Jus post bellum justice provides us with two criteria: holding aggressors responsible (punishment) and providing some form of restoration to victims (restitution). The reality of our time suggests a very limited justice.

Before taking a look at justice, let’s take a step back and consider the explicitly Christian foundations for thinking about political order.

Once again, public opinion polls have disappointed isolationists and others who want the United States to have a minimalist foreign policy. Almost overnight, a large swath of America now wants to counter Russia, and elected officials who want to keep their jobs have responded.

The jus post bellum (the ethics of ending war and building peace) categories of order, justice, and conciliation can help us think through how the war in Ukraine should end.

How do Christian Realism, Christian idealism and Christian cynicism approach the Ukraine War?

Have we any hope and faith for export? In this time of apprehension and pessimism, here as well as over there, have we any hope and faith to spare?

Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement to place his nation’s nuclear deterrent forces on a state of heightened alert invites those of us in the free world—and surely the United States—to revisit the just war assumptions that served as a deterrence during the Cold War.

We are told that a policy of firmness must inevitably lead to war, while conciliation could guarantee peace. In the Nazi days this was called appeasement.

Providence does not favor nations that imagine they can pursue holiness while escaping reality and responsibility.