Civil War

In Safe Passage, Kori Schake details how transitions in geopolitical power lead to violence, except when the United States slowly and peacefully took over the hegemonic role Great Britain played.

The Arab coalition and the US find themselves in the awkward position of directly and indirectly supporting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula while they fight the Houthis in Yemen.

Though the Yemen conflict is in many ways a proxy war between Iran and the Saudi coalition, it is much more complicated, and not all the blame should be placed on the coalition for worsening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Isolation may be impractical, but its appeal is very understandable. In this article, originally published on June 14, 1943, in Christianity and Crisis, Charles Gilkey presents six influences upon this school of thought, and emphasizes the importance of giving primacy to the opinion of returning veterans in defining future U.S. foreign policy.

The United States’ involvement in two world wars indicates clearly that American isolationism is at a practical end, Reinhold Niebuhr asserts in this article, originally published on April 5, 1943 in Christianity and Crisis. Working toward international integration is a national responsibility – morally and in the interests of security. Alliances depend on the will of their members; it is no different for the United States. Niebuhr also warns of a new danger: a unilateral “imperialist” American military establishment, simultaneously preoccupied with hegemony and unconcerned with the rest of the world.

Rather than simply securing our borders or pursuing our interests, Americans continue to believe that what happens here is the fate of the earth. The real challenge to this consensus would be a view of America as just another country, neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally evil.

Following the Christian just war tradition, could the assassination of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad be justified, despite its illegal nature?

Christian clergymen of today typically prefer to disparage power and prestige as demonic ensnarements that Jesus shunned when offered. But Jesus exemplifies not the rejection of power per se but rather a godly deployment of it.

The Reformation’s ennoblement of the God-created individual has a power that many despots don’t recognize until too late.