On 5 August, 2026, President
Von der Leyen of the E.U. “announced that €1.4 billion in profits from
immobilised Russian assets [held in the E.U. would] be allocated after Russia’s
deadly strikes on Kyiv.”[1]
This response sounds well and good, especially as Ukraine had failed to shoot
down all of the missiles and thus was in vital need of American anti-missile weaponry.
Yet in spite of this strategic vulnerability, “only €70 million” of the €1.4 billion
would be “directed toward military assistance.” The lion’s share of the
profits would “be used to repay G7 and EU loans.”[2]
In other words, the E.U. Commission was seeing to it that almost all of the
profits from Russian assets would go to creditors outside of Ukraine in the
E.U. and elsewhere. Because Russia had been serially lobing missiles on
civilian targets such as apartment buildings in Ukraine with overwhelming
success, and, moreover, occupied at least 20 percent of Ukraine in the east at
the time, the Commission’s decision to pay off loans rather than keep them
outstanding so much more money than €70 million could be directed to
Ukraine’s military defenses. Both ethically and geopolitically, getting the
lent money back especially to creditors in the E.U. right away is problematic.
The Commission acting on behalf
or in the interest of creditors that are in the E.U. has all the earmarks of an
institutional, or structural conflict of interest even though the expedient
politics are obvious behind the decision are obvious. In a conflict of
interest, typically a relatively narrow, or confined (usually private) benefit
is put before satisfying a wider benefit, which can even be viewed as being a
duty. A duty to the public good, for example, is eclipsed by a desire to
satisfy a more narrow or circumscribed private benefit, whether to oneself or a
related party. In this case, the exploitation of the conflict of interest lies
in the E.U. prioritizing the relatively narrow private financial benefit of
E.U. creditors over the wider, public good of pushing the invading Russians out
of Ukraine and thus standing up against military invasion itself.
Although most of the scholars
on the conflict-of-interest scenario in ethics have argued that an unexploited institutional
conflict of interest is not unethical, I contend that human nature renders such
a temptation ethical even though the temptation is in the structure within an
organization or inter-organizationally. For President Von der Leyen even to have
the power to siphon off most of the profits to lenders in the E.U. is arguably
unethical in itself, given the incentive of the underlying expedient politics
of preferring one’s own over exogenous groups (e.g., Ukraine). Accordingly, the
Council of Ministers, the European Council, and the E.U. Parliament should have
passed a federal law mandating that all of the profits go to
Ukraine to augment its military.
Also on 5 August, 2026, “Ukraine’s
president Volodymyr Zelenskyy . . . called for allies to send more
anti-ballistic air defence, after Russian strikes killed at least 17 people
overnight.”[3]
Von der Leyen’s response to this plea can be put in the following way: Even
though we have €1.4 billion at our disposal now, we are giving you only €70
million. Zelensky could be forgiven for thinking, thanks a lot sarcastically
even though being thankful for getting anything. For overnight, when the
“Russian army sent 115 drones and fired 28 high-speed missiles, including
ballistic ones, Ukraine’s military had been “unable to shoot down a single
Russian missile” due to “a drastic shortage of anti-ballistic munitions.”[4]
The opportunity cost in the Commission’s decision to pay off loans rather than
devote the entire amount of profits to Ukrainian defenses was spelled out at
the time by Ukraine’s president, who said, “Ballistics interceptors are
something that could have saved the lives of those who died today. It is very
important that partners realise that delays in their delivery or unwillingness
to transfer anti-ballistics leads to such terrible victims and destruction.”[5]
Moreover, the Russian advantage in missile offense says, in effect, that it is
ok to invade another country that does not pose a threat; furthermore, military
power decides geopolitical disputes with impunity. Lest that dogma become the
default for international relations, international law can be relegated as an
oxymoron in what is a return to a Hobbesian state of nature beyond the
nation-state. With so much on the line—big picture—Von der Leyen’s decision to divert
so much of the profits to Ukraine’s international creditors can be viewed as a
case of Aristotle’s notion of misordered concupiscence: putting a lower good
above a higher one. She would have been easily understood were she to have told
those creditors that it was more important to buttress Ukraine’s anti-missile (and
other) defence than even to make full interest payments because the world
needed to show Russia’s President Putin that military aggression does not work
in the twenty-first century—that war crimes won’t go unpunished, and of course
Ukraine desperately needed anti-missile munitions and weaponry, and fortifying
other weaponry wouldn’t hurt Ukraine’s position either.
In short, priorities, especially
that interlace geopolitical, business, and military affairs, matter even in
terms of what sort of global order might result amid the collapsing post-World
War II order. Would international relations boil down to “dog eat dog,” or
would even just informal coalitions of nation-states force back aggressive
advocates of military might who scoff at international law and norms that
constrain political realism (i.e., strategic state interests as hegemonic)? Priorities
matter in terms of whether the overblown militaristic forays into Ukraine,
Gaza, and Iran would eventually be able to become and even define the status
quo in international relations.
2. Ibid.
3. Sasha Vakulina, “Ukraine Failed to Shoot Down a Single Russian Missile Launchedin Overnight Barrage,” Euronews.com, 5 August, 2026.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
