Rewarding Invaders with Profit: The Case of Russia in Ukraine

Operant Conditioning in Psychology, the theory advanced by B. F. Skinner in the 1930s, holds that punishment and reinforcement can change behavior. Positive reinforcement is more likely than punishment to see a given behavior repeated. With regard to the U.S.-Russian plan announced in November, 2025, to end the war in Ukraine, E.U. officials were concerned that if Russia would benefit from the plan, Putin would be more likely to stage other invasions in Eastern Europe. Positive reinforcement financially could make invading profitable, a point that would not be lost on government officials of countries desirous of territorial expansion.

At an international security conference held in Canada on November 22, 2025, some U.S. senators voiced concern that the plan worked out by Trump and Putin would reward aggression. U.S. Sen. Agnus King said as much during a panel discussion. The proposed plan, which the government of Ukraine was considering at the time, “rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern Ukraine.”[1] Sen. McConnell, a former Majority Leader, put out a statement on the dangers of Putin viewing the plan as a win for him.

Besides what future responses Putin might have to the positive reinforcement in having gained territory in eastern Ukraine, the moral question of whether invaders should be rewarded politically and even financially for going to war seems simple enough, especially as it can be argued that a moral duty exists for every other government around the world to make Putin and Russia pay for having invaded Ukraine. As E.U. President Von der Leyen said, might should no longer be allowed to be the decider of rights to territory.

The switch from Russia paying a price to gaining financially (in additional to territorially) was apparent from the E.U.’s vantage-point concerning that Union’s plan to make Russia pay literally for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction from the Russian financial assets blocked then in Europe. “In a dramatic reversal for the EU, the US-led plan suggests the Russian assets would be unblocked, releasee, and turned into an investment platform handled by [the U.S.]. The language implies the Kremlin would not only be spared from paying war damages in a future settlement but also benefit commercially.”[2] Two separate funds would be created from the €300 billion in “the immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank.”[3] One fund would “finance Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and another [fund] shared by the US and Russia [would] develop ‘joint projects in specific areas’”, with both Russia and the US getting the profits.[4] 

That part of the American-Russian plan for peace directly contradicts the Von der Leyen’s position that Russia should not benefit from having invaded another country in Europe. Absent a strong UN that could have acted so as to remove the Russians from Ukrainian territory (and the Israelis from Gaza), relying on disincentives so Putin (and Netanyahu) and any other officials of other governments would think twice before sending troops out. If Putin’s government is allowed to profit and gain additional territory by invading Ukraine, which the internally-weakened E.U. seemed powerless to prevent in 2025, then the fact that both Putin and Netanyahu “won” at the expense of Ukraine and Gaza even in terms of profits from investments is itself a good argument that a stronger international order was needed to stave off the worst that goes with absolutist national-sovereignty. 

Put another way, with the E.U. hampered by the state-vetoes in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., and with the international organizations such as the UN without any governmental sovereignty whatsoever, a world in which so much harm has been unleased by national governments with utter impunity and even positive reinforcements may need a world federation as Kant advocated. Such a global body would have to be capable militarily of removing an invader and stopping a genocide, rather than merely delivering humanitarian aid to civilians.

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1. Rob Gillies, “US Senators Slam Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Peace Plan as Rewarding Aggression,” AP News.com, November 22, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Extrapolating from the Arab Spring to Corporate Social Responsibility

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and a myriad of other companies, sees a natural extension or follow-through from the pro-democracy protests in the Middle East and North Africa to more corporate social responsibility. As much as I would like to think that the twenty-first century proffers a new world, I think we have to acknowledge the weight of the political, economic and social strictures that we have uncritically inherited.

The full essay is at "The Arab Spring and Corporate Responsibility."

Selling Coal at a Conference on Climate Change

Peabody Energy, an American coal company and unlikely participant at a global conference on climate change in November, 2017, nevertheless previewed its presentation by trumpeting coal as part of the solution with: “As the world seeks to reduce emissions while promoting economic prosperity, fossil fuels will continue to play a central role in the energy mix.”[1] Besides interlarding economic growth at the conference that was on the climate, the company’s management felt the need—nay, even the obligation—to remind the world that coal would still play a prominent part in how the world obtains energy for its billions and billions of human beings. “The reality of it is the world is going to continue to use fossil fuels, and if I can throw myself on the hand grenade to help people realize that, I’m willing to do it,” said Barry Worthington of the U.S. Energy Association before the conference in the E.U. city of Bonn. Were people really unaware that reliance on coal was an intractable problem from the standpoint of reducing carbon emissions, or was the American company simply wanting to sell more coal?

Most experts at the time were insisting that we must shift from fossil fuels to meet the targets on emissions; not even short-term economic prosperity from coal should thus get in the way from the perspective of minimizing the worst expected from increasingly likely climate change. Accordingly, Worthington’s obligation could be viewed contrariwise as a crime against humanity. “Any country or company continuing to champion further exploration for and mining of coal and even other fossil fuels from now on would be willfully carrying out a crime against humanity, and they would be held accountable,” said Saleemul Huq of the International Center for Climate Change and Development.

A useful distinction can be made between helping developing countries to use cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels, as the U.S. had done at the last G20 meeting before the conference, and insisting that coal production be increased or even held at current levels so not to interfere with other social goods (e.g., economic growth). Even the insistence that coal would continue to supply 40% of the world’s energy takes away from the alternative narrative that coal use should be reduced as much and as soon as possible, realistically of course.

Humanity may unwittingly have already been on borrowed time from the standpoint of the Earth’s changing climate—unwittingly because the oceans were still absorbing carbon dioxide such that we could not perceive the full extent of the change already extant on land. So the public alarm from the self-aggrandizing selling of coal at a conference on climate change could be expected to be muted. Even if the oceans had been saturated such that the carbon in the atmosphere was spiking, the public alarm would likely have fallen short of taking into account that the species itself could face extinction—for a future equilibrium of the world’s climate will not necessarily be consistent with continued human survival. Indeed, as a result to natural selection, our species is not “hard-wired” to take the long-range future into sufficient account; we are much more oriented to instant gratification. I suspect that this innate proclivity will be the seed of our species’ destruction unless we can circumvent a changing atmosphere with the advent of technology fitting the scale and severity of the problem. Such technology would have to dwarf that of making coal more efficient.

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1. Lisa Friedman, “For Climate Conference, a Sales Pitch on Fossil Fuels,” The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2017.