A big victory for the pro-Europeans at a debate on Monday evening. Lembit Öpik and I defeated some Eurosceptics at University College London on “The house believes in a federal Europe”.

Other than, obviously, the persuasive rhetoric and skilled arguments of the pro-federalist side, and the good sense of the assembled student body, here are two reasons why we won.

First, the extraordinary attempt by the UKIP representative to compare Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel with Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. In fact, he said that the former two were more dangerous than the latter. I think he rather startled his audience with the suggestion that world war and the Holocaust somehow didn’t matter. Most people tend to take a rather dim view of genocide: it will surely count against UKIP that they do not.

Secondly, there was the subject matter of the debate itself, namely a federal Europe. The opposition tried to raise criticisms of the current EU institutions or the reforms proposed in the Lisbon treaty, but that doesn’t help much in a debate about federalism. For we too could join in the complaints about the lack of accountability or the mistakes in policy-making, only we also had suggestions for how to make things better. Not for us the dream of emulating the Icelandic economic miracle or the satisfaction in providing soldiers for the American foreign legion. No, we have a vision for the world and for Britain’s place in it, and that includes being part of a federal Europe. When it is presented in this way, it can be popular.

Amid European rejoicing about the restoration of multilateralism to the White House in the recent American presidential election, an interesting corrective is published in the Wall Street Journal. Law professors Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner examine the European record on adhering to international law and suggest that, contrary to the impression that Europeans often like to give, it is no better than that of the Americans.

They quote examples such as the ECJ’s rejection of the seizure of the assets of Yassin Abdullah Kadi and the al Barakaat International Foundation – fundamental rights were held to be superior to a decision of the UN Security Council – and the fact that the EU still refuses to permit the import of American beef raised using growth hormones, notwithstanding a WTO ruling that it should. The Europeans are in no position to lecture the Americans on fidelity to the law, they argue.

I am not entirely convinced by all their examples – there is no reason why a UN SC resolution should have directly binding effect, and no reason why acts of the Council of Ministers should be permitted to violate fundamental rights simply because they are intended to implement UN SC resolutions – nor do I think their comparison is valid. The Europeans, in the case of Yassin Abdullah Kadi, err on the side of individual rights against authority; the Americans, in the case of Guantanamo Bay, do the opposite.

But the beef case and others still apply. If the law is famously an ass, international law is treated as an ass, too.

The federalist view of international law, like Gandhi’s opinion of western civilisation, is that it would be a good idea. International legal institutions and processes are developing slowly, incompletely and imperfectly. But not only is the efficacy of international law somewhat in doubt, so is its legitimacy. Europeans ask why public opinion over the acceptability of hormones in beef should be overruled by a group of international judges. Who voted for them?

This is, of course, rather like the Eurosceptic argument against the EU, only transferred to another level, but with one crucial difference. Federalists do not wield this argument against the system of international law in order to evade it or to break it, but in order to strengthen it. We are not Euro-nationalists.

Improved legitimacy for international law will not come from wiser judges but from greater public participation in making the laws upon which those judges rule. (Paragraphs 11 to 15 in the Federal Union paper on the Cancún summit explain this in more detail.)

It is precisely the weakness of international law, even at the hands of liberal democracies, let alone dictatorships, that underpins the argument for supranational political institutions instead. What matters is not just what the law says but where the law comes from.

One of the things that has been hard to explain in the debate about the European constitution is the nature of the change that it represents. On the one hand, it would be based on the existing treaties, with many of the same features and structures, so it can be thought of as the continuation of a spectrum along which the European Union has travelling for 50 years.

On the other hand, there is something distinctly different about a constitution that marks it out from being just another treaty. The difference is not in the words, nor in the literal meaning, but lies in the sense and purpose behind it. A constitution is an expression of political togetherness, the willingness to act in a shared and mutual manner. (I am writing this without resort to the formal words and definitions of political science, because they would in turn need to explained and defined. The whole point is that a constitution has a significance outside that jargon and those definitions.)

A constitution has within it the implication that future, unforeseen challenges will also be dealt with together. A treaty, on the other hand, is to be taken literally. I have written before about the Montreux convention governing the Bosphorus and Dardanelles: because it does not include any provisions on safety (it was written in 1936), it cannot be interpreted as having any now. That is what I mean about the literal interpretation of a treaty.

These two different ways of looking at the difference between a treaty and a constitution are not strict alternatives: either one or the other. The best approach to take might depend on the situation. Think about the duality of wave and particle – sometimes it is best to think of an electron as a wave, sometimes as a particle, but it remains the same electron – and the complexity of the difference between a treaty and constitution starts to make a bit more sense.

A helpful explanation of the difference was made in the European Parliament last week in a speech by the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. There, he spoke of the difference between a contract and a covenant. (He was not referring explicitly to treaties and constitutions, but the point is the same and it is a good one.)

Read the whole speech here or the most interesting extract here.

His simple definition is this:

“A contract is made for a limited period, for a specific purpose, between two or more parties, each seeking their own benefit. A covenant is made open-endedly by two or more parties who come together in a bond of loyalty and trust to achieve together what none can achieve alone. A contract is like a deal; a covenant is like a marriage. Contracts belong to the market and to the state, to economics and politics, both of which are arenas of competition. Covenants belong to families, communities, charities, which are arenas of cooperation. A contract is between me and you – separate selves – but a covenant is about us – collective belonging. A contract is about interests; a covenant is about identity. And hence the vital distinction, not made clearly enough in European politics, between a social contract and a social covenant: a social contract creates a state; a social covenant creates a society.”

In that sense, the difference between a treaty and a constitution is a moral one, not a political one at all. It is whether countries participate for their own benefit or for the benefit of others. It turns federalism from merely being a different form of discussion about international relations to a proposition about the nature of politics as a whole. Federalism can give citizens rights, and protect the environment, and free up markets, and all those other good things too, precisely because it approaches politics and institutions in a different way. That perhaps is why it is so hard to argue for.

An unusual article, but a good one, in the First Post by Claire Berlinski worries about the possibility of an oil tanker accident in the Bosphorus, the sea passage between Europe and Asia that runs through the heart of Istanbul. The oil boom in the Caucasus has seen traffic through the straits increase substantially, and with it the risk of a collision

An oil tanker carries thousands of tonnes of oil, if not hundreds of thousands, and could cause a devastating explosion in the wrong circumstances. But the Turkish government cannot keep them out of the centre of the city.

An international convention signed in Montreux in 1936 guarantees the right of passage to merchant shipping between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, so that these Turkish waters are not treated like normal territorial waters elsewhere in the world. Control of the straits has long been contested internationally and freedom of passage through the Dardanelles was included as point 12 in Wilson’s 14 points of January 1918.

What this means now is that the Turkish government cannot impose new safety rules on ships that are transiting the straits. To require the use of trained and experienced pilots, for example, which is common in other congested shipping zones, is forbidden here. Such are the consequences of a convention.

But what of Turkish sovereignty? Is this treaty not a violation of it? Well, yes it is, but that’s what happens to countries that lose wars: demands are made on them subsequently. The dependence of many Black Sea nations on shipping through the straits would otherwise leave Turkey in a position to impose a stranglehold. The Montreux convention protects them.

But can the convention be changed? It would be in the interest of Turkish sovereignty for improved safety provisions to be added, but equally it is in the interest of other countries that they should not be. Let Turkey pay for the costs of any clean-up, they might say. And no-one is entitled to second-guess them.

The people who would like the world to be divided neatly into national sovereignties have to face the facts of geography. Different national sovereignties will have interests that are starkly in conflict, and compromises have to be found. The international conventions that manage those conflicts and express those compromises have to be agreed by all. That is what the protection of national sovereignty means. Even if there is pollution or devastation as a result.

An otherwise sensible article by Neil Clark is ruined by his souverainist obsession cropping up again. Neil Clark doesn’t like the EU, and so anything else he doesn’t like will be blamed on the EU if he can possibly manage it. Sometimes that’s fair, often it’s not. His article about Switzerland and Israel is an example of the latter.

The story is that the Swiss government has voiced criticism of Israeli policy towards settlements on the West Bank. (You can read the story here.) Neil Clark chooses to add to his article the statement that:

“Switzerland's independent line on Middle East issues also shows the advantage of maintaining national sovereignty in an age where most countries in Europe have surrendered important decision making powers to the EU. While other countries in Europe have been cajoled, under US and British influence, to moderate their criticisms of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and to agree to swingeing sanctions on Iran - non-EU Switzerland is free to make its own decisions and to say what it thinks about Israeli actions.”

This argument goes wrong because the member states of the EU have not given up the ability to make their own foreign policies. The treaties spell out rules for how the EU makes a common foreign policy – unanimity for the policies themselves, majority voting for the implementation (and the Lisbon treaty does not change this) – and member states are free to pursue their own foreign policies in addition to this. They are supposed to consult with each other when making their own foreign policy decisions, but they may still pursue their own policies if they wish. Important decision-making powers have not been surrendered.

Think about the Iraq war. EU member states were on both sides of the argument. If Neil Clark is correct, either one side or the other must have surrendered the right to follow its preferred policy: in fact, neither had.

Neil Clark’s mention of the US gives the game away. Most people are aware that the United States is not a member of the European Union. The influence of America is entirely separate. The fact is that the Americans have been exercising a lot of influence in Europe and many European countries have accepted it. It’s a choice each country has made for itself. Neil Clark doesn’t like that choice – he is free not to – but it’s not a matter of EU membership.

There is a further point, though, which is about the effectiveness of sovereign foreign policies. It is one thing to express opinions for one’s own benefit: it is another thing for them to matter to anyone else. The difference between these two notions is the reason for European foreign policy itself. Lots of small European countries can ventilate their consciences as much as they wish, and it might make their more concerned citizens feel better, but there is no obligation on the rest of the world to take notice. Put all those European voices together, though, and maybe there is some chance of being heard.

The right to speak does not confer on others the duty to listen. Misunderstanding this is a common mistake. Understanding this is a characteristic of federalists in Europe.

A recent edition of the Economist fell into the same trap, asserting that:

“Such federalist proposals are intellectually coherent—and politically doomed. There is no European demos and, across 27 member-states, there will never be. For example, centre-right parties in France are far warier of free trade than the Swedish centre-left. When it comes to views of America or Russia, mainstream voters in Greece or Cyprus have little in common with mainstream voters in Poland or Britain.”

But it’s not simply the view held by mainstream voters in any European country that counts: it’s the reaction of foreign countries to those views that matters. And it is hard to discern much reaction on the part of America or Russia to the views of the Cypriot electorate. However, if you put Europe together as a whole, then you might have a force on the world stage to be treated with respect. It’s not an easy argument to put – hence the Economist’s “doomed” comment – but that doesn’t make it less true or less relevant.

EU farm ministers never tire of discussing the Common Agricultural Policy. The latest negotiations concluded in the early hours of Thursday morning, over the so-called CAP healthcheck. The aim was to revise some aspects of European agricultural policy, but without affecting its overall cost. (The EU budgetary process sets budgets for 7 years at a time, with the current budget settlement running until 2013. It will be the debate about the next budgetary period that will really trigger proper review of the CAP.)

There has been a mixture of welcome and criticism for the agreement that has been reached, with the various changes made to milk quotas, payment modulation, national envelopes and all the rest. But the interesting point is that the decision was reached by ministers in the early hours of Thursday morning. They never tire of the discussions, but surely they get tired. Is it really right that such an important area of policy is dealt with in such a ludicrous manner?

Who is thinking at their clearest at that time of night? Summits, particularly agricultural summits, are notorious for making mistakes and including them in the finished texts. Better would be a more orderly system of taking decisions that does so in a more paced and measured manner.

Next, what kind of accountability can there be for decisions taken in this manner? Where is the parliamentary process? There were no national or European parliamentarians engaged: only ministers and civil servants. That’s not the modern notion of democracy. While the overall cost of the CAP can’t be touched, there are various levies and charges that can be adjusted, and changes to these amount effectively to changes in the tax burden. It can’t be right that ministers can take decisions on the tax burden in the middle of night without reference to anybody.

Ever since John Hampden refused to pay the Ship Tax in 1637, the legitimacy of taxation has been at the heart of politics. The slogan “No taxation without representation” still echoes from the days of the American revolution. It is a lesson the EU still has not learned.

Jack Thurston, writing in the Guardian, complains that the ministers involved are interested only in the fate of the agricultural interests rather than those of wider society. He may be right, but the solution is not to send a different set of ministers to the meetings. Instead, the EU should copy its most successful policy areas – the single market, environment – which are managed according to the Community method (what the Lisbon treaty dubs the “normal legislative procedure”) and bring the normal parliamentary disciplines of accountability and transparency to the agricultural table.

A debate in the House of Commons yesterday identifies some interesting phenomena as a result of the banking crisis and the moves against the Icelandic banks last month. The debate was initiated by Mary Creagh, Labour MP for Wakefield, speaking about constituents of hers who had lost out in Guernsey or the Isle of Man through bank defaults there. The Isle of Man subsidiary of an Icelandic bank had taken deposits from British investors, who will find themselves partially, if not totally, out of pocket once the dust settles.

First, there is the complexity of the regulatory arrangements to take into account the different jurisdictions involved. That previous paragraph mentions four of them, one of which is in the EU, another one is in the EEA, and two are not in anything at all. Do you know which is which? Mary Creagh explained that many of her constituents did not, and were caught out by the differences in compensation regimes as a result.

This is a fine example of a political issue that need not be a problem in theory but turns out to be one in practice: the assertion that companies can bid for business in the UK from different and competitive regulatory regimes may sound fine but it has its consequences when things go wrong (which is, after all, what regulatory regimes are designed for).

Next, there is the role of the British government in closing down Icelandic banking operations in the UK that led, in turn, to the losses in offshore accounts as well. The Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that “The British Government’s obligation must be to depositors who have put their deposits into UK banks.” Not, you note, to UK depositors who have put their deposits into banks. British citizens with money abroad might lose out in favour of foreign citizens with money here. It is the nationality of the deposit that counts, not the nationality of the depositor.

It is not the place of this blog to say that this is wrong, but we must comment on the apparent importance of nationality in the Chancellor’s statement. Is it really right that a system based on free capital movements across borders and that refuses to discriminate between countries when it comes to competition can suddenly introduce differential treatment for investors when things go wrong? How is the average investor to cope with all this? The value of EU law in protecting consumer interests within the single market has never been clearer.

The newspapers and airwaves, having speculated and then reported on the outcome of the US election, are now speculating about what it means. The biggest significance will be for American domestic policy and race relations, which are really outside the topic of this blog, but the way he might change American foreign and macroeconomic policies certainly is of interest.

Obama’s first and most notable policy position was his opposition to the war in Iraq – think about how things might have run differently if Hillary Clinton had voted against it rather than in favour – but over time he has moderated his demands for a timetable for withdrawal, and the American military presence will surely continue there for longer than he had originally envisaged.

The troops withdrawn from Iraq will be redeployed to Afghanistan, where he wants to step up the war, and he expects his European Nato allies to send more troops themselves. He was also willing during the campaign to discuss publicly the idea of US military action in Pakistan, military action which has already started under George W Bush and will presumably continue. Not the sudden spread of world peace that some of his supporters envisaged.

Turning to the global economy, Obama has flirted with protectionism during primaries in rustbelt states, at the same time as briefing the Canadian government that he did not really mean it. Where the truth will lie, we do not know. In fact, he does not know, either. Economic conditions are changing so dramatically and so quickly that hardly any positions have remained untouched.

The need for an new international system for regulating finance is generally agreed, and there will be a summit in Washington DC on 15 November to discuss it. Given that the Americans are among those who have suffered most from the current crisis, they ought to have a strong interest in changing the global rules. But it would be a big and substantial act for the American government to spread the influence around: again, rhetoric is one thing, actions are another.

Irwin Stelzer sums up the problem nicely in the Daily Telegraph:

“The notion that the new president, having waged a long and hard fight to gain control of the commanding heights of the American economy, will surrender that territory to some international body strikes me as daft.”

Isn’t that true of every step in international integration, where the national governments are the ones who have to face the biggest changes?

A notable characteristic of American foreign policy has been the extent of continuity from one president to the next. There are exceptions, of course, but fewer than you might think.

George W Bush has been misunderestimated, for example, in that the global contest with Islamist terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan, started under Bill Clinton, as did the use of military force to undermine the regime of Saddam Hussein. Even the first steps by the American military away from Nato took place in Bosnia and then Kosovo in the 1990s.

In that light, how much might be at stake in the election taking place today between Barack Obama and John McCain? As far as economic policy is concerned, much of what the two of them have said during the campaign has been wiped out by the financial crash. It is unlikely that Obama’s spending plans can be maintained when his country’s financial system remains on life-support.

Foreign policy options have not been curtailed in quite the same way by the financial crash, but even here America’s options are more limited than the two candidates have sometimes been willing to admit. So many of America’s interests are tied up in the actions of other countries around the world, and those countries’ governments are not going to be changed as a result of today’s election. The dependence of America on Chinese manufacturing and Saudi oil might be reduced over time as the recession sets in and alternative energy sources found, but that will take time. Russia and Iran might find themselves a little less assertive if the oil price continues to fall. Maybe Europe will improve the way it acts on the world stage, with or without the Lisbon treaty.

A major difference between the two presidential candidates is the way in which they are seen around the world. Barack Obama is much more well-known and well-liked – he would win by an enormous margin if everyone in the world could have a vote – whereas John McCain, by policies and by temperament, does not seem to inspire a lot of affection. Obama, then, has a moment of goodwill, should he be elected. If he is as good a politician at governing as he is a politician at campaigning, he will surely use this for all he can.