The E.U.’s Hungary Overreaching on Sovereignty: International Trade

Sovereignty is not a word to be casually used, especially if in overreaching. In both the E.U. and U.S., state governments have overreached at the expense of the delegated competencies or enumerated powers of the respective Unions of states. The Nullification Crisis in the U.S. and de facto unilateral refusal of the E.U. state of Hungary to observe E.U. law both demonstrate how the overreaching by state governments can compromise a federal system.[1] In the E.U. the refusal to do away with the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. enable and even invite such overreaches at the expense of the E.U. itself, and its distinctly federal officials. Even a state government’s pursuit of it’s state’s economic interests does not justify holding the E.U. hostage. The case of supporting Ukraine in the midst of the invasion by Russia is a case in point.

In part because of Hungary’s veto of the accession of Ukraine into the Union, as intimated by Ukrainian President Zelensky on August 24, 2025, Ukrainian attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline blocked oil imports into the E.U. states of Hungary and Slovakia. “Ukraine attacked oil facilities on Russian territory with drones and rockets.”[2] This violation of Russia’s sovereignty was predicated on Russia’s long-standing invasion of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Accordingly, the main motive for the bombings of the oil facilities in Russia can be said to have been to weaken Russia’s military by reducing the revenue to the Russian state from oil exports. To be sure, Ukraine’s president himself “suggested that the attacks on the pipeline might be connected to Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s EU accession.”[3] On the anniversary of Ukraine having broken off from the Soviet Union, Zelensky said, “We always supported the friendship between Ukraine and Hungary. And now the existence of the friendship depends on what Hungary’s position is.”[4]

The overt threat to continued imports of Russian oil was received loud and clear in Budapest, the Hungarian state capital. The state’s foreign minister, Péter Szijártó “said his government firmly rejected what he described as the Ukrainian President’s intimidation and considered those bombings on the Russian pipelines as an attack on Hungary’s sovereignty.”[5] On social media, the foreign minister puts sovereignty in terms of “territorial integrity, and, furthermore, claims that an “attack on energy security is an attack on sovereignty.”[6] I beg to differ.

Sovereignty as understood territorially and applied to the E.U. state of Hungary does not include Ukrainian bombings within the territory of Russia because the latter is not Hungarian territory. Furthermore, energy security is not sovereignty, especially when such security depends on international trade. The severing of such a contract by the inability of a counterparty to deliver product does not violate sovereignty. In fact, as pointed out by Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, the E.U. state of Hungary could have diversified and become independent of Russian oil “like the rest of Europe.”[7] Indeed, the ability to do so would have been an exercise of the governmental sovereignty retained by the Hungarian government in the E.U., and the latter may have used its portion of sovereignty to assist the state, given the consensus at the E.U. level against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014 with Crimea.

The problem of the Hungarian overreach on what sovereignty means and entitles helps to explain why Viktor Orbán, the governor of Hungary, had been serially violating E.U. law and regulations even after the Commission began withholding money for the state. Orbán’s refusal to recognize that some governmental sovereignty, in the form of competencies—full and shared—had been delegated to the E.U.’s federal governmental institutions in 1993 coupled with an overreaching construal (or distortion) of what territorial sovereignty means and entitles, explains why Hungary has stymied so much at the federal level, given the power that states wield there through the European Council and the Council of the European Union. Therefore, it is ironic that Tamás Deutsch, a representative in the European Parliament representing a district that is within the state of Hungary, “said the pipeline bombings represent a military attack against an EU member state, and that the EU should not conduct [accession] talks with Ukraine as a result.”[8] So Hungary is a member-state after all, when being one is convenient.

Playing by convenience at the state level without concern for the viability of the federal level is precisely what could unravel the European Union. The irony is that without the E.U., Hungary would not have an empire-scale union at hand to push back against Russia, should Putin decide to invade Hungary after all. That would be a violation of Hungary’s sovereignty. So resisting the urge of convenience or state-rights ideology to exploit state power at the federal level could actually strengthen Hungary’s sovereignty even if international trade deals do not all go Hungary’s way. Unfortunately, the principle of unanimity at the E.U. level ultimately undermines rather than strengthens the remaining governmental sovereignty of the states if the veto power is exploited for expediency rather than to protect vital, long-term state interests against federal encroachment on the governmental sovereignty reserved by the states.

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1. In 1832-1833, the government of South Carolina held that the U.S. tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void within the state. “The resolution of the Nullification Crisis in favor of the federal government helped to undermine the nullification doctrine,” which holds that states have the right “to nullify federal acts within their boundaries.” Britannica.com (accessed August 25, 2025). I submit that the European Court of Justice could do worse than declare the same with regard to state laws, including the refusal of a governor or state legislature to implement federal directives, that are in violation of E.U. law and regulations. Monetary sanctions by the European Commission have not been a sufficient deterrent. If either de facto or de jure nullification becomes the norm, then it would only be a matter of time before the Union dissolves and the states could once again take up arms against each other.
2. Sandor Zsiros, “Hungary and Slovakia in Spat with Ukraine over Bombed Druzhba Oil Pipeline,” Euronews.com, August 25, 2025, italics added.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

The E.U. on Ukraine: On the Human, All Too Human

On August 17, 2025, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U., as a precursor to both of them meeting with Don Trump, president of the U.S. on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Von der Leyen had decided to accompany Zelensky to Washington in part to potentially play interference should the U.S. president again publicly berate Zelensky to his face and in part to protect Zelensky should Trump’s position/pressure be too pro-Russia (i.e., pro-Putin). To virtually all Europeans and to many Americans, Trump’s verbal outburst at Zelensky in the Oval Office had been shocking, especially as it seemed to be pre-meditated and orchestrated. Taking emotional advantage of the head of a state being invaded by the empire-scale Russia can assuredly be reckoned as being a bad host, and even low class for the president of the empire-scale United States. International relations do indeed contain a very human element, and in fact leaving it out of an analysis of an international situation is nothing short of negligent.

Our political entities are, after all, artifacts made by us and thus can at best restrain our most base instincts. Even as such, as Hobbes points out in Leviathan, living under a sovereign is much preferable to being in the brutish state of nature. It is important to remember in assessing international relations that Hobbes’ state of nature is not completely extinguished or blocked by the establishment and maintaining of government. As for Hobbes’ social contract, I would be surprised if there even was a group of humans living in proximity without some hierarchy of power, and thus de facto government, in which case the scenario of a number of free individuals social-contracting from nothing, ex nihilo, to form a government is, as Aristotle wrote of Plato’s theory of the Forms, “beautiful but false.” By the way, Plato eventually rejected his own theory wherein forms, or pure ideas, are metaphysically real.

Lest I be presumed to have digressed, my point with all of the historical philosophy was not to put you to sleep; rather, I contend that Von der Leyen’s presence with Zelensky in Washington is not only to be analyzed in terms of Europe’s geo-political interests in countering any plans that Russia’s president might develop to invade any of the E.U.’s eastern states, but also of the human, all too human—to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche—element. The latter is also highly relevant to the E.U. president’s trouble with the governor of the E.U. state of France, whose efforts to upstage the federal president as the figurehead of the E.U., including in speaking for the E.U. rather than just for his own state, have not gone unnoticed in Europe. By the way, the U.S. avoids such a pitfall by making foreign policy an exclusive competency, or enumerated power, of the U.S., such even the governor of California or Texas cannot publicly state a foreign policy for the United States.

In stating after his meeting with Von der Leyen that Europe “needs to stand united in any further negotiations to stop Moscow’s all-out war in Ukraine, Zelensky was essentially saying that the governors of even large E.U. states should get behind the president and foreign minister of the E.U. rather than go it alone in foreign policy with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moreover, because Russia is on the scale of an empire whereas E.U. states are “kingdom”-level, the E.U. is needed to face off against President Putin of Russia, especially of the president of the empire-scale U.S. leaned in Putin’s favor to end the invasion even if that means rewarding an invasion with additional territory. On this point, Von der Leyen stated, “Our position is clear: international borders cannot be changed by force; these are decisions to be made by Ukraine . . . and not without Ukraine at the table.”[1] To be sure, this statement can be viewed as naïve, for it omits any mention of the E.U.’s role in safeguarding Zelensky from being faced with intense political pressure from Trump and military threats from Putin to “help” Zelensky make the “right” decision. Considerable military and political pressure from two empire-scale polities can be brought to bear on a single kingdom-level polity. Hence, Zelensky also said after his meeting with Von der Leyen, “It’s crucial that Europe is as united now as it was at the very beginning, as it was in 2022 when the full-scale war began.”[2] Ukraine desperately needed the support of at least one empire-scale polity, especially if the American and Russian empires were actually on the same side. 

American support for Putin would mean that America was at the time in favor of two invaders: Russia and Israel. There was a time when the U.S. stood for freedom-fighters rather than bullies. Whether a person or the head of a militarized polity, a bully is a bully. That is to say, the human, all too human element should not be left out of the equation. 

I submit that militaries around the world, whether voluntarily or through a semi-sovereign world federalism, as discussed by Kant in Perpetual Peace and has seemed definitively necessary after Russia’s unimpeded invasion and Israel’s genocide and holocaust in Gaza, should try to counter rather than enable or ignore the worst of human nature. We cannot assume that Hobbes’ infamous state of nature has been, or even would be, replaced by the institution of government, especially in international relations, but our species could do much better, and it is not at all utopian to say so.

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1. Malek Fouda, Sacha Vakulina, and Aleksandar Brezar, “Zelenskyy Urges Europe to Remain United Against Russia’s ‘Anti-European’ War in Ukraine,” Euronews.com, August 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Trump Meets Putin on Ukraine: On the Exclusion of the E.U.

Like proud male birds dancing for a female for the chance to reproduce, U.S. President Trump and Ukraine’s Zelensky engaged in public posturing ahead of the negotiations set to take place between Trump and Vlad the Impaler Putin of Russia in Alaska on August 15, 2025. For the public, to take the postures as real positions, set in stone, would be nothing short of depraved naivete. Missing in action in all this posturing was E.U. President Van der Leyen and the E.U.’s foreign minister. Instead, the governors of two, albeit large, E.U. states were busy making demands as if their respective political bases were more powerful than the E.U. as a whole. In short, Van der Leyen missed an opportunity to join the dance of posturing.

After a virtual meeting with Trump, Zelensky postured by saying, “Putin is bluffing that the sanctions do not work, that they are nothing. In fact, sanctions are hitting the Russian economy hard.”[1] The Ukrainian president added that Putin had not changed his military goal with respect to occupying “the whole of Ukraine.”[2] Meanwhile, Trump was rattling his saber by warning Putin that there would be “very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree to a ceasefire.[3] This warning is sheer posture; no one should assume that Trump was saying what would actually happen, so protests against Trump unleashing World War III would be unfounded and based on a failure to distinguish negotiating posturing from announcing a new policy.

Different from posturing were demands from the governor of a large E.U. state, including that a ceasefire “must be at the very beginning. Later, there may be a framework agreement. Third, . . .”[4] A leader of an E.U. state who was not to be included in the upcoming negotiation between Trump and Putin, whose respective federations are empire-scale and consist of states and regions, respectively, that are themselves the size of E.U. states, was making demands as if that leader were to be a participant in the negotiations, for otherwise to make demands would not make sense; all that could be offered would be suggestions.

As the de facto head of state for the E.U., and de jure president of its executive branch, the European Commission, President Von der Leyen would have had more sway with Trump and Putin were she to have made suggestions; it would have been improper for her as a non-participant to make demands. So E.U. foreign minister Kallas overstepped in stating, “Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included.”[5] Even though Kallis’s rationale, that “it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security,”[6] is a valid argument for why the EU rather than a governor of even a large EU state should be included in the negotiations, her demand is but from the sidelines of the playing field on which negotiations take place, and thus her making a demand only shows her weakness as being situated as such. That the E.U. had stood a better chance of edging its way into the Trump-Putin negotiations was undone by state officials jumping in for Von der Leyen in meeting before the negotiations with Trump and by Kallas’s deference to state officials in her own meeting with them. That the E.U. state of Hungary blocked an E.U. foreign policy supporting Ukraine also reflects on the weakness of the E.U. in not having sufficiently resisted opposition by governors to getting rid of the necessity of unanimity on foreign-policy (and other significant) matters at the federal level.

Between the lack of respect for the federal officials by state-level governors and foreign ministers, and the continuing inherent weakness at the points of state involvement in federal institutions, blame for the E.U. being sidelined by Trump and Putin applies at least partially to the Europeans themselves. Merz and Macron should have made way for Von der Leyen stand for the EU being the European to meet vicariously with Trump a few days before the negotiation in Alaska, and the foreign ministers at the state level should have respected the necessary role of consensus, as unanimity is difficult to achieve with 27 states, so Kallas could have made E.U.-wide suggestions for Trump and Putin. There is indeed a very practical cost in world affairs that Europeans pay in refusing to expand qualified majority voting in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., and for not increasing the power of the European Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens rather than states. Although it would be unwise to cut state involvement off at the federal level as has happened in the U.S., that just one governor can paralyze the E.U. in foreign policy is indication enough that the state governments have too much power at the federal level—much more than is necessary to safeguard the interests of state government from being eclipsed by a much more powerful federal government, as has happened in the U.S., keine Zufall, especially after state governmental institutions ceased appointing U.S. senators to Congress in the early 20^th century. The state governments in the E.U. could give up the ghost on the principle of unanimity at the federal level without worrying about unfettered encroachment from the federal institutions. State governments should continue to be represented in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., but on the basis of qualified majority voting rather than unanimity. The result, I contend, would be that the E.U. would be better able to muscle its way into negotiations between the E.U.’s counterparts: The U.S., Russia, and China.

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1. Sacha Vakulina, “’Putin Is Bluffing,’ Zelenskyy Tells Trump as European Leaders Push for Ukraine Ceasefire,” Euronews.com, August 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Sacha Vakulina, Aleksandar Brezar, and Alice Tidey, “Trump Warns of ‘Very Severe Consequences’ for Russia if Putin Does Not Stop War in Ukraine,” Euronews.com, August 13, 2025.
4. Sacha Vakulina, “’Putin Is Bluffing,’ Zelenskyy Tells Trump as European Leaders Push for Ukraine Ceasefire,” Euronews.com, August 13, 2025.
5. Jeremy Fleming-Jones, “Kallas Calls Snap Meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on Ukraine on Monday,” August 10, 2025, italics added.
6. Ibid.

Russia Benefits from Flawed E.U. Federalism

In the E.U., the 27 state governments are able to wield a veto on most important policy proposals in the European Council. Expecting unanimity where not even consensus is enough is so utterly unrealistic at 27 that it may be time to reconsider whether the E.U. can afford such an easy (and tempting) means by which state governors can exploit the E.U. by essentially holding it hostage. To be sure, like the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, the veto in the European Council represents the residual sovereignty that states in both unions enjoy, but extortion for financial gain by means of threatening or exercising a veto in the European Council (and the committees of the Council of the E.U.) suggests that the continued use of a veto by state governments is too problematic to be continued. Residual sovereignty can find adequate representation by qualified majority voting, which is closer the threshold needed to maintain a filibuster in the U.S. Senate. That the E.U. state of Slovakia maintained its veto on a proposed number of federal sanctions against Russia on July 9, 2025 when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated international law in invading Ukraine is a good indication that the veto had outlived its usefulness and was being used by governors for sordid purposes by using the E.U. rather than strengthening it in foreign affairs.

The full essay is at "Russia Benefits from Flawed E.U. Federalism." 

Worse than Hell on Earth: Gaza

Each of us is so close to human nature that our perception of it may be blurry or partial. One of Freud’s contributions is the insight that we don’t even know ourselves completely, given the existence of the subconscious. This is also true of trying to comprehend human nature at a distance, as whether humanity is or is not by nature compassionate to people who are suffering greatly at a distance. The sheer duration of the extreme suffering of civilians in Ukraine and Gaza in the midst of ongoing military attacks by Russia and Israel, respectively, beginning in the early 2020s, and the sheer impunity absent any interventionist coalitions of countries from around the world combine to give a negative verdict on human nature concerning compassion from a distance. It can even be said that the ongoing passive complicity around the world impugns not only us, but human nature itself. While less explicit than in furnishing weapons to Russia or Israel, the complicity of human nature is more serious, for even as geopolitics change, human nature is static, at least in a non-evolutionary timespan. Given the extreme suffering in Gaza in particular, the lack of political will around the world to step in militarily and assume control of Gaza may mean that human nature itself is worse than hell on earth.

The director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, claimed in early June, 2025 that “humanity is failing” as it has collectively “watched the horrors” of the Israeli offensive that had rendered conditions in Gaza worse than hell on earth.[1] Given the leveling of towns and cities and the deliberate blocking of food and medical supplies for months even as 1.2 million residents could not leave the territory allegedly to make life untenable so the population would be exterminated, it is easy to heap blame on the Israeli officials for going too far in exacting revenge for the Hamas attack in which only 1,200 were killed and a few hundred Israelis were taken hostage. The fallacy, or excuse, of collective justice plus allowing the victims to exact it is a damning indictment on the Israeli government and even the state of Israel as deserving sovereignty. Such a verdict is easily made; it is much more difficult to turn a negative verdict on the rest of us as we and our respective governments around the world have passively refused to step in militarily.

“It has become worse,” Spoljaric said. “We cannot continue to watch what is happening. It’s surpassing any acceptable, legal, moral, and humane standard. The level of destruction, the level of suffering. More importantly, the fact that we are watching a people entirely stripped of its human dignity. It should really shock our collective conscience.”[2] I think it has, so the question is why there is such a gap between being shocked morally and deciding to take action and then actually doing so.

The International Red Cross is the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, which is the corpus of international law that regulates the conduct of war and is designed to protect civilians. The most recent version, the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, was adopted after the Second World War with the intention of preventing the killing of civilians “from happening again.”[3] This is of course an allusion to Nazi Germany, which had killed roughly 20 million Slavs in Eastern Europe and millions more, including Jews from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary westward. Ironically, Adolf Eichmann, who had managed the trains to and from the death camps, was convicted by an Israeli court because he had ignored Himmler’s direct order NOT to force Hungarian Jews to walk to a death camp in Poland; Eichmann could not claim that he was just following orders, and this is how he lost the case and his life.

As uncomfortable as it must be for Israeli officials to be likened to Nazi officials, the discomfort of the rest of us in being confronted with the verdict of our own passive complicity or at least our refusal to act on the basis of shocked conscience is surely much less. I suspect most of us reflect on the negative verdict on human nature as if reading a weather forecast of rain ahead. I contend that we are alienated from our own nature as a species, and that support for this and our lack of humane discomfort from having remained passive bystanders willing at most to go to a political protest is in the sheer impunity that both Putin and Netanyahu have been able to leverage in their respective one-sided military invasions.

If the dire verdict of our sordid human nature, which none of us can escape, is reasonable, then perhaps the question of whether our species deserves not to go extinct from the species-induced climate disequilibrium (i.e., the warming, over all, of the planet) can be revisited. Prior to 2022, and especially during the Coronavirus global pandemic, we could forgive our collective species for having polluted as if there were no tomorrow—that our penchant for instant gratification and outright greed are not enough to warrant extinction as if it were a divine punishment like Noah’s flood. After 2022, however, our calculous could be different—more dire for our species being worthy of survival from its self-induced and perpetuated ongoing and uncorrected climate crisis. The refusal of even democratic governments around the world to jointly step in as over a million residents of Gaza had reached a living condition worse than hell on earth is arguably morally worse than having refused to regulate carbon emissions sufficiently and then take drastic measures when the global average temperature reached 1.5C degrees. Leaving governments to enforce the Paris Agreement of 2016 themselves is bad enough; standing by while reports of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians, including babies, as a pastime and leveling even cities is much more unethical because of the extremity and scale of the human suffering. That even such a verdict being made explicit would not make any difference in practicality is a foregone conclusion that only confirms the sordid verdict. It is not as if no wiggle-room is in human nature, or that life is entirely deterministic, so we are indeed culpable both as individuals and as a species rather than being victims of our own innate nature. 

As sordid as selfishness is, even what Jonathan Edwards calls “compound self-love,” in which benefits are extended to other people rather than only to oneself, is not sufficient to save us from the damning verdict. As a Christian theologian in the eighteenth century, Edwards maintained that because God is love (ultimately of being in general assenting to being, and thus to us in so far as we exist), divine love, or agape, is ultimately unconditional. Yet from our limited vantage point, it is useful to wonder why a perfect being would love such a species as looks the other way as a people face worse than hell on earth on an ongoing basis. It is easy enough to believe that Yahweh will punish Israel for incessantly disobeying the Commandment against (mass) murder; it is much more difficult to come up with a rationale as to why God should love the rest of us even though God is love and thus cannot be otherwise. We most certainly can be otherwise. The question may ultimately be whether our species is worth being loved even by unconditional love itself.

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1. Jeremy Bowen, “Gaza Now Worse than Hell on Earth, Humanitarian Chief Tells BBC,” BBC.com, June 4, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Underneath the Rhetoric: Israel’s Hatred of Palestinians

Official public statements by a government’s officials obviously trade on rhetoric—manipulation by wording being a part of statecraft—but when the rhetoric is so self-serving and divorced from facts on the ground (i.e., empirically), wording can be indicative of the underlying mentality, which is real. I submit that the statements of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu and Israeli foreign-ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein in May, 2025 amid the Israeli military offensive in Gaza reveal the surprising extent that hatred can warp human perception and cognition without the warping itself being grasped by the very people in its grip.

Facing pressure from the E.U. and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. in May, 2025, the Israeli government made a decision that the media described as lifting of the two-month-old Israeli ban on humanitarian food and medicine entering Gaza as over a million residents there were facing starvation and a lack of medical care. The so-called lifting of the blockade in actuality consisted in allowing in less than ten trucks on the first day, and between twenty and forty on the second day, with none being able to distribute through distribution centers. As a result, the food—a mere trifle spread over 1.2 million souls—did not reach any hungry mouths. Incredibly, Netanyahu admitted publicly that he was intent to allow in just enough food and medicine that would relieve the Israeli government of the pressure from its allies. Whereas during the ceasefire earlier in 2025 when Israel was allowing 600 trucks into Gaza per day, the “lifting” of the blockade would only permit a maximum of 100 trucks. In essence, the crime against humanity of exterminating a people was ongoing, given how far short 100 trucks’ worth of food (and the trucks also contained boxes of medicine and medical supplies) is in being able to feed 1.2 million people. Meanwhile, the Israeli military was upping its bombing in Gaza, with 100 residents killed on one day and 48 on the next day after the “lifting” of the blockade. In effect, the Israeli government’s cabinet was increasing the demand for medical supplies and medicine while intentionally minimizing the number of humanitarian trucks that could enter Gaza and making it very difficult for the trucks that did get in to unload at distribution centers such that the food and medicine could reach the actual residents of Gaza. Netanyahu’s stated goal of riding Gaza of Palestinians continued unfettered.

It is in that context that the E.U. took the decision to review the “wide-ranging trade and cooperation pact” with Israel “over its intensified offensive in Gaza.”[1] The E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, stated on May 20, 2025 that the E.U. “would examine if Israel has violated its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which defines the trading and diplomatic relations” bilaterally.[2] That the Israeli military had already killed over 50,000 residents of Gaza over more than a year begs the question of what took the E.U. so long even just to review the agreement. The constitutional, or basic law, provision for unanimity on foreign policy in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. and that the E.U. state of Hungary had been serially exploiting its veto-power on the federal level is the obvious explanation.

Less well-known, however, is the sheer gradualism in the machinery of any government, federal or unitary, in reacting beyond words in ways that a strong enough to make a real difference “on the ground.” Aggressor regimes around the world benefit from the refusal of legislatures to off-set the inherent gradualism of government by enacting a fast-track option. Both in reacting quicker to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the E.U. could arguably have made a difference, whereas entrenchment is much more difficult to counter after a year.

Ongoing entrenchment has the benefit to the aggressor of being able to set the contours of debate concerning the militarization of an occupation or an outright invasion and extermination of a people. For example, in responding to the E.U.’s decision just to review the agreement, Marmorstein of the Israeli government wrote on social media that the “war was forced upon Israel by Hamas, and Hamas is the one responsible for its continuation. Ignoring these realities and criticising Israel only hardens Hamas position and encourages Hamas to stick to its guns.”[3] There a number of problems with this reply.

Firstly, whether or not Israel rejects the decision of the E.U. to review the trade and diplomatic agreement, the decision is solely for the E.U. concerning its own review, so this is not something for the counterparty to accept or reject. Secondly, not even Hamas—not to mention the 1.2 million residents of Gaza—forced Israel to kill over 50,000 and decimate entire neighborhoods. Nor did any counterparty force Israel to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as people on a mass scale were starving. Behind the rhetoric is a warping of social reality in being incorrect in terms of being forced to make decisions, as if at gunpoint. Thirdly, the extremely disproportionate number of guns and bombs that Israel had over Gaza undercuts the claim that Hamas was “sticking to its guns,” and that this forced Israel to disproportionately bomb and kill in Gaza, especially during its offensive in May, 2025. Fourthly, the claim that Israel was militarily on the defensive is so contrary to the facts that, beyond the rhetorical use of the claim, it points to a rather severe cognitive and perceptual warping. I submit that hatred is the underlying culprit behind the cognitive and perceptional displacement.

Shortly after Hamas’s unjustified attack and kidnapping on October 7, 2023, the president of Israel said publicly that every resident of Gaza was culpable. Such over-reach of accusation, even considering that Hamas had democratic legitimacy in Gaza, bespeaks hatred, and is consistent with the UN’s finding of reason to believe that Israel was guilty of the crime of trying to exterminate a people, which is easier to prove than genocide. Furthermore, Netanyahu’s admission that he would allow only a minimum of humanitarian food-aid into Gaza in May, 2025 and only to satisfy the U.S. and E.U. points to an underlying hatred like smoke suggests the presence of fire. 

Also indicative of hatred in the Israeli government, Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, said at the time that the Israeli government was “rejecting” the E.U.’s decision to review the trade and diplomatic agreement: “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement.”[4] This revealing glimpse both of the intent of Israel’s cabinet and what atrocities had been going on in Gaza strongly implies that hatred was a, or even the motivator, for what else other than sadistic pleasure could explain killing babies as a pastime. Furthermore, the statement belies the claim that Israel was being forced by its adversary to hit, and hit hard in Gaza. The refusal to take responsibility for one’s own decisions and even blame a counterparty as if it had made the decisions or forced them is suggestive of a sordid character and even delusion. It is probably that Israeli government’s officials have continued to be so angry and demeaning of a people deemed in effect (and ironically!) as sub-human that the policy of extermination has continued unabated even by the so-called lifting of the blockade of humanitarian aid that might keep the population from continuing to shrink as intended and desired by the Israeli officials. 

It is no wonder that the ICC has issued arrests warrants; it is more astonishing that the world has allowed the Israeli officials to continue to commit war crimes and a crime against humanity with only slight pressure to let some humanitarian aid into Gaza. While certainly not as culpable, the E.U.’s delay in even reviewing its agreement with Israel is astonishing. Is there a threshold of atrocity beyond which a coalition of countries would take immediate action against an aggressor-state? Given the impunity of not only Israel, but also Russia in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that there is such trigger even when a squalid, hateful, and over-reactive aggressor-character is on the loose as if it were in Hobbes' state of nature. 

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1. Euronews, “Israel ‘Completely Rejects’ EU Decision to Review Trade and Cooperation Deal,” Euronews.com, May 21, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Astha Rajvanshi, “Ex-Israeli General Hits Out at Government for ‘Killing Babies as a Pastime’ in Gaza,” Nbcnews.com, May 20, 2025.

Beyond Description, Atrocious, Inhumane: The New Normal?

“The situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious and beyond inhumane.”[1] So wrote Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, on May 17, 2025. He could have been looking at films taken when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1945 at the end of World War II. It was a shock to the world back then. The scale of the inhumane atrocity of over a million people living in rubble and starving by design in the next century raises the question of whether extreme inhumanity toward a group in searing hatred was becoming normalized, and thus tolerated by the world absent even a coalition of the willing to step in and counter what even democracy could inflict.

At the very least, the impunity enabled by Israel’s major ally pointed to a fatal flaw in the post-World-War II world order, including the United Nations. Ironically, the collapse of the Soviet Union made the world vulnerable, given the bias in there being one less superpower. “A policy of siege and starvation makes a mockery of international law,” the head of the UN wrote.[2] He added that annexation and settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, and “nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” or, I might add, of any people.[3] Yet even such strong phraseology is but dry parchment while Israel killed over 100 residents of Gaza on next day—bombing a hospital no less in an attack called Operation Gideon’s Chariot.

To be sure, the Israeli government announced it would “allow a ‘basic amount of food’ to enter Gaza ‘to ensure a famine crisis does not develop’ after blockading the territory for 10 weeks.”[4] Lest humanity be presumed to be the motive, Israel’s IDF made the recommendation “out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting” as Israel’s army expanded its presence in Gaza.[5] A similar logic may have been behind Eichmann’s frustration that there simply were not enough ovens so the number of people gassed daily had to be reduced. In both cases, group-identification led to viewing some humans as not human.

It is as if the world and especially the Israelis learned nothing from the disclosure of Hitler’s brutality, for by the 2020s, group-identification itself had still not come to be viewed as dangerous, especially when the obsession becomes reductionistic, and large-scale, planned-out atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine were allowed to go on. Eerily, were the Russian government successful in riding Ukraine of Ukrainians and the Israeli government successful in exterminating the Palestinians in Gaza, would the rest of the world blink? More likely, the tyranny of the status quo would turn a blind eye and go on as if nothing atrocious had happened.

I think it very likely that not even Guterres’s strong words would be enough to translate any political will into action to forestall the victimizers even by the UN. The lesson is perhaps that having strong allies can indeed enable a government to enact Nazi-level atrocities with impunity while the rest of the world looks on as if collectively helpless. What was shocking in 1945 may be viewed going forward as a precedent rather than a “never again,” line in the sand. Remembering past systematic atrocities by governments, whether of Hitler or Stalin, that were oriented to punishing or even eliminating a people out of hatred doesn’t help if such large-scale inhumanity is actually (i.e., de facto) to become precedent. In the midst of destructive, large-scale technology and the banality of efficient state organizing, the world could do worse than come up with a new world order in which having a powerful ally does not give victimizing governments a de facto veto over countervailing efforts to protect peoples from being exterminated out of sheer hatred.

John Locke knew that one rationale for government is that victims make lousy judges of their respective aggressors. That governments might view themselves as victims and leash out hyperactive vengeance may not have occurred to Locke, or even to Kant, who stated that a world federation would only possibly but not probably ensure world peace. It seems that political development beyond the nation-state needs to catch up to the modern reach and intensity of government being used as a tool of hatred. Even in 2025, Putin’s hatred of Ukrainians and Netanyahu’s hatred of Palestinians were of such intensity that both men should have been rendered unfit for office by international if not by domestic means.

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1. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, LinkedIn.com, May 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Wyre Davies and Rushdi Abualouf, “Israel Says It Will Allow Basic Amount of Food into Gaza, Ending 10-week blockade,” BBC.com, May 18, 2025.
5. Ibid.

On the Case Against Israel: The ICC and ICJ as Seeds

At first glance, the impotence of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice once an order has been willfully ignored by a government may seem overwhelming. The continued atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine even amid court challenges fueled the argument that might makes right. Even so, the willful sense of impunity of the perpetrators and their enablers in other governments may trigger enough of a public adverse reaction that the courts and international law itself eventually come out stronger.

In 2024, the jurisprudence on genocide was still new and has few cases. In its case against Israel, South Africa urged the International Court of Justice to order provisional measures that Israel would be obliged to take because an imminent risk of irreparable harm that is genocidal in nature exists in Gaza. Allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza is one such measure. With famine already in Gaza, South Africa asked the ICJ to direct Israel to do more in cooperation with the United Nations. Expanding the number of crossings for UN aid to enter the territory, and making that aid available at various points throughout Gaza are two examples of how Israel could cooperate with the UN, of which Israel is a member. The court issued such concrete orders as these two, even as the court had to consider the risk that Israel would violate the court’s provisional orders. In fact, in January, 2024, the court ruled that given the future risk of genocide, additional provisional measures were justified. This means that the court had found enough evidence of a risk of genocide—not that the court found evidence that genocide was taking place. This is a key distinction.

Moreover, the court had to ask itself whether the group being harmed—residents of Gaza—are a protected group?  The court found that the Palestinians constitute a national group. The court also had to assess whether there was destructive intent, meaning that Israel’s actions in Gaza were geared to eliminating the group rather than just killing individuals in the territory. South Africa charged Israel with four out of five types of acts that are genocidal in nature. By mid-April, 2025, Israel had been blocking aid trucks from entering Gaza for over 6 weeks. Crucially, the underlying action was being deployed against the group as a whole, as distinct from killing individuals by gun or bomb. Displacement, starvation, and destruction of medical facilities are the other types of acts that South Africa cited as being indicative of the Israeli government having a genocidal intent.

Even though Israel has ignored the court’s provisional measures, and in fact has gone in the opposite direction, such as by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, that Israel has engaged with the court by sending a high-level legal team to argue before the court is a good argument for Israel being obligated to comply with the provisional measures. Why would the Israeli government engage at all with the court if doing so would make it more difficult to sneak out of any obligations? Israeli officials continued to believe that it is too hard for genocide to be proved in a court of law for the charge to gain traction at the court.

The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israel’s sitting prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, and a former Israeli defense minister is not for having committed genocidal acts because proving genocidal intent is more difficult than is pursuing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Proof of cause of death is required in the crime against humanity of extermination, and the prosecutor was looking only at starvation, so the arrest warrant is not for that crime. Of course, crimes against humanity and war crimes are not exhausted by extermination, and are serious nonetheless.

It is significant, therefore, that in April, 2025, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary, ignored its treaty obligation to the ICC and even E.U. law as per the Rome Statute by refusing to arrest Netanyahu when he was visiting the state. The court dismissed Hungary’s excuse that the state’s legislature had not yet enacted a state law that would enforce the treaty obligation. Simply put, a treaty has the force of law, so domestic legislation is not needed for a government to act as obligated in line with the language of a treaty. As for the Rome Statute, it has the status of federal law because the E.U. itself has been delegated enumerated powers, or competencies, that the state governments are legally required to observe. Furthermore, that Hungary was planning to leave the jurisdiction of the international court does not mean that the treaty obligations could legitimately be ignored prior to pulling out of the court’s jurisdiction.

I contend that both Israel’s willful violations of the international court’s rulings and Hungary’s refusal to recognize the arrest warrant by hosting Netanyahu risked undercutting the legitimacy of international law and courts such as the ICJ and ICC because the disrespect could become an international norm.

There is not yet an international, multilateral treaty on crimes against humanity; there is a treaty against genocide. That the latter is being applied to powerful states may result in less progress in negotiating a treaty on crimes against humanity. On the other hand, South Africa taking Israel to court based on international law has strengthened such law; even the court’s provisional measures have made a dent in the public consciousness around the world. Even in just telling victims that their rights are being violated is significant. It may be that governments will recognize an obligation to thwart genocide in progress around the world.

Moreover, in addition to how easy it has been for governments, including Hungary, Russia and Israel, to ignore the orders of international courts, that Orban has repeatedly violated E.U. laws and various states, including Germany, have serially violated the state-budget deficit limits of the Growth and Stability Pact undermines federalism as a viable system of basic law. Even the checks and balances at a federal level, as in a judiciary being able to curb excesses by an executive branch, were under threat in the U.S. when a federal judge found sufficient evidence that the Trump Administration was guilty of criminal contempt by ignoring certain court orders. The inability of courts to enforce their respective rulings is a vulnerability that was being exploited by governments at various levels of jurisprudence and governance. The danger of such intentional breaches becoming a norm was nothing short of the rule of law itself becoming too easily expendable.

To be sure, there were signs of seeds sprouting that could someday result in national laws requiring governments to take action against a power-aggrandizing government reaching the level of extermination and genocide. The ICJ was hearing South Africa’s case, especially after South Africa had been guilty of refusing to enforce an ICC arrest warrant in Africa, and Nicaragua had brought Germany to the ICJ on the charge of supplying weapons to a genocidal government in Israel. Although the case law was still limited, public interest in the rulings of the ICC and ICJ was growing globally in the early 2020s. It could be that the governmental attacks on the international courts by refusing to respect their orders were the last gasps of opposition before a global step forward in holding otherwise absolutist-sovereignty in check. Just as climate change had entered public discourse around the world, the obligation of governments around the world to stop one government from exterminating a people could represent a progressive step in our species’ political development.  

On the E.U.'s Initiative for Ukraine

In March, 2025 after the U.S. had direct talks with Russia on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. stepped up its game in helping Ukraine militarily. This was also in the context of a trade war between the E.U. and U.S., which did not make transatlantic relations any better. The E.U.’s increasing emphasis on military aid to Ukraine and the related publicity inadvertently showcased how federalism could be applied to defense and foreign policy differently that it has in the U.S., wherein the member states are excluded, since the Articles of Confederation, when the member states were sovereign within the U.S. confederation. Although both manifestations of early-modern federalism have their respective benefits and risks, I contend that the E.U.’s application of federalism to the two governmental domains of power is more in the spirit of (dual-sovereignty) federalism, even though serious vulnerabilities can be identified.

The full essay is at "The E.U. and U.S. on Defense and Foreign Policy."

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.

Russian Electricity Hits a Financial Curtain

On February 8, 2025, the E.U. states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania turned off all electricity-grid connections to Russian and Belarussian supplies of electricity, thus reducing revenues for the belligerent country and its ally. Electricity would thenceforth merge with the Continental European and Nordic grids through links with the E.U. states of Finland, Sweden, and Poland. Europe was taking care of its own, for a price of course, while Russia was increasing trade with China and other countries to make up the difference from decreasing trade with Europe. In short, it can be concluded that unilaterally invading a country has economic consequences that diminish and reconfigure international business.

At the time, European media played up the “geopolitical and symbolic significance” of the “severing of electricity ties.”[1] To these, economic significance could be added. No longer could officials in Russia’s government count on the stable revenue to help finance the military incursion into Ukraine. The economic interdependence between Russia and the E.U. was decreasing. Moreover, the philosophy of international business, which maintains that increasing commercial ties, including trade and foreign direct-investment, reduces the probability of war because such conflict would come with a financial cost. In fact, decreasing economic interdependence can itself make war more probable as there is less to lose financially from going to war.

Moreover, taking the E.U. and Russia as empire-scale countries that in themselves can be viewed as regions in the world, a financial curtain replacing the Iron Curtain of the Cold War could be said to be the “big picture” of which cutting off supplies of Russian electricity is just a part. In the age of nuclear weapons, a financial divide between the E.U. and Russia (and Belarus) could give rise to dangers of much greater magnitude than even Russia’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Even though the view that if enough international business is established between two or more countries, war can finally be obviated has been shown to be faulty, eliminating trade and foreign direct-investment makes it easier politically for countries to go to war over other matters.

In short, the severing of business relationships can be viewed on the macro economic-geopolitical level on which the severing of ongoing business contracts can itself be viewed as a political weapon and, together with other severings, as part of larger economic wedge between even regions of the world. At that scale, as the world wars of the twentieth century demonstrate and perhaps pre-figure, war can be of a magnitude that the weapons unleased are nothing short of horrendous. Drawing an economic line roughly between Europe and Asia can have very significant geopolitical and military implications. Perhaps it is owing to human nature that we are more prone to drawing such lines in which economic relations are severed than to reinforcing economic interdependencies in spite of the fact that they do not obviate war. It takes some time for a spider to weave its web, especially if the spider happens to be named Charlotte, but only a moment for such a web to be destroyed.

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1. Daniel Bellamy, “Baltic States Cut Russian Electricity Ties, Ending Decades of Reliance,” Euronews.com, February 8, 2025.

On the Potential of International Business to Render War Obsolete: The Case of Russian Gas

In a graduate-level course on international business, a professor sketched out the political-economic philosophy of international business, whose mantra is that if two or more countries have enough trade and foreign direct-investment, those countries would be less likely to go to war. In short, economic interdependence, thanks to international business, can render war obsolete and thus greatly enhance the human condition. Decades after I had taken that course, a business professor at the same university wrote extensively on the role that business can play in facilitating peace. Unfortunately, that economically-sourced theory of international relations downplays or ignores that the reasons or rationales for going to war and the decisions taken by a government for military-strategic reasons during a war can trump the (especially immediate) economic benefits from international business, whether in terms of imports, exports, or foreign direct-investment by foreign firms at home or by domestic firms abroad. This can occur even though revenue from taxes or state-owned enterprises having to do with trade and foreign-direct investment can help a government in fighting a war. The case of Ukraine cutting off Russian natural gas from traveling through Ukraine in pipes to the E.U. as of January 1, 2025 is illustrative of vulnerability in the theory of international business as a way to world peace.

In not allowing the 2019 transit deal between the Kremlin-owned gas company, Gazprom, and Ukraine’s Naftogaz to be renewed for 2025 and beyond, the Ukrainian government faced “the loss of some $800 million a year in transit fees from Russia, while Gazprom [stood to] lose close to $5 billion in gas sales.”[1] At the time, Russian forces were making further incursions in eastern Ukraine, so the Ukrainian military could have used the military hardware that $800 million could have bought, especially with isolationism soon to gain a foothold in the White House. Furthermore, that Gazprom had “recorded a $6.9 billion loss, its first in more than 20 years, due to diminished sales to Europe,”[2] suggests that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, largely for a noneconomic, imperial reason, had come with some economic costs. Put another way, Putin’s regime could have used the $5 billion in gas sales to the E.U. to help finance the invasion. International business was clearly not foremost two either government in the war. Rather than the pipeline reducing the chances of war when it broke out in 2023, the international commerce would become a casualty of war. Although international business benefits states, to reduce state interests in political realism to economics misses a lot and thus can lead to bad predictions regarding war and peace.

As for the E.U., at first glance it would seem that Europe would be less supportive of Ukraine in its war, including financially and in terms of sending military hardware because the Ukrainian government had just cut off Russian gas from reaching the E.U. in the middle of winter. Fortunately, the E.U. had anticipated the geopolitical strategic move by seeking out other sources of natural gas, such as the U.S., so the Russian gas through Ukraine only “represented about 5% of the European Union’s total gas imports, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.”[3] A spokeswoman for the European Commission said at the time, “The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin to (central and eastern Europe) via alternative routes . . . since 2022.”[4] Taking into account the continuing pipeline through Turkey, the E.U. had reduced “Russia’s share of its pipeline gas imports down from over 40% in 2021 to about 8% in 2023, according to the European Council.”[5] I submit that even if the E.U. had not prepared for the rather obvious decision of Ukraine’s government not to renew the transit deal with Russia in the midst of the Russian invasion, non-economic, geopolitical interests would have continued to fuel the E.U.’s desire to support Ukraine militarily, for fear of Russian inroads in eastern and even central Europe can easily be understood to trump even the economic benefits from international trade and foreign direct-investment with Russia.

In short, states are foremost political entities; not that they and the people who run them are not motivated by the economic benefits arising from international trade and foreign direct-investment, and these can admittedly make a difference on close calls on whether to go to war, but geopolitical considerations are primary. War and the effects thereof go beyond economics and business. A town being occupied, whether in Ukraine or Gaza, has existential implications for the people therein that extend beyond how trade is being impacted. In fact, as Israel has demonstrated toward Gaza, economic resources can be weaponized such as by withholding food and other humanitarian relief so as to kill off a population. Such a goal is not economic in nature, and international business is not sufficient to override such ideological goals, or even hatred itself. The limits to peace through economic interdependence stem from precisely this point: hatred goes beyond economics, so the latter can only go so far in constraining the former. The problem, in other words, is not that international trade and business haven’t been extended sufficiently to insure world peace, but that hatred can override economic self-interest.  

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1. Kosta Gak, Alex Stambaugh, and Anna Cooban, “Ukraine Ends Supply of Russian Gas to Europe,” CNN.com, January 1, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi Against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must typically resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis went beyond citing ethical principles to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 Urbi et Orbi (i.e., to the city and the world) address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian kingdom of God, both as a concept in the Gospels and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the instinctual ways of our species as worldly. In other words, there is value in terms of international relations from people being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.  Celebrating Christmas can be a means of bringing to mind what the Jesus in the Gospel narratives stands for and represents, which in turn stands as an alternative, which Gandhi realized, for how international relations can be done even by very human, all too human, and thus flawed, political leaders desirious of God's mercy.

Russia's attack against Ukraine on Christmas, 2024 (source: AP)

On Christmas Day in 2024, “Russia launched a massive missile and drone barrage . . . , striking a thermal power plant and prompting Ukrainians to take shelter in metro stations on Christmas morning.”[1] Specifically, over “70 rockets, including ballistic missiles, and over 100 attack drones were ued to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”[2] In short, Putin’s strategic objective was to leave Ukrainians without electricity. Because he chose to do so on Christmas, which many Americans strangely call “happy holidays” or just “this holiday,” prompted Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to write, “Putin deliberately chose Christmas for an attack. What could be more inhumane.”[3] Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, described the inhumanity as “(d)enying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas.”[4] That many urban Ukrainians had to spend Christmas morning in underground subway stations rather than at home celebrating Santa’s bounty and enjoying fellowship for its own sake is indicative of just how little respect Putin had for Christianity; his utter lack of respect for Ukrainians was by then well known.

On the same day, Pope Francis “urged ‘all people of all nations’ to find the courage . . . ‘to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions’ plaguing the world, from the Middle East to Ukraine, Africa to Asia.”[5] This language in itself is rather lame, or vague—a statement to be expected from any pope. That he “called for an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, . . . ‘particularly in Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.’”[6] This statement could be expected to be received by the people the world over like a repeating recording, which is to say, as more of the same impotent normative language to which both Putin and Netanyahu had been so terribly unresponsive.

Fortunately, the Pope added a line seemingly too utopian to matter, but with arguably huge effect in terms of changing perspectives around the world. The pope “called for reconciliation ‘even (with) our enemies.’”[7] Such compassion is two degrees of separation from the ruthless killing of civilians in Ukraine and Gaza—in the latter, 1,200 Israeli deaths and a few hundred hostages do not ethically justify killing over 44,000 residents of Gaza, as if they had all been culpable in the attack by Hamas. I suspect that both Putin and Netanyahu easily dismissed the pope’s distinctly Christian valuing of compassion extended even to—and I would argue especially to—one’s detractors and enemies. In doing so, Putin in particular, who claimed to be Christian and enjoyed the political alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy, could be seen from around the world as a hypocrite.

That the pope was not just extoling compassion, which is a moral virtue, but also invoking Jesus’s preaching on loving one’s enemies—which both as being based in love, which is deeper than ethical conduct, and being specifically oriented to one’s enemies—renders the invocation theological in nature. One thing about theology is that it can be applied in ways that moral principles are typically not.

For example, Timchenko wrote that the attack on Christmas was “a depraved and evil act that must be answered.”[8] What is binding on Putin and Netanyahu theologically is also binding on “the good guys.” Timchenko’s claim that the attack must be answered in retributive vengeance flies in the face of having and showing compassion for one’s enemies. Timchenko cuts off even the possibility of this by claiming that vengeance must take place as the response. At least Putin and even Netanyahu might have admitted that reconciliation by showing compassion to the respective enemies was possible. Unlike in ethics, where Timhenko can be distinguished normatively from Putin and Netanyahu because only the latter two are responsible for having harmed and killing innocent people, the spiritual value of the Jesus preachment in the Gospels to love thy enemies (and detractors more generally) by being compassionate rather than aggressive towards them applies to everyone. Why? Jesus's claim that loving one's enemies applies to anyone who seeks to enter the kingdom of God, the experience of which is possible at any time, reflects the religious belief that the spirit of God's mercy applies to every one of us, as what we all deserve in terms of divine justice is worse than what we actually get from God, which, as God is existential love, is life.  It is no accident that God's mercy was a lietmotif of the pope's homily on hope in the Midnight Mass that Christmas. 

Although by the end of 2024, the Israeli government had certainly blown any good-will that Gaza residents would show in kind to a sudden two-degrees-of-freedom switch by Israel to showing compassion to that enemy, had over 44,000 Gaza residents not been killed and over 2 million left homeless (and even bombed at least once while staying in tents), a cycle of reconciliation could have been initiated by the Israeli akin to how Gandhi treated even the British who had imprisoned him. Such a cycle, wherein serving the residents would naturally have resulted in good overtures by the residents to even Israeli troops, is that which Jesus preaches in the Gospels for how the kingdom of God can be at hand already and spread like a mustard seed grows.

To contrast the way to world peace through individuals reconciling by being compassionate with detractors with Putin’s attack on Christmas is to see Putin (and Russia’s government) as two steps removed, and thus especially sordid. That Putin regarded himself as a Christian, especially considering that Paul had written that faith without works is for naught, only adds hypocrisy to the two degrees of separation between inhumane treatment of others and being compassionate to one’s enemies. The pope’s Christmas Day speech thus helped the world to situate not only Putin, but every other militarily aggressive head of government in the world. We, the species that has been described as killer angels, are indeed capable of holding both poles in mind simultaneously.

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1. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Lucy Davalou, “Pope Francis on Christmas Day Urges ‘To Silence the Sound of Arms,’” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.