Peace in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is passing the one-year mark as I write. In its early days, the determination with which the Ukrainians repulsed Russia’s attempt to overrun their country inspired and encouraged me. But as months have passed, I have begun to harbor misgivings. What’s the end game? What turn of events will allow for the cessation of hostilities? Little that I have read over the last year gives me confidence that those urging strong support for the courageous Ukrainians have a plausible answer.

One of Catholicism’s most important contributions to contemporary moral reflection is just war theory. This approach establishes jus ad bellum criteria, moral standards that must be met before hostilities are initiated. The justice of the cause of Ukrainian defense is without question. The Russian invasion aims to usurp the sovereignty of the Ukrainian people and ensure that their country accepts a supine role as a satellite state in a Moscow-dominated region. But just cause is not the only criterion. War, even in self-defense, must be undertaken as the last resort, in view of the probability of success, and with proportional means.

These standards apply to the war’s prosecution as well as its beginning. At every major juncture in a conflict, the principle of last resort holds. Governing authorities must ask: Should we continue the conflict, or has the larger situation changed to such a degree that we can attain our aims by diplomatic means? Probability of success likewise applies in an ongoing way. It may be gallant to fight what one knows will be a losing battle, but according to just war teaching, doing so reflects pagan vanity, not Christian moral judgment. A wise leader does not embark on unrealistic ­enterprises, especially when lives are at stake. Finally, as a war progresses, those in charge need to discern whether the advancing destruction outweighs the gains that will be made possible by further victories.

The principles of last resort, probability of success, and proportionality require leaders to make complex judgments that take a host of factors into account. Regarding the military situation in Ukraine, I’m not nearly as well informed as the leadership in Kyiv or the analysts in the Pentagon. But all of us can follow public statements about the war’s overall aims and objectives. Those statements are concerning.

In the first stages of the war, it was obvious that Ukraine was fighting to preserve its sovereignty. Since Russian forces have been driven out of most of Ukraine, and the conflict has settled into a largely static battle far from Kyiv, the situation has changed. The principles of last resort and proportionality became relevant and remain so. Can the long-term preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty be achieved if control of the easternmost provinces of Ukraine is ceded to the ­Russian aggressor?

It’s not obvious that the answer is “yes.” Perhaps ceding territory to Putin will embolden him, making it likely that he will try to invade again. But “no” is not the obvious answer, either. Russian forces have been severely damaged, and Moscow has been humbled by its failure to do more than make small gains in eastern Ukraine. Moreover, the American-led support for Kyiv has swept aside earlier diplomatic ambivalence about the West’s commitment to support a sovereign Ukraine. Even if a peace settlement requires Ukraine to remain outside NATO, Putin is unlikely to put his hand back into the American-supplied hornet’s nest.

The notion of a peace settlement that falls short of restoring all territory to Ukraine may seem unjust, given Russia’s aggression. But just war theory does not warrant persistent conflict for the sake of righting past wrongs. It forces us to distinguish the good from the perfect. If the essential aim of defending Ukrainian sovereignty can be achieved without the reclamation of every piece of territory taken by the Russians since they swept into Crimea in 2014, then ongoing recourse to military means becomes unnecessary and violates the principle of last resort.

Just war doctrine insists that we limit our war efforts in accord with judgments about the probability of success. The question emerges: Is it reasonable to imagine that the Ukrainian military can expel Russian forces from its easternmost provinces, some parts of which have not been under Kyiv’s control for nearly a decade? Is it remotely possible to expel Russia from Crimea, where for more than two centuries Moscow has based its Black Sea fleet? If these strategic aims are unlikely to succeed, what good comes from the pursuit of them?

Proportionality likewise counsels restraint. Ukrainian sovereignty would certainly be secure if Russian forces were defeated in a decisive way. But at what cost in lives lost and cities destroyed? Just war theory is sensitive to the evils of war. Even just wars wreck lives, cities, and countries. This tradition of moral reasoning therefore warns against continuing military action for the sake of turning satisfactory outcomes into better ones, especially when the means necessary are out of proportion to the anticipated gains.

Again, I want to emphasize that just war analysis is not formulaic. It requires prudential judgments. A wise statesman knows that a nation’s honor is no small thing. National sovereignty has a spiritual dimension as well as a legal-diplomatic aspect. That said, against his own intentions, Putin has ensured Ukrainian sovereignty by uniting that country in opposition to his aggression. In all likelihood, diplomatic compromise will neither undermine that nation’s commitment to independence, nor weaken its resolve in self-defense.

In view of these considerations, were I functioning as moral counselor to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, I would advise him to give careful thought to this ­question: Can Ukraine survive, even thrive, in a post-war environment that includes territorial concessions to Moscow? Even more pointedly: Does the most realistic chance for thriving as a sovereign nation require concessions? If the answer is “yes,” then Zelenskyy has a moral duty to pursue a negotiated settlement.

But I am not Zelenskyy’s moral counselor. And, truth be told, he does not enjoy full freedom to govern Ukrainian affairs. To a far greater extent than was true before the war began, that country has become an American client state. As Christopher Caldwell observes, “The United States’ involvement in the war has always been greater than it appeared.” The Ukrainian military is able to stymie Russian advances because we provide them with precise and lethal tools. “Most of the new weapons’ destructive power comes from their being bound into an American information network,” which means that “the United States is participating in these military operations at the moment they happen.” Ukrainian soldiers are mercenaries, at least in part, fighting on behalf of America’s war aims.

What are America’s aims? We need to know if we are to think in a disciplined way about the moral justifications for American war-making, whether war is made directly or by proxy. This is not an easy question to answer, which is why my misgivings have grown. In late April of last year, when it was evident that the Ukrainian military would not be easily defeated, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that U.S. policy sought to help “Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory.” Then he hinted at a larger geopolitical ambition: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” In March 2022, President Biden made the off-the-cuff remark that Putin “cannot remain in power.”

Regime change, Russia weakened: These sound like good outcomes, but they are elements of America’s larger interest in sustaining our post–Cold War hegemony, rather than limited war-making objectives. The goal of sustaining American hegemony can justify an open-ended use of violence. As Nancy Pelosi put it last year, the war in Ukraine concerns the defense of “democracy writ large for the world.” She is not alone in seeing it this way. In the eyes of many foreign policy experts, the grinding war in eastern Ukraine is simply the current front in the millenarian battle of “liberal values” and the “open society” against authoritarian regimes. This way of thinking seems high-minded, but when it comes to war, it writes a blank check.

My reservations about the moral status of American involvement in Ukraine do not entail “isolationism” and disregard of our global responsibilities. During the Cold War, the United States adopted a policy of containment. Communist aggression was rightly countered, sometimes directly by U.S. forces (in Korea and Vietnam) and at other times by proxies (in Central America and Afghanistan). Yet, unlike “Russia weakened,” containment of the USSR and China functioned as a limited objective. This circumscribed goal allowed our leaders to harken to the principles of last resort, proportionality, and probability of success, principles that counseled them not to nurture conflict in Eastern Europe and to accept a great deal less than victory in Korea and Vietnam.

The collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated restraint from American foreign policy. The upshot: a moralistic imperialism that has been bipartisan. George W. Bush’s second inaugural address called Americans to take up the task “of ending tyranny in our world” by bringing liberty to all nations and peoples. Barack Obama’s administration emphasized human rights and expanded their scope, urging a progressive vision of the global triumph of the Rainbow Reich. But the end-of-history global victory of American “values,” whether defined by America’s center-right or its center-­left, has not come to pass. As a consequence, in recent years we’ve seen a crisis mentality emerge. In 2022, Freedom House, a U.S. government–funded non-profit, issued a warning. “Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy—a form of self-government in which human rights are recognized and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law—are accelerating their attacks.”

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, American leaders suffer from a potentially toxic combination of delusions. They imagine that they have a world-­transforming ­mission—and that their enemies are growing stronger by the hour. This mentality encourages the moral recklessness of a protracted conflict that risks escalation. Because it is realistic to assume that Russia will do almost anything not to lose the war, American efforts to raise the stakes may fuel a wider conflict on the eastern margins of Europe. Moreover, using the admirable resolve of the Ukrainians to attain the goal of “Russia weakened” bleeds the Ukrainian nation for the sake of bleeding Russia.

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper unwittingly participated in an interview set up by pro-Putin Russians pretending to be patriotic Ukrainians. In an unguarded moment, he said, “The brave Ukrainian people are doing the dirty work we never want to do here in the United States. Which is why we should do everything to continue to support you with everything we can, whether it’s munitions or arms or intelligence, you name it. So I think it’s vitally critical that we ­continue this fight till the end.” Esper served under Trump. He does not speak for the Biden administration. He is, however, a reliable voice of the American foreign policy establishment. Which makes one pause and wonder: What, exactly, is “the end” sought by the “dirty work” that “we” must continue?

I hope my foreboding about American overreach is misplaced. But of this I am confident: Russia bears responsibility for beginning the hostilities in Ukraine; Ukrainian patriots have fought with courage and determination that merit our admiration; American arms and technical support are deeply implicated—and just war doctrine assigns to all participants responsibility for reestablishing peace.

WHILE WE’RE AT IT

♦ In the West today, secularism draws Jews and Christians together. We face what amounts to a totalizing supersessionism, the conceit that modern science and progressive politics possess the full and final truth about human nature and our destiny, and that the religions of the West must be renounced. In view of this threat, First Things has formed a study group, Jews and Christians Engaging Word and World. Our goal will be to clarify and outline our commonalities (as well as differences), especially as they inform our approaches to pressing moral and social issues. The present situation calls for us to stand together against the perversions of a post-religious world. We are pleased to have Mark Gottlieb, senior director of the Tikvah Fund, and Bruce Marshall, Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine at Southern Methodist University, as leaders of this important new initiative.

♦ According to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, 57 percent of high school girls say they persistently feel sad or hopeless. That’s up from 36 percent a decade ago. For boys, what might be called the nihilism index went up from 21 percent to 29 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of teenagers reporting that they have seriously considered suicide has also increased, reaching 30 percent for girls. Researchers make lame speculations about causes. That’s because today’s cultural propaganda forbids our acknowledging the obvious fact that the last decade has seen the imposition of gay marriage, “shout your abortion,” transgender ideology, and lots of Rainbow flag-waving. During the same ten years, marijuana has been legalized and “white privilege” has been demonized. Black Lives Matter announces that our country is hopelessly racist; environmental activists tell us we’re on the brink of extinction. In short, we’ve created a toxic culture.

♦ The nihilism index should include more than the percentage of teens reporting despair and contemplating suicide. Marriage and fertility rates belong as well, as do drug overdose deaths, murder rates, and mass shootings. Other factors are relevant, too: workforce participation, civic involvement, religious attendance. I invite social scientists to give rigorous formulation to a nihilism index, a much-needed measure of how bad secular progressivism has made life for so many people.

♦ Over the last fifteen years, the United States has gone from hosting no pediatric gender clinics that facilitate “transitions” to hosting more than one hundred. Over the same period of time, mental health for young people has declined and the rate of teen suicide has increased. We have gone from no pot shops to thousands of them—and from 27,000 drug overdose deaths per year to more than 100,000. Correlation does not prove causation, but it demands investigation.

♦ At present, very few children are produced by gestational surrogacy, the process by which an already fertilized egg is introduced for gestation into the womb of a woman other than the mother, often for a fee. But political, cultural, and demographic trends indicate that the number will grow. The political drive toward defining the “right” to children comes from gay activists. Why should two men who are married to each other be deprived of children? Surrogacy is also likely to grow among professional women who want to avoid the disruptions of pregnancy and who wish to have their embryos screened for any defect or imperfection—or merely undesirable traits, such as the wrong eye color. Factor in demographic trends, which predict dramatic declines in fertility, and the cultural conditions are in place for a concentration of resources to develop artificial wombs and streamline the production of children. What begins under the sign of choice (“If you don’t want to avail yourself of the new methods of child production, then don’t”) will evolve in the direction of ­coercion. I predict that by 2070, progressives will be arguing that women who give birth “the old-fashioned way” are irresponsible, just as a woman in the Netherlands today who keeps a child with Down syndrome is chastised. Political measures akin to today’s rigorous anti-smoking regulations will be proposed. People must not burden society with their irresponsible decisions!

♦ Writing on MercatorNet, Richard Stith draws out aspects of the Dobbs decision that affirm the personhood of the unborn child. He goes on to say,

Perhaps its greatest gift to pro-life people, however, is Dobbs’s complete lack of interest in the subject of religion. None of the opinions treats as even worthy of debate that common suggestion in the media that abortion involves a war between religious theocrats and secular democrats.

♦ Michael Lind in Tablet, on the politics of gender ideology:

To date, sensible Democrats have been shamefully silent. Although few have spoken up to reject the crackpot crusade to “defund the police,” no prominent Democrat has dared to criticize unnecessary surgical castrations or hormone therapy and mastectomies for patients who suffer from gender dysphoria.

♦ Joseph Ratzinger:

The loss of transcendence evokes the flight into utopia. I am convinced that the destruction of transcendence is actually the mutilation of man from which all other sicknesses spring. Robbed of his real greatness, he can only resort to illusory hopes.

♦ The late Paul Johnson often framed his wisdom in well-chiseled statements. Here are two, courtesy of ­Roger Kimball, from Johnson’s 1983 book, Modern Times: “Utopianism is never far from gangsterism,” and “The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.”

♦ Auguste Comte was the first to outline a technocratic tyranny devoted to the perfection of the human condition by scientific reason. “Man,” he wrote, “must be more and more subordinated to humanity.”

♦ In Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology, Kenneth Minogue provides a useful definition of the tyranny of ideas. Ideological politics promises to perfect the world. It encourages the powerful conviction that the one key has been found that unlocks the mystery of suffering and injustice, making politics into an activist theodicy. “Yes,” we hear the ideologue saying, “suffering is real. But I am working to uproot its cause.” As Minogue notes, ideology’s “simplest formulation is that all evils are caused by an oppressive system.” This leads to a battle for liberation in which “there are no civilians.” After all, decent people oppose evil. We now know the social causes of evil. Therefore, only those who love evil—those in love with their “privilege” and consumed by “hate”—will shrink from the fight against the social causes. Here is Karl Marx’s account of the use of ­criticism: “Its essential sentiment is indignation; its essential activity is denunciation.” Cancel culture is not a strange and new phenomenon. It’s a direct expression of the modern mind’s determination to “solve” the problem of evil. This usurpation is by no means restricted to Marxism. It’s a feature of every technocratic enterprise. Lockdowns and vaccine mandates, for instance: Advocates were well oiled with indignation and quick in denunciation.

♦ Michael Oakeshott: “To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise.”

♦ Andrew Sullivan:

It’s possible, it must be possible, both to enforce and embrace traditional understandings of the world, which are often, by the way, also largely true, while accommodating those of us who are different—a gay person—but without overturning the entire bloody order.

The word “accommodate” is equivocal. Gay rights require much more than such modest aims. They demand affirmation in law and custom. Sullivan’s faith that our society can affirm homosexuality and sustain traditional understandings of the world has little basis in reality. One cannot deny the first chapters of Genesis without overturning the entire order.

♦ During the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, He Gets Us, a 501(c)(3) committed to gentle evangelization, ran a sixty-second ad. It featured arresting black-and-white photos of conflict, anger, and enmity in our ­society, ending with the tag line, “Jesus loved the people we hate.” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response to the basic Christian message that we must love our enemies? “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads that make fascism look benign.”

♦ In June 2022, CompassCare crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo was firebombed. “Jane was here” was written on the center’s wall, a likely reference to the militant abortion rights group Jane’s Revenge. In view of the sustained efforts by federal law enforcement to address domestic terrorism, one would expect the perpetrators to have been brought to justice. To date, authorities have not indicted anyone. This failure is part of a larger ­pattern. The Thomas More Society, a legal nonprofit committed to pro-life and other worthy causes, has ­cataloged 161 attacks on pro-lifers since the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in May 2022, including an attack on the home of the organization’s president, Thomas ­Brejcha.

♦ It’s not that the Justice Department has been sitting on its hands. In October 2021, anti-abortion activist Mark Houck tangled with an abortion supporter outside an abortion clinic. After local officials deemed the encounter unactionable, the Feds took up the case, and last September armed agents arrived at Houck’s home to arrest him. Fortunately, in late January a jury found Houck not guilty of any violations of the law. But one wonders about the government’s zeal for prosecution.

♦ Speaking of which, a leaked FBI document from the agency’s Richmond Division outlines a plan to infiltrate traditionalist Catholic communities, which are deemed sources of “white supremacy.” The document apparently relies on threat assessments made by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a radical-left organization that routinely describes conservative political views as “extremist.” It labels the Alliance Defending Freedom a “hate group.” The FBI subsequently retracted the leaked memo. But its existence—and the plan to spy on Americans whose religious and moral views are deemed “extremist”—says something disturbing about our governing consensus.

♦ Bishop Mark J. Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso on the border crisis:

From experience, I can tell you it won’t be solved with policies that deny asylum to more people, or with walls, deportation, detention, or more money for immigration enforcement. Immigration is a long-term challenge that’s only going to be solved with long-term thinking. We need to pivot to a more humanitarian approach that respects the rights and dignity of people who need to migrate.

I’m all for long-term thinking and humanitarian approaches. But we must face reality, which includes massive violations of our immigration laws. Is the good bishop opposed to any effort to limit illegal border crossings?

♦ Writing in Dominicana, the annual journal of the Dominican student brothers of the Province of St. ­Joseph, Brother Pius Mary Henry, O.P., reviews The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life. As a broken-down old climber, I naturally read it through. Honnold’s famous free solo ascent of El ­Capitan in 2017 was captured in the gripping documentary Free Solo. (The term “free solo” means climbing the sheer cliff without the safety of a rope to catch a fall.) There’s no doubt that Honnold is an athlete at the top of his game. Henry notes, “Everyone knows excellence when he sees it, and Honnold’s arresting achievements, like the mountains he climbs, unquestionably manifest God’s glory.” But Henry concludes by noting that, when natural beauty and extraordinary feats strike us with awe, we need to recognize “with St. Thomas . . . that the good of grace in one soul exceeds the good of nature—including scaling El Cap—in the entire created universe.” As someone who has enjoyed the beauty of nature while climbing El Capitan, I’ll add my “amen.”

♦ I’m pleased to announce that our annual New York Intellectual Retreat will be held on August 11 and 12. For those who have never attended a First Things Intellectual Retreat, we begin with a Friday evening lecture. On Saturday we break into small groups for seminar discussions of reading material circulated to participants in advance, and we end the day with cocktails, dinner, and entertainment. This year’s theme will be Creation and Fall. We’ll give close attention to the first three chapters of Genesis and look at some literary classics that interpret this foundational scriptural text.

♦ Have you been a subscriber for five or more years? If so, you can sign up for a free book (The End of Interpretation, my recent reflections on reading the Bible) and First Things swag. Go to ­firstthings.com/f­aithfulsubscriber. It’s our way of saying thank you.