European Priorities Regarding Ukraine

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.

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “EU Releases €1.4 Billion to Ukraine from Frozen Russian AssetProfits after Kyiv Attacks,” Euronews.com, 5 August, 2026.
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.

A Drone Wall for the E.U.: Russian Aggression Assuages Euroskeptic States

Speaking after his meeting with U.S. President Trump in Alaska during the summer of 2025, Russia’s President Putin said that if no agreement is reached with Ukraine, the force of arms would decide the matter. In other words, might makes right, or at least military incursion is a legitimate way to decide political disputes between countries. I would have hoped that such a primitive mentality would be antiquated in the twentieth century, but, alas, human nature evolves only at a glacial pace undetected within the lifespan of a human being. In September, 2025, the United Nations was under attack from within the General Assembly because of the continuance of the veto held by five countries in the Security Council; the U.S. had just vetoed a resolution for an immediate cession of Israeli destruction in Gaza. As a former deputy secretary of the UN had admitted to me during the fall of 2024, the veto itself renders the UN unreformable; a new international organization would have to be established sans vetoes for efficacy to be possible. Even so, absent a real enforcement mechanism, such as a military force, a resolution even of a vetoless organization would merely be parchment. The impotence of the UN is one reason why NATO, a defensive military transatlantic alliance, has been valuable in the face of military threats by Russia. Yet in September 2025, after Russian drones had flown into four E.U. states, E.U. President Von der Leyen felt the need to take the lead by again stressing her proposal for a drone wall along the E.U.’s eastern border; she was not deferring to any international alliance, much less to the United Nations. I submit that Von der Leyen’s initiative is yet another means by which the E.U. can be distinguished from international “blocs,” alliances, and organizations. Unlike the latter three, the E.U. has exclusive competencies and is thus semi-sovereign (and the same goes for the state governments).

After “two or three large drones were spotted at Copenhagen Airport,” which is in the E.U., on September 23, 2025, the E.U.’s Commission “called for a drone wall, a novel initiative first unveiled by President Ursula von der Leyen” in her State of the Union speech.[1] “For those who still doubted the need to have a drone wall in the European Union, well, here we get another example of how important it is,” a spokesman at the Commission said.[2] Why had not the Commission pursued this proposal in time to block the incursions in August and September?

Euroskeptic, or anti-federalist, Europeans, which included at least two governors at the time, loathed the idea of federalizing defense (and foreign policy). Also, just as in the early decades of the U.S., some state governments resisted the federalization of “collective” debt. That the E.U.’s executive branch was “rolling out a €150 billion loan programme to boost defence spending, which could be mobilized to promote domestic production of drones,” represented to some governors a giant leap on the way to a central federal state that would eventually encroach on the state governments.[3] This fear, by the way, is precisely what led several U.S. states to try to exit the U.S. in 1861.

Whereas in the U.S., the state government’s direct power at the federal level had been weakened when state governments no longer appointed delegates to the U.S. Senate, E.U. state governments could wield veto power over a significant number of proposed federal laws and regulations. Whereas the U.S. state governments could no longer adequately protect their turf against federal encroachment, the E.U.’s federal governmental institutions could still be paralyzed by blocs of states or even just one state. So, it is incredible that the Commission was able to act on the incursions of drones once this had been in a north-western state (i.e., Denmark) to create a drone wall and issue significant “collective,” or federal debt. Unlike international organizations, the E.U. has some governmental sovereignty that had been delegated by the states, and this means that it is no surprise that the E.U. rather than NATO or the UN would take action in the face of Putin’s use of force of arms to decide the question of Ukraine. The problem is that the Commission has too often been paralyzed by the state governors, which is particularly damaging because the E.U. is not an international organization, and those that existed as of 2025 could not be relied upon.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “’We Cannot Wait’: EU Calls for Drone Wall to Deter Russia after New Incident in Denmark,” September 23, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

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.