Paul Miller’s lecture at Christianity & National Security 2023. Paul Miller discusses Afghanistan, Christian realism, and secular realism. The following…

American thinking has often been shaped by Just War Theory, if implicitly. Last year, Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-CA) introduced HR 1009 that clarifies and makes explicit the American commitment to the just war tradition. 

Does the Catholic Church still believe in the doctrine of just war? Last week, Pope Francis told Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, “At one time we also spoke in our churches of holy war or just war. Today we cannot speak like that.”

Just war should aim at a better peace. It is unclear how a Palestinian war against Israel would do that in Palestine, Israel, or the region.

The lines have indeed been drawn, and I welcome you to join me in choosing the side of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the ideals of American democracy.

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic in which the United States must seemingly make the frightful choice between saving lives and saving the economy, we inexplicably have a legion of volunteer mathematicians lining up to show off how well they can make the terrible calculations to decide who lives and who dies.

Much of Carter Malkesian’s narrative about the Afghan war is spot-on, but he gets several key events wrong.

Nationalists believe that humanity is divided into mutually distinct, internally coherent groups defined by shared traits like language, religion, or culture, and that these groups should each have their own governments. There is an alternative.

Assassinating Iranian Major General Qaseem Soleimani was a justified act. But it took place within the context of a largely unjust and strategically indefensible grand strategy, so it is unlikely to be a net positive in the long run.

I am grateful that the post-liberal, nationalist right has grown more explicit about its antipathy to core tenets of classical…