical grievances, reject nationalist rhetoric, and encourage countries to move towards genuine cooperation.”[4] So Gorcevic was clever to speak of Montenegro’s government as not wanting to “argue with Croatia.”[5] She added, “We want to solve the bilateral disputes.”[6] North Macedonia’s president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, however, was not so clever, assuming she was in favor of statehood, in saying North Macedonia’s “EU accession hopes” were “being held hostage by Bulgaria,” which was “demanding constitutional changes [in North Macedonia] to recognize the Bulgarian minority.”[7] To be sure, the E.U. state of Bulgaria’s concern for Bulgarians in North Macedonia did not take into account, and thus respect, the E.U.’s own requirements that rule-of-law safeguards exist in the states. Again, statehood involves more than merely membership; the constraints on states are greater. Also, the accession of states should not be leveraged by existing states to score points or remake another country’s system of government. For its part, the E.U. justifiably did not want to add a state that is in disputes with existing states, for such internecine “warfare” could impede unity in the Union, and thus block important federal foreign policy and legislation.

Regarding the E.U.’s legitimate interest in being “solid” in foreign policy, and thus able to have political power on the global stage, in an 2026 annual report, the Commission assessed Georgia, Turkey, and Serbia as standing out as candidate states “for their lack of alignment, which could limit their access to ‘gradual integration’.”[8] According to a senior E.U. official at the time, “Common security and defense policy has become an increasingly important dimension in the accession process.”[9] Although such policy included “border management, cybersecurity and the protection of critical infrastructure,” alignment “with sanctions against Russia” was “seen as a key indicator.”[10] Therefore, even though “Gorcevic also said she was hopeful that the recent elections in Serbia would help the Western Balkans in the enlargement process,”[11] Serbia’s closeness to Russia in terms of foreign (and energy) policy relative to the E.U.’s negative stance on Russia means that the reformist Serbia’s Student List win in late October would not necessarily facilitate Serbia’s accession. The unlikelihood that Serbia would recognize Croatia also did not help matters, but political ties to Russia, especially in the midst of its militarily unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, can be viewed as the kiss of death as far as accession is concerned.[12] 

My point is that the E.U.’s concern is entirely justified, given tremendous value of broad consensus on foreign policy inside the E.U, and therefore the Commission was not motivated to manipulate countries outside of the Union by leveraging the desire for statehood so the E.U. could have greater influence in the world. The continuance of the state veto mechanism in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, which together can be likened to the U.S. Senate and its committees, renders broad agreement on foreign policy among E.U. states, and thus candidate states too, as pruden and even perhaps even necessary in order to avoid paralysis at the federal level. Viktor Orban's affinity with Russia's Putin during his invasion of Ukraine weakened the E.U. in its ability to provide a united, federal response in defense of Ukraine. 

One of the chief benefits of the E.U. is that the states separately cannot wield such power internationally as the E.U. can. Enlargement should not be so valued by Europeans that it becomes an end in itself, by which means greater strategic-interest and ideological divergence between states, and thus in the European Council and the Council of the Ministers, can make its way in at the expense of a more perfect Union.

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “Montenegro Rejects ‘Second-Class’ EU Membership as It Eyes 2028 Accession,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.
2. Luca Bertuzzi and Maria Tadeo, “Georgia PM Offers No Way Out of EU Accession Deadlock in Euronews Interview,” 3 November 2026, italics added.
3. Luca Bertuzzi, “Progress and Pitfalls on the Path to a Bigger EU: Five Takeaways from the Euronews Enlargement Summit,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.
4. Ibid.
5. Sandor Zsiros, “Montenegro Rejects ‘Second-Class’ EU Membership as It Eyes 2028 Accession,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.
6. Ibid.
7. Marta Pacheco, “North Macedonia Leader Hits Back at Bulgaria’s Demands for Constitutional Change,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.
8. Luca Bertuzzi, “EU Tying Enlargement to Strategic Alignment Puts Serbia, Georgia and Turkey in a Tight Spot,” Euronews.com, 4 November 2026.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Sandor Zsiros, “Montenegro Rejects ‘Second-Class’ EU Membership as It Eyes 2028 Accession,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.
12. Luca Bertuzzi, “Progress and Pitfalls on the Path to a Bigger EU: Five Takeaways from the Euronews Enlargement Summit,” Euronews.com, 3 November 2026.

U.S. Foreign Policy on Russia: On the Importance of an Educated Electorate

Shortly after the sudden and unexpected death of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior (and hawkish) U.S. senator, on 11 July 2026, the Congress passed, and U.S. President Trump signed, the Graham Act, which is legislation that gives the federal president discretion in adding economic sanctions and higher tariffs to weaken Russia’s military machine by hurting Russia’s economy—especially its lucrative oil industry—because Russia was still invading Ukraine. By Columbus Day, however, President Trump and Russia’s President Putin had made a deal wherein Russia would sell 300,000 tons of diesel to the U.S. and global markets immediately, with an additional 500,000 tons in November and then one million more. President Trump, using his discretion as allowed in the Graham Act, “issued a broad sanctions waiver for Russian diesel until April 2027.”[1] Euronews reported at the time that this move was “raising concerns in Ukraine and among its allies,” most notably the E.U. and in its state capitals.[2] The fact that the deal undercut the Western strategy of pressuring Russia economically so it would withdrawal its military from Ukrainian territory means that the diesel sale and broader waiver did more than raise concerns in Europe. Zelensky was probably hitting his head against a wall in utter disbelief at one point. For his part, Putin, formerly head of the KGB in the U.S.S.R., may have been relieved, and dumbstruck, that the Americans could be such suckers. As is often the case in foreign policy, domestic politics play a role in the motivation of key actors on the world stage. President Trump was facing an upcoming Congressional election in early November and whether Trump’s Republican group would continue to control the U.S. House and U.S. Senate was preoccupying the president in October because if even just one of the two federal legislative chambers would be under the control of the Democratic group, Trump’s legislative will would be compromised at best in getting through Congress. Trump’s political calculus had a lot to do with his knowledge of his base—the voters who would be likely to vote for Republican candidates in November. That base is often a “black box” to many Americans and Europeans alike, and this impedes accurate analysis of Trump’s political calculus in making a deal with Putin that would be sure to anger government officials both in Ukraine and the E.U.

The E.U. foreign minister, Kaja Kalla, responded to the deal by holding firm to the pro-Ukraine Western strategy of trying to weaken Russia economically so it would decamp from Ukrainian territory. “The US is our biggest ally,” she said, “but our message is clear: if we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is (by) putting more pressure on Russia.”[3] Paying for diesel by sending dollars to Putin’s Russia not only does not add to the pressure; Russia’s military “hand” is strengthened financially and even emboldened psychologically. Adding, “Russia has started this war” and “We should not forget about this,” Kallas “urged the White House to enforce [the Graham Act] that envisions  r-reaching sanctions and tariffs” on Russia—not less.[4] Kallas predicted that if the Americans would enforce the Act, enough economic pressure could be put on Russia for it to end the invasion. Trump’s waiver makes the opposite more likely, and if Russia seizes Ukraine, the Russian bear would be on the E.U.’s eastern door-step, emboldened by the weakness not only in the E.U. retaining the veto-power that states enjoy on foreign-policy and European defense legislative proposals in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, but also in the American President refusing to “stay the course” and even augment economic sanctions against Russia.

So why did Trump make the deal and issue the waiver? Lots of ink was used as various opinions were subsequently unleashed on Americans and Europeans alike. Generally, the view was that Trump stupidly thought that the release of 300,000 tons of diesel in October would lower food prices in grocery stores—as the hike in the market price of diesel, which is used by trains, trucks, and ships, had already been passed onto consumers of groceries—in time for the election in early November. Although automobiles typically do not use diesel, perhaps the president thought that the prices of gas in gas stations would fall too. That 300,000 tons of diesel covered just half a day of demand in the U.S., and thus the announcement of the deal hardly touched the world market-prices of diesel, was generally taken to show just how stupid the president was in making the deal in order to get more Americans to vote for candidates of Trump’s group. But such a view is superficial, as it misses what Trump may have known about his voters.

Many voters still inclined to vote Republican in 2026 may have thought that the U.S. buying diesel and thus increasing the supply in the U.S. would mean that gas prices would soon drop substantially. The connection to food prices would be a tougher hurdle, but Trump making this connection in his speeches campaigning for candidates in October would likely be sufficient. Why is this likely so? According to the Pew Research Center, “voters were sharply divided in [the presidential election of] 2024 by whether they have a college degree. Voters with a four-year [college] degree or more education—who constitute about 40% of all voters—favored Harris by a double-digit margin (16 percentage points), which those without a college degree favored Trump by nearly as much (14 points).”[5] The Pew report includes a graph entitled, “Wide divide between voters with and without college degrees continues to be a major factor in Trump-era elections.”[6] A major factor. This is not to say that college graduates have the knowledge and intelligence of an Einstein. Educated political commentators and non-Trump voters alike likely dismissed Trump’s political calculus by failing to realize that many, but not all, voters still in Trump’s “MAGA” base would not think out the problem far enough to include the likely impact on diesel and food prices that 300,000 additional tons of diesel on the world market, especially just weeks before the election. That MAGA and non-Trump voters, and their associated media outlets, are well-known to have very different perceptions of social reality does not account for the differential impact that such a gap in education has in terms of voters’ electoral judgments. That a voter would be more inclined to keep one’s House representative or U.S. senator in office or vote for a new Republican simply off the news that Trump is making deals to increase the amount of gas because the price will then fall a lot is not something that would necessarily occur to a college-educated person who is used to analyzing and thinking through, and has more of a knowledge base in general. In fact, even such a person, already graduated, may not realize that one of the chief benefits of four years of college lies in the improved use of reasoning (i.e., logic) that results from following the train of thought of professors in class, and of scholars in books, and especially in studying material for exams. After such improvement, a person may have trouble recalling what one’s own reasoning was like prior to going to college, and thus realizing how people without a college education think.

In short, Trump knew his base. It didn’t matter that the price of gas would not go down by election day. It didn’t matter that the voters would not see lower food prices in grocery stores. In fact, Trump’s announcement of the deal could outweigh even the most recent release of economic statistics—even that the monthly inflation rate in September was 3.4 percent. 

It is not for naught that Jefferson and Adams agreed that a viable republic—a representative democracy—requires an educated and virtuous self-governing citizenry. After World War II, a college degree rather than just a high school degree became the basic, or assumed, level of education: the base. That 60 percent of the American electorate had—at best—graduated from high school without going on to college in 2024 can thus be taken as the proverbial canary in the coalmine, for demagogues know how to exploit voters whose education is not sufficient for good self-governing (i.e., electoral judgment) that is the basis of any republic. To be sure, ideology plays a role too—voters are not merely rational beings. Values should also play a role in voting, but demagogues can take advantage of a voter’s lack of knowledge and hardship in reasoning through policies and legislation, either already enacted or proposed, even in contorting values. Hence, a poor person could be misled, for example, in voting for a candidate for office who campaigns that he would cut government aid to cover medical insurance and even necessary treatment, or for a candidate who says she would vote against a middle-class tax cut and increasing the earned income tax credit, and vote for a tax cut for people making over $200,000 a year. It is very hard for educated people to comprehend how any voter could be so easily tricked. Even if an anti-government ideology, which, to be sure, is a valid political philosophy, is firmly in place for such a voter, accepting to take most of the hit of government spending-cuts oneself is more difficult to justify, especially if one is barely getting by economically.

Even college educated voters may not reason beyond determining the nugatory price-impact of Trump’s deal with Putin to consider, for example, the impact of the refusal of the U.S. Justice Department to enforce anti-trust law on the relevant industries so market competition could exist and bring down prices to the extent that major oil companies and grocery companies, as well as seed producers and large agri-businesses (e.g., poultry). Ironically, the anti-intellectual prejudice in Trump’s “MAGA” base discouraged such advanced reasoning and analysis from gaining much spotlight (and credibility) in the media. Rule by mob, which both Plato and Aristotle considered to be the bad form of democracy, is antipodal to (i.e., inconsistent with) a meritocracy. This is not to advance Plato’s preference for philosopher kings, wherein a just polis is one wherein reason rules the passions (i.e., of the mob); rather, that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—two very different politicians, with different visions—agreed on anything is reason enough to pay more attention to their joint view that an educated citizenry is important if, as Ben Franklin said, Americans can keep the new republic. Viewing Trump as a threat to democracy is thus entirely too superficial; the threat is much deeper, and much more difficult to correct. The American member-states getting rid of heavy tuition bills foisted on students willing to put in the hard work of years of study would be a good start, but such an investment in civics would require an ability to reason beyond today and immediate self-interest, especially that which is economic. I submit that the state-members of the U.S. should be begging rather than charging their respective citizens to go on to college as a matter of necessity for the republics themselves as viable representative democracies. Moreover, to reason well, to be able cognitively to think things through, can be regarded as a virtue, and, furthermore, particularly in utilitarian America, it is worth mentioning that engaging in reasoning-training by studying knowledge for a sustained period of years (not just two) is useful in all walks of life, rather than just vocationally. Admittedly, I sacrificed too much of my youth to such refining and fortifying, so there is a limit to everything, but getting the U.S. to 60% of voters being college-educated is not asking too much of a citizenry.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU Decries ‘Concerning’ Trump-Putin Deak, Insists Sanctions on Russia Will Continue,” Euronews.com, 12 October 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Hannah Hartig, Scott Keeter, Andrew Daniller, and Ted Van Green, “Voting Patterns in the 2024 Election,” Pew Research Center.
6. Ibid.

St. Francis of Assisi: On War and Greed

St. Francis of Assisi died 800 years before October 4, 2026, assuming that the days dropped in adopting the Gregorian calendar after his death have been incorporated in the calculation. It seems that not only gravity affects time; changing calendars does too. As time passes, how past heroes are viewed changes according to contemporary circumstances and values. Painting of Jesus during the late Roman Empire depict him as a young Roman, with short hair and clean-shaven. During the Middle Ages, when beards and long hair were in style for men, Jesus too was depicted in such terms as we recognize in modernity. Similarly, I contend that Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violence in the West Bank framed the 800^th death-anniversary of Francis in terms of peace and diplomacy being salient in his mission. I contend that this emphasis unduly relegates something more important to him: his strident stance against greed, and even money itself as a symbol of avarice.

The full essay is at "Francis of Assisi."

NAZA: Dehumanization as Foundational to Genocide

While a student at Yale, I took Charlie Musser’s seminar on documentary films on a whim, after having taken two courses oriented to film narrative (not screenwriting). Because my studies were mainly in philosophy of religion, historical theology, and history at Yale, I think neither Charlie nor I knew quite why I was taking his course. At the time, I would not have thought that I would be writing on the genre thirty years later. The film, NAZA (2026), makes my earlier endeavor entirely worthwhile, and integrated into my main academic areas of study and research, which include ethics and political theory. The documentary “examines ‘the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians’” in Gaza, and as of October, the theatrical release was being extended due to so many sold-out showings.[1] The Venice Film Festival awarded the film with the Special Jury Prize, and the two filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, “received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at the festival.”[2] The film can be interpreted as documenting the magnified harsh effects that unchecked power over other people can have when those others are dehumanized. It is interesting how close “NAZA” is to another word, NAZI.

The full essay is at "NAZA."

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1. David Mouriquand, “Gaza Documentary ‘NAZA’ Beating ‘Avengers Endgame” Encore’ at Box Office,” Euronews.com, 1 October 2026.

2.Ibid.