Religion and Politics: On the Catholic Church’s Just War Theory

In the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as an idealist, even other-worldly, from the standpoint of the political domain. To be sure, he knows how to alienate the Temple hierarchy enough to be put to death, but he stays clear of the Zealots in their militaristic rebelliousness against the Roman occupation. Give what it Caesar’s unto Caesar. The just-war theory developed by Augustine and Aquinas seeks to bring that gap—to make the idealist of the Gospels more relevant practically to the politics of international relations. To be sure, Jesus’s refusal to join the Zealots—symbolized by Jesus including Romans among those whom he heals—could be used to argue convincingly that attention to compassion for one’s enemy makes impossible even any just war. Jesus is just as idealistic in the story of the rich man who will not give up his wealth to follow Jesus—it is harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man (who will not give up his wealth to follow God) to enter the Kingdom of God, whose very substance spiritually is epitomized by compassion to one’s enemies, according to the American theologian, Samuel Hopkins. So, Pope Leo was on solid ground in April, 2026 in the midst of the U.S.-Iran War when he emphatically insisted that Jesus would oppose any war—not just any unjust one—but where does that leave the Catholic Church’s just war theory as promulgated by two theological giants, Augustine and Aquinas?

The full essay is at "Religion and Politics."

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.

The United Nations: Weak Even in Defending Itself

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

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

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

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

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

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

Passive Aggression on Campus: Redefining Hate-Speech

Besides using social pressure and anger to purge words that a student or faculty member deems unacceptable, the word police have found that they can get objectionable opinions criminalized. This runs 180 degrees from the sort of openness to different, even objectionable ideas that makes a college campus thrive with an academic rather than passive-aggressive atmosphere. Sometimes, getting the law to go against a pollical opinion that a fallible person deems to be intolerable can show just how dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary the criminalizing of ideas can be. Here I have in mind the case of Marianne Hirsh, a genocide scholar at Columbia University. It is a sign of going too far that political corrective would be weaponized with criminal punishments that such a scholar, whose parents had died in the Nazi Holocaust, would think that she would have to teach at another university to be able to continue teaching material from the notable twentieth-century scholar, Hannah Arendt, who wrote on the banality of evil in that Holocaust (and, were she still alive in the next century, would probably also write of the Gaza Holocaust in such terms). Behind political correctness is the arrogance and related intolerance that stem from the sin of self-idolatry: taking oneself to be omniscient and omnipotent (but not omnibenevolent).

Hirsch had been using Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem; he was convicted of the war crime of forcing Jews in Hungary to march to a death camp in Poland so as many as possible would die on the way and thus reduce the killing needing to be done at the camp. Arendt, a Jew, is critical in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, of Israel’s illegal kidnapping of Eichmann in Argentina. Even mentioning that text, or explaining why Arendt criticized Israel’s founding, could run afoul of Columbia’s 2025 revision of antisemitism, “which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech.”[1] That’s pretty heavy language, and the penalties would surely go beyond getting fired from the university. So it is worthwhile to unpack the claim that criticism of Israel constitutes hate-speech.

For criticism of Israel to be taken as antisemitic, hence anti-Jewish, speech, the criticism would have to pertain to Jews generally, but to criticize Israelis is not to criticize Jews who are American and live in the United States, for example, unless they hold dual citizenship. Moreover, to conflate citizenship, which is a political designation, with a religious or social designation is to commit a category mistake, for the categories are distinct. To criticize another country is not to criticize a world religion (or even religion itself, as it is a distinct category).

Once we have properly identified criticism of a foreign government (or country) as political in nature, we can see that such criticism is acceptable in international relations; people criticize other countries all the time. It can even be said to be the human condition, and we are all in trouble if that is criminalized. It would be like making the breathing of air illegal. In short, criticizing other countries is so normalized in international relations that to make criticizing only one country illegal while another other country or government thereof is “fair game,” would be highly unfair. It would be especially unfair were that country’s government exterminating a people within its territory, for to not criticize such a country could be considered inhuman or at least insensitive to the desperate plight of other human beings.

That both Hirsch and Arendt are/were Jewish and yet included criticism of Israel should be enough to dispel the notion that criticism of Israel is antisemitic. So it is ironic that Hirsch, whose very parents died in the 20^th century holocaust, thought she might have to leave Columbia university to be able to continue to include Arendt’s political criticism of Israel in courses. This is not to say that Columbia’s new “definition” of antisemitism is itself antisemitic because both Hirsch and Arendt could be expunged for being in violation.

I contend that any government, and thus any country, is “fair game” in terms of being the recipient of political criticism, and that this does not constitute hate speech. In criticizing Israel’s role in the Gaza Holocaust, no hatred is being directed at or even implied to pertain to any Jews in America who are not Israelis. That Israelis in Israel can be criticized for their government’s policies and actions is fair because that country’s political system is democratic.  Even in an autocratic state such as Russia, the people can be criticized for not standing up sufficiently to an unprovoked invasion of another country. Perhaps Vatican City would be a closer parallel to Israel, but even in criticizing a political stance of the Pope or a public policy of Vatican City, a person is not criticizing being Catholic in terms of its religious culture or beliefs. Vatican City is recognized internationally as a country and thus as a political entity, and thus political criticism is fairly done without being labeled as hate speech against Catholics. Also, to criticize them for regarding the Virgin Mary as a divine being in being born without sin and being bodily assumed into heaven does not constitute a political criticism of the Vatican as political entity. It is not as if the Virgin Mary were president of Vatican City.

For the governments of Israel and the United States to wield antisemitism as a club so to curtail adverse political speech—and Columbia’s new definition doubtlessly came from pressure from the Trump Administration—represents a category mistake that is ethically and politically unfair, especially if a legitimate basis exists to criticize a policy and/or action of the Israeli government. The Gaza Holocaust evinces such a basis. In fact, ethically, it can be argued that it is the duty of every human being on the planet to criticize a government (or country) for being in the process of starving, shooting, and bombing an occupied population of people, who, unlike in the case of a war, could not fight back. In the 20^th century as news of the Nazi holocaust broke, criticism of Nazi-Germany or even Germany itself was not “redefined” as anti-German hate speech because a legitimate reason for even harsh criticism existed. True to American culture, therefore, it is best to side with free political speech in international relations.

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1. Jeff Offenhartz, “A Columbia Genocide Scholar Says She May Leave over University’s New Definition of Antisemitism,” The Associated Press, July 25, 2025.

On the Impact of Personalities on Diplomacy: The Case of Trump and Zelensky

One of the many advantages that democracy has over autocracy (i.e., dictatorship) is that the dispersion of political power among elected representatives and even between branches of government (i.e., checks and balances) reduces the impact that one personality can have on diplomacy. Even in a republic in which power is concentrated in a president or prime minister, one personality can matter. Given the foibles of human psychology, the risks associated with a volatile personality “at the top” in a nuclear age are significant. Kant’s advocacy of a world federation includes a caveat that world peace would only be possible rather than probable. Given the probability of anger and associated cognitive lapses in even an elected president or prime minister, a world order premised on absolute national sovereignty is itself risky; hence the value of a semi-sovereign world federation with enforcement authority. The impromptu press conference between U.S. President Trump and Ukraine’s President Zelensky on February 28, 2025 demonstrates the risks in countries being in a Hobbesian state of nature (i.e., not checked by any authority above them).

In the Oval Office at the White House, “a remarkable scene was unfolding. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance had begun berating their guest, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a hitherto unseen public implosion of a key global relationship.”[1] The implosion was between two people—the two presidents—rather than of the alliance itself, but the former was indeed capable of impacting the latter. Put another way, two people, rather than two countries, were arguing. “The state is moi” is not a relation of identity in a republic. That it was a host who was shouting and berating a guest went largely unnoticed in the press, in part because the host was on the offensive in pivoting from an (orchestrated?) question from a journalist; his question contained the insult that Zelensky’s wearing of his military uniform in the sacred Oval Office was disrespectful even though Elon Musk had worn t-shirts there even that month. Unlike Musk, Zelensky was at war—one caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Showing visual comradery with generals and troops by wearing a uniform is laudatory rather than indicative of an intent to disrespect other presidents. Ironically, Trump had installed flags of all of the U.S. military branches in the Oval Office.

In short, the Ukrainian president may have unwittingly walked into a pre-arranged “turkey shoot.” That Trump had his counterpart thrown out of the White House—the invitation to lunch notwithstanding—evinces not only anger, but sheer rudeness in place of hospitality. That such human foibles could upend a deal between two countries even though one stood to gain access to rare earth-minerals with commercial applications and the other country was in dire need of a third-party to broker an end to the devastating war. The political philosophy of international business, wherein commercial interests reduce the likelihood of war, was implicitly reputed as Trump shouted accusations at his guest.

What enraged Trump was Zelensky’s claim that if the U.S. (and the E.U.) don’t stand up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia would not stop with that country. As in the case of World War II, an ocean could not keep the U.S. out of war as Hitler was invading countries. That Zelensky had a valid point was utterly missed by the angered American president. Adding insult to injury, Trump refused to let his guest speak, and Vice President Vance accused Zelensky of being ungrateful, even though the president had thanked America for its military aid on several occasions.[2] Any implicit disrespect in Zelensky’s military garb in the Oval Office was more than made up for by the dignity of that president in constraining himself from insulting Trump and Vance. In contrast, it was Vance’s rudeness and Trump’s verbal hostility toward a guest that were below the dignity of the American presidency and the sacred room.

Zelensky’s point that American could eventually be drawn into another European war is valid—this point should be made perfectly clear. It was not Zelensky who was risking another world war; rather, it was Trump’s lack of emotional self-control that made such an event more likely, for Trump’s rash cancelation of the agreement for U.S. military and diplomatic help in exchange for access to rare earth-minerals in Ukraine made it more likely that Russia would absorb the Ukraine militarily and perhaps then go into the Baltic states and perhaps even Poland. It was Hitler’s invasion of Poland that brought Britain into war with Germany, and that in turn involved the U.S. militarily in its lend-lease agreement with Britain. Trump did not grasp this point that Zelensky was making, and this cognitive lapse in turn triggered Trump’s temper. This is precisely why a world-order founded on absolute national sovereignty is dangerous.

As titillating as a brawl is to watch, I contend that a wise electorate looks beyond such flash-points to keep one eye on fundamental implications. The structure and foundation of the world order was vulnerable to rash personality conflicts between presidents of sovereign countries even in the context of war, especially since post-World War II institutions such as the UN were waning given their lack of enforcement authority. Fortunately, the world was shifting off of the bi-polar hegemony of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, and it was not lost on the E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, who wrote on the day of the brawl, “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”[3] She even reminded the world that Russia, not Ukraine, was the aggressor, as Trump implicitly contracted this point in accusing Zelensky of risking World War III by not being grateful. A world order in which the U.S. is the world’s “police department” was, fortunately, becoming antiquated, for, given President Trump’s lack of emotional self-control, such a unipolar structure with the U.S. at the hub was indeed dangerous, given the impact that personalities can have on diplomacy.

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1. Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny,”Inside the 139 Minutes that Upended the US-Ukraine Alliance,” CNN.com, March 1, 2025, italics added.
2. Daniel Dale, “Fact Check: 33 Times Zelensky Thanked Americans and US Leaders,” CNN.com, February 28, 2025.
3. Malek Fouda, “European Leaders Unite Behind Ukraine Following Trump-Zelenskyy Confrontation,” Euronews, February 28, 2025.

Advancing the E.U.’s Strategic Autonomy: Beyond Security by Regulation

Faced with the return of Donald Trump as U.S. president in early 2025, the European Parliament debated on November 13, 2024 how the E.U. should respond and, if needed, protect its strategic interests with respect to Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine. “In their debate, MEPs considered hw to engage with the new administration to address challenges and leverage opportunities for both regions as the E.U. seeks stable transatlantic relations.”[1] The possibility of the incoming U.S. President pulling back on NATO and with respect to contributing military supplies and money to Ukraine, and issuing protectionist tariffs on imports from the E.U. had added urgency for the E.U. to come up with ways of countering those external threats from the West just as Russia’s latest forays into Ukraine were external threats from the East. On the same day, Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s secretary of state/foreign minister/foreign policy “chief” “proposed to formally suspend political dialogue with Israel over the country’s alleged violations of human rights and international law in the Gaza strip.”[2] This alone put the E.U. at odds with Israel’s stanchest defender/enabler, the U.S., and with its incoming president, Donald Trump. From a human rights standpoint alone, both with respect to the governments of Russia and Israel, the trajectory of the E.U. in incrementally increasing its competencies (i.e., enumerated powers delegated by the state governments) in foreign policy and especially in defense (given the new post of Defense Commissioner) was in motion. The question was perhaps whether the E.U.’s typical incrementalism would be enough to protect the E.U.’s strategic interests, which includes protecting human rights at home and abroad. Fortunately, on the very same day, Kaija Shilde, Dean of the Global Studies school at Boston University, spoke at Harvard on the very question that I have just raised. I will present her view, which will lead to my thoughts on how viewing the E.U. inaccurately as a mere alliance harms the E.U.’s role internationally from within. That is to say, the continuance of the self-inflicted wound, or category-mistake on what the E.U. is, was compromising the jump forward in defense that the E.U. needed at the time to more competently address the crisis in Ukraine.

Shilde began by noting the important role that the private sector had been playing within the E.U. with regard to providing Ukraine with military assets. Any state-actor has to harness markets to generate defense items, and the fact that the states were still commanding their respective militias, or armies, does not nullify this federal competency (enumerated power) that has been difficult to fully recognize given the contribution of the private sector. The E.U. and the U.S. both had been regulating their respective markets and thus encouraging their respective military-industrial industries. Therefore, both unions were more important than NATO, which has only been an alliance since its inception, in pushing against Putin who, in 2014 and again in 2022 invaded Ukraine militarily. In 2024, the E.U. was in fact doing things to generate military power. Direct lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine, enhancing defense integration within the E.U., and coordinating a war economy have been just three of the contributions at the federal level since the invasion of 2022. In 2024, the E.U. was the third largest military spender in Europe. Combining financial aid and military allocations, the E.U. allocated more money than did the United States.  

Europeans have been in favor of a role for the E.U. in defense. As of 2024, over 70 percent of Europeans in a poll every year since 1999 have said that the E.U. should have a role—that it shouldn’t be left up to the states. Only around 20 percent disagreed during that interval. Asked which level of governance best addresses defense threats, 43 percent said the federal level, which is to say, the European Union. In fact, the Europeans polled had specific ideas of what a E.U. army should do. Defending the E.U.’s territory was number one on the list. Shilde concluded that there must be something organic about pan-European defense, but would popular opinion be enough for the E.U. to augment its defense competencies (powers) in time to help Ukraine push back the Russian (and North Korean) army?

Since 1950, European integration proceeded by occasionally taking back-steps, and has been pushed forward by external threats. In the 1950s, the European Defense Community was prompted by the Soviet threat. In 1956, during the Suez crisis, France proposed a federal union for Europe rather than the extant Economic Community. Whereas the U.S. began with an emphasis on defense, for obvious reasons, the E.U. took off from an economic core of competencies (i.e., enumerated powers). Federal governmental sovereignty can be at both poles, as well as in the incremental powers that both unions have been able to add at the federal rather than state level. To be sure, starting with defense is more typical of federal levels than with economic regulations, which have traditionally been made at the local, provincial, and state levels.

A plurality of Europe’s military power has been due to the E.U.’s regulatory power; this is a modern way of generating military power—a modern way of exercising governmental sovereignty even if defense competencies are added later. The role of European companies in the E.U.’s shaping of markets to deliver military goods should not be minimized. In 2024, E.U. private firms spent 3 times that of American firms on defense research and development. This is because of E.U. regulations. For example, the E.U. facilitates some infant industries by means of protectionism. To be sure, given the Russian military incursion into Ukraine, the E.U. needed to become a large scale buyer of military goods and it needed a defense industrial policy in 2024, according to Shilde, even if the upcoming U.S. President were to decrease the American military support not only to Ukraine, but even NATO. Should he make a retreating dent in these respects, Shilde predicted that the E.U. would see a sizable enhancement of its role in defense, including in regard to helping Ukraine. It may not make any difference, she said, whether the federal level directly commands any military units; after all, the Confederate States of America relied on the armies of its member-states in the 1861-1865 war between the USA and the CSA.

I contend that the comparison between the E.U. and the CSA is not nearly as accurate as a comparison between the E.U. and U.S., even in 2024, especially if you take account of time, and thus development, by comparing the E.U. of 2024 with the U.S. of 1820—both unions being around 30 years old. Even comparing the E.U. and U.S. as they were in 2023 allows us to exclude the claim that one of the two was merely an alliance or an international organization. Federalism had already come to Europe within the E.U.’s borders, and, like case of the U.S., both the federal and state levels of the E.U. already enjoyed some governmental sovereignty. Hence both unions could be classified as having modern federal systems rather than being confederations, in which the states hold all of the sovereignty.

Importantly, getting the comparison right, and being realistic about what the E.U. was even as of 2024 is important to eliminating the self-inflicted handicap that had held the E.U. back since 1993. Classifying the E.U. as a mere alliance, and thus like that of NATO, has held the E.U. state governments back from agreeing to delegate additional defense competencies to the E.U. so a stronger united and collective defense of Ukraine could possibly tip the scales against Russia’s President Putin. This would be as if to say, with action as well as words: invading another country is no longer allowed. Such a twenty-first-century advance in international relations would truly be a Hamiltonian feat. Perhaps it would also be such a feat to get enough E.U. citizens to admit to themselves that the E.U. had already become a federal system, and thus has not in fact been inherently limited to the roles of an international organization or alliance. To put on a united front with one arm tied up, and to be doing so unwittingly or at the behest of an ideology is a self-infliction that the E.U. could have done without, especially with American isolationism rising in the West and Russian militarization intensifying in the East.

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1. Euronews, “MEPs Debate Future E.U.-U.S. Relations Against Backdrop of U.S. Administration Change,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.
2. Shona Murray and Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrel Proposes to Suspend E.U.-Israel Political Talks over Gaza War,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.

Israeli Secret Ops Undermining the United States: Political Realism as Undercutting Allies

On September 14, 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was “giddy with excitement” after U.S. President Trump had communicated “the possibility of moving forward” with a mutual defense pact.[1] This communication was punctuated, however, by “cautious wording.”[2] Trump had recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s state capital and recognized Netanyahu’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights. What accounts for the caution regarding a defense pact? Moreover, why had Trump been quiet concerning the Israeli election that was coming up in a week or so? Netanyahu was polling behind his contender, so vocal support from Trump, such as on Netanyahu’s campaign pledge to annex the Jordon Valley, would have been valuable to the sitting prime minister. At least part of the answer may have something to do with Israel’s undercutting military action in Iraq. American allies have their own geo-political agendas that can include undercutting the United States militarily.

There is the public relationship, which is all smiles, and there is what is really going on secretly. Which is real? 

First of all, just two days before Trump conveyed a vague interest in moving forward on a defense pack, Politico had broken the story that U.S. Government had determined over the last two years that Israel had been behind the "StingRay" cellphone surveillance units found around the White House.[3] Those machines could act as cell-phone towers and thus obtain cell-phone calls, texts, and data from people in the White House, as well as coming and going. Although Trump publicly claimed that he didn't believe that Israel had been spying on him, his reaction in secret may have been different, as he was known to be lax with his cellphone security and may have had personal information extracted. In public, the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister denied the story, but in private, their relationship may have been damaged.
Secondly, according to the U.S., Israel had likely been involved in a strike near Baghdad in July, 2019. According to two U.S. officials, the strike complicated America’s relationship with Iraq.[4] It was in Israel’s interest to target militia groups with close ties to Iran. Pentagon spokesman Sean Robertson pointed out that the U.S. military has “repeated spoken out against any potential actions by neighbors that could lead to violence in Iraq.”[5] It is interesting that one of the closest U.S. allies would act so anyway. In an interview, Netanyahu, who also acted at the time as Israel’s defense minister, admitted that he had “given the security forces a free hand and the instruction to do what is needed to thwart” Iran’s plans “in Iran itself, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen.”[6] Whether Netanyahu merely relegated the fallout for the U.S. or had an interest in driving a wedge between the U.S. and Iraq goes beyond my intel. 
Thirdly, Israeli military forces, dressed as Iraqis, had secretly entered Iraq before, using complicit British guns to shoot at American soldiers and thus destabilize the situation in the eyes of the Americans and thus manipulate them to increase their involvement there. Both the British and Israeli states had an interest in keeping the U.S. mired in the Middle East, though I doubt the British interest was principally to weaken the dollar. Israel’s interest is rather obvious in having a powerful ally close by militarily. In any case, special relationships tend to get weakened by undermining actions on the ground.

Perhaps political realism, a theory that maintains that states pursue their respective interests rationally, really does explain how states act in secret. But is such a narrow preoccupation of interest rational? A single-minded privileging of immediate interests is not rational, I submit, because the longer-term benefits from a longer-term interest are discounted or ignored outright. Allies can realize such benefits unless either state puts short-term opportunism (from short-term interests) above the sort of self-restraining motivation that respects as binding the other state's interests. 
In secret, states may indeed be opportunists even in trying to weaken an ally while proffering supportive platitudes in public. After all, the present-value of money, which holds that having money today is worth more than having it tomorrow (hence interest on a savings account is compensation), stems from the importance of instant gratification in human nature. Given this genetic staple, trust simply does not exist between states, even allies. The maxim that a state will only act in concert with an ally when the immediate strategic interests are in line is not rational, I submit, because the benefits from self-constraining immediate interests are given up; such benefits, if allowed, would result in a more optimized state interest being realized. 

Even medium-term benefits may not be realized. Netanyahu, for instance, may find that his desire to be re-elected is not sufficiently supported when a “trusted” ally is more hesitant than usual in offering support. From the American standpoint, it may not even make sense to have a mutual-defense pact with an ally that takes cell-phone data from near the White House and plows ahead militarily at the detriment of the United State's costly work in Iraq. Why would the U.S. agree to spend money and lives to defend Israel unless America were itself attacked? To be in a mutual military pact, both sides must be capable of and willing to recognize and act on obligation even when the immediacy of interest could benefit by acting contrarily even if in secret.

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1. Oren Liebermann, “Trump May No Longer Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving for Netanyahu,” CNN.com, September 16, 2019 (accessed on the same day).

2. Ibid.

3. Daniel Lippman, "Israel Accused of Planting Mysterious Spy Devices Near the White House," Politico, September 12, 2019.
4. Barbara Starr et al, “Israel Likely Had a Role in Iraq Airstrike that Has Roiled US-Iraqi Relations,” CNN.com, August 23, 2019 (accessed on September 16, 2019)

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

Before Infiltrating American Democracy, the Kremlin Had Curtailed Democracy (and Federalism) in Russia

Officials in the Russian government may have ordered computer hackers to infiltrate the U.S. presidential election in 2016 not only in order to influence the outcome to be more favorable to Russia, but also because those officials did not respect federalism and democracy, which, after all, had been so weak in Russia.  

 
For instance, when it looked like Igor Morozov, an insurgent candidate from within the local nomenklatura in Ryazan, might beat the Kremlin-appointed incumbent governor in 2012, the Kremlin summoned Morozov and the next day he announced that he was dropping out of the race. He would be appointed a senator instead. His campaign, he explained, had created the “threat of a split in society.”[1] In actuality, the success of his candidacy was undermining the federal government’s control of the governorship races and Putin's United Russia Party. Federalism, it would seem, was a facade, and thus easy to disrespect.

 Igor Morozov, campaigning before the Kremlin intervened.  Kommersant.

Sergei Salnikov, the deputy secretary of the United Russia Party in Ryazan, had crossed party lines to back Morozov. Salnikov pointed to weakening of democracy should the Kremlin be able to install the next governor. It’s “as if you have simply been raped,” he said.[2] Democracy was being raped, and it was so weak all it could do was take it. How can such a thing be worthy of respect in a one-party dictatorship? 

To be sure, Putin would not have likened his “presidential filter” of candidates to raping. The filter itself contained a structural conflict of interest because a candidate for governor had to secure the endorsement of 10 percent of the republic’s lawmakers, who were heavily dependent on the sitting governors. Incumbents could thus see to it that “paper tigers” were put up as the opposing candidate such that in actuality no real competition existed. 

From the stand point of federalism, a conflict of interest existed in the Kremlin’s “filter” for “criminality.” For the Kremlin to filter candidates for the highest office in a republic's election has rendered the “state level” as subordinate to the federal government. A trajectory can thus be drawn toward political consolidation and away from federalism, including its checks and balances.

Therefore, the Russian political elite has been able not only to enrich, but also ensconce, itself at the expense of democracy and federalism. The latter, in fact, is ideally suited to the inherent diversity between republics in an empire. Neither democracy nor federalism has been strong enough, even in terms of being popularly valued, for the dictatorial tradition of the Czars and Soviets to collapse along with the U.S.S.R. Similarly, the Arab Spring showed the world, and Russia, that even when popular passion lies with democracy, an authoritarian tradition can still be stronger. 

Viewing democracy (and federalism, which is also relevant in U.S. presidential elections) as weak, as well as inherently inferior in terms of power to one-party rule, the Russian officials who ordered the manipulation of the American electorate likely saw themselves as tinkering with an inferior breed, or at least political system. As much as democracy is valued at least in principle in the United States, the form of government can be disvalued elsewhere, particularly where dictatorship has been the norm. Even Plato and Aristotle theorize strong (demos) and weak (mob rule) manifestations of democracy, yet those philosophers also wrote of a weak form of dictatorship: the tyrant, who can be expected to disrespect democracy for its (ideally) decentralization of power. A tyrant would naturally view himself as a bird of prey seizing on disbursed individuals who together form a people, the popular sovereign, in a democracy. Yet as Nietzsche theorized, a bird of prey who resorts to manipulation and other forms of domination is actually weak rather than strong, for were such a creature strong, it would have no need of subterranean means of increasing its power over others. 

1. Ellen Barry, “Not in Script For Kremlin: A Real Race For Governor,” The New York Times, September 28, 2012.
2. Ibid.

Savage Beatings in a Government's Toolkit: A Case of Pathology Writ Large

The psychology of someone acting on behalf of or in line with a government in beating another person who has not done or said anything personally against the beater is perplexing. The transmission of anger towards what a group stands for onto a particular human being who may be just walking has not been uncommon in human rights lore; even so, the component of strong emotion in the beating itself is bizarre; it may evince a pathology affecting some people when they think about, or engage in, the political domain. So considering violence against the nonviolent as a government tool that depends on the pathology is also problematic.

To attend the funeral in December, 2009 of Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was the 87 year-old spiritual leader of the Iranian reformist movement, and therefore a dissident leader to the Iranian Government, mourners poured out in thousands into the streets leading to the mosque. However, anti-riot police and plainclothes pro-government Basij militiamen had blocked the area. Parlemannews reported at the time that the Basij beat people, including women, and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowds. One witness told a reporter,  ”Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the Basijis.” That witness also said baton-wielding riot police clubbed people on the head and shoulders, and kicked men and women alike, injuring dozens.  “I saw at least two people with blood pouring down their face after being beaten by the Basijis,” he said.[1]

Attending a rally by U.S. presidential candidate Don Trump in 2016, I was stunned while watching a muscular military man stomp on a protester even though she had done nothing to that man in particular, such as shout or spit at him. Why such anger in the stomping, I wondered at the time. It was as if the man's trigger had malfunctioned. To be mad at a message of protest is not in itself to be angry at other persons at an interpersonal level.  

While a government could be justified in responding to violence with violence, to use violence where there is none in opposition suggests that violence is a tool in the government’s toolkit for changing behavior or political positions. This tool depends on the existence of the pathology at an interpersonal level.  It depends on people who view other people as being less than human—even as a kin to dogs—on account of having different opinions and even principles.  

The philosopher Kant wrote in the eighteenth century that the rational nature is of such value that anyone (or anything) having it should not be treated as merely a means, but also as an end in itself. To reduce a rational nature to an object to be savagely attacked is therefore unethical. This applies both to governments (and the officials thereof) and to the individuals who attack other individuals on behalf of governments. 

Besides this Kantian ethical analysis, it strikes me as odd to classify “savage beating” at a governmental tool alongside fiscal policy, treaties, and monetary policy. This represents a category mistake concerning just what it is to be a government tool.  To be sure, any government is ultimately founded on the lethal use of force applied to individuals. Even so, the assumption that violence against nonviolent individuals or groups is a government tool can be questioned as faulty. Alternatively, it could be assumed that violence only fits against violence. 

1. Associated Press, "Iran Police in Fierce Clashes with Cleric Mourners," Foxnews.com, December 23, 2009.