On America’s Dominance in NATO: The E.U. as a Contributory Factor

Just after the E.U. had successfully negotiated (mostly) free-trade treaties with India and a few South American state-level countries, the E.U. and U.S. were at odds on the ownership and control of Greenland to such an extent that the NATO alliance was strained if not fraught. The resulting power-vacuum with respect to military alliances could be filled by the E.U. strengthening its federal foreign policy and defense powers and forming a military alliance with India and even South America in order to put less reliance and thus pressure on the weakened NATO alliance.  This is not to say that new military alliances would necessarily or even probably form; rather, such alliances would be in line with the dynamics and logic of power itself at the international level. I contend that the unbalanced balance of federal-state power in foreign policy and defense in the E.U. was a major contributory factor of the dominance of the U.S. in NATO.

U.S. President’s politically aggressive threats regarding making Greenland a U.S. territory (but not a state) made the American dominance in NATO suddenly unsavory to the Europeans. At the end of January, 2026, the former European Council president Charles Michel was unusually blunt by European (but not American Midwestern) standards. “NATO chief Mark Rutte should stop being an ‘American agent’ and unite the fraught military alliance in the face of the United States’ ‘hostile rhetoric’ and ‘intimidation’,” Michel told Euronews.[1] Whereas his words, hostile rhetoric and intimidation, applied to President Trump were nothing new; it was the expression, American agent, that stood out. Even though the dominance of the mighty American military power in NATO was hardly news, that Michel said it out loud signaled the depth of the Europeans’ displeasure at Trump’s overt messaging on Greenland. Michel was just as blunt about Rutte himself. “I want to be clear, Mark Rutte is disappointing and I’m losing confidence. . . . I’m not expecting Mark Rutte to be an American agent. I’m expecting Mark to work for unity within NATO,” Michel said.[2]

Rutte’s claim that Trump was the “Daddy” of NATO was admittedly over the top (Trump’s ego hardly needed the accolade of Daddy), but Michel’s criticism is weaker concerning Rutte’s efforts to find “an off-ramp for Trump to climb down on his recent threats to trigger a trade war” with the E.U. over differences on Greenland.[3] Dissipating the related economic and political escalations between countries in NATO served the interests of unity in NATO, so Rutte deserves credit for providing Trump with an off-ramp.

Michel also claimed that the E.U. had been a “very loyal partner” to the U.S. and thus did not deserve Trump’s threats.[4] Instead of going on to analyze the relative validity of the positions of the E.U. and U.S. on which continent should own and control Greenland, the road less travelled by analysts concerns the argument that the E.U. would be more likely to reach a parity of power with the U.S. in NATO were the E.U. states willing to transfer more governmental sovereignty to the federal level in foreign policy and defense. This would include (but not be limited to) moving off reliance on the principle of unanimity to hold votes in the Council by qualified-majority. As the executive branch, the Commission would of course have more shared and exclusive competencies (i.e., enumerated powers) in foreign affairs and militarily (with control over more than the 60,000 troops). As in the U.S., both the states and the Union would have armies, and the Commission could temporarily borrow the state militias as needed. That the state governments have direct power in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, whereas the American states are only indirectly represented in the U.S. Senate, means that the E.U. would be less likely to abuse its federal police and even the federal borrowing of state armies as Trump was able to do.

Moreover, that the U.S. had become so violent, in part due to the astounding corruption in local police departments and in part due to the Trump administration is itself a reason why E.U. citizens and their elected representatives have good reason to bolster defense at the federal level. Gone were the days when America stood for the little guys rather than the bullies in the world. Unfortunately, the language that speaks most clearly to Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin is that of counter-force. Were the E.U. not so bottom-heavy militarily (i.e., reliant on the state armies), perhaps a federal force could have gone into Ukraine and Gaza to push the aggressors back. Might-Makes-Right would have suffered a set-back rather than stand to become the default in post post-World War II global order. Therefore, the Europeans could stand to do some navel gazing on why the U.S. has been so dominate in NATO.  

1. Mared G. Jones, “Mark Rutte Should Stop Being an ‘American Agent’ and Unite NATO, Charles Michel Says,” Euronews.com, January 30, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

E.U.-India Free Trade

Early in 2026, “(a)fter months of intense negotiations,” the E.U. concluded “a free-trade deal with India,” which, if ratified by the E.U.’s upper and lower chambers (the European Council and the European Parliament), would sharply reduce “tariffs on E.U. products from cars to wine as the world looks for alternative markets following President Donald Trump’s tariffs.”[1] Signaling that something more than trade was involved in the treaty, “(b)oth countries hailed a ‘new chapter in strategic relations’ as both sides” sought “alternatives to the US market.”[2] The E.U. had just engineered a free-trade treaty with four South American countries. Competition for better, cheaper, trade was reducing Trump’s bargaining power by means of tariffs. Using them to inflict geopolitical harm on other countries, including the E.U., would become less effective as free-trade deals excluding the U.S. materialized. The implications, and even the motive in the free-trade negotiations between the E.U. and India, extend beyond economics.

At the time, India was “facing tariffs of 50% from the Trump administration.”[3] Half of that percentage was a penalty on India for buying Russian oil. The tariffs “severely dented” India’s exports and thus gave India a huge incentive to negotiate with the Europeans. On the European side of the equation, Trump had just threatened to impose tariffs on any country opposing the American purchase of Greenland before relenting at Davos. Such market uncertainty had momentarily stirred Wall Street and shaken European export-oriented businesses. Quite understandably, given such uncertainty, E.U. President von der Leyen was emphatic when the India deal was reached. “We did it—we delivered the mother of all deals,” she said.[4] “This is the tale of two giants,” she added, “who choose partnership in a true win-win fashion. A strong message that cooperation is the best answer to global challenges.”[5] The American president, von der Leyen’s counterpart, was without doubt among the challenges, which also included Russia’s militaristically aggressive president and the wholly unrepentant genocidal state of Israel. The broader message from the E.U.-India trade announcement is that the bad boys can be obviated, and that really good trade deals can be reached as a result.

The E.U.’s trade minister Sefcovic observed that the pressing need to find other markets and thus insulate E.U. trade from whimsical American impediments to E.U.-U.S. trade gave an incentive for negotiations to proceed “with a new philosophy” of avoiding subjecting sensitive goods to free trade. “If this is sensitive for you, let’s not touch it,” he explained as the new modus operendi in the negotiations.[6] I contend the pressing mutual interests to render Trump’s threats powerless fostered this new strategy. That is, both countries looked “to de-risk their economies from the threat of Trump’s tariffs.”[7] The hurdles that had scuttled E.U.-India trade negotiations beginning in 2007 were thus obviated at least in part due to the erratic trade policies coming out of Washington.

It is significant that the E.U. characterized the deal with India as an instance of “rules-based cooperation.”[8] Russia and Israel were both severely breaching international rules, and even U.S. President Trump’s whimsical application and withdrawal of tariffs can be viewed as contrary to the constancy of rules. Business abhors such volatility, and so do most governments. The bad boys are the exception, and the good boys and girls were smart to work around the baddies. Given the extent and depth of corruption (i.e., lies and refusals to enforce criminal law with impunity) and the sheer, unprovoked aggressiveness in the police departments of too many of the U.S.'s member-states and at the federal level, where the aggression directed at Minnesota citizens was nothing short of animalistic in January, 2026, the challenge to a rules-based rather than power/whim-based order was a major American problem beyond “merely” Washington having supplied weapons to Israel to wipe Gaza and its people off the map—literally into cold, wet tents.  

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1. Peggy Corlin and Maria Tadeo, “EU Inks ‘Mother of All Deals’ with India Trade Agreement Amid Global Turmoil,” Euronews.com, January 27, 2026.
2. Ibid., italics added.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

Ukraine’s Zelensky Nails the E.U.

On a day when “(a)pproximately 4,000 building in Kyiv lacked heating . . . as temperatures plunged to -20C amid Ukraine’s coldest winter in years, almost four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “delivered a scathing critique of European inaction at the World Economic Forum . . . , declaring that the continent ‘looks lost’ and remains trapped in endless repetition of failing to defend itself or decisively support Ukraine.”  Zelensky lamented, “Repeating the same thing for weeks, months, and of course, years. And yet that is exactly how we live now.”  In particular, he was referring to the fact that just as the U.S. had been sinking drug boats, the E.U. could have been sinking Russian oil tankers even near Greenland. “We will solve this problem with Russian ships,” he said. “They can sink near Greenland just like they sink near Crimea.”  Why was Europe repeating the same “day” over and over again, as in the film starring Bill Murry, Groundhog’s Day? Zelensky had the presence of mind to identify the root problem though his wording was antiquated.

Contrasting the U.S. with the E.U., Zelensky lamented, “The fact remains, Maduro is on trial in New York. Sorry, but Putin is not on trial. . . . The man who started it is not only free, he’s still fighting for his frozen money in Europe.”  Questioning “why Trump could seize shadow fleet tankers and oil while Europe could not, noting that oil funds the war against Ukraine,” Zelensky said, “If Putin has no money, there’s no war for Europe.”  The point is that the E.U. could have acted to thwart Putin’s military might by cutting off oil revenue. Such action even years earlier seems like a no-brainer, given Zelensky’s logic: “Today they target Ukraine. Tomorrow it could be any NATO country,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to cut Russia off from components making missiles, or destroy factories making them?”  That could be done directly by bombing the factories and boycotting Russia, and indirectly by bombing Russian oil in tankers, whether Russian or not. It was, in other words, in the interest of the Europeans in the E.U. to cut off the Russian war-machine rather than appease it with inaction. 

As for the E.U.’s reliance on a few of its states to defend Greenland amid U.S. President Trump’s intention to invade or purchase the island, Zelensky noted the significance of the weak response by saying, ‘If you send 14 or 40 soldiers to Greenland, what is that for? What message does it send? What is the message to Putin, to China? And even more importantly, what message does it send to Denmark, your close ally? Forty soldiers will not protect anything.”  Even as Zelensky was insightful in drawing out these wider implications, he made a political category mistake in mischaracterizing one E.U. state, Denmark, as an ally in the E.U., for a state in a federal union is neither an ally (i.e., equivalent) to the union itself nor an ally to other such states. Unlike allies, E.U. states have delegated a portion of their respective governmental sovereignty to a federal level (e.g., exclusive competencies, as well as qualified-majority voting).  In fact, Zelensky was undercutting his own argument in so doing.

In particular, and here we get to the main point, “Zelenskyy criticized Europe’s fragmented response to global challenges, declaring the continent ‘still feels more like geography, history, tradition, not a great political power’ and ‘remains a fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers.’”  Even in sending a few thousand troops from a few E.U. states rather than a federal response going beyond loose cooperation, the E.U. showed itself in relief as having succumbed to its parts (i.e., states). Zelensky actually fed the undergirding Euroskeptic, anti-federalist European ideology by referring not to states or even member-states, but to small and middle powers as if the E.U. did not even exist. If he was referring to small and large E.U. states as “small and middle powers,” Zelensky was missing the point that whether large or small, an E.U. state is an E.U. state. Mischaracterizing E.U. states as small and middle powers, and the E.U. as the unnamed large power not only ignores the E.U.’s immense weakness, especially with regard to its own states, but also ignores that in a federation, there are only two levels: the state level and the federal level. 

In short, if Zelensky wanted a stronger, more perfect Union in Europe, a “great power,” he should have said so, explicitly: the E.U. needs more competencies, or enumerated powers, in foreign policy and defense, subject to qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Instead, the way he described “small and middle” powers in his speech at Davos undermined his own goal. He claimed that Europe needed to learn at least how to defend itself, but since his last address at Davos a year earlier, “nothing has changed.”  He lamented that in Europe, everyone “turned attention to Greenland and its clear most leaders [in Europe] are not sure what to do about it.”  Meanwhile, Europe’s “small and middle” powers were reluctant to provide Ukraine with advanced weapons systems. Relying on the U.S. had become foolish, and yet the E.U. was still not stepping up to the plate (an expression from baseball) to bat in foreign policy and defense. 

It was long since time for structural change be made in the division of competencies between the federal and state systems of government in the E.U., especially with the U.S. eyeing Greenland and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine having been going on for nearly four years by early 2026 when Zelensky delivered his speech to the world’s economic and political elite in Davos. It was time, in other words, for the governors of the states to “step up to the plate” and agree to federalize more authority in foreign affairs and defense. After all, those state governments had enough direct power at the federal level in the European Council and the Council of Ministers to act as a check, even under qualified-majority vote, on federalized foreign policy and defense. The U.S. could take a lesson in this respect and replace elected U.S. senators with governors in that union’s higher legislative chamber to step federal encroachment on the retained and residual governmental sovereignty of the member-states there.  

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1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Zelenskyy Says Europe ‘Looks Lost’ and Living in ‘Groundhog Day’ in Scathing Davos Address,” Euronews.com, January 22, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

On the Global Order: Experts Missing the Big Picture

Although the reasoning of government officials in foreign policy can be impeccable, they are susceptible to being so oriented to the intricacies of the “chess” playing that they may actually be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, a ship that sank in the icy Atlantic in 1912. At a talk by American foreign-policy experts at Yale’s School of Global Affairs in March, 2025, Ely Ratner, who served as an assistant secretary of defense, and Celeste Wallander, who was also an assistant secretary, joined Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) to speak mainly on U.S. foreign policy in regard to Russia and China; only scant mention was made of the situation in Gaza even though a holocaustic genocide was well underway there. What the speakers said about the post-World War II world order was most telling; what they did not say, however, spoke volumes.

The talk was incredibly timely. On the very same day, Oscar-winning filmmaker, Hamdan Ballal, who had won for the film, “No Other Land,” was allegedly beaten by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, after which he—not the Israeli thugs—was arrested and detained by the Israeli military, ostensibly so he could get medical attention.[1] Were he in Gaza, where the Israeli military had recently bombed two hospitals, he might well have died getting medical treatment. On the very next day, Euronews reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had told U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic.”[2] Hegseth was doubtlessly referring to Europe’s reliance on the U.S. militarily since the end of World War II. With Russia invading Ukraine, the Trump Administration was urging the E.U., including its state governments, to increase their defense-spending. Hegseth said nothing about Israel’s crimes against humanity in the occupied Gaza territory.

I contend that the impunity that both aggressive Russia and Israel were enjoying are but symptoms of the slow demise of the post-World War II global order. Although Ratner agreed with this conclusion, and the other two speakers at Yale agreed, they all pointed out that elements of the existing order were still working and should be retained. However, such elements were no match for the obvious impunity that by 2025 came with military invasion and none of the speakers proffered an alternative to the existing world order, even though Ratner warned that President Trump’s “spheres of influence” basis for international relations was dangerous, for it could mean that the U.S. could take Greenland and Russia could subjugate Ukraine with impunity.

That none of the speakers mentioned the United Nations at all is significant because that international organization’s utter failure to enforce its own resolutions and even kick out countries that had willfully and repeatedly violated resolutions (e.g., Russia and Israel) attests to dire need for a new international order. That the UN had allowed certain members of the Security Council to shamelessly exploit a conflict of interest in wielding the veto on their own behalf or to protect their allies strongly suggests that a new global organization was urgently needed by 2025. Nevertheless, none of the three speakers at Yale even mentioned the UN. Instead, they were essentially rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic.

People who work too closely within a given institutional order can easily succumb to missing the forest for the trees—focusing minutely on even the design of a leaf and thus missing the forest-fire going on even nearby. Meanwhile, radicals with no vested vocational and monetary interest in the existing order can easily become so utopian that their proposals simply cannot be taken seriously.  In the rise and fall of world orders, people at credible vantage-points issuing realistic proposals that go beyond tweaking existing institutions are needed. A former undersecretary of the UN who spoke at Harvard in 2025 agreed with me that the UN could not be adequately reformed because none of the five veto-powers on the Security Council would agree to give up their power even though doing so would enable the UN to pass resolutions against even governments committing crimes against humanity. Even extirpating the vetoes from the Security Council would not be sufficient; the UN would need military power of its own with which to enforce its resolutions on recalcitrant national governments. Fears of a world government coming from populist fringes, which would likely include religion over-reaching, could shout over realistic explanations that a semi-sovereign federation would not be a world government in the sense of dominating national governments. At the regional level, both the E.U. and U.S. demonstrate that governmental sovereignty can indeed by divided between federal and state governmental systems within a federal system.

Given the human-caused breach of the climate by excessive carbon-pollution, the existence of nuclear bombs many times over, and both the scale and severity made possible by modern technology of crimes against humanity—as perpetrated for instance by Nazi Germany and then Israel—continuing to rely on a global system based on an absolutist version of national sovereignty absent any global-level accountability is nothing short of reckless. In my experience at both Harvard and Yale, I heard nothing said either by the faculty or visiting officials on how humanity could realistically move on from the antiquated world order. Meanwhile, Israel and Russia continued with their toxic military activities unabated.

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1. Elise Morton, “Oscar Winning Palestinian Director Hamdan Ballal Allegedly Attacked by Israeli Settlers,” Euronews.com, March 25, 2025.
2. Tamsin Paternoster, “’Pathetic European Free-Loading’: US Officials Slam Europe in Leaked Chat,” Euronews.com, March 25, 2025.

Mixing Trade and Defense Policy: The E.U.-U.S. Bilateral Relationship

Trade and war have historically been related, as, for example, money from recurring surplus balances of trade—an alternative to debt—has facilitated military build-ups prior to going to war in the Europe. In threatening to take Greenland by military force if the E.U. state of Denmark continued to refuse to sell the island and then issuing 10% tariffs against Denmark and other E.U. states, as well as two sovereign European states for having sent troops to defend Greenland in case the U.S. were to invade, President Trump closely wielded trade and military policy. The E.U.’s response was unbalanced, being oriented only to the trade element of the E.U.-U.S. bilateral relationship, due to weaknesses in the E.U.’s federal system.

In January, 2026, President Trump’s announced that “a 10% tariff on all products coming from eight European countries”—the E.U. states of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany plus Britain, which had seceded from the E.U., and stand-alone Norway—would begin on February 1^st and increase substantially months later “until a deal is reached for the ‘complete and total purchase of Greenland’.”[1] Those states had just sent troops to Greenland as doing so would prevent Trump from using military force to invade the island. The E.U. itself was inactive on this military front even though the independent coordination between a few states in sending troops lacked not only the united action, but also the political leverage that the E.U. could have provided in pushing back against Trump’s threats. That the E.U. is more than the sum of its parts (i.e., states) seems perpetually to be lost on Europeans, whose primary political instinct would be called “states’ rights” in American terms. In fact, the Euroskeptic ideology has gone so far as to misconceive of the E.U. itself as merely a trading “bloc,” such that adding competencies, or enumerated powers, in foreign policy and defense would by implication seem taboo.

Accordingly, rather than the European Commission, the Parliament, and the Council coordinating legislative and even “basic law” action to bolster the E.U.’s military reaction to Trump’s threats, calls were instead for the E.U. to “deploy its ultimate anti-coercion tool against the US . . .”[2] That instrument had been adopted by the E.U. in 2023 “to combat political blackmail through trade” and “would allow the E.U. to restrict third countries from participating in public procurement tenders. Limit trade licenses and shut off access to the single market.”[3] The use of the instrument would be in accord with the mistaken, ideologically convenient view that the E.U. is primarily a trade organization. Besides misconstruing the E.U.’s three pillars as exclusively economic in nature, the “geopolitical ramifications” of using the legislative instrument to “severely impact U.S. services and products” would be extrinsic. Furthermore, if those ramifications would cause the U.S. to militarily invade Greenland, the E.U. would have to rely on its states to respond militarily. I submit that such a military response would be suboptimal relative to a federal response.

President Trump’s geopolitical close linkage of trade policy and military strategy with respect to Greenland demonstrates just how deficient and costly the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology has been with respect to the E.U. being thought of as primarily economic in nature. That the states sending troops to Greenland “reiterated their ‘full solidarity’” with the E.U. state of Denmark is not the same as a foreign-policy statement coming from the E.U.’s foreign minister. Even concerning the E.U.’s anti-coercion law, that the E.U. states of Germany and France were planning on pushing “their European partners to use all tools at their disposal” rather than work through the E.U.’s Council, which represents the states, demonstrates the anti-federalist, states’ rights ideology at work at the expense of federal action.[4] To be sure, it is difficult for governors of states to give up power to a federal level. The question is perhaps how deficient the E.U. must become in a changing world in which trade is increasingly intertwined with geopolitical and even military interests and activity before the E.U.’s state governments are willing to delegate enough competencies, or enumerated powers, to the Union in foreign policy and defense so the benefits of collective action can be realized. It is significant that, “across the pond” from the E.U., U.S. President Trump was happy to pit E.U. states against each other without any pushback with teeth from President Von der Leyen.

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1. Maria Tadeo, “Pressure Grows on the E.U. to Deploy Trade Bazooka against Trump’s Greenland Tariff Threat,” Euronews.com, 18 January 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Eleonora Vasques and Mared Gwyn Jones, “France and Germany Push to Use EU Anti-Coercion Tools If Trump’s New Tariffs Become Reality,” Euronews.com, 19 January, 2026.

Distortions of Political Perspective in Foreign Affairs

When the human mind becomes too affixed to a political ideology, rather it is “right,” “center,” or “left,” one way that the excessive attachment can be seen by other people is by perspectival distortion. A very basic illustration of this cognitive-perceptional lapse is when someone claims that only X but not Y is problematic even though both X and Y can be criticized using the same or even related criteria. Besides the fact that ideology is inherently partial rather than wholistic, “sins of omission” concerning X or Y (but not both) due to a cognitive-perspectival distortion, which in turn comes from the partiality of any ideology, can easily be viewed as unethical in virtue of being patently unfair as well as self-serving, ideologically. This very abstract paragraph sprang from news reports of U.S. Senator Linsey Graham referring to Iran’s Khamenei as a Hitler-figure while giving Israel’s Netanyahu a pass even though by January 11, 2026 when Graham spoke, the large-scale killing and suffering of a people had easily dwarfed the few thousand Iranian protesters who had been killed on the street. Even mentioning an equivalence would have been sufficient in terms of which leader comes closer to being a 21^st century Hitler. As a result, the U.S. senator’s credibility undoubtedly took a hit—except, interestingly, to people sharing the senator’s foreign-policy ideology. This too flags political ideology itself as problematic for the human mind.

On the Fox News’ program, “Sunday Morning Futures,” Graham urged regime-change in Iran. “If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people,” Graham said.[1] On the very same day, activists said that “Iran has killed at least 544 people and even more are feared dead.”[2] That Because Graham had very recently joined President Trump on a flight on Air Force One, the senator’s statements had likely been planned in order to prepare the American people a possible American military action to remove Iran’s dictator, whose democratic legitimacy was probably as great as Putin’s in Russia given all of the hand-picked “opposition” candidates.

Although Graham’s statement, “You gotta end this,” can be thusly construed as having really come from Trump himself, that the line applied even more so to what the Israeli government had been inflicting in Gaza for years by then and yet Graham did not mention this obvious point evinces the sort of ideological distortion that can so easily flag a politician’s credibility. 

With the Qatar News Agency reporting also on January 11, 2026 that the death toll in Gaza had reached 71,412, with 171,314 injured (and with entire cities destroyed, perhaps over a million people homeless and hungry), it is significant that Graham referred to Iran’s leader as a “modern-day Hitler” without even mentioning even the possibility that the holocaustic genocide still going on in Gaza qualified Netanyahu, a war criminal still wanted by the International Criminal Court, for the same infamous title.[3] In fact, with some high officials of the Israeli government having stated that death is not enough for the residents of Gaza—all of whom being presumably culpable for Hamas’ attack in October, 2023 in which less than 1,500 Israelis were killed and/or taken hostage—the holocaustic, extra-suffering, extension from “mere” genocide arguably qualified Netanyahu and his henchmen as democratically-elected “Nazis” for wanting to exterminate a subjugated people. Even though Iran’s government could claim to have been democratically elected through a legal fiction of “opposition” candidates pre-selected by Iran’s highest body of clergy, the case of Israel demonstrates that a democracy is capable of conducting a holocaust, or at least a genocide. Incidentally, German’s President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, so Hitler came to power in a democracy, so the distinction between autocracy and democracy with regard to going on to perpetuate crimes against humanity (and war crimes) is not as clear as politicians such as Lindsey Graham would like to suppose.

Essentially, Graham ignored the elephant in the living room—the invisible elephant in plain view—while abhorring just over 500 Iranian protesters having just been killed. This slight, I contend, was no oversight, and it demonstrates just how culpable political ideology itself can be when firmly held by the human brain. The resulting distortion, or warping, can enable even enormous suffering and death unleashed by a state with impunity. By implication, no one power in the world can be counted on to play the role of the global “policeman.” Rather, the U.S. could go in to protect the Iranian protesters while another large power, such as China, could go in to exterminate the Israeli troops in Gaza, and perhaps even in the West Bank. This would be superior to a partial action, but even more superior would be a world federation with enough delegated military power of its own or on call to protect civilians in any country or occupied territory, and thus fairly, in which the scale and severity of unmitigated and unjustified atrocities committed by a military reach a threshold.

Lest a world federation with limited governmental sovereignty checkable by a qualified-majority of countries, whether sovereign states or political unions, seem too far-fetched, it is worth reflecting on the enabling by large-scale organizational management (i.e., efficiency) and military technological “progress” (i.e., bigger, more powerful weapons) of the drastically increased scale and severity of the genocidal holocausts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Eichmann’s application of efficiency to the network of trains going to and from the concentration camps, and the Israeli ability to bomb or bulldoze each and every building even in large cities in Gaza demonstrate just how large the destructive capacity of humans directed at entire peoples can be. So the value that a world federation—one that would be unlike the UN and the ICC in that enforcement powers would be included—in the 21^st century is much greater than in the eighteenth century when Kant wrote his treatise on perpetual peace. In that book, the European philosopher argues that the establishment of a world federation would make world peace possible but admittedly not probable. Although such odds may apply three centuries later, human nature remaining constant, the need for a world federation has become much greater. 

The President Trump’s government giving Netanyahu’s Israeli government a pass and negotiating with Russia’s Putin on the  latter’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, while extracting the sitting president of Venezuela and hinting that Iran might be next is so dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary from a global rather than self-interested perspective that leaving the world order in the hands of impotent international organizations (i.e., the U.N. and the ICC) can be considered to be downright reckless. The ideological and related self-centered vulnerabilities of the human mind, together with the enhanced scale and severity of the infliction of suffering and even death, render a world-order based on absolute sovereignty at the nation-state and political-union levels as antiquated, and yet we continue to rely on just such an order. That’s the idea.

1. Lee Moran, “Lindsey Graham Urges Donald Trump to Kill ‘Modern-Day Hitler’ in Iran,” The Huffington Post, January 12, 2026.
2. Jon Grambrell, “Death Toll in Crackdown on Protests in Iran Spikes to at Least 544, Activists Say,”

3. Lee Moran, “Lindsey Graham Urges Donald Trump to Kill ‘Modern-Day Hitler’ in Iran,” The Huffington Post, January 12, 2026. On the report on Gaza, see QNA.org (accessed January 13, 2026).

A Hobbesian World of Might-Makes-Right

In his famous text, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as one of might, or raw force, being the decider of what is rightly and determinatively so. If one person physically harms another person such that the latter’s food may be taken by the former, then that food belongs to the victor even without any overarching normative, or moral, constraint that says that the food still belongs to the vanquished. If Trump's statement that Putin has "won" some regions of Ukraine by military means is correct, then those occupied lands will have been decided by might as if that constitutes right. That Israel has physically decimated Gaza's cities and placed its indigenous residents in concentration camps without enough food or access to medical care with impunity means that the plight of the Palestianians has been decided by might, not right. 

In short, possession is really 99 percent of ownership. Might makes right. Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief-of-staff, described this world "order" in responding to questions on whether the U.S. planned to invade Greenland. "Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. . . . We live in a world, in the real world, . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."[1] In this system, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, simply does not exist or is a target. Evolution has not changed human nature from the hunter-gatherer “stage.” To be sure, not all of humanity is on board with this sort of global order, even if guns have a way of pushing down or even silencing the more progressive elements of the species. The Trump administration’s attacks on the ICC represent a case in point.

The absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty feeds into the functioning of a might-makes-right world. “Global standards for how civilians must be treated and how to wage war are often, in the eyes of the Trump administration, a hindrance and a violation of national sovereignty.”[2] The implication is that unimpeded national sovereignty not only comes without danger, but is also the best system for international relations and thus the prosperity and happiness of the species. Rather than merely criticizing Trump’s “unprecedented campaign against a core institution of international law, the International Criminal Court,” the assumptions underlying a global system of unfettered national sovereignty merit critique, given the unnecessarily unheeded power-aggrandizing actions of Stalin and Hitler in the twentieth century. The military exploits of the Empire of Japan can be added to the list as well. In the next century, the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the mass-killing and starvation of Gaza’s indigenous residents by Israeli Zionists demonstrate the fallacy of a stable world to be brought about by unrestrained national sovereignty, given the underlying human nature that manifests too easily as the instinct of power-aggrandizement. In short, the Israeli genocide in Gaza demonstrates that the Nazi holocaust was not a “one off” deviation from human nature, but rather is closer to mainstream human nature than was realized during the last half of the twentieth century. Indeed, the genocide in Gaza may be reckoned by history as yet another holocaust writ large.

Nevertheless, and as evidence that might-makes-right can continue even amid such atrocities in progress, the Trump administration “used America’s disproportionate global financial power and threats of further repercussions to hinder the [ICC’s] work and create a chilling effect—even as Palestinians [continued] to face U.S.-backed Israeli policies that ICC judges said could constitute grave crimes, and that could undermine Trump’s own stated vision of peace for Gaza.”[3] Rather than focus on the role of private investor-capital in planned development projects being planned for Gaza absent its indigenous population, I want to highlight the disproportionateness of a might-makes-right superpower as itself being a problem unless might-make-right is deemed salvific for humanity. For the ICC, the raw power in the disproportionate military and financial power of the Trump administration over other countries presented “an existential paradox: The ICC’s pursuit of accountability over Gaza is both the reason it has a target on its back, and proof that it [i.e., the ICC] is necessary.”[4] But to be necessary and largely impotent against the power of the disproportionate enabler of Israel (and perhaps even Russia) is to be in the worst of two worlds, as it were.

Put another way, the very existence of a partisan “world police force” presents the ICC with its greatest threat as well as its highest raison d’etre. With such a police force operating on the basis of might-makes-right internationally, that same rationale can be seized upon by other partisans internationally to engage in power-aggrandizement activities of their own, even against the global police-force itself. Such a system is inherently self-contradictory, in other words, and thus weak as a system in which the world order can be in order rather than chaos and upheaval. That the dogma of absolutist national sovereignty sanctions and protects parchment-constraints at the national level (and below) saves such a system from being chaotic from top to bottom, but as Trump’s second presidency demonstrated, a might-make-right foreign-oriented attitude can easily be translated into efforts to walk through constraints at the national level, such as legislatures and courts. 

Arresting and deporting a person deemed to be an illegal immigrant before one has the chance to challenge the actions judicially enjoys the default of a fait accompli. Quelle domage. The Trump administration could simply inform a judge that the suspect is no longer under U.S. jurisdiction so there is nothing that can be done. Such a tactic is well-known to the might-makes-right mentality.  This point should not be taken to excuse or accept illegal immigration as if it were not a crime and one worthy of punishment and expulsion by the rule and thus due process of law. 

Might-makes-right hates to be subject to, or constrained by the rule of law as the mentality sees itself as the law. It is easy for this mentality oriented to foreign affairs to be turned inward while using absolutist national sovereignty as a shield both domestically and internationally. Trump, "himself convicted of felonies, has promoted impunity for various violations of domestic and international law; in addition to opposing the ICC warrant for Netanyahu, Trump is supporting the Israeli leader's bid for a pardon over his corruption charges from Israeli prosecutors."[5]

I contend that such a world of both domestic and international impunity from the constraint of an externally imposed law represents a step backward for the species. Given the foregone benefits that political development could otherwise deliver, the phenomenon worthy to be examined goes beyond the legitimacy and functioning of the ICC and the American foreign policy on Israel and even Russia. The post-World War II international efforts to subject might-makes-right to constraints internationally were being cast off and even attacked a few decades into the next century with the implication being that nothing but might-makes-right might be left standing.

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1. Chris Cameron, "Miller Says Imperialism Is Justified in Greenland," The New York Times, January 7, 2026.
2. Akbar S. Ahmed, “Trump’s Pressure Campaign on the ICC Is Falling Apart,” The Huffington Post, December 3, 2025.
3.. Ibid., italics added.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., italics added.