Tuesday, January 27, 2026

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.  


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.

Thursday, January 22, 2026

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.  


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.

Tuesday, January 20, 2026

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.


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.

Monday, January 19, 2026

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 1st 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.


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.

Tuesday, January 13, 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 21st 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 21st 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.


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).

Thursday, January 8, 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.


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.

Poised to Take on the U.S. Military: All Five Danish Soldiers in Greenland

Even though Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine was prompting E.U. officials to bolster the union’s defenses in 2025, U.S. President Trump’s statements early in 2026 in favor of the U.S. buying or invading Greenland, an “autonomous” part of the E.U. state of Denmark, triggered defensive rhetoric in that state’s government. I contend that the rhetoric was largely, though not completely, hyperbolic, and that more substantial statements could have come from the E.U.’s foreign minister because the E.U. is, as an empire-scale political union of states, equivalent to the U.S.[1] That the E.U. could in principle take on the U.S. is enough to view the Danish state’s rhetoric as hyperbolic, and thus as not credible enough to dissuade an American invasion of Greenland.

In January, 2026, Denmark’s Defense Ministry, which doubtless would be jealous in giving up even any part of its military powers so the E.U. could “walk with a big stick” rather than mere public statements, felt the need to confirm the 1952 military directive that directs soldiers stationed in Greenland to fire immediately, rather than upon orders issued by superiors, upon any other military invading the island. Danish military personnel would be required to “immediately take up the fight” even if their respective commanders are not aware that Denmark has issued a declaration of war.[2] That public confirmation was triggered by U.S. President Trump having “repeatedly threatened to take control of Greenland by force if necessary, describing the Arctic territory as vital to American national security.”[3] Trump had recently directed his military forces to extract the sitting president of Venezuela to face trial in New York City, so officials in not only Greenland, but also Mexico and even Iran in addition to little Denmark were understandably on edge.[4]

The hyperbole was in the Danish governor’s statement that an attempt to take Greenland by the U.S. would mark the end of NATO.[5] “If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country military,” Mette Frederiksen said, “then everything stops. That is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of World War II.”[6] Tellingly, she omitted any mention of the E.U. even though the fact that Denmark was at the time a semi-sovereign state in a political, economic, and social (policy) union is more significant than that Denmark was in an international military alliance. The prime minister’s omission reveals a lot, and is consistent with the anti-federalist ideology in Europe. At the very least, she could have threatened that if NATO would go down, presumably from her insistance alone, she would use her power in the European Council to propose an exclusive competency by which to strengthen the E.U. militarily—something that would displease the sitting American president, who preferred to meet with governors of E.U. states rather than with President Von der Leyen and the President of the Council (the counterpart of the American Vice President, who is the President of the U.S. Senate, which represents the States).

Threatening that an American invasion of an autonomous territory of Denmark would cause NATO to collapse is not something that the U.S. State Department or President Trump would (or should) take very seriously, especially with more than a few NATO countries being in the neighborhood of Putin’s military prowess in Ukraine at the time. The hint or outright claim that Denmark could unilaterally “pull the plug” on a giant military alliance reflects back on the state’s government at the expense of the credibility of its public statements. Such hyperbole can actually make an invasion more likely because weakness often tries to make itself look stronger than it is. In fact, even Denmark's threat of military force to repell an American invasion could be viewed as hyperbolic. Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief-of-staff, told CNN, "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."[7] Even if Denmark would not cave once the U.S. has gained actual possession of the territory, the odds in terms of military strength were against the small E.U. state.

The E.U.’s case for additional competencies in defense and foreign affairs is actually strengthened when a small state such as Denmark shows signs of such weakness by overplaying its hand in making threats that it cannot keep. It was not just because of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine that such additional competencies should already have been ceded by the state governments in the E.U.; small states especially could benefit from collective action in defense and foreign policy at the federal level, irrespective of the Russian threat to the east. In very practical terms, if government officials at the state level in the E.U. truly want to counter U.S. President Trump, strengthening the E.U.’s enumerated powers (i.e., shared and exclusive competencies) even though that would mean delegating such powers would be a prime way to do it. Like the Schengen Agreement and the Growth and Stability Pact, both of which began outside the E.U.’s framework and then were incorporated within it, not every state need be included. Hungary and Slovakia, for example, could be initially excluded and thus not given the power of obstruction that those states’ respective governors had relished too much. Unlike the U.S., the E.U. is more flexible with regard to the coverage of the enumerated powers, or competencies, that are at the federal level. Every state need not participate, though that every state would presumably benefit from a military-defense at the E.U. level is admittedly an argument for unanimity unless “third-party” externalities (i.e., benefits) are acceptable to the states subject to the coverage.

Regarding the American threatened buyout or invasion of Greenland, E.U. President Von der Leyen should have been the official to respond. At the very least, the leverage of the E.U. was being passed up from within. Such weakness is difficult to respect from abroad. In incorrectly viewing the E.U. as an international organization, President Trump’s assumption is that the strategic interests of the U.S. are strengthened by a weakened—even if just by false categorization—European Union. The American federal president apparently was not deterred by the uncomfortable facts that the European Parliament’s representatives are elected by E.U. citizens, who by the way hold E.U. passports, the European Court of Justice is the E.U.’s federal supreme court, and the Commission counts as an executive branch, whose head stands unofficially as the federal president. In fact, because the head of the executive branch is not the head of the Parliament or the Council, the E.U.’s federal level has the same structure as that of the U.S.’s federal level. In other words, neither Trump nor Von der Leyen could be said to be prime ministers in a legislature. Even making this comparison would run counter to President Trump’s stance on the E.U. in terms of the U.S.’s security and dominance in the world. 

By ceding too much obstructionist power to the Euroskeptics, officials at both the state and the federal levels of the E.U. have been enabling President Trump’s short-sighted view of the geo-political interests of the U.S. with respect to Europe. By implication, the Euroskeptics who have been holding offices in the E.U. have been enabling the dominance of the Americans as well as the overblown hyperbole in Denmark, as if that small state could even conceivably stand up militarily to a union of 50 states. Incidentally, E.U. enlargement to the east by the accession of new states, which the U.S. did in enlarging westward during the nineteenth century, is in the Europeans’ geo-political interest with respect to becoming a counter-weight to the United States in international affairs and in dealing with the American government directly.

1. Skip Worden, Essays on Two Federal Empires: Comparing the E.U. and U.S. (2015)
2. Aleksandar Brezar, “Danish Soldiers Would Shoot Back If Invaded, Government Confirms,” Euronews.com, 8 January, 2026.
3. Ibid.
4. My paternal grandmother’s parents came to Wisconsin from Denmark, so I am not trying to insult Denmark by alluding to the fact that it is a small E.U. state; rather, I am trying to emphasize the benefits for such a state of collective action that the E.U. could provide in defense of the state were it not for Euroskeptic, anti-federalist ideology especially in some of the eastern states of the E.U.
5. Aleksandar Brezar, “Danish Soldiers Would Shoot Back If Invaded, Government Confirms,” Euronews.com, 8 January, 2026.
6. Ibid.
7. Chris Cameron, "Miller Says Imperialism Is Justified in Greenland," The New York Times, January 7, 2026.

Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Guidelines Puffed Up as Law: Should under the Subterfuge of Must

During the coronavirus pandemic (2020-2022), Arizona’s Ducey administration allowed bus and light-rail employees to go maskless even though they were in close contact with the public. Bus drivers were even getting sick. The “rationale” of the Phoenix transit authority was that the federal regulation is “just a mandate.” Because the word mandate means “an authoritative command,” the rationale that being a mandate renders a law or government regulation as optional can only be spurious at best; this is a case of arrogant ignorance that can’t possibly be wrong about itself in the member-state that ranked 49th out of 50 on public education. As an authoritative command, a law, even as implemented in regulations, has what Kant called necessity in that law itself cannot be bent; it stands firm in itself as law. In contrast, a guideline connotes flexibility rather than necessity. It follows that enforcement must pertain to laws (including regulations) but not to guidelines. I contend that what are commonly referred to as international laws are actually international guidelines. Such “laws” lack viable enforcement mechanisms and thus are actually guidelines for governments engaged in international relations.

Calls that governments need to respect international law even though no enforcement mechanism exists are actually expressions of a moral desire that such “laws” should be respected in the international arena. That what is actually a should is typically expressed in terms of must by government officials around the world only adds to the mistaken belief that a viable world order exists and thus that aggressors such as Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and America’s Trump—all of whom have wantonly disregarded international law—pose no threat. A law without a credible means of enforcement—and not just by volunteer “enforcers”—is not a law; as in Hobbes’ state of nature, such a “law” can be said to have the force of an ideological moral desire against opponents.

In the wake of the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuela’s sitting President Maduro, E.U. foreign minister Kallas issued a statement, which reads in part: “The E.U. recalls, that under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be upheld.”[1] The word must implies at the very least that penalties apply if the must is dismissed by a state that violates the law or Charter. As had been clear for decades, even countries in the UN could easily ignore the Charter with impunity within the UN, and the veto-powers in the Security Council need only veto a proposal to see to it that it cannot be violated because it has not passed. So, what Kallas really meant is that governments around the world should uphold the principles of international law and the UN Charter. Notice that she used the word principles, which do not constitute law, so she contradicts herself in applying the word must. For someone to say, you must follow that principle, is not the same as saying, you must follow the law. Only the latter connotes or implies that violations will be punished—not even that there might be penalties. Those exist even if law enforcement does not catch a particular culprit.

Kallas’s statement can be critiqued on moral grounds, which is certainly ironic because her foreign-policy stance is laudable; I submit that militaristic heads of government should be restrained internationally, lest the world falls back into the dark ages. In using the word must, the E.U.’s foreign minister was doing exactly what Nietzsche calls attention to in his critique of modern morality, in which “Thou shalt not” is used as a club of sorts to beguile the self-confident strong into unilaterally not acting on their strength. Were he alive, Nietzsche would probably council the sitting U.S. president not to feel shamed or guilty from Kallas’s infliction of must, which can only mean should in referring to international law and anything to do with the United Nations given the utter lack of enforcement. Without that, the world is left with international guidelines rather than laws, and the UN is left standing on the sideline utterly impotent from the self-inflicted initial wounds of the veto-mechanism in the Security Council and the lack of any UN armed forces or police adequately empowered as force to enforce UN resolutions. The same goes for the International Criminal Court, the ICC, whose arrest warrants for Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu were being either ignored around the world or even actively fought against (by the Trump administration). An arrest warrant that depends on voluntary enforcement by third parties (i.e., governments around the world) is not a warrant in any sense of that word. Again, a misleading use of words.

A problem with using words that are bear on a global order misleadingly is that the appearance of there actually being an order internationally, as distinct from “might makes right” as the de facto default, is illusionary. In actuality, when Putin invaded Ukraine, Netanyahu inflicted an inhumane holocaustic genocide on the people of Gaza, and Trump captured the sitting president Venezuela, the status of international law was epitomized by the word should rather than must. The moral desire for international constraints on raw militaristic aggression is of course laudable, but that desire itself does not constitute recognition of there being international law. To portray the former as the latter is dishonest. 

It is also counter-productive from the standpoint of what would be needed for the family of nations, or more practically a coalition of “the willing” among the political unions and sovereign states of the world, to design, approve, and activate institutions, including possibility a global federation along the times described by Kant, that are capable of instituting and enforcing law internationally. Officials of such institutions as have enough governmental sovereignty to enforce international law even with boots on the ground if necessary could indeed say must without merely expressing a moral desire. Out of such self-confident strength at the global level, albeit with institutional checks on tyranny at that level from a qualified majority of countries, which would all be semi-sovereign, the precedents being incurred in favor of “might makes right” by Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump could potentially be reversed and once again set as outliers internationally. Such rogue nations could be relegated and effectively expelled from the family of nations both economically and politically. 

That a holocaustic—yes, holocaustic—severity of suffering was unleashed by a genocidal government in the Middle East for years in the so-called modern era (after the Enlightenment!) is itself testimony enough that the post-World War II global order’s international organizations, including the International Criminal Court and the UN, including its top court, was by 2023 utterly impotent. Out of this power vacuum, militaristic aggressors on the world stage could easily sense that low-hanging fruit could be easily plucked with utter impunity. It is precisely at such a point that the ground is fertile for a new world order to be promulgated and enacted so as to constrain angry men who are bathed in power. Human nature itself is the root cause behind the cycle of world orders through history punctuated by intervals of unimpeded military aggression, such as by the three blind men, driving drunk with power, in the mid-2020s.


Saturday, January 3, 2026

Oh, Siagon

War can leave families in a dysfunctional condition. In the case of the Vietnam War, the broadcast video of the last helicopter taking off from the roof of the American embassy in Siagon in 1974 carries with it the veneer of fleeing Vietnamese on their way to a life of freedom in the United States. Not evident from the video is the impact on a Vietnamese family that is documented in the film, Oh, Siagon (2007).


The full essay is at "Oh, Siagon."

President Nicolás Maduro: Captured by the U.S.

In the early hours of January 3, 2026, the sitting president of Venezuela was captured by the U.S. military and sent to New York, where he would face a federal indictment involving the trafficking of narcotics to the United States. President Trump’s decision to go forward with the military plan no doubt had to do with the South American state’s tremendous oil reserves, just as President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq surely had something to do with that Middle Eastern state’s oil fields. Elected representatives at the federal level of the U.S. have known since 1974 that skyrocketing gas prices could easily result in voter-resentment. Whether the capture of Maduro was motivated by his drug activity reaching the U.S. or Venezuela’s oil, the invasion and capture by U.S. forces is in line with the Hobbesian notion that might makes right, and even that 90% of ownership of property lies in possession. Lest it be thought that President Trump broke with precedent internationally in capturing the sitting president of another country, his strategy can be understood as being along the trend that had been gaining traction because the post-World War II international order had become hamstrung in the impotence of international bodies including the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.

The various reactions of the leaders of other South American sovereign states provide a sense of the confusion regarding the “new way” that was taking hold internationally amid the power vacuum. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reaction, for example, treated the U.S. military strike as crossing “an unacceptable line,” and thus as establishing a precedent wherein one country can legitimately invade another.[1] “Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,” Lulu wrote.[2] Apparently he was unaware of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza—both of these cases being flagrant examples of raw military aggression in violation of international law. So, President Trump’s military action can hardly be described as a “first step toward world of violence, chaos and instability.” Furthermore, Lulu’s appeal to multilateralism flies in the face of the paralysis in the UN Security Council due to the five permanent veto-powers—at least one of which had been protecting Russia and another backing up Israel even in committing a holocaust against a people that at least some high officials in the Israeli government viewed as subhuman (i.e., dogs). It was not the first time in modern history that a people has been viewed as subhuman, and thus as deserving, like rats, of extermination. Unlike that case, no coalitions of the willing were willing to take on Russia and Israel in 2023 and even in at least the two subsequent years, which has allowed the naked aggression to take hold and actually become a precedent before the U.S. military captured Maduro.  

Also, apparently oblivious to the intractability of the post-WWII world order, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States and the United Nations. Because the General Assembly is militarily impotent and the U.S. has veto-power in the Security Council, and the Organization of American States has no actual power, Petro’s plan demonstrates the utter lack of redress against the “new way” of might makes right then gaining even more traction. Perhaps at least China could then stage a military strike in Israel to capture Netanyahu and his henchmen and deliver them to the International Criminal Court. At least then the Hobbesian state of nature would paradoxically be aiding in the enforcement of international law against genocides and holocausts. Waking up to such news on January 3, 2026 would indeed have been quite a Christmas present, albeit delivered late.

Also oblivious to the military aggression of Russia and Israel, Chilean President Gabriel Boric stated, “Chile reaffirms its commitment to basic principles of international Law, such as the prohibition of the use of force, non-intervention, the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and the territorial integrity of States.”[3] Chile’s commitment means absolutely nothing, as that South American state had done nothing to organize an international coalition to push Russian troops out of Ukraine and Israeli troops, who were gangraping young Palestinian boys, out of Gaza (and the West Bank). A precedent for such a coalition can be found in U.S. President George H.W. Bush removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the early 1990s, without invading Iraq because the coalition did not support that. Unfortunately, the international community of nations did not act on that basis against Russia and Israel. Hence Boric’s demand that the “Venezuelan crisis must be resolved through dialogue and the support of multilateralism, and not through violence or foreign interference” can be likened to one hand clapping alone in a forest.[4] That such a demand is even made as the post-WWII world order laid wayward largely defunct as regards military invasions and even a genocide begs the question of why no governments were working constructively toward international institutions that could enforce international law against aggressive national leaders.

To acknowledge that the ICC and the UN had become utterly impotent and yet to do nothing to give rise to a new world order, especially as military invasions and even a holocaustic genocide were being allowed to run their respective courses unincumbered, was where the world was as 2026 began. In 2025, a former undersecretary of the UN admitted to me at Harvard that the UN could not be adequately reformed because the veto-powers in the Security Council would never divest themselves of that power. A new institution would be necessary for international law to mean anything more than a guideline for governments to voluntarily follow when doing so suits them. In the meantime, the U.S. and Israel could circumvent the International Criminal Court with impunity, and the E.U., mired in anti-federalist ideology, could not step up to push Russian troops out of Ukraine. President Trump had plenty of precedents for his military strike in Venezuela even though capturing a sitting president was admittedly novel. It is precisely through such incrementalism that a series of precedents becomes ensconced as a new status quo in international relations.


1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Trump Hails ‘Brilliant Operation’ in Venezuela that Led to Maduro’s Capture,” Euronews.com, 3 January, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Friday, January 2, 2026

From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza

Twenty-two real-life stories fraught with suffering and a pervading sense of utter hopelessness: The film, From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza (2024), is a documentary in want of a solution that did not come not only in 2024, but also in 2025. That Rashid Masharawi, the film’s director, survived even the release of the film is remarkable. Israel clearly did not want true stories from Gaza reaching the rest of the world even though it was not as if the rest of us could miss the photos of the mass devastation throughout Gaza and the resulting tent camps in 2025. It precisely because societal-level figures, such as 65,000 or 75,000 civilians murdered and over a million left starving and homeless, can be easily separated from the plights of individuals and families on the ground that Masharawi’s film is so valuable. Juxtaposed with the Gaza-wide statistics befitting the genocide and perhaps holocaust, the 22 stories in the film give the world a sense of what experiencing a holocaustic genocide is really like.


The full essay is at "From Ground Zero." 

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