Canada as an Associate Member of the E.U.

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, one trend in the American retail sector involved the creation of a status that had not existed: customers as “members.” The jargon was essentially marketing because managers in corporate headquarters realized that customers would doubtlessly appreciate the more exclusive label of “member” because clubs have members. Would the American political elite pick up on the trick and refer to citizens as members of the U.S. even though such a label so applied would not make sense? Meanwhile, to differentiate the E.U. from the U.S., Europe’s political elite regularly referred to E.U. states as member-states even though the same label could be applied to U.S. states. States of both unions are represented at the federal level, and thus are indeed members, whereas to be a customer is not to be a member of a store. When Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, sought closer relations with the E.U. due to his trade-fight with the U.S. in 2026, he discussed with European leaders the possibility of Canada becoming an “associate member” of the E.U. even though no such status existed. The implication is that E.U. states, unlike U.S. states, are not really states, but rather are members. This implication exposes the underlying category mistake that denies that states pertain to federal systems whereas countries are members of international alliances and trade blocs.

On September 13, The Wall Street Journal reported that Carney had been “exploring closer ties with the European Union, including becoming an ‘associate member’ of the bloc.”[1] Creating such a status would be difficult because the E.U. did not have members; rather, the political union, which is not an informal network of sovereign countries (i.e., a bloc), has states. In fact, the E.U. is beyond being a confederation of sovereign states, as the U.S. had been under its Articles of Confederation; both the federal and state levels of judicial, legislative, and executive governance have some sovereignty. This is what distinguishes a federation from a confederation in modern parlance. So, the E.U. has semi-sovereign states, and thus not “members” as if the E.U. were a bloc or international alliance or trade group.

At the time, Canada was a member of the British Commonwealth of former colonies, so Carney can be viewed as misapplying that relation to the European Union. Similarly, when David Cameron was the prime minister of Britain, he carelessly quipped that the E.U. was just one of the international networks that Britain happened to be in. A federal union that itself is semi-sovereign (enumerated powers or competencies having been transferred from the states) is not a network. It would appear that political category mistakes abound when it comes to the European Union. Like the U.S.’s federal level, that of the E.U. is semi-sovereign and thus that union is not international. Technically, both the U.S. and E.U. have international and national elements/principles of governance at the federal level, but neither union can be labeled as international. Hence the words “member” and “associate member” do not apply to states in either union.

The root cause of the linguistic category mistakes is ideology. Specifically, what had been known as “states’ rights” in the nineteenth century in the U.S. was effectively renamed in the E.U. as “Euroskepticism” two centuries later. The ideology seeks to minimize the governmental sovereignty that has been transferred to the federal level; referring to E.U. states as members intentionally gives the false impression that the states were still fully sovereign. Mislabeling the E.U. itself as a bloc is from the same motive. Whereas members of a bloc are free to act as they please, semi-sovereign states in a federal system in which the federal level’s institutions of public governance also have some sovereign powers are bound by them. It is from precisely that ideology that Viktor Orbán’s state of Hungary wantonly violated E.U. law.

The Wall Street Journal fell for the ploy of implying that E.U. states are actually members. Noting that the status of associate member did not exist in the E.U., the newspaper indicated, according to Euronews, that “the EU could be open to creating special membership arrangements” for Canada.[2] Euronews followed the sentence with another: “The EU and Canada want to bolster trade ties of goods, services and workers, particularly in areas including energy, artificial intelligence, defence and critical minerals.”[3] The E.U. and Canada are represented here as equal parties, however, rather than one being in the position amenable to being an associate member (or state) of the other. Put another way, Canada and the E.U. were negotiating on trade as equals, as per the (limited) governmental sovereignty that both had at the time. If Carney wanted Canada to be an E.U. rather than a U.S. state, Canada and the E.U. would no longer be on the same level because Canada’s accession would have to be approved by the European Union, and Canada would then be a part of the whole rather than another whole. The notion that Canada would merge with the E.U. (or the U.S.) and yet be a state, or worse, a member, is internally inconsistent. So too is the claim that a federal union of states has members, and therefore possibly associate members too. Perhaps Guam (and other U.S. territories) should be labeled as an associate member of the U.S., as if the American states were members of the U.S.

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1. Lucy Davalou, “Canada Eyes ‘Associate Member’ Status with EU amid US Tensions, WSJ Reports,” Euronews.com, 13 September, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Georgia and Georgia: Aspiring and Settled States

While one Georgia was secure as a member-state in the U.S., another Georgia was finding itself being frozen out of not only accession talks with the E.U., but also being invited as a “NATO partner” to attend the NATO meeting in June, 2026. It is ironic that whereas the first Georgia had delegated some of its sovereignty to the U.S. in 1789, the second Georgia was unhappy remaining fully sovereign outside of the E.U. rather than as one of the semi-sovereign E.U. states. Giving up some governmental sovereignty can be a “step up,” and, with that comes certain requirements in terms of good governance.

Although “Georgia’s ruling party representatives claimed that the [NATO] summit in Ankara did not include the type of meetings Georgia used to attend in the past . . ., Georgian Dream MP Irakli Kirtskhalia told the press in Tbilisi that ‘we have no problem attending the summit, (sic) ask the organizers why we are not represented.’”[1] The party representatives were artfully deflecting, whereas Kirkskhalia was pointing journalists to the real reason for Georgia’s absence. Georgia’s government had not been invited to the NATO meeting, even though other partners of NATO, including Qatar, UAE, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Ukraine, and Australia were. At the root of the problem was a lack of trust.

That Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili “travelled to Tehran to attend the funeral of the late Ayatolla Ali Khamenei” instead did not exactly win Georgia much trust in the West.[2] The signal that such an action sent outdid any positive words of potential partnership with NATO. A political analyst in Georgia, Paata Zakareishvili, “claimed that the absence of NATO’s invitation to its regional security debates represents what he called the loss of trust by Georgia’s partners.”[3] In fact, he went so far as to admit, “Georgia is being ignored.”[4] He added that Georgia had been aspiring to be part of the alliance, and that “Georgia and Ukraine used to move toward NATO membership together.”[5] Considering Russian President Putin’s strident opposition to Ukraine being in the international alliance, Georgia should have had an easier way in. Instead, he said, “Georgia is no longer being considered anywhere.”[6] Anywhere turns out to be important, for, according to Georgia’s former ambassador to NATO Levan Dolidze, “what is far more damaging is Georgia’s absence from discussions within the European Union.”[7] Such discussions pertained to Georgia possibly gaining statehood in the Union; and, yes, statehood does indeed imply the existence of a federal political system.

As is clear from Georgia in the U.S., being a member-state in a political union wherein both the union and states are semi-sovereign is much more significant than being invited as a partner to a meeting of an international alliance. Even though the U.S. Senate and the Council of the E.U. (and the European Council) are founded on principles of international law, neither union can be said to be an international organization. Indeed, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the European Parliament are founded on national rather than international political principles (i.e., citizens rather than polities are represented, and by population). Both unions can be said to be hybrids forged from the hard political compromises made in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, when the arrangement of fully sovereign countries under the Articles of Confederation were dismissed as too suboptimal for political agency.

Although near the end of 2025, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze insisted that Georgia’s accession-path to statehood “remains steady and irreversible” such that becoming a state by 2030 was still “both realistic and attainable,” the E.U. froze Georgia mid-stream in June, 2026 after the Georgian government had passed a “foreign influence” law that the Commission “described as Russian-inspired and authoritarian against the backdrop of massive anti-government protests in Tbilisi.”[8] The trip to the funeral in Tehran in July didn’t exactly help speed Georgia along either. It did not matter, as Kobakhidze claimed, that Georgia was ahead of all other prospective, aspiring states in economic progress indicators; the problem was one of trust, both regarding democratic values at home and the choice of allies abroad. Even though technicians—pedestrians really—were doubtlessly focusing narrowly on whether the accession criteria were being met, it is important not to lose sight of the big picture.

Was the Georgia “Western” enough not merely to join in an international military alliance, but also to become a semi-sovereign state in a political, federal union? Or would the Georgian government be a “Trojan horse” whose strings would be pulled by Russia’s autocratic and militaristically aggressive Putin? Although from the strategic standpoint of the West, bringing in as many former Soviet Republics as possible may seem optimal because such a move would deprive Russia of being able to “bring them home,” filtering by applying the “sufficiently Western” test is better because then neither the Western military alliance nor the European Union (and the United States, indirectly) would be weakened from within. 

The Georgia that has been a member of the U.S. since the beginning of that political union (and, even earlier, when the U.S. had just been a military alliance and then a confederation of sovereign countries), had tried to “Georexit” in 1861 but was subsequently brought back “into the fold.” Would the Georgia that was shut out of the E.U. in 2026 follow in the footsteps of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary at the expense of federal foreign policy and the defense of the E.U. itself from foreign threats, and ultimately even accomplish “Georexit”? Already Britain had seceded from that political union, and the vote in favor of secession was mainly a reaction against the fact that E.U. states are semi-sovereign rather than fully sovereign, which pertains instead to a confederation such as that of the American Articles. No significant difference with E.U. foreign policy was involved in Britain’s decision to secede. Georgia, on the other hand, would need to prove its loyalty not only to rule-of-law democracy, but also to the West (rather than to Russia or Iran), besides being willing to cede some of its sovereignty in order to be considered and ready for statehood in the E.U.

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1. Peter Barabas, “Georgia Left Off NATO Summit Partner List as Critics Decry Isolation,” Euronews.com, 10 July, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

We Don’t Have Another America: Ukraine on the E.U.

On America’s Thanksgiving Day, 2025, Dmytro Kuleba, a former foreign minister of Ukraine, was asked whether Ukraine’s government officials could trust American officials negotiating with the Russian officials, given the fact that Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Envoy at the time, had recently been caught coaching Kirill Dmitriev, a top Russian official, on how to get U.S. President Don Trump on the side of Putin even though the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine was still in violation of international law, which, by the way, trumps historical reasons, such as a lost Russian empire. Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine during the 1930s would seem to nullify any imperial claims from the past. Kuleba relied to the journalist’s question with, “Not really, but we do not have another America.”[1] He was really giving Europe a wake-up call, but the problem there was not a lack of consensus, but a structural deficiency in the federal system of the European Union.

Far from being able to diagnose what aspects of the E.U.’s federal system were holding the Union back from protecting Ukraine from an American-Russian one-sided plan to end the ongoing invasion, Kuleba said rhetorically, “Isn’t it embarrassing that almost four years into the war, European leaders are still jumping from one topic to another, from sending peacekeeping forces to reassurance forces to strengthening the Ukrainian army.”[2] While it may be tempting to criticize state-level officials for being “all over the map” on what the E.U. should do regarding the American-Russian negotiations, as well as on Russia itself, moreover, such divergence of opinion is only natural. In the U.S., for instance, polling officials from the 50 states would not likely find even a consensus. For example, the leaders of Arizona and Massachusetts may have been as far apart from each other on whether to help Ukraine militarily as the leaders of Hungary and France. If this comparison itself “touches a nerve,” I contend that a festering, subterranean category mistake is the root cause of the pain.

E.U. citizens had a solid basis for being frustrated, for although “two top E.U. aides joined negotiations with Ukrainian and American delegations in Geneva . . ., European leaders have been largely side-lined from the talks.”[3] As for the Coalition of “the willing,” which consisted of 33 sovereign countries, depending on a bloc rather than on the E.U. to safeguard Ukraine’s geopolitical and military interests, or treating the E.U. as if it were a bloc, can be reckoned as borderline foolishness when up against an active theatre of combat.

Kuleba’s point in lamenting that Ukraine did not have another America in Europe may imply that the E.U. could and even should be another America capable in terms of raw power to be a counterweight to American foreign policy in the world. This is not to say that “another America” would be a replica of the United States, for the European Union, although another empire-scale federal system characterized by dual sovereignty (and thus not a confederation such as U.S.’s Articles of Confederation (1781-1789)), contains differences. For example, whereas the U.S. Senate represents the member-states at the federal level, the European Council and the Council of Ministers represent the state governments at the federal level in European Union. Yet the U.S. House of Representatives and the European Parliament are much more alike counterparts, representing U.S. and E.U. citizens, respectively. The political genus of empire-scale and level federalism of dual sovereignty (i.e., state and federal) can indeed support institutional and procedural differences in the basic, or constitutional, law. Whereas the U.S. in the twentieth century had become too consolidated, the E.U. in its first few decades in the next century has been too state-heavy, as the U.S. was for many decades since it split the atom of governmental sovereignty in 1789. Even though the E.U.’s federalism contains more safeguards protecting the states from federal encroachment than did the U.S. even when the governments of the member states selected U.S. senators, those E.U. safeguards arguably have paralyzed the E.U. on the world stage.

In particular, the veto power of each state government in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, and the refusal of every state to delegate more governmental sovereignty to the European Commission to conduct foreign and defense policy, are why the E.U. president (i.e., of the federal executive branch) and the federal foreign minister were not able to defend Ukraine from the ongoing invasion for years, and to become directly involved in the negotiations to end the invasion. Put more bluntly, by even just threatening to use the state’s veto, the governor of the E.U. state of Hungary was holding E.U. policy and power regarding Ukraine and Russia hostage. Even with regard to the frozen assets of Russia’s central bank, E.U. officials were having trouble using that as political leverage to shift the negotiations more to Ukraine’s favor. It is not that President Von der Leyen was weak or not astute politically, or naïve on defense; rather it is the case that a federal system in which governmental sovereignty is held both by state governments and the Union is incompatible with the confederal device of the state veto at the federal level.

A dean of the Global Affairs school of Boston University told me in 2024 that the E.U. was a mix of confederal and modern (dual sovereignty) federalism. I countered that the two types of federalism are mutually exclusive. To conflate the two, such as by granting the federal institutions some governmental sovereignty while giving each state government a veto over such sovereignty, is self-contradictory and thus inherently implausible. To be sure, the E.U.’s states could look at the process of consolidation of power at the federal level in the U.S. and want institutional and procedural safeguards against such federal encroachment from happening down the road in the European context, but I submit that such safeguards can exist without hamstringing the E.U. internationally.

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1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “European Decision-Making on Ukraine ‘Embarrassing,’ Former Foreign Minister Kuleba Says,” Euronews.com, November 27, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

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."

The E.U.: A Step Toward a World Federation?

Does the European Union represent a novel paradigm and thus a step in political development? Whether this is so or not, can the E.U. be thought of as a step on the way towards a world federation? In a talk at Harvard in 2025, Anthony Pagden, a professor at UCLA, addressed these questions when the E.U. was just a few years over thirty—comparable to the U.S. in 1820. The question was not whether the E.U. too would lean towards political consolidation around a federal head, but whether the world was making its way institutionally toward the creation by compact of a world federation, which in turn could presumably stave off war. In 2025, the need for global accountability on willful, militarily-aggressive national governments was on at least some minds. The implication is that the global order based on national sovereignty was insufficient, especially given the advanced destructiveness of military weapons.

According to Pagden, the nation-state concept is at its core an ethnic concept that was extended in the 19^th century to include states that had territory extended beyond that of a particular ethnic group.  Although nation-states had existed, the concept came into its own in the 1800s, so the modern notion of the nation-state is ahistoric, and thus perfectly capable of being superseded should political development occur. The related notion of sovereignty only became salient in the 16^th century (e.g., Jean Bodin) and this continued in the next century in Hobbes’ Leviathan.  Hobbes’ assumption was not that governmental sovereignty could not be split like an atom, but that it should not be divided lest civil war break out. Europe was no stranger to war in the 1600s, given the Thirty Years War, which was based on religious differences bearing on political power.

Of course, the atom of sovereignty was split in the U.S. Convention in the following century, with the checks-and-balances in federalism being relied upon to keep the inherently unstable division stable. Although Pagden didn’t mention this point, he did say that relations between nation-states had historically tended to be through empires but more recently (in centuries) has been through federations. In the process, the very notion of sovereignty has been undergoing a gradual transformation. Whereas Russia’s President Putin once claimed that either a country is sovereign or it’s a colony, Pagden claimed that at least as of 2025, sovereignty had reached international organizations. Together with nation-states, the notion of multilevel sovereignty had come into its own. From this notion, Pagden claimed, a world federation would someday be likely. He cited Durkheim’s prediction that at some point humanity would form a global “social order” may be correct, but Kant’s claim that peace would only be possible but not probable under a world federation also deserves attention. Even if the world’s shift from empires to federal governments and international confederations (which actually extend back to antiquity--Sparta and Athens having headed military confederations) makes a world federation more likely, the question of whether having one would stave off war warrants reflection too. I think the key would be whether such a federation has enforcement power, for the U.N. has arguably sidelined itself because it lacks the authority and power to enforce its own resolutions and the veto mechanism on the Security Council is a contributing factor that relegated the U.N. to the sidelines as Russia invaded Ukraine and Israel ravaged Gaza—both cases evincing an utter lack of accountability from beyond the sovereignty of the nation-state.

Pagden stressed that even though historically, empires have shaped the geography of the modern world, federations will likely make an indelible imprint on the world in the future. “Empires and federations have much in common,” he said. Both are legal societies. But with respect to confederal international organizations, including the United Nations, “international law is controversial.” I would add that the lack of enforcement power renders such law de facto impotent in its own right, although such law can be used by nation-states in the exercise of their sovereignty on the world stage.

Even though empires and federations have elements in common—indeed, originally federations were exclusively international--empires are created by conquest, whereas federations begin by consent. In European history, countries that had sovereign states in Medieval times became political sub-units of federal nation-states in the early-modern period. Pagden characterized Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium as “centralized federalism.” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin once told me that Congress delegating functions to the state governments is “decentralized federalism.” Relatedly, Pagden said that the notion of subsidiarity comes from Roman law; only legislation that affects all of the political sub-units should be at the empire level. In his Political Digest (1603), Althusius relates this point to his claim that only the members at a level in a federal system are to be represented at the next-highest level: individuals belong only to the first-level. That Germany and Belgium are themselves states in the E.U. federal system resembles the structure of Althusian federalism, which is based on the Holy Roman Empire. By implication, geographically diverse U.S. states, such as California and New York, could federate and still remain as states in the U.S., just as Belgium and Germany in the European Union. Once you get the levels right, comparative federalism gets very interesting (and contentious, for most people compare apples with oranges—a state in one Union with another Union).

The ECJ says that the EU treaties evince a constitutional order, so common law from the ECJ is indeed law. Pagden disagreed with the European Court of Justice on this point, whereas I agree with the court. Even so, he said, “The E.U. is a federation even if not in name.” The contradiction is only apparent. The E.U., according to Pagden, is an exception—thus instantiating a new paradigm and thus a step in political development. He could have cited the Athenian League and Sparta’s confederation as evincing the close association that federalism has had with distinctly international rather than national political entities. The British Commonwealth too is international, but it being voluntary differentiates it from federalism, which has tended to be treaty-based.

I contend that to classify the E.U. as an international organization is incorrect. Unlike NATA, the UN, ASEAN, and the AU, the E.U. has a federal government of three branches: the European Court of Justice, a legislature (the Council of the E.U., the European Council, and the European Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens rather than states), and an executive branch (the European Commission). Like the U.S. the E.U. has federal institutions based on national (e.g., the ECJ, the Parliament and the Commission) and international (e.g., the European Council and the Council of the E.U.) principles. The U.S. House is based on national principles whereas the U.S. Senate is based on international principles—the same ones that the UN is based on). Both empire-scale federations, the E.U. and U.S., fall under the rubric of federalism wherein governmental sovereignty is “dual,” or split, whereas the UN and NATO are not, for full sovereignty is retained by the countries. Applicable to the E.U. as well as the U.S., John Stuart Mill claimed not only that federations are not stable over time, but also that a federation can become a nation-state. Indeed, the E.U. and U.S. effectively split the very notion of nation-state between two governmental systems over the same territory.

The basic paradigmatic likeness of the E.U. and U.S. flies in the face of Pagden’s argument that the E.U. evinces something politically sui generis; this point in turn he uses to claim that the new type of federalism is more useful than the American type as a basis for a world federation constructed by regional federations. I submit that the E.U. and U.S. are empire-scale federal systems and thus can be characterized as regional with respect to the global level. The E.U. doesn’t need to be unique for the construction of a world federation by consent to be achieved; the U.S. and E.U. both evince the useful step in that both federations fall under “modern federalism,” which Ken Wheare distinguishes from confederalism because only in the former type is governmental (not popular!) sovereignty split, whether by treaty, basic law, or constitution. Furthermore, that the interstate heterogeneity in both the E.U. and U.S. is a leap from intrastate diversity whether in terms of political ideology or culture qualifies both unions as being a useful step potentially if a world federation is someday to be constructed. The diversity within the E.U. is much greater than is the diversity within Germany, for example. The same applies to France. Hence federalism, in being able to accommodate differences, is more useful at the level of the E.U. (and the U.S.).

Pagden rightly points to Europe’s shared political and legal culture from Roman law, and all of the delegates at the U.S. convention were of European extraction at some point. A world federation would be another leap in terms of inter-state diversity because no such common cultural basis would apply. The distinction between British common law and the French code pales in comparison between ancient Roman and Chinese law. Also, the absolutist interpretation of sovereignty by the governments of Russia and China is a world away from the notion of dual sovereignty that characterizes “modern federalism” as evinced in the E.U. and the U.S, both of whose federal institutions are based on national and international principles depending on the institution. This hybrid is precisely what a world federation might need, and yet the notion of applying federalism to making a nation-state and yet one whose members are semi-sovereign (with residual sovereignty!) was even by 2025 foreign to a Hobbesian notion of sovereignty as unitary and absolute.

Therefore, I do not think that a new paradigm or type of federalism will be necessary for a world federation to be constructed. In fact, the hybrid that is at the federal level in the cases of the U.S. and E.U. can be useful, and even perhaps necessary, for such a federation not to succumb to impotence on enforcement. Yet I suspect this would be the sticking point for countries like Russia and China. Simply put, the absolutist view of national sovereignty must give way to make way for Wheare’s notion of dual-sovereignty in federalism for national governments, whether federated or not, to consent to a global federation. Staving off war is arguably worth scrapping the absolutist view, but try convincing Presidents Xi or Putin of this; after all, a very intelligent man, Immanuel Kant, thought that world peace would only be possible—not probable.

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.

Resolved: The E.U. Should Join NATO

I contend that the European Union rather than its states should be in NATO. Besides eliminating duplication from the E.U. having a nebulous observer status while the states are formally in the alliance, the increasing role in defense being played by the Commission, including there being a Defense commissioner (secretary/minister), calls for being formally in the alliance. Whereas the U.S. began as a military alliance of sovereign states, the E.U. can trace its beginnings to the European Economic Community. Both unions have since incorporated powers or competencies beyond the respective starting points. For the E.U. this has meant moving beyond economics and trade to include social policy and, last but not least, defense. It is in NATO’s interest to adapt to this change. Lastly, that the E.U. and U.S. are both instances of (early) modern federalism, which at its core has the attribute of dual-sovereignty wherein both the federal and the state levels enjoy at least some governmental sovereignty, whereas NATO, as an international alliance, is confederal in that all of the sovereignty resides in the members of the alliance, justifies the E.U. being a member of NATO rather than being misinterpreted as a comparable international organization as the state-rights Euroskeptics like to believe.

On November 6, 2024, at his confirmation hearing at the European Parliament, the Commission’s nominee to be the union’s first defense commissioner (defense secretary in American parlance), Andrius Kubilius (of the European People’s Party) said, “If we want to defend ourselves, we need to spend at least €10 billion up to 2028.”[1] In addition, €200 billion would be needed over the next decade to update infrastructure and €500 billion to build an air-defence shield. “We need to spend more,” he said, “not because it is a demand of President[-Elect] Trump, but because of Putin”, the President of Russia, who, not coincidentally, was in the second year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[2] Showing “that we’re able to defend ourselves” would “convince Putin not to start another military campaign” within the E.U.’s territory.[3] Strength comes in numbers, and at the time that meant 27 states united to thwart Putin’s military expansionism.

A united force would carry over into NATO, within which the E.U. would have more clout than any of the 27 E.U. states had ever had in the alliance. Furthermore, were the E.U. to replace its states in NATO, the seven E.U. states that still had not met the commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense would be wiped clean because the only requirement would be that the E.U. spend at least 2% of its GDP on defense, and Kubilius was clearly signaling that the Commission was in favor of doing so.  Of course, whether the Parliament would go along is another story. For NATO, no longer would 27 states in Europe have to be watched as far as defense spending is concerned, and the integration of military infrastructure at the E.U. level would also be easier for NATO to connect to instead of doing so separately to 27 state military forces (militias in American parlance).

Perhaps most important, with the E.U. being a member of the NATO alliance and spending €200 billion over a decade on infrastructure that would integrate the fractured militaries at the state level, the chances would be lower that war would erupt within the E.U. between the states. Nineteenth-century American history reminds us that such a war is possible in an empire-scale federal system wherein the state governments are powerful, and twentieth-century European history contained two world wars that began in what would become the European Union. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is very much in the interests of the U.S. that the E.U. not only be able to defend itself, and thus rely less on American money for the purpose and be better equipped to fend off Russian expansionism, but also join NATO. Having one voice rather than 27 to speak with would simplify the communicative tasks on both sides of the Atlantic. I suspect that the foremost obstacle to further European integration on the defence front is ideological in nature, and this resistance, not coincidentally, aligns quite well with the personal and short-run political interests of the heads of the state governments in the European Union, for it is human, all too human, to relish being in the spotlight.

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1. Paul Soler, “Boost E.U. Defence Capabilities Against Putin, Future Commissioner Warns,” Euronews.com, November 7, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

European Federalism: Beyond “Sticks and Stones"

Domestic governance is perhaps more difficult than international relations in that real enforcement mechanisms are in force only in the former. Flaunt a UN resolution and that feckless organization is unchanged; if a state official flaunts a federal law, on the other hand, the viability of the federal system can collapse as governors and legislators in other states get the same idea. Before long, the states are once again sovereign. Unfortunately, it is easy to get distracted by political theater and miss such existential threats from the point of view of the viability of a system of public-sector governance. Yet we depend so much on governments, so to tamper with necessary beams (or cards, as in a house of cards) is quite dangerous. Along with the governors of Hungary and Slovakia, Poland’s top official knowingly compromised the viability of the European Union (E.U.) in 2023, but, unfortunately, I don’t think many people stood up and paid attention to the danger. Political theater staged for election purposes is more tantalizing, which raises the question: who in the E.U. was watching the proverbial store?

In response to Ukraine’s President Zelensky’s depiction of Poland’s government as engaging in “political theater” in making a “thriller” in objecting to the E.U.’s lifting the ban on Ukraine crops traveling through and being bought in the union, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to the Ukrainian “never to insult Poles again.”[1] To remark that a politician, especially one up for re-election, is using hyperbole to appease Polish farmers for electioneering purposes is not to insult the Polish farmers or the Polish people as a people. So it is outlandish, not to mention a bit strange, that Poland’s prime minister told journalists, “The Polish people will never allow this to happen, and defending the good name of Poland is not only my duty and honor, but also the most fundamental task of the Polish government.”[2] If so, then the Polish people had a terribly reckless judgment concerning the rationale for war and the prime minister lapsed terribly in not knowing that the primary responsibility of a government is to protect a people from being attacked from abroad. Retaliating for one insult is not generally viewed by political theorists as a legitimate (and even smart) reason to go to war. Furthermore, “Never insult us again!” strikes me as childish. Were Zelensky to resort to that jejune mentality, he might have replied, sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you, and then stuck out his tongue just for effect.

One of the benefits of representative democracy is that reflection by elected representatives who enjoy the buffer of a term in office can hold statescraft off from the momentary excitements of a mob. Both Plato and Aristotle viewed the mob as the bad form of democracy. To Plato, reason in a just person and polis controls the appetites, or emotions. Indeed, structures of governance, both public and private, are instituted in order to subject flaring passions to reasoned-out routes. As a E.U. state, Poland committed an egregious error when Morawiecki refused to recognize the federal (i.e., E.U.) change of policy lift the ban on Ukrainian grains in the E.U. In this respect, the prime minister’s political tactics could compromise the viability of the E.U. as a system of public-sector governance (i.e., a system of government). The E.U. is hardly alone; the U.S. has also been susceptible to resistance from the governments of member states.

In 1832, the legislature of South Carolina decided that it could lawfully void any federal law from being valid within South Carolina; it was a matter of that republic defending its interests. President Andrew Jackson sent troops to the wayward member state, whose government had even drawn up an “exit” document, which was used in 1861 to exit the U.S. In 2023, Alabama ignored the U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming “a lower court that had ordered the state to redraw its seven-seat congressional map to include a second majority-Black district or ‘something quite close to it.’”[3] After the decision in June, the Alabama legislature “again approved a congressional map with only one majority-Black district.”[4] Just as the history of the E.U. has included instances in which state governments, and even state supreme courts, have ignored decisions by the European Court of Justice, the government of Alabama was saying, in effect, that rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court could be ignored. Considering that this was hardly an open question, considerable gall as well as denial went into the recalcitrance of the state officials. The judges of the lower court whose ruling the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed wrote, “We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.”[5] Flouting federal law is no small matter, as the supremacy of the federal judiciary in adjudicating on federal law had long been established by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Marshall’s ruling in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

In 2023, the governors of the E.U. states of Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia announced that they would continue to ban Ukrainian wheat even though the E.U. had just lifted the ban. Specifically, the European Commission rejected the state bans on Ukrainian grains, dairy, sugar, fruit, vegetables and meats.[6] A spokesperson for the Commission said, “In this context, it is important to underline that trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable.”[7] Yet those states persisted. In fact, Slovakia and Bulgaria enacted bans! In so doing, all of those states weakened Ukraine, which was defending its territory against the Russian invasion.  The states indirectly aided President Putin.

Because the E.U., like the U.S., was aiding Ukraine militarily, the illegal state bans thwarted E.U. foreign policy too. The E.U. had “decided to suspend duties and quotas on a long list of Ukrainian exports . . . , including many agricultural goods, in a bid to help the war-torn country cope with the economic fallout from Russia’s war and facilitate trade for Ukrainian farmers.”[8] So at the federal level, the decision taken involved an acknowledgement that helping Ukraine as a matter of foreign policy to thwart Russian aggression would entail economic costs within the E.U.

The governors of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria had jointly written a letter to E.U. President von der Leyen, “If market distortions causing damage to farmers in our [states] cannot be eliminated by other means, we ask the Commission to put in place appropriate procedures to reintroduce tariffs and quotas on imports from Ukraine.”[9] As states being directly represented at the federal level in the European Council, the recalcitrant five were obliged to abide by federal law rather than be sore losers when their joint request was denied. For each state had agreed to cede some sovereignty to the E.U. even in the federal qualified-majority-voting procedure itself—not to mention the exclusive competencies, such as trade—so to continue as semi-sovereign states and yet act if those states were sovereign state, just as South Carolina had done and Alabama would do, is nothing short of duplicitous and egoist.  

A federal system simply cannot function viably if every state can decide for itself whether a certain federal law is valid within the state’s boundaries. Such a federal system would reduce to a confederation, in which governmental sovereignty resides with the members (i.e., states). Just as the U.S. discovered from 1776 to 1789 in the Articles of Confederation and the E.U. was discovering in 2023 both with regard to raising money and enforcing federal law, a confederal system has too many vulnerabilities to be viable except internationally. With a bicameral legislature (i.e., the Parliament and Council of the E.U.), an executive branch (i.e., the Commission), and a supreme court (i.e., the European Court of Justice), the E.U. is not an international body; rather, like the U.S., both national and international principles of governance are included in the system.

So even though not nearly as childish as making threats on the basis of an insult erroneously inferred to be against the people, Poland’s refusal to recognize a federal law is much more significant than even whether Poland would permit Ukrainian wheat to pass through (or be bought within) the state, and definitely more important than whether someone insults the Poles. When I was a kid in America, telling Polish jokes was a stable. In hindsight, it seems so silly, and only a fool gets upset over childish things. Certainly, heads of governments should not. Chief executives of governments, and CEOs for that matter, should not talk to each other as if drunk in a bar. Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers swore like a sailor and was very immature in his “empire building” of real estate, and his emotional immaturity was one reason why the investment bank collapsed. Governments, however, cannot simply collapse, and so people who represent others have a responsibility to talk like adults rather than children. Being an adult includes being willing to submit to constraints, such as federal laws, and even international law were they to be given any enforcement power.

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[1] Maija Ehlinger and Mariya Knight, “Never ‘Insult Poles Again,’ Poland’s Prime Minister Tells Ukraine’s Zelensky,” CNN.com (September 23, 2023).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ariane de Vogue and Fredreka Schouten, “Supreme Court Rejects Alabama’s Attempt to Avoid Creating a Second Black Majority Congressional District,” CNN.com, September 26, 2023 (accessed September 30, 2023).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Robert Greenall, “EU Rejects Ukraine Grain Bans by Poland and Hungary,” BBC.com, April 17, 2023 (accessed September 30,2023).
[7] Jorge Liboreiro and Sandor Zsiros, “’Not Acceptable’: EU Decries Bans on Tariff-free Ukrainian Grain Imposed by Neighboring Countries,” Euronews, April 17, 2023 (accessed September 30, 2023).
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., italics added.

Turkey’s President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues

The European Union is not a military alliance, like NATO or the ancient Spartan League. Nor is the E.U. merely a free-trade agreement like NAFTA. In terms of the history of federalism, the E.U. instantiates “modern federalism,” wherein governmental sovereignty is split between federal and state levels, rather than confederalism, wherein all such sovereignty is retained by the states. Both the U.S. and E.U. instantiate modern federal systems, although ironically the U.S. was originally a confederal system of sovereign states. In likening the E.U. to NATA in 2023, President Erdogan of Turkey unwittingly committed a category mistake. This in turn weakened his attempt to leverage his power in approving Sweden as a country in NATO with his demand that the E.U. admit Turkey as a state.

Just prior to the NATO meeting in June, 2023, Erdogan stated at a news conference, “First, let’s clear Turkey’s way in the European Union, then let’s clear the way for Sweden, just as we paved the way for Finland.”[1] Becoming a state in a political union, whether it is the U.S. or E.U., is qualitatively different than joining a military alliance. Joining the latter does not involve a transfer of some governmental sovereignty to a federal executive branch (e.g., the E.U. Commission), legislative branch (e.g., the Council of the E.U. and the E.U. Parliament), and judicial branch (e.g., the European Court of Justice). A state in such a federal system is qualitatively different than a country being in a military alliance because an alliance itself has no governmental institutions and sovereignty.

To characterize a state in a union and a country in a military alliance both as “member states” is misleading. In fact, efforts to do so may stem from an ideological “state’s rights” (or Euroskeptic) effort to deny that the E.U. is in fact an instance of modern federalism rather than confederalism. In remarking that “almost all NATO member countries are European member countries,” Erdogan unwittingly fell into the trap of the ideologues who refuse to recognize that the E.U. and U.S. fall within the same genre of unions of states (i.e., modern federalism rather than confederalism).[2] Because the term country implies full sovereignty, both E.U. and U.S. members are states in the sense of being semi-sovereign political units in a federal system. The U.S. states are members of the U.S., because they joined the U.S. from being formerly sovereign countries (or assumed to have been of such status) and the members of the U.S. Senate, which is based on international rather than national law. The Council of the E.U. is also founded on international principles, wherein political units rather than citizens are the members.

It follows that the countries that are members of UNESCO, the UN, and other international organizations are not states thereof, and should not be referred to as member states. To do so in an attempt to imply that the E.U., unlike the U.S., is also an international organization flies in the face of the very existence of the E.U. Commission, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. International organizations do not have legislatures and high courts and executive branches to implement law and federal judicial rulings. That the Euroskeptic ideology denies this just shows the downside of ideology in general as being intellectually dishonest as regards empirical facts. To want to remake things as they presently are is one thing; to claim or insinuate that things are already different than they are is quite another. I contend that the Turkish president fell into the trap laid by the intellectually dishonest ideologues in Europe.

1. Hande A. Alam and Christian Edwards, “Erdogan Links Sweden’s NATO Bid to Turkey Joining the EU,” CNN.com, July 10, 2023.
2. Ibid.

National Leaders Lag Global Crises: A Systemic Explanation

Surveying the world on August 19, 2014, the UN’s Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, claimed that the greatest humanitarian crises in the history of the United Nations were outstripping any solutions coming from the organization’s members. World leaders, he said, “have to sit down together with an open heart to negotiate in the interests of their people,” Ban said.[1] Yet there’s the rub, for even though the Secretary-General avoided the point (perhaps because it implies structural reform at the UN), national officials acting in the interest of their respective citizens do not necessarily have an interest in coming together with other such officials to take care of the mammoth human external costs of countries at war with themselves.

By the day of Ban’s astonishing declaration that the world faces the greatest humanitarian crises in the history of the UN, 6.5 million people had been displaced in the three years of civil war in Syria. The Russian-aided separatist movement in Ukraine had claimed 2,000 lives since the beginning of 2014. Fighting in Iraq and Israel were also among the humanitarian disasters in progress. In 2013, at least 33 million people had been displaced by such conflict—the highest figure ever recorded, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.[2]

Even though Ban complained about the lack of political will in the international community to resolve the ongoing conflicts or at least provide sufficient humanitarian aid to the displaced, the problem lies deeper. That is to say, it is no accident that national officials around the world were not leading on these global problems. Rather than merely being a question of leadership, thus idiosyncratic to particular officials, a disjunction naturally severs their political interests from their international “responsibilities;” for is it even fair to an elected official to say that he or she has an ethical duty to work toward solutions to problems outside the actual or best interests of his or her constituents? Similarly, would it be ethical for a corporation’s board of directors to disregard their fiduciary duty to the stockholders in committing funds needed in the company to societal problems that only vaguely negatively impact the company’s short- or long-term profitability? Certainly, global and societal problems cry out for help, and it is only human to want to respond, but what if the incentives and disincentives built into the system work tacitly against rather than for such a response?

In his statement, Ban Ki Moon admits both that national officials work in the interests of their respective peoples and that he himself cannot solve the crises or attend to their humanitarian external costs. “I can bring world leaders to the river,” he explained, “but I cannot force them to drink water.”[3] What lies only implicit, unfortunately, in relating these two points is the lack of any governmental sovereignty on Ban’s level, on which resolving humanitarian crises is not an externality. Depending on government officials on another level to respond as if this were so on their level too is foolish, not to mention erroneous. In fact, it may even be unethical, given the fiduciary duty of elected national officials to represent their respective constituents. That Ban backed off from mention of this structural flaw in the global fabric is telling, particularly given the conflict of interest that exists for any national official in deciding whether to cede some sovereignty to the UN or retain the authority. Ban wants to keep his job, and he knows where the true power lies in the UN.

Leadership, especially the visionary sort, does not respond to crisis after crisis; rather, a vision is of an alternative paradigm, and thus connotes structural change in governance systems. Perhaps political leadership had been so melted down into public administration and the culture of managerialism by 2014 that structural change even as an ideal could only be imagined as an oxymoron, and certainly not uttered in the public square. With such a tight straight-jacket, it is no wonder that pressures around the world built up and exploded. Are we then left with a tale of two cities—one gripped by a pathological fear of change and the other moved only in fits by revolutionary fervor? Is the want of visionary leadership in formulating, enunciating, and advocating systemic change to be forever sacrificed in favor of either Edwin Burke’s conservatism or Robespierre’s forced radical change?

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[1]Oren Dorell, “U.N. Chief: Crises at New High,” USA Today, August 20, 2014.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

E.U. Federalism Enabling Russian Expansionism

The visuals alone in the closing news conference of the EU-US “summit” held in Brussels, which President Barroso denoted as “the capital of Europe,” on March 26, 2014, must have struck Europeans and Americans alike as novel, if not rather bizarre; we are not yet accustomed to seeing the EU and US presidents on the same stage, for we are mired in the paradigm of another epoch. The failure to "catch up" may tacitly enable the expansion of another empire-level federation.

Were the original 12-star US flag used, the similarity would be too striking to ignore. This is not to say that the EU and US are identical in basic law. Whereas the US has one federal president, the EU has two. A council of presidents in the US had been considered in 1787 and dropped in favor of the energy that only a "single executive" could have. (Image Source: Reuters)

The old mental framework may sense itself already out of place—that is to say, on borrowed time in the new century and millennium. Clutching tight to one word, country, as if the global system were exhausted by it (and reduces to it), may suggest just such a felt insecurity as a houseguest might feel once his or her relations have moved away and only strangers remain.

In the stage with EU Presidents Van Rompuy and Barroso, US President Obama probably had no sense of the ambiguity latent in his reference to “the countries represented here today.”[1] To the overstayed houseguest, Obama was referring to the EU’s states and to the US but not to its states. The mental staying-power of a framework firmly ensconced in the global (collective, which is to say, shared) consciousness rides headlong over the silent category mistake that inheres in thinking of the states in one empire-scale union as each corresponding to another such union rather than to its states. Both in terms of scale and governmental sovereignty (i.e., dual-sovereignty), the states are states and the unions are unions—the situs of foreign policy, whether at the state or federal level, not being decisive as to the ontological nature of the unions as federal empire-scale unions-of-semi-sovereign states.

President Van Rompuy, chairman of the European Council—which like the US Senate is based on intergovernmental principles as polities rather than citizens are represented—had only his chamber’s half of modern federalism in mind when he stated, “We have to coordinate [sanctions] among our member states; they are not all in the same position as far as trade, energy, financial services is concerned; so we have to coordinate among us and of course with the United States.”[2] By implication, the United States is on par with the “member states” in the European Union. 

President Obama had already laid the perfect groundwork for his counterpart by observing that there “has been excellent coordination between the United States and Europe.”[3] To be sure, Obama was on more solid ground in stating that Russia has not driven a wedge “between the United States and the European Union,” and that over the years, “we have been able to deepen the ties between the European Union and the United States.” [4] Yet he quickly reverted to treating the EU as if it were like NATO instead. “The twenty-eight members of the European Union are united; the twenty-eight members of NATO are united.”[5] Well, the fifty members of the United States were united too; hence the name, whose use in the singular rather than plural only became definitive nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence declared to the world thirteen sovereign states, or countries.

The American president’s uses of Europe and members are both logically problematic (especially at an EU-US Summit!). Furthermore, the rhetoric played into the European president’s institutional and prejudicial agenda in privileging the EU’s states at the expense of not only the US’s states but also the EU itself.

Put in terms of the development of federalism both historically (and relatedly) in terms of the theory, Van Rompuy was reducing modern federalism, which contains both national and intergovernmental governmental institutions at the federal level, to the much older confederal, alliance-based, sort of federalism that is entirely intergovernmental at the federal level.  Excluded from the mythic paradigm wherein the EU is like the ancient Athenian Alliance and Spartan League are EU institutions such as the European Parliament (which like the US House of Representatives is founded on national-government principles), the European Commission (also national rather than intergovernmental), and the European Court of Justice.

In practical terms, President Van Rompuy’s antiquated vantage-point reinforces a major weakness of the EU. En fait, Van Rompuy’s council of the EU state governments could not get past their commercial differences to arrive at a formidable array of sanctions “with sharp teeth” to impose on Russia in the wake of its invasion of the Crimea region of Ukraine, an independent state between two empire-scale federations. Whereas the governments of the republics and regions of the Russian Federation did have sufficient power to thwart Putin’s adventurism at the federal level, the EU’s states had enough power in the EU’s federal system to obstruct a united response with enough “teeth” to push Putin back into Russia and keep him from further incursions at the expense of neighboring independent states.  

As it stood, Ukrainian lawmakers could only lament Ukraine’s agreement with Russia and the US to give up the third-largest stock of nuclear weapons in exchange for the counterparties respecting Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. “We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement,” Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said in the wake of the Russian invasion. “Now there’s a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake.”[6] As if unable to part with his partial (intergovernmental) understanding of the EU as something akin to NATO or the Athenian Alliance rather than Russia, China, and the US, President Van Rompuy reflected in his remarks the institutional bias of his own chamber at the expense not only of the EU itself, but also the world. 

The failure of the whole (i.e., the EU) to relativize the particular state interests in the European Council (and the Council of Ministers) to the overarching interests of the EU (as represented in the Commission and the European Parliament as a body) informed Rizanenko’s reservations and thus tacitly sent the message that reducing nuclear proliferation does not pay. Add in the message to Putin that he could invade Ukraine with virtually no cost to Russia and we can conclude that the imbalance in the EU in favor of the state governments at the expense of the Union (and its foreign policy) has already made the world a much more dangerous place. The antiquated, and indeed mistaken view of the EU as comparable to NATO and thus of the EU’s member states though little united states of Europe (while the US states are somehow like European provinces) is not merely an ideologically convenient (i.e., self-serving) series of category mistakes; the resulting fecklessness in the EU had had a direct impact in weakening global security.

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[1] Closing News Conference, “EU-US Summit,” March 26, 2014.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Oren Dorell, “Ukraine Lawmaker Laments Giving Up Nuclear Arsenal,” USA Today, March 11, 2014.