Rethinking US Foreign Policy in Syria

    Is it ethical to take part in supporting one side in a foreign civil war?  I would put forward that it is only ethical on the large scale where American support would ensure a swift and efficient end to hostilities.  I lobby that the slow and tepid American support of anti-Assad factions in Syria is actually less humane than staying out of the conflict despite the tragic validity of the rebel cause.   If we truly cared about the wellbeing of the Syrians, we would have invaded the country en masse.  Instead, we have prolonged the civil war by using the rebels as a proxy fight against Russia.   Perhaps the Russian troop drawdown will impact American policy or allow for a quick resolution, but our record of answering atrocities with short and shallow speeches is not promising.  Imagine two great outside forces taking sides in the American Civil War.  Sure, each side would have welcomed assistance, but at what cost?  What if the war had lasted years longer because each time one side came close to defeat it received an influx of supplies from a third party?  What if these were never enough supplies to actually turn the tide of the war but instead felt more like a pay day loan that keeps someone who is treading water from drowning completely if only for a little while.  History would look back at this hypothetical situation with disdain and condemn the person in the boat for only throwing out a couple of children’s lifejackets when they could have reached out a hand and pulled the victim up over the side once and for all. 

    Syria needs regime change, and it needs it quickly – but if we are not prepared to push hard to make it happen we have no business prolonging someone else’s civil war.  If we continue with mild support, the currently six-year-old conflict could continue for many more.  Go big or go home should be the mantra of an American Doctrine of Compassion.  And if you believe that it is not in our interest to be majorly involved in another ground war in the Middle East at this time, the hard decision to stop trying to help must be made.  At what point does being ruled by a tyrant outweigh thousands of civilians dying in the streets for over half a decade?  After all, it is all relative anyway.  For those ideologues who will stand up and decry my position as inhumane, you must ask yourself the question: why Syria?  Are their people any more valuable than the citizens of Iran or the debacle of Libya that we so cleanly washed our hands of already?  Our foreign policy in the region is inconsistent at best and borders on whimsical at worst.  What values are we currently standing on in Syria – it certainly is not human rights.

#remembertheredline

Should a Christian Defend American Exceptionalism?

King Louis XVI lost his head to the French Revolution on 21 January 1793, primarily because of the root notion that he was born great.   His over-zealous constituents failed to share his self-admiration, and constructed a devise that would attempt to sever this very concept of Divine Right not only from his body (which it did quite handily by all accounts) but also from every elitist-thinking mind on earth.

As America flirts with disaster around the world and tries to climb out of the foreign policy tar pit she wandered into over the past several years, her citizens are faced with the opportunity and often responsibility to truly defend their core ideology of freedom for the first time in their lives.  Are we really a blight on the world stage?  Was there ever anything special about the United States?  Many American Christians struggle with how to address these questions.  On one hand, they feel they should defend their patriotism with a resounding ‘yes’ to all of the above.  But on the other, they feel the weight of the shared condition of humanity and have tasted too much of the grace offered by a loving Messiah to look past their own sin and claim to be anything greater than the rest of the world.  After all, what is a true Christian except someone who first understands their extreme need for salvation because of their own depravity?   Is there even space for anyone to be exceptional in Christian theology?  One of the founding fathers actually addressed this same paradox.  Benjamin Franklin alongside Silas Deane wrote this note while in Paris in 1777 during the height of the American Revolution:[1]

Tyranny is so generally established in the rest of the world, that the prospect of an asylum in America for those who love liberty, gives general joy, and our cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind […] We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature.  Glorious is it for the Americans to be called by Providence to this post of honor.[2]

There is a difference between being inherently great and being called to do great things.  For the American Christian, God has granted an immeasurable occasion for being about the business of greatness.  To answer one’s calling and to do it well is never a mark of shame.  A good Biblical example comes in Exodus 31 when God mentions to Moses that he has “called by name Bezalel” and his fellow craftsman Oholiab to spearhead much of the detail work on the Tabernacle – the house of worship that would be replaced by the Temple generations later.  The text continues: “And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you.”  God called these men out of obscurity, equipped them with knowledge, and placed them in the setting for doing great things.

Sitting in pre-Revolution Paris on diplomatic business, Franklin certainly understood the complexities of favoring the American system of freedom over those of other nations.  Perhaps he could have gained more political points with his would-be allies if he had claimed that the French monarchy had its merits too.  But he unashamedly called America an asylum from the tyranny that plagued the rest of the world. 

This same tyranny still survives across so much of the world today, and Christians in America must realize that to understand American Exceptionalism is to understand the concept of calling.  They should agree with Franklin that Americans did not make themselves great, but rather, they simply answered the call to greatness.  I would urge all American Christians to put aside any sense of entitlement or arrogance that they may hold on to lest we become a nation waiting in line for our own cultural guillotine.  Instead, they should unashamedly remind others of those great individuals upon whose shoulders we stand that answered their own call and answered it well.  And they must never forget that excuses do not work when you are called.  For America to continue to be a great nation, exceptional individuals must continue to rise up and offer hope of a better future to those walking in darkness both at home and abroad.  Thus American Exceptionalism is a Providential gift that should never become past tense in the heart of American Christians.

---

[1] Silas Deane was an on-again-off-again supporter of American Independence.  He died shortly after returning from a visit to France only a few years before the Revolution there.

[2] As quoted in Paul A. Varg’s Foreign Policies of the Founding Fathers (Michigan State University Press, 1963), page 3.

McCarthy has Left the Building

    In light of the recent shift in US/Cuba policy, I had to ask myself: ‘what changed?’  While I was busy worrying about Ebola, mid-term elections, and government shutdowns, did the Castro boys skip town?  Were the lack of diplomatic relations with Cuba just a forgotten holdover from the United States’ Cold War policy, or was there something different with the island nation in December of 2014?  What changed last week to cause President Obama’s announcement?  The answer: very little.

    In the 1990s, the United States began to normalize relations with Russia and the former Soviet nations, and some people have drawn a comparison between the current action and that as if the US had simply forgotten to end the Cold War with its closer neighbor in the Caribbean.  The reality is quite different.  Russia underwent a massive shift in leadership, direction, and policy in response to western pressure.  Big changes took place – then the policy shift occurred.  Meanwhile, the Castro Bros. and their status quo remains in full swing 90 miles south of the border.

    However, I do not believe that this foreign policy shift is unique to this administration.  In fact, there is a definitive and traceable pattern developing.  What we are seeing is transference of the (arguably) failed Middle East policy into Latin America.  I.E. if we play nice, give them a seat at the table, we will gain ground.  Whether you like the honey over vinegar approach or not, it has clearly not proven to be tenable currency in the world of Islamic extremism.   Perhaps it will work better in Cuba.  After all, a case can be made that this is similar to the model we followed with China as it erupted into the world economy a few decades ago. 

    The biggest change did not happen last week, but actually took place over the last decade.  The American people simply are not scared of Communism anymore.  With Islamic terrorists as public enemy number one, McCarthy has left the building without so much as a raised eyebrow.

    Like it or not, America is on track to spend at least the next two years attempting “restorative justice.”  I’m sure some of our other antagonists are watching the situation very closely.  Sadly, sometimes being the ‘bigger person’ just makes you a larger target.

Crimea 2.0

Don’t have a clue about the Crimean Peninsula that everyone on the news is talking about?  Read on, because ignorance is not bliss.

   This is not the first time that the Crimean region has been fought over.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (that all you homeschoolers almost certainly memorized – or maybe it was just me) immortalized the events of an ill-fated charge into almost certain defeat ordered by poor military leaders during the Crimean War.[1]  The conflict was plagued by terrible leadership and planning all around.  Between 1853 and 1856, Russia fought against an unusual alliance of the Ottoman Empire and France, England, and other European nations over (1) who had access to the Holy Land and (2) Russian territorial expansion.  Russia favored the Orthodox Church while France and the others pushed for Catholic supremacy.  (Rabbit to chase: Thus Russian Expansionism is not new or somehow tied to communism.  Communist leaders simply used nationalism to fuel public opinion since expansion was already part of their collective heritage.)

   Eventually, Russia lost the war, and the territory reverted back to Ottoman Control for a brief time after going back and forth over the century before. 

   The Crimean War bears horrifying similarity to the growing tension today, and longtime Columbia professor Shepard Bancroft Clough’s (d.1990) prophetic words capture the situation best even though they were published in 1969: “The Crimean War, which cost the lives of half a million men, was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took.”[2]  Let’s hope that while the last half of his statement has most certainly happened, the massive loss of life can be prevented before it is too late in 2014.

---

[1] The opening stanza really foreshadows the end result: 

“Half a league half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred: 'Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns' he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”  Read the whole poem: http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.ykp0Ojd7.dpuf

[2] Shepard Bancroft Clough, A History of the Western World, vol 2 (D.C. Heath and Company,1969), page 1010.

(1) Why was Russia culturally and politically isolated?

Map of the Break-up of the Ottoman Empire
(Years in the green areas show when territory transferred to Russia).
From William R. Shepherd's Atlas of Medieval and Modern History (Henry Holt: London, 1932).

If you watched US coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, you might have caught the fact that Peter the Great (Tsar of Russia from 1682-1721), made a real effort to westernize his nation.  So what happened in the last 293 years?  Why did Russian history travel its own path as an isolated and anti-Western country?  If your answer was that it began with communism or the Russian Revolution, think again.

Peter the Great died on 28 January 1725 leaving his wife Catherine I to rule in his place, but her poor health did not allow her much time on the throne (she died in 1727).[1]  However, she used this time to continue to bolster foreign alliances including The Treaty of 1726 with the Austrian Empire that insured mutual military aid if the Turks attacked either nation (Sochi was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire at this time). 

But in the chaos following the death of Catherine I, we begin to already glimpse the push back of the nobility to keep the West out.[2]  Many favored moving the capital away from St. Petersburg and instead to Moscow in an effort to set their own path independent of the tsars.  While the family was able to right the autocratic ship in the years to come, these ideas of toppling the elite (who were synonymous with their elite family members ruling in the rest of Europe) kept growing and finally were consummated with the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

The bottom line: Most of the interaction ordinary Russians had with the West came about because of the ruling elite, so when they pushed back against them, they were indirectly pushing back against Western ideas. 

---

[1] Walter Keating Kelly, The History of Russia (Henry G. Bohn: London, 1854), page 400.

[2] Arthur Hassall, The Balance of Power: 1715-1789 (Rivingtons: London, 1963), pages 114-115.

The US and Iran: Periphery Decay Creates Nuclear Spit-wads

Iran has clearly been a hotbed of issues for thousands of years; however, recent developments have proven that the Supreme Leader has little to no fear of outside interference. The tide has turned in such a way that rouge states have the upper-hand simply because they believe that the only viable options on the table for the UN or the US are empty threats and meaningless sanctions. With other terror threats spreading US militaries thin and wearing on home moral, Iran threatens to spit nuclear paper wads while the teacher is busy in the hall.

The single largest issue in play is the erosion of ‘Western’ supremacy. Whatever your opinion of American foreign policy, a century of dominance kept Iranian tension inside its borders (though with some local exceptions). While the US never actually had direct control of Iran, the model of periphery decay applies much the same as it does with many great imperial powers of the past. Ancient Rome began its downward slide many decades before its final ‘fall.’ A good example of this is their control of what is now much of Great Britain. When Rome was strong, they could afford to bulk up military assets on the island and wage a long-term pseudo cold-war. As tension at home in the form of infighting, poverty, and often poor leadership shifted the policy of strength and offence to one of preservation, local peoples rose to drive out the weak Roman forces along with many of their cultural attributes in an effort to restore what they felt had been overshadowed or taken from them for so many years by a foreign power. Later, the same islands saw the decline of the British Empire with the gradual independence of colonies into the mid-20th century. As Imperial power weakened, local nationals could vie for freedom (or slowly rip the decaying limbs of the empire apart, depending on your perspective).

As American power weakens – or is even perceived to have weakened abroad, there will be more nations like Iran. While the belief of American exceptionalism may still be true for some of us, President Ahmadinejad and others are no longer intimidated by the world police force that had belonged to the United States for so many years.