Agreed! Europe is more important to, and for, America than is generally appreciated.
Appreciate the back and forth. This will be my last comment, and you can have the last word.
We are graded on a curve. It isn’t up to me how we are graded, but compared to other great world empires, I’d say we are benevolent in some of what we do, and evil in other aspects, viz abortion and LGBTQ. On balance, more good than bad.
You’re right, and a multipolar world means a more unstable and violent world. Is that what we want in a nuclear age?
As with pandemic mitigation policy, foreign policy is about tradeoffs and what evil you are willing to live with. And yes, silly as it may be to say it, it’s about the protection of human life.
China has the second largest economy, nukes and the world’s largest population, with a disturbingly large male majority. They are rapidly building up their military capabilities. They are the next obvious candidate for global power. Im certain that Chinese rule will not be as benevolent as American or British rule.
Yes, and, being rich is nice. Not being rich anymore will not be so nice. It’s nice to fly anywhere you want, and have people speak your language when you arrive. It’s nice to be able to go anywhere you want and spend your money. Like it or not, we all benefit from this, and when it goes away, we will miss it.
God determines the trajectory of nations. Our future is one of decline. When it happens, we will deserve the judgment that comes. At the same time, I do not want to hasten those bad times.
Ukraine being part of NATO would likely have kept Russia from attacking. At the same time, Ukraine has her own problems, including corruption and political censorship/repression which make NATO membership unworkable, from what I understand.
President Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg in a famous Atlantic interview in 2016 that Ukraine will always be within Russia’s sphere of influence and there’s nothing we can do about that. Ironically, some on his own side would now accuse him of treason for stating this basic fact. I agree with Obama.
Expanding NATO further than we’ve already expanded it is probably not a good idea right now. I won’t say more as I really don’t know what I am talking about. Promising Russia we won’t include Ukraine in NATO in order to win the peace seems like a reasonable concession to me.
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Sure, but what proportion of Christians would we trust explaining to Russians what’s really happening on the ground here in the United States? For instance, libs in Europe can’t comprehend the strength of the support of Israel from a democratic nation of Christians, mostly, so they ask why support for Israel is so monolithic in the US? Do we trust our fellow believers to explain this? That Israel is the place where Herod and Pilate meet and agree and are almost friends, Herod being the libs reading and listening to the Jewish media and Pilate reading and listening to dispensationalists who have owned conservative Christianity for the past century here, now?
Whether the herd is Wheaton or St. Louis, Christians adopt their political positions en masse and hold them like mad men. Elisabeth Elliot learned this when she (honorably, to my mind) merely pointed out that many of the Palestinians were our brothers and sisters in Christ, and she got her comeuppance.
Three things make me hold my horses in jumping on the universal bandwagon. First, Solzhenitsyn’s prediction there would be a war and he would not support his sons fighting in it, but also explaining that there’s a hard distinction between Soviets and Russians, and much of Ukraine is Russian, historically. Second, I look at the map and I understand why Russia would want a trustworthy buffer between Moscow and Europe. (Remember that it was Ukraine and Poland that were the real bloodlands of the Second World War. If you haven’t read it, do.) And third, that eastern Ukraine is much like Northern Ireland was after Scots were sent in to colonize it. Love,
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I’m working hard to disagree with anything you say, Joel, so I came up with one. When the Iron Curtain fell, there was a funny political cartoon of a huge bear rolling over and a cat under the roll-to side, quivering and quaking and terror-stricken, labelled “Europe.”
For at least a century, Russia has been an unpredictable huge bear, and although it’s lost its first-tier patina (as we saw) of might and power, it’s still up there simply by virtue of it’s MAD weapons. Furthermore, I have no question President Putin is capable of further madness. I’m reading Solzhenitsyn, remember, and have read first two volumes of Stalin’s bio, so the macabre character of Russian leaders and the fealty of their serfs is ever present in my mind. So really, I think every wise effort should be made to stand against Putin while feverishly working to find him some face-saving off-ramp. Love,
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The American government would have lost its ever-loving mind if Canada or Mexico had been playing footsie with the Warsaw Pact the way Ukraine has with NATO. Soviet troops in Ottawa are entirely comparable to US/NATO troops in Ukraine in terms of distance to the respective capital. Ditto Mexico:New Orleans::Ukraine :Moscow.
The closest we came to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had no land border component.
I’ll pick at this too. Like Tim, I strongly agree with 99% of what you’re saying here, but how about seeing it as offering the Ukrainian people an off-ramp? Western elites have decided to punish Putin to the last Ukrainian.
And as for Putin’s deposition, it’s not at all clear to me that this would be in the interests of either the American people or humanity in general. Looking at our elites’ management of regime change in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and even back to USSR/Russia, well, the world in general is much worse off from the way they were managed if not the idea itself. We may not like Putin and he certainly doesn’t have our interests at heart, but he’s stable and predictable, at least compared to what could replace him.
Again, Russia is one of very few countries that threaten my American children. Putin being deposed in some sort of coup puts all kinds of unpleasant outcomes into play. Russia today is a bad neighbor, but they could go back to being a global menace. Heaven help us all if they become Libya with nukes.
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Off topic comment from me: support for Israel is no longer monolithic in the U.S. or across both parties. Bari Weiss was pushed out of the New York Times, in part, for her Zionism, which was equated with racism by the Paper of Record.
Then again, in 2015, Barack Obama made a wise nuclear agreement with Iran in the face of intense Israeli and some bipartisan opposition, and got away with it politically. This has driven Israel to triangulate against Iran by establishing friendlier relations with the Arabs, overseen by President Trump.
The Israel Lobby is no longer as powerful as it once was, and I expect it will continue to wane, including among evangelicals. That’s probably better for us and Israel.
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Simple inertia will keep it something very close to monolithic, I think. Yes, there have been cracks in the foundation, but only cracks. I’d expect to see US having some little amount of wiggle room from Israel’s demands concerning our foreign policy in the Mideast, but only a little. Meanwhile, to the degree that Trumpism (whatever that is, now) maintains much of it’s electoral power by virtue of culture war conservative Christians, even as other aspects of dispensationalism slough off, rabid support for Jews will not, and thus rabid support of Israel.
But all your observations are right. I just don’t think the twentieth century’s Zionism empowered by both dispensationalism and Hitler’s slaughter of some millions will cast a less-than-one-century shadow.
Similarly, rabid opposition to godless communism did not focus on China, but Russia, and its uniformity among conservative Christians throughout the second half of the twentieth century is the inertia behind much of the moral weight of the damn-Putin unanimity today. What do you think, brother?
Love,
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I think you’re right about the Putinphobia and the less than a century shadow of Hitler’s slaughter. I will throw in some cheap observations, take em or leave em.
Boomers’ parents fought World War II, and so that generation was raised to view Jews as victims and Israel as the plucky hero. My generation was not so raised. This is even true among dispies. Social justice is the larger concern.
Israelis are white and European. Palestinians are brown and Arab. Israel is a colonizer; Palestinians are the oppressed. Millennials will not be inclined to show sympathy to Israel. I do not see it changing. Maybe i am wrong.
Among American Jews themselves there is a certain diffidence about Israel. American Jews and liberal and swim with leftist tides. Those tides now flow towards wokeness. Wokeness and Zionism do not mix the way plain old socialism or communism may have in the past.
Last, in conservatism we used to have Reagan’s three legged stool. Trump broke the stool, to a degree, although his administration was very pro Israel. The natcons and neocons bet the house on opposing Trump at the highest pitch of expression, and they lost badly. To get back in control would require a political earthquake. Many have simply joined the Left. But the Left is not entirely hospitable to their Zionism. They are a man without a party, but their bitterness drives them always to stick it to MAGA rubes.
Social cons now see natcons as enemies. The younger crew at First Things and AmConMag are concerned about things other than Israel. The neocons are fine with Drag Queen Story Hour which makes them enemies of civilization every bit as bad as a foreign enemy. This is how younger right wing people think. Sohrab Ahmari is the future; RJ Neuhaus is the past.
The late Tony Judt, a liberal Jewish intellectual, predicted before his death that Israel’s future was uncertain, that she had worn out the world’s sympathy and was in danger of losing her statehood. Demographics alone are a big challenge.
Wait and see.
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