What has freedom meant across the ages?

The Marshall Plan exemplified the alignment of values and interests good foreign policy should embody.

Why did the CCP grow so strong? George Dsang explains in this Christianity and Crisis article from 75 years ago.

The economic aid which is required could not be a matter of pure generosity. Nations as nations are incapable of such generosity.

Now what is here symbolized has been the most fundamental idea in our American democracy. Ours is a government by discussion.

George Marshall’s attempt to create peace between the Chinese nationalists and communists failed. Christian realists in 1947 considered why.

As part of a series of reports from different countries in the fall of 1946, Christianity and Crisis published articles by M. Searle Bates and Henry P. Van Dusen on China. These reveal the situation of Christianity in the country and America’s foreign policy challenge in East Asia.

Neither active idealism (a massive humanitarian intervention) nor defensive realism (an anticommunist security strategy) quite comes to grips with the Marshall Plan’s rationale. Americans would not have been so committed to spending these large, sacrificial sums except that their own core beliefs, values, and institutions were at risk.

Today should be a reminder, especially, perhaps, to Christians, that sometimes fights need to be fought. We worship a God who mandated governments to use the sword to deploy violent action, in the last resort and in measures sufficient to win the fight, when nothing but proportionate and discriminate force will protect the innocent, take back what has been unjustly taken, or punish sufficiently grave evil.