On the Impact of Personalities on Diplomacy: The Case of Trump and Zelensky

One of the many advantages that democracy has over autocracy (i.e., dictatorship) is that the dispersion of political power among elected representatives and even between branches of government (i.e., checks and balances) reduces the impact that one personality can have on diplomacy. Even in a republic in which power is concentrated in a president or prime minister, one personality can matter. Given the foibles of human psychology, the risks associated with a volatile personality “at the top” in a nuclear age are significant. Kant’s advocacy of a world federation includes a caveat that world peace would only be possible rather than probable. Given the probability of anger and associated cognitive lapses in even an elected president or prime minister, a world order premised on absolute national sovereignty is itself risky; hence the value of a semi-sovereign world federation with enforcement authority. The impromptu press conference between U.S. President Trump and Ukraine’s President Zelensky on February 28, 2025 demonstrates the risks in countries being in a Hobbesian state of nature (i.e., not checked by any authority above them).

The full essay is at "On the Impact of Personalities on Diplomacy."

Russian Electricity Hits a Financial Curtain

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

The full essay is at "Russian Electricity Hits a Financial Curtain."

India on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: On the Flawed Hegemony of Political Realism

India took an equivocal position on Russia’s invasion. This is surprising at first glance because India has been so concerned to protect its sovereign territory from baleful encroachments from China. What explains India looking the other way as Russia unilaterally invaded a sovereign state? I contend that the explanation supports the assertion that the world could no longer afford its system based on national sovereignty if political realism is in the driver’s seat at the national level.

The full essay is at "India on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine."

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. 

The full essay is at "Judgment at Nuremberg."