Concerns are growing that international focus on uranium enrichment may overlook plutonium dangers. The post Nuclear experts warn Trump that Iran deal must include plutonium appeared first on World Israel News.

Concerns are growing that international focus on uranium enrichment may overlook plutonium dangers. The post Nuclear experts warn Trump that Iran deal must include plutonium appeared first on World Israel News.

Police and county inspectors are reviewing the death at a Cherry Hill Road complex where other children have fallen. COLLEGE PARK, Md. — A young girl died Thursday night after falling from a high-rise apartment building in Prince George’s County, prompting police and county inspectors to review a College Park complex where two other children have fallen within the past year. The fall was reported around 9 p.m. in the 9300 block of Cherry Hill ... Read more

American intelligence suggests Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is able to direct Iran's military planning despite the serious injuries he suffered in an airstrike at the beginning of the war. The post Despite crippling injuries, Mojtaba Khamenei playing key role in Iran war – report appeared first on World Israel News.

American intelligence suggests Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is able to direct Iran's military planning despite the serious injuries he suffered in an airstrike at the beginning of the war. The post Despite crippling injuries, Mojtaba Khamenei playing key role in Iran war – report appeared first on World Israel News.

Flotilla leaders Thiago Ávila and Saif Abu Keshek were deported without facing criminal charges. The post Israel deports ‘professional provocateurs’ arrested on Gaza flotilla appeared first on World Israel News.

Flotilla leaders Thiago Ávila and Saif Abu Keshek were deported without facing criminal charges. The post Israel deports ‘professional provocateurs’ arrested on Gaza flotilla appeared first on World Israel News.

Police said a dispute tied to an informal soccer game ended with gunfire on school grounds. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — An 18-year-old man accused of opening fire after a dispute over a children’s soccer game was held without bond Friday, three days after a 15-year-old boy and a woman were killed outside Southwest Elementary School. The case has shaken a west Michigan neighborhood where children often gathered after school to play on the grounds. Rafael ... Read more

Russia is reportedly using the Caspian Sea to secretly ship drone components and supplies to Iran, helping Tehran rebuild its offensive capabilities after the war, according to the New York Times. The report says the poorly monitored waterway has become a key sanctions-evasion route, with ships disabling tracking systems as cargo moves between the two The post Secret route: Russia helping Iran rebuild drone arsenal appeared first on World Israel News.

Russia is reportedly using the Caspian Sea to secretly ship drone components and supplies to Iran, helping Tehran rebuild its offensive capabilities after the war, according to the New York Times. The report says the poorly monitored waterway has become a key sanctions-evasion route, with ships disabling tracking systems as cargo moves between the two The post Secret route: Russia helping Iran rebuild drone arsenal appeared first on World Israel News.

Troopers said witnesses described the mark as a “party dot” tattoo. COLUMBIA, Ky. — A 27-year-old Kentucky woman was charged with fourth-degree assault child abuse after state police said a 22-month-old child was found with a black dot tattoo on the forearm. Brook McDaniel was arrested May 4 after Kentucky State Police troopers responded to a child abuse complaint at a home in Columbia, according to reports citing a uniform citation. The case drew attention ... Read more

Members of the group oppose engagement with the US and have argued publicly that Iran should continue confronting Washington rather than pursue compromise. The post Iran ultra-hardliners push to derail potential US agreement appeared first on World Israel News.

Members of the group oppose engagement with the US and have argued publicly that Iran should continue confronting Washington rather than pursue compromise. The post Iran ultra-hardliners push to derail potential US agreement appeared first on World Israel News.

The military said Hezbollah continued carrying out drone attacks against Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon throughout the day. The post Three IDF soldiers wounded by Hezbollah drone as war rages despite ‘ceasefire’ appeared first on World Israel News.

The military said Hezbollah continued carrying out drone attacks against Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon throughout the day. The post Three IDF soldiers wounded by Hezbollah drone as war rages despite ‘ceasefire’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel's elite Border Police bomb squad ventures deep into hostile territory, dismantling explosives labs, improvised rockets, and live warheads under constant threat of ambush. The post WATCH: Inside the IDF’s dangerous bomb disposal unit appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel's elite Border Police bomb squad ventures deep into hostile territory, dismantling explosives labs, improvised rockets, and live warheads under constant threat of ambush. The post WATCH: Inside the IDF’s dangerous bomb disposal unit appeared first on World Israel News.

The UAE has remained a primary target for Iranian aggression in recent weeks, as Tehran attempts to punish regional neighbors for their perceived cooperation with U.S. and Israeli security initiatives. The post UAE intercepts ballistic missiles in massive Iranian attack appeared first on World Israel News.

The UAE has remained a primary target for Iranian aggression in recent weeks, as Tehran attempts to punish regional neighbors for their perceived cooperation with U.S. and Israeli security initiatives. The post UAE intercepts ballistic missiles in massive Iranian attack appeared first on World Israel News.

On Thursday, Hamas confirmed that Azzam al-Hayya, the son of Hamas leader in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya, died of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike. The post IDF attacks Islamic Jihad arms production factory in Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

On Thursday, Hamas confirmed that Azzam al-Hayya, the son of Hamas leader in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya, died of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike. The post IDF attacks Islamic Jihad arms production factory in Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel established a covert military base in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, including senior U.S. officials. The base, set up shortly before the war with U.S. knowledge, housed Israeli special forces and served as a forward logistics hub for the Air The post Revealed: Covert Israeli Base Backed Iran Air Campaign appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel established a covert military base in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, including senior U.S. officials. The base, set up shortly before the war with U.S. knowledge, housed Israeli special forces and served as a forward logistics hub for the Air The post Revealed: Covert Israeli Base Backed Iran Air Campaign appeared first on World Israel News.

The discussions remain fragile amid continued distrust between Washington and Tehran. The post If Iran talks fail, US could target missiles, ports and IRGC infrastructure appeared first on World Israel News.

The discussions remain fragile amid continued distrust between Washington and Tehran. The post If Iran talks fail, US could target missiles, ports and IRGC infrastructure appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF struck Hezbollah weapons depots, a drone launch site, and two loaded rocket launchers in southern Lebanon. The post WATCH: IDF strikes Hezbollah drone sites and rocket launchers appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF struck Hezbollah weapons depots, a drone launch site, and two loaded rocket launchers in southern Lebanon. The post WATCH: IDF strikes Hezbollah drone sites and rocket launchers appeared first on World Israel News.

Mojtaba has become Schrödinger’s ayatollah; his power comes from the uncertainty about whether he is alive or dead. The post Weekend at Mojtaba’s appeared first on World Israel News.

Mojtaba has become Schrödinger’s ayatollah; his power comes from the uncertainty about whether he is alive or dead. The post Weekend at Mojtaba’s appeared first on World Israel News.

According to ISIS’s newly released report, at least six confirmed nuclear-related sites were destroyed so far. The post US, Israel cripple Iran’s nuclear weaponization work, new report shows appeared first on World Israel News.

According to ISIS’s newly released report, at least six confirmed nuclear-related sites were destroyed so far. The post US, Israel cripple Iran’s nuclear weaponization work, new report shows appeared first on World Israel News.

Footage shows a U.S. Navy fighter jet striking the tanker Sevda's smokestacks in the Strait of Hormuz as it attempted to enter an Iranian port. The post WATCH: CENTCOM releases footage of strikes on tankers headed to an Iranian port appeared first on World Israel News.

Footage shows a U.S. Navy fighter jet striking the tanker Sevda's smokestacks in the Strait of Hormuz as it attempted to enter an Iranian port. The post WATCH: CENTCOM releases footage of strikes on tankers headed to an Iranian port appeared first on World Israel News.

The US military said it struck two Iran-linked vessels attempting to enter an Iranian port, with a US fighter jet hitting their smokestacks and forcing them to turn back. The post US, Iran no closer to ending war as Tehran’s response awaited appeared first on World Israel News.

The US military said it struck two Iran-linked vessels attempting to enter an Iranian port, with a US fighter jet hitting their smokestacks and forcing them to turn back. The post US, Iran no closer to ending war as Tehran’s response awaited appeared first on World Israel News.

His article is the most detailed warning yet from the most senior Russian official thus far of what the Kremlin is contemplating, under the newfound influence of hardliners like Sergey Karaganov whose sway over Putin has grown in recent months, … The post Germany’s Remilitarization: Former Russian President Medvedev’s Detailed Article . Review. appeared first on Global Research.

Yesterday I joined Rob Finnerty on NEWSMAX to discuss one of the most urgent deadlines in American justice: Anthony Fauci now has just three days left before the five-year statute of limitations expires on his perjury before Congress. On May … The post Three Days Left to Prosecute Anthony Fauci appeared first on Global Research.

Steven Hamill said he was 26 when doctors first treated his symptoms as an infection. LIVERPOOL, England — Steven Hamill, a British father who was diagnosed with penile cancer at 26, is describing the symptoms and surgeries that led doctors to remove about four inches of his penis. Hamill, now in his 30s, shared his account during recent media interviews after appearing on ITV’s “This Morning.” His case drew attention because penile cancer is rare ... Read more

Capitalism is a distinctive mode of economic organization, one that emerged relatively recently in human history. What distinguishes it, a new history argues, is not a reliance on coercion or colonialism but the way it subjects everyone to market dictates.

The person killed had jumped a perimeter fence, airport officials said. DENVER, Colorado — A Frontier Airlines plane struck and killed a pedestrian on a Denver International Airport runway late Friday, forcing pilots to abort takeoff and evacuate 231 people after smoke and an engine fire were reported, officials said. Frontier Flight 4345 was departing Denver for Los Angeles when the collision happened about 11:19 p.m. on Runway 17L. Airport officials said the pedestrian had ... Read more

In Bolivia, the unions representing miners and peasants have declared an indefinite strike, seeking the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. They are protesting a new law that undermines peasant and indigenous land rights.

First published on May 13, 2025 Commercial gimmicks are sometimes impossible to beat off.  Their stench and pull follows, even as you look the other way.  One occasion is most prominent in this regard.  Nostrils get clogged and eyes get … The post Commemorating Mummy: Reflections on Mother’s Day appeared first on Global Research.

Julia Ward Howe was a humanist who cared about suffering people, a feminist, a social justice activist & suffragette, and it was because of her anti-war commitment that she wrote the famous “Mother’s Day Proclamation” in the wake of the Civil War The post Women’s Rights and Social Justice: Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 Anti-War Mother’s Day Proclamation, A Day of Peace appeared first on Global Research.

Often forgotten today, the US saw a tidal wave of rank-and-file worker militancy in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Many socialists of the era took jobs on the shop floor to help foment the upsurge and build a revolutionary movement to replace capitalism.

This video production was first released in February 2021. It was almost immediately the object of censorship by Vimeo, which closed down our account in March 2021. Thanks to Vaccine Choice Canada it was published on Rumble. Global Research remains … The post Covid Documentary: The Most Devastating Crisis in Human History. There Never Was a Pandemic appeared first on Global Research.

Deputies said Joshua Dahan is accused of killing his parents and older brother. PFLUGERVILLE, Texas — A 27-year-old Pflugerville man was charged with capital murder after deputies found his parents and older brother shot to death Thursday morning inside a home near Lake Pflugerville, authorities said. The Travis County Sheriff’s Office said Joshua Dahan was booked into the Travis County Jail after investigators tied him to the deaths of Armand Dahan, 62, Jami Dahan, 63, ... Read more

Police said evidence showed Matthew Mitchell shot three relatives before killing himself. HOUSTON, Texas — A Houston restaurant couple and their two young children were found dead Monday evening inside their River Oaks home after officers responded to a welfare check, police said, in a case investigators described as a murder-suicide. The deaths of Matthew Mitchell, 52, Thy Mitchell, 39, daughter Maya Mitchell, 8, and son Maxwell Mitchell, 4, have shaken Houston’s dining community and ... Read more

Il Dipartimento di Stato, al termine dell’incontro del segretario Marco Rubio con Papa Leone XIV a Roma per “discutere della situazione in Medio Oriente”, sottolinea “l’impegno comune degli Stati Uniti e della Santa Sede a favore della promozione della pace … The post Una Nazione sotto il Dio della Guerra appeared first on Global Research.

Cidadãos colombianos continuam a chegar em massa à Ucrânia e a morrer em combate contra as forças russas. O número de mercenários estrangeiros na Ucrânia aumenta diariamente, preocupando as autoridades dos países de origem desses “soldados”. No caso da Colômbia, … The post Mercenários colombianos morrem na Ucrânia appeared first on Global Research.

A crise entre os EUA sob Donald Trump e seus aliados históricos europeus continua a se agravar. A recente decisão de Trump de retirar algumas tropas americanas do território europeu está enfurecendo líderes locais na UE e gerando preocupações sobre … The post Trump considera retirar mais tropas da Europa appeared first on Global Research.

Doctors linked the case to minocycline, a prescription drug used for rosacea, acne and bacterial infections. NEW YORK — A 68-year-old woman developed blue-gray patches on her arms, legs and tongue after taking minocycline for rosacea, according to a medical case report that drew renewed attention this week to a known but unusual drug reaction. The case matters now because the skin changes appeared quickly, only weeks after the woman began a daily 100 mg ... Read more

Russia has been severely cracking down on Internet access for its population over the past few months. This is a continuation of a trend of information control that Russia has been using for years. Russia has long been banning hundreds of sites, including independent media, human rights groups, and even major global platforms, and trying The post Strategic Snapshot: Russia Cracks Down on Internet appeared first on Jamestown.

Authorities said dental records confirmed the remains were those of 18-year-old Ceasar Asbury. BUCYRUS, Mo. — A Texas County couple has been charged with murder after authorities said skeletal remains found in a shallow grave at their rural home were identified as their 18-year-old son. Chaun C. Asbury, 42, and Tamla Asbury, 45, were indicted Thursday on charges tied to the death of Ceasar Asbury and the alleged abuse and neglect of other children at ... Read more

The latest floods in Kenyan capital Nairobi killed at least 108 people. This death toll wasn’t just caused by a natural disaster: while wealthier residents were protected from harm, Kenyans living in informal settlements were left to fend for themselves.

Ken Burns talks to Jacobin about his new documentary, The American Revolution; the ongoing project of 1776; and why the Declaration of Independence was far more than a revolt of slaveholders and the wealthy.

A pro-Israel group is set to spend half a million dollars in a California congressional primary to boost the campaign of Jasmeet Bains, who recently walked back comments calling the Gaza war a genocide. Democratic Party leadership is also backing Bains.

Grace Edwards, 19, died days after she was hit in a Bellflower Boulevard parking lot. LONG BEACH, Calif. — A Long Beach man has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges filed six months after a 19-year-old nursing student was struck and killed in a shopping center parking lot, authorities said. Deasean Alphonzia Edwards, 40, is charged in the death of Grace Edwards, a Long Beach resident who police said was hit Nov. 2 while walking ... Read more

Facing the prospect of paying a bit more in taxes, billionaires are responding calmly and rationally: by calling themselves a marginalized, oppressed minority group being traumatized.

As trust in media craters and revenue dries up, legacy news outlets are filling their feeds with celebrity heart-to-hearts and personality-driven coverage. The result is journalism that fawns over fame and power rather than holding it to account.

Executive Summary: On May 7, several drones originating from Russia entered Latvian airspace. One crashed at an oil storage facility, while Latvian authorities continued efforts to locate another drone believed to have fallen in Rēzekne municipality (Delfi; Latvian Public Media, May 7). Latvian defense officials chose not to intercept the drones due to concerns over The post Russia Rehearsing Tactics Along NATO’s Baltic Frontline appeared first on Jamestown.

“Global Health Scare”: “Dangerous Hantavirus” On Board Dutch Cruise Ship. Remember? The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship in February 2020 Sets the Stage for Announcing the COVID-19 Pandemic By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 07, 2026 A wave of media disinformation … The post Selected Articles: “Global Health Scare”: “Dangerous Hantavirus” on Board Dutch Cruise Ship appeared first on Global Research.

… The post A Living Example of an Indian Tribal Tradition appeared first on Global Research.

A collection of bowlers has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing private equity–backed corporation Bowlero of a multiyear scheme to consolidate bowling centers, driving up prices and degrading lane quality.

The Utah Data Center is a 62-square mile monstrosity. The Data Center has come under intensive backlash given the amount of water such a facility would engorge. While the facility is not the largest in the world, it is a … The post 1500 New Data Centers Planned. A Military Project by the White House appeared first on Global Research.

Colombian citizens continue to arrive en masse in Ukraine and die during combat against Russian forces. The number of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine increases daily, worrying authorities in the countries of origin of these “soldiers.” In the Colombian case, President … The post Colombian Mercenaries Dying in Ukraine appeared first on Global Research.

There is no doubt that the AI researchers, like many other experts, were also aware of the potential to use artificial intelligence to control the activity of human brains on a mass scale The post AI and the Remote Control of the Human Brain: You’ll Lose Your Freedom of Thought, but Don’t Worry About It—you Won’t Even Realize It appeared first on Global Research.

Apparently, the Trump administration’s recent pro-war shift is not limited to the Middle East. The Republican administration seems increasingly yielding to the interests of the military lobby and the so-called “deep state,” approving measures that will harm international security and … The post Trump Gives Green Light for New Arms Deliveries to Ukraine appeared first on Global Research.

Around 1,000 monuments to Soviet soldiers have been destroyed across European states, more than 460 of them in Poland. Today, only a few dozen monuments to Soviet soldiers remain in Warsaw. Parallel to this, the country has enforced a decommunization … The post How Victory Day over Fascism Became an Unofficial Holiday for Europeans appeared first on Global Research.

On May 4, CNN published a relatively long report about the alleged “dramatic increase in personal security around President Vladimir Putin”. CNN claims that the Kremlin is “installing surveillance systems in the homes of close staffers” due to a “wave … The post Why is CNN Suddenly Covering ‘Putin’s Fear of Assassinations and Coups’? appeared first on Global Research.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe penned her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” calling for peace. Her words still ring with truth, calling us not to raise our children to kill another mother’s child but rather to gather together to “promote the alliance … The post Mother’s Day Pivots to Peace appeared first on Global Research.

In a world deafened by bombs — the Strait of Hormuz blockaded, Gaza in ruins, Ukraine bleeding, walls rising on every meridian — a woman from a university campus on the eastern outskirts of Algiers has just received one of … The post From Bab Ezzouar to the World: The Extraordinary, Improbable Journey of Yasmine Belkaid appeared first on Global Research.

Compiled by Gary G. Kohls, MD, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) Many of these quotes are from: Vaccine Truth to which we remain indebted. * “No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a … The post An Urgent Reading Assignment for the Vaccinology-illiterate that Makes Vaccine-hesitancy Logical appeared first on Global Research.

[This article was first published by GR in December 2021.] People are walking round in a COVID trance or a COVID hypnosis as I covered in a previous article How the Masses Were Hypnotized Into the COVID Cult. The … The post The Grand Psyop: Five Experiments and Syndromes to Account for Mass COVID Trance Behavior appeared first on Global Research.

[This article by Dr. Rudolf Hansel was first published by GR in December 2021.] The saying “Wehret den Anfängen!” [Resist the Beginnings] does not come from the time of German fascism, but today it is associated with National Socialism and … The post “We Citizens are Being Psychologically Attacked with the Aim that We Obediently March Towards the Abyss” appeared first on Global Research.

The Vaccine Cartel and US Army Are Developing 13 Hantavirus Vaccines and Gene-Therapies Nicolas Hulscher, May 7, 2026 How the US Pulled Off an Armed Robbery of the World’s Energy Supply and Created the Petrogas Dollar. “Chaos is the … The post This Week’s Most Popular Articles appeared first on Global Research.

… The post A Great Disaster in India’s Great Nicobar Island appeared first on Global Research.

… The post Global Sumud Flotilla: Australia’s Labor Must Condemn Israel’s Aggression appeared first on Global Research.

The waxwork figures of the Pentagon recently glowed with excitement with the announcement that the US military would be finally called upon to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. With the ceasefire between Teheran and Washington barely holding, President Donald Trump,… The post Epic Nonsense: Trump Shelves Project Freedom appeared first on Global Research.

Executive Summary: News of a plan to build a “Trump Tower” in Tbilisi sparked mixed reactions in Georgia. On April 18, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump Organization, founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and managed by his family, plans to brand an approximately 70-story building in Tbilisi, which would become the tallest The post Georgian Dream Sends Mixed Messages Amid Push for U.S. Diplomatic ‘Reset’ appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: On April 30, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada approved legislation creating a commission to define what Ukraine should do next to “de-imperialize” the Russian Federation by promoting the interests and rights of smaller and indigenous nations of that country (Verkhovna Rada, April 30; Anti-imperial Block of Nations, May 1). Kyiv’s efforts to develop alliances with The post Kyiv to Expand Its Outreach to National Minorities within Russia appeared first on Jamestown.

Shadi Hamid is a strange advocate for American hegemony. The Washington Post columnist is a liberal, a Muslim, and a vocal critic of the US-Israel alliance. And yet his latest book, The Case for American Power, is an attempt to explain why the Republic is “the last best hope of the earth.” However well-intentioned Hamid is, it is perhaps unsurprising that his case is not wholly successful. That said, any defense of America—however qualified—is a welcome undertaking in an age when the Left and Right alike have become so unpatriotic. If Hamid’s book rallies readers on the Left or in the center around a more robust foreign policy, he will have done a service. But Hamid’s America is little more than an abstraction, a hopeful avatar of democratic ideology unrooted from a deeper tradition. I regret to say that he does not offer the full-throated civilizational confidence Americans must rediscover if we are to overcome the gathering storm.  From the outset, Hamid gets off on the wrong foot by resting his case on the notion that America can “change and improve on itself” because it is an “idea.” More specifically, he writes that the American idea “represents a fusion of power and morality” manifest in a universalist “mission.” To be sure, ideas are vitally important to American nationhood—but we are also constituted by something more tangible. Universals, our Founders understood, are only incarnate in particulars. Hamid’s reduction of America to a mere creed is little more than a terrible simplification.  It seems, though, that Hamid understands the limits of his creedalism more than he lets on. At one point, he cites Sir Roger Scruton’s concept of “oikophobia,” the fear and hatred of home, to critique those on the Left who hyper-fixate on American abuses of power. Hamid argues quite cogently that both left-wing oikophobia and right-wing xenophobia are manifestations of “declinism,” a lack of faith in American exceptionalism.  And yet Hamid does not fully recognize that all these forms of declinism are rooted in our disappointments with abstractions. The ideals held up by oikophobes and xenophobes alike have little to do with the actual country—they are, in fact, attempts to escape the realities of American life altogether. Ideology traffics in fantasy even when its proponents adopt the pose of hard-headed realists. The columnists and “thought leaders” and influencers who dominate social media reduce the American people to an abstraction to be manipulated at will. Is it little wonder the chattering class faces a crisis of public trust?  The stronger aspects of Hamid’s case lie in the contrast he makes between “American democracy” and revanchist autocracy as different ways to exercise power. Taking the example of Vladimir Putin’s Russian war machine, he warns that autocratic power always violates human dignity. “The experience of living under authoritarian rule twists the soul and distorts natural moral intuitions,” he writes. Especially as new technologies make autocracies stronger, Hamid argues that the United States must boldly stand against the tide of illiberalism. Hamid’s book would have been much stronger, though, if he more directly confronted the many errors made by the liberals and progressives ostensibly on his side of the aisle. Though he heaps scorn on Obama-era arrogance and Biden’s half-hearted support of Israel, he rarely recognizes the ways that liberal foreign policy has appeased autocrats for decades. Liberal foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has really been a kind of self-deterrence, a horror at using any kind of power to advance American interests. Adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even Putin himself have been treated more like potential partners than the intractable antagonists they really are. Coexistence, not victory, has been the aim of liberalism. Perhaps Hamid is reluctant to confront the shortcomings of the foreign policy left because he imagines them as his principal audience. I certainly do not envision his book selling many copies outside of the Acela Corridor. But I suspect his reticence has a deeper cause; despite Hamid’s paeans to America, he shares the Left’s fundamental lack of faith in America. Though he praises our regime’s “potential for change,” he simply does not think America has ever really lived up to the promise of her ideals.  This is the fundamental problem with liberal ideology—it is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Abstractions do not stiffen the spine, and theory cannot overcome crisis all by itself. Indeed, as Edmund Burke warned near the end of his life, “a blind and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform” can be “the greatest of all evils.” Merely claiming that America is great because she has the capacity for change is by no means the strong argument Hamid seems to think it is. In fact, it seriously undermines the civilizational confidence we must recover if we are to fend off the threats of autocracy in the modern world. The real case for American power is not dependent on vague and unattainable “democratic values.” It is, rather, rooted in our people’s real history and actual virtues and the spiritual inheritance of liberty we have received. Ultimately, the case for American power can never be made in liberal terms; it must, rather, be conservative.

Millions found their names missing from electoral rolls ahead of a state election in West Bengal that was won by the BJP. Officials call the revisions routine verification but critics say they disproportionately affected poor, rural, and minority communities.

The Right’s con men promise liberation for those who feel themselves superior but are held back by the leveling institutions of mass mediocrity. Their rhetoric intoxicatingly combines feelings of superiority with a sense of dispossessed victimization.

A standard talking point of the American MAGA right is that European nations have become free riders on U.S. taxpayers. The complaint is not baseless: since the end of the Cold War, many European states have allowed their militaries to atrophy while relying on the United States to underwrite global security. Yet this argument misses the less visible benefits of the international system America constructed. The United States benefits not only materially from NATO and other transatlantic institutions, but politically and socially: European elites have been integrated into an American-centered order that shapes their incentives, ambitions, and sense of possibility. In other words, America’s real advantages derive from shaping the behavior of allied elites and embedding entire regions within a favorable institutional architecture. We are referring to a global order in which the ultimate horizon of vertical mobility is no longer the nation-state, but American institutions, global organizations headquartered in the United States, and American corporations. To understand this dynamic, one need only look across Europe. For elites in the post-communist member states of the European Union, a career in European institutions represents the pinnacle of advancement. The trajectory is rather familiar: national leadership becomes a stepping stone to Brussels. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, for example, went on to serve as president of the European Council. Numerous Eastern European leaders signal their competence and virtue through their “acceptance” in European circles, and speculation about their eventual transition to EU institutions is routine. Cadres from ruling parties are steadily absorbed into the bureaucratic structures of the Union. For Western Europeans, whose standards are considerably higher, careers in EU institutions carry less prestige. It is no accident that the current president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, rose to that position after an underwhelming tenure in German domestic politics, nor that the office has been held by figures from relatively minor states such as Luxembourg. Instead, Western European elites often proceed to what is effectively the final destination of global mobility: the United States. Politics within Western European states, even at the highest levels, increasingly functions not as a terminal destination, but as a platform for even greater transatlantic prestige.  The young Austrian political star Sebastian Kurz, after his chancellorship, quickly became a global strategist for Thiel Capital. Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak transitioned into an advisory role at Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Anthropic. Germany’s former foreign minister Annalena Baerbock serves as president of the United Nations General Assembly, headquartered in New York. Former British prime minister Tony Blair entered into advisory roles with JPMorgan following his time in office, while former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg served as secretary general of NATO for a decade, a position now held by former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, before returning to Norway as finance minister. Former Italian prime Minister Mario Draghi likewise spent part of his career at Goldman Sachs before assuming the highest offices in European governance. The specific positions may differ, but the underlying logic of elite circulation remains remarkably consistent. The significance of such trajectories becomes clearer when contrasted with cases that fall outside the accepted sphere. When former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder began working for Russian energy giants after leaving office, the reaction in the West was one of immediate and sustained outrage. The response was, in a sense, entirely logical: it implicitly acknowledged that the post-political engagements of national leaders carry significant geopolitical weight. Engagements with Western corporations, institutions, or alliances are treated as neutral or even commendable, whereas analogous ties to rival powers are deeply problematic. This double standard reveals the underlying structure of the transatlantic system established, and now perhaps to be dismantled, by the U.S. To the MAGA-minded observer, such developments may appear irrelevant as mere careerism with no bearing on American interests, yet this could not be further from the truth. European elites are disincentivized from confronting the United States because they are, in a very real sense, bought, not through crude corruption, but through the promise of status, influence, and post-political careers at the very center of global power under American hegemony. That political leaders from important nation-states would conclude their careers by relocating to another country is a revealing indicator of American power, but not historically unprecedented. This phenomenon can be understood as a contemporary form of the “domestication of the nobility” that took place in the early modern period—a concept explored by the historian Peter Wilson in Absolutism in Central Europe, drawing on the work of Norbert Elias and Jürgen Freiherr von Krüdener. Wilson describes how, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the lavish courts of Europe were not just beautiful, but also functioned as instruments of political control by pacifying and domesticating the nobility, thereby enabling the consolidation of absolutist states. Wilson explains this phenomenon: “The monarch gained a degree of freedom from aristocratic restraint but was only able to become absolute through the development of a court to consolidate his power. Absolutism becomes a process of manipulation and socialisation, rather than one of direct coercion. The ruler’s stronger position permitted the ‘domestication of the nobility’ by offering them the temptations of the court society. These inducements were social, rather than economic or material, reflecting the influence of Weber rather than Marx on these arguments.” Through the prestige of court life, rulers centralized power by manipulating and socializing the nobility, stripping it of its traditional martial function that had once enabled it to resist the centralization of royal authority. Court ceremony, what Elias termed the “civilizing process,” dulled the nobility’s inherent bellicosity. The grandees, the high aristocracy, were transformed into allies of the ruler in the project of state-building, often serving as heads of proto-ministries. In the Habsburg Monarchy, for example, the great Hungarian magnates chose to enter the imperial service, staffing the ruler’s chancelleries, while resistance to centralization increasingly shifted to the lower nobility. The parallels to contemporary U.S.-European relations are profound. With the rise of the U.S. as the world’s uncontested superpower, European elites have been similarly “domesticated” by their incorporation into a broader imperial “court,” where participation confers status, security, and opportunity in exchange for relinquishing a large measure of autonomy. The reactions of European elites to Trump’s often abrasive treatment reveal the persistence of this dynamic. They are, by and large, reluctant to engage in open confrontation. They remain “civilized” in the Eliasian sense, holding out hope for a return to the pre-Trump world. What distinguishes Trump from his predecessors is his apparent indifference (if not hostility) to the entire system of transatlantic elite integration. Where previous administrations maintained the “court” and its attendant rewards, Trump has often treated allied elites with open disdain, undermining the very mechanisms through which they were incorporated into the American-led order. In that sense, he disrupts the logic that has underpinned transatlantic relations for decades. If access to the court is restricted, or its rewards diminished, European elites may be forced to rediscover a more traditional form of sovereignty. In doing so, they could revert to something resembling the original aristocratic condition—a class once again defined not by domestication, but by its capacity and willingness for conflict. Would this be in America’s interests? Would it be in the interests of the Europeans? Time will soon tell.

Former President Barack Obama just unveiled his presidential library, an oligarch-funded shrine to himself. It’s a perfect bookend to a presidency that bailed out Wall Street donors who were throwing millions of Americans out of their homes.

A renewable energy transition doesn’t have to mean higher prices for consumers. On the contrary: if managed well, it could actually offer lower energy prices.

Faced with declining market share and poptimist contempt, rock music once seemed bound for the dustbin of history. But an industry crisis and a moribund liberal political establishment are driving a rediscovery of rock’s potential.

Opponents went all in on smearing Graham Platner as a Nazi based on a bad tattoo choice. It didn’t work. Maine voters decided they’d rather have universal health care and an end to reckless wars than a polished politician with an unblemished past.

Executive Summary: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) established the Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces in Exile on January 26 (BBC Russian Service, January 26). This marked PACE’s first official recognition of a Russian delegation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent expulsion of Russia from The post PACE Establishes Platform for Russian Opposition Delegation appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Ukrainian drones attacked Yekaterinburg, a city located deep inside Russia, for the first time on April 25. The attack damaged a high-rise apartment building (DW Russkaya Sluzhba, April 25). From the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin framed the war as a “special operation,” The post Ukrainian Drone Strikes Deep in Russia Grow Public Alarm  appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: On April 21, the State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) released its annual report on the main risks and challenges to Georgia’s state security and stability (SSSG, April 21). The annual state security report was published at the same time that Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the appointment of Mamuka Mdinaradze, the The post Georgian State Security Faces Rising Challenges  appeared first on Jamestown.

It’s not just Graham Platner. In Maine’s gubernatorial race, logger and labor leader Troy Jackson is mounting an economic populist campaign that promises to build bridges between urban progressives and rural working-class voters.

At this point, the Devil Wears Prada franchise is a major cultural phenomenon. And The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a worthy addition, with more than a dash of topicality in its treatment of some of the bleaker aspects of contemporary existence.

California’s heat protections for workers decreased heat-related deaths by 31% in recent years. With deaths climbing around the United States, extending these protections throughout the country could save as many as 1,500 lives each year.

Executive Summary: Diversity remains part of the show in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with colorfully dressed minority delegates once again on display at the annual National People’s Congress (Xinhua, March 8). At this year’s gathering, delegates passed a new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (民族团结进步促进法), a detailed, sprawling statute that turns the The post New Law Engineers Unity appeared first on Jamestown.

In his recent article “What Do Conservatives Mean by ‘Western Civilization’?”, Providence editor James Diddams notes how contrasting remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveal a tension: there is no firm definition of “Western civilization,” yet the concept enables people with different philosophical precepts to unite around policy goals defending said civilization. I propose instead that a definition of “Western civilization” exists, one firm enough to ground the multiplicity of projects aimed at its defense while still loose enough to contend with its myriad opponents—thinkers who, as Diddams illustrates, were rooted in European history and culture yet defended ideas that seem inimical to any coherent or defensible notion of the West. It is my contention that Western civilization is best understood as a mostly unbroken dialogue of ideas and their embodied application. That mostly is important. I’ll return to it presently. This idea of Western civilization as a dialogue was articulated by Robert M. Hutchins in his essay The Great Conversation, written initially as the introduction for the Great Books of the Western World collection published by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952. Hutchins writes: The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in other respects… no other civilization can claim that its defining characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any other civilization can compare with that of the West in the number of great works of the mind that have contributed to this dialogue. The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the LOGOS. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. As in any lengthy dialogue, when the Great Conversation is distilled to its essence one will find recurring themes and ideas. These ideas recur as later authors engage with those who come before them: Bertrand Russell engages with René Descartes; Descartes engages Hobbes; Hobbes, Aquinas; Aquinas, Aristotle; Aristotle, Homer. Elements of the ideas put forth by earlier authors find their proliferation, expansion, and sometimes refutation in those who come later. Hutchins’ conception of Western civilization is not perfect (by his own admission), but expanding that conception as “a mostly unbroken dialogue of ideas and their embodied application” does a lot of work to resolve the tension that Diddams expresses. Embodied application casts a wide net to include not just literature, but also art, architecture, government, religion, and any other cultural artifact of the West. Each field is a dialogue with its predecessors, ultimately grounded in a dialogue of ideas. This also leaves plenty of room for individuals with different philosophical precepts to propose widely differing policies, united around the theme of continuing the dialogue. Here’s where that mostly comes in. For the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, general editor of the Great Books of the Western World, penned a follow-up to Hutchins’ essay. In The Great Conversation Revisited, he makes this ominous observation: …we must call attention to a striking fact about the 20th-century additions to the second edition of Great Books of the Western World. There is a clear break between this century and the twenty-five centuries that precede it in the tradition of Western civilization. There are signs of discontinuity that do not show themselves in any of the preceding centuries. The unbroken continuity of the great conversation from Homer down to the end of the 19th century nearly stops there…innovations, departures, and novelties occur, discrepancies become marked, denials and dissidences are stressed that had not surfaced in any other century. Adler defends his claim by referring to the vast number of revisions that had to be made for the second edition of the Syntopicon, the index of great ideas that is the cornerstone of the Great Books of the Western World. Unfortunately he does not name specific examples, nor detail what the discontinuities are. Yet we can infer perpetrators. Take Heidegger, one of the authors mentioned by Diddams, who was also one of the authors Adler and his team added to the second edition of the Great Books collection. In his essay On Metaphysics, Heidegger takes a radical departure from previous philosophers in defining “Nothing” as ontologically prior to being: Does Nothing “exist” only because the Not, i.e., negation exits? Or is it the other way about? Does negation and the Not exist only because Nothing exists? This has not been decided–indeed, it has not even been explicitly asked. We assert: “Nothing” is more original than the Not and negation. And the way we know “Nothing” is through dread (Angst): Does there ever occur in human existence a mood [so particularly revelatory in its import] through which we are brought face to face with Nothing itself? This may and actually does occur, albeit rather seldom and for moments only, in the key-mood of dread (Angst)…Dread reveals Nothing. In short: Nothing is ontologically prior to Being, and we know Nothing not through rationality, but through mood. These are staggering departures from preceding conceptions of nothingness and rationality. Even the epistemically uncertain Descartes refused to reject them: Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am,” is a rational argument for the existence of the mind. Even if nothing else exists, there is something doing the thinking, and we have direct access to it. The social implications of Heidegger’s dread are equally staggering, with the last decade of transgender madness in law and policy only its latest form. Like the sense of dread acquainting one with Nothing, only one’s sense of “true self” is valid for determining one’s gender. But Heidegger’s (and others’) departure from their predecessors also draws a sharp line between those we read “for pedagogical purposes” versus those we “lionize as integral to our civilizational self-understanding,” to rephrase the question Diddams asks in his article. The line is between those who continue the dialogue of the past and those who break from it. Continuing the dialogue requires a disposition of humility: as we develop answers to the questions of our day, we are obliged to engage with the thinkers who came before us, recognizing when their insights into reality can shape our own. Neither the radical left nor the radical right possess such a disposition. Both represent a twofold break from the past: first by claiming that the fundamental questions of reality have been solved, and then in asserting that ultimate reality is nothing but a reflection of power dynamics. For Marxian-influenced thinkers, the only legitimate political goal is thus the pursuit of equality across not only economic classes, but any group where there is a perceived disparity in power. Critical Theory is necessary to determine which group identity (sexuality, race, indigeneity, etc.) is the most oppressed, and therefore the most entitled to the spoils of redistribution. The far right draws the opposite conclusion: that the strongest group (defined in terms as equally dubious as those of Critical Theory) must unapologetically dominate all others. To do so is not good or evil, but beyond such categories. The emergence of ideas purporting to “solve” reality with reference to power left in their wake a century of destruction by breaking from the continuity of the moral and political dialogue that defined the West. Understanding Western civilization as a dialogue is a highly flexible and (with respect to ideas) ecumenical way to account for the history of the West and its future propagation. It begins amid pre-Christian paganism, continues through the inestimable influence of Christianity, and is questioned by postmodern revolutionaries. In all cases the dialogue persists. Just as those who came before us passed their hard-won wisdom to us via the dialogue, we can continue the dialogue of Western civilization with clear-headed reasoning, humble correction, and faithful Christian stewardship.

The Trump administration has hired a team of private debt collectors — known for widespread abuses when previously hired to collect federal student debt — to hound immigrants slapped with new multimillion-dollar civil penalties for not leaving the US.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais last week dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act. The ruling underscores the many antidemocratic features of our political system and the need for a new, actually democratic constitution.

Executive Summary: The Iran conflict has made completing the moribund Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCP) increasingly attractive. The U.S.–Israeli “Operation Epic Fury” attack against Iran, launched on February 28, upended Persian Gulf hydrocarbon energy exports, severely disrupting global trade. The first airstrikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior government and military figures. In The post Iran Conflict Could Help Revive Moribund Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline  appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: On March 17, Moscow announced new initiatives presented as an ambitious effort to rebuild critical infrastructure in the occupied territories of Ukraine, improve the lives of its residents, and attract nearly 10 million visitors annually (TASS, March 17). The Russian state corporation WebRF and the Unified Institute of Urban Planning announced 25 development The post Russia Rebuilding Occupied Ukraine for Extraction appeared first on Jamestown.

I converted to Catholicism after years of misgivings over what I perceived as its readiness to excuse all manner of sinfulness in the name of ideas such as “human dignity” which, though theologically legitimate, could easily be manipulated to left-wing political ends. Eventually, however, I embraced Catholicism after coming to recognize the disparity between the Catholic Church’s formal teaching versus what Catholics, including what priests, bishops, and popes, say and do. This incongruity has come to the fore lately on the issue of immigration—specifically the deportation of illegal aliens. Whether it’s Pope Leo XIV, some of the American cardinals, bishops, and priests, or other Catholics, day in and day out we hear the invocation of “human dignity” as a counter to the deportation of illegal aliens. Two recent essays in Church Life Journal and Public Discourse, respectively, exemplify how “human dignity” can be used to pervert justice. The first, “On the Illegality of Illegal Immigration,” argues that the U.S. should simply make illegal immigration legal because what truly matters is the “need” and “dignity” of the illegal alien. Although Terence Sweeney, a professor at Villanova, concedes that illegal aliens who commit crimes and those who are financially secure but have overstayed their visas can be deported, he argues that fundamentally there are only two considerations: the needs of illegal aliens, and their intrinsic human dignity. Their very poverty, he claims, gives them a moral right to immigrate, because doing so is analogous to stealing food to feed one’s starving family. This line of argument assumes that the act of illegally immigrating is intrinsically excusable when in flight from poverty. The author seems to imply that the poor and migrants have become holy, their actions sanctified, based only on their status as poor migrants. However, there is nothing in Christianity that divinizes anyone based only on their economic status as such. This perspective, by making it impossible for poor people to sin by entering the U.S. illegally, makes an idol of the poor, and abuses “human dignity” as a political tool to legitimize mass migration. If any poor person anywhere in the world can manage to make it to the U.S., or any first world country, does Christianity really teach that they are intrinsically owed the benefits of citizenship? On the French Revolution, Hannah Arendt wrote that what ultimately “unleashed the terror and sent the Revolution to its doom” was the transition by Maximilien Robespierre and the most radical Montagnards of the Jacobin faction from advocating for the rights enumerated in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, a document even critics of the French Revolution can appreciate, to the more radical 1793 Declaration, which was predicated on the rights of the sans-culottes, the urban working class. When the universal alleviation of all poverty replaces the maintenance of freedom as the government’s guiding principal, the stage is set for perpetual revolution. This was, as Arendt wrote, “the abdication of freedom before the dictate of necessity,” and in Karl Marx it “had found its theorist.” She writes: Politically speaking, one may say that the evil of Robespierre’s virtue was that it did not accept any limitations. In Montesquieu’s great insight that even virtue must have its limits, he would have seen no more than the dictum of a cold heart. Thanks to the doubtful wisdom of hindsight, we can be aware of Montesquieu’s greater wisdom of foresight and recall how Robespierre’s pity-inspired virtue, from the beginning of his rule, played havoc with justice and made light of laws. Everything was done in the name of le peuple (the people)—the “key words” of the revolution, “the term became the equivalent for misfortune and unhappiness.” The legitimacy of Robespierre and the Montagnards rested on their fanatical commitment to compassionate zeal. That is, they legitimized their power on the “capacity to suffer with the ‘immense class of the poor,’ accompanied by the will to raise compassion to the rank of the supreme political passion and of the highest political virtue.” The second essay, “The Dignity of the Family and American Democracy” by Fr. Mike Johns, argues against the separation of families amid deportations. Johns is right to argue that families should be kept together, even if the children were born here and are juridically U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, Johns goes further, claiming that basically all deportations are intrinsically evil because they go against “the dignity of the human person.”  The author quotes Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, published in 1993, wherein John Paul II cites Gaudium et Spes, a document of the Second Vatican Council. But these Church documents must be read in harmony with the Bible, the Catechism, and other Church documents. The Catholic Church specifically says the state has a right and duty to protect its own sovereignty, and that the right to emigrate is not absolute. It follows that the “deportations” those two documents identify as part of the list of intrinsic evil are referring to the deportations of citizens from their own countries. Reading “deportation” to mean any and all deportations would invalidate laws enacted by our democratic process, thereby undermining sovereignty, by setting the “rights” of illegal aliens above those of citizens.  The only way to make it work is to call what is unjust just and what is illegal legal. The use of “human dignity” has become an ultimate thing, an idol that has displaced our literal neighbors and the wholeness of the biblical message. In this capacity, it has become a political tool in the service of those who advocate for open borders. There are many ways good and godly things can become idols, not because an idea like concern for the poor isn’t true and good, but because it is not the only thing that is true and good. We tend to think of idolatry as worship of power, money, celebrity, beauty, sex—the obvious idols our culture worships, but we rarely think something true and good can become an idol—morality, theology, ministry in the church, serving the poor, ad infinitum.  Advocating for “human dignity” and “humanization” is easy compared to caring for all those Americans whom God gave us as our fellow countrymen—our literal neighbors. One cannot claim to care about the human dignity of billions of people around the world when they despise, scorn, and disenfranchise their fellow citizens, advocating for laws that negate them, usurp them, and bring all sorts of injustices down upon them. God calls on us to embody universal love, but that love must be extended from the particular families, polities, and nations we inhabit; Christian love does not call upon us to negate our own nations for the sake of the global community but to express universal love through our embodied particularity. If everyone can be an American simply by setting foot on our soil, then solidarity with our fellow Americans is meaningless. To the credit of Robespierre, at least he was seeking the wellbeing of his fellow Frenchmen before that of the world, however imperfectly.

Perry Link’s latest collection of essays, The Anaconda in the Chandelier, provides a meaningful introduction to the writings of one of America’s most prominent scholars of Chinese literature and politics.  The book is not only highly readable but also succinctly expresses numerous insights into Chinese culture and politics most other writers could only convey in far more words.  This series spans decades, allowing the book to capture shifts and changes in China’s political milieu, including the brief period of relative political openness in the late 1990s before returning to Maoist-like political control under Xi Jinping, who assumed power in 2013.  For readers unfamiliar with China, the book offers a helpful introduction to Chinese culture, domestic politics, social dynamics, and literature.  Meanwhile, for China scholars, the book, titled after one of Link’s most popular essays, provides a useful collection of Link’s work. The book’s essays range from playful pieces such as “The Joys of Beginning Chinese,” which details his enjoyment of teaching Chinese 101, to more somber pieces, such as “What the Tiananmen Mothers Offer China,” which remind the reader of the sacrifices at the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Link appropriately injects some humor while doing justice to the draconian political control under which political dissidents have suffered for their commitment to democratic ideals.  Link admirably focuses on Chinese writers, intellectuals, and artists, including tributes to Fang Lizhi and Liu Xiaobo, two key political dissidents, as well as other political reformers, who “put their own safety and comfort on the line.”  He reminds us that after coauthoring Charter 08, a blueprint for a democratic Chinese society, Liu Xiaobo “was taken from his home by police and never returned.”  His essays cumulatively paint a picture of what life is like in China for those committed to the ideals of human rights and democracy.   For some readers who are sensitive to language, off-color humor or sexual innuendo, and short descriptions of torture, there may be brief sections that should be skimmed or skipped over.   For example, in “Capitulate or Things Will Get Worse,” he describes some forms of torture used by the Chinese police.  Some of his essays on Chinese literature reference genitalia and swear words.  But these are brief and are used to serve a purpose, either in conveying the colorful use of language in Chinese literature or the kind of political repression and persecution utilized by the Chinese regime.    And yet, even as Link excels at moving depictions of the suffering endured by Chinese dissidents, The Anaconda in the Chandelier’s greatest lacuna is its failure to do justice to Link’s own contribution and sacrifice to the cause of human rights in China.  Link’s commitment to academic candor and his principled stance in championing human rights and political freedom led the People’s Republic of China to barred him from traveling to China beginning in 1996.  In his essay “Life on a Blacklist,” Link describes some of the potential reasons he has been denied entry into China, including his scholarship, his friendship with and support for dissidents, and his activism.  Regardless of the exact reasons why the Chinese Communist Party chose to crack down on him, Link’s willingness to support political reformers demonstrated undeniable courage.  In James Mann’s 1998 book About Face, Mann describes Link’s efforts to escort Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi and his wife to a banquet hosted by President Bush during his 1989 trip to Beijing, including trying to evade the  Chinese police who continually tried to restrict the group’s movements.   Being blacklisted by the Chinese government came at a significant professional cost for Link; as other peers continued to be able to travel to China, engage with Chinese writers, and produce scholarship informed by such travels and interactions, Link could only do so at a distance.  As a scholar, Link is well-regarded for his perceptive analyses of Chinese politics and society. But besides his work as a sinologist, he is even more admirable is his love for the Chinese people, demonstrated through his commitment to democratic reforms in China when others chose to stay silent makes him not just a academic but a moral witness. The book also does not do justice to Link’s record of cultivating and mentoring younger China hands.  Years ago, when I was endeavoring to publish my first book, I reached out to Professor Link for advice.  Although I had not been a student of his, he graciously offered me counsel and encouragement.  Other scholars and China-watchers similarly report his eager willingness to mentor, advise, and counsel.   Whether readers are experienced China-watchers or are looking for an introduction to China that captures the many complexities, both humorous and bleak, of life under the CCP, The Anaconda in the Chandelier deserves a place on the bookshelf. 

My family arrived in America from Iraq in December of 1978. Less than a year later, on November 4, 1979 Islamic revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, along with the Americans inside. It felt like we had just barely escaped the Middle East only to be pulled back in. My father strictly warned us not to say we were from Iraq—back then the majority of Americans knew little about the Middle East and he was afraid we would be perceived as somehow connected to Khomeini’s Islamist ideology. Then in 1980 the Iran-Iraq war began; a war that devastated my family. In Iraq, the Christians had not previously been allowed to serve in the military, but Saddam needed bodies for the war, and that included the Christians. My paternal uncle—the youngest and last of my father’s brothers remaining in Iraq—was conscripted. My grandparents mourned that the last of their sons was sent off to war. Only my aunt remained with them in Baghdad; she took care of them until their deaths, while my uncle was on the front lines. But the greatest injustice of this ordeal is that when he finally escaped Iraq years later, the American consulate denied his application for asylum because he was a combatant. Like many, he could have lied on his application, but he chose not to. We tried to explain that he would have been killed if he had refused to fight, but the consulate wouldn’t budge. Think of all the people who have lied, deceived, and committed all manner of crimes and were still allowed to enter our country. But my poor uncle, a soft-hearted, kind, honest, intelligent, well-educated Christian man, was denied. Some argue that the current conflict with Iran is like the U.S.-led Iraq War. It is not. There were problems with that action—in both its motives and goals—which continue to haunt and hinder our actions today. Iraq was a secular dictatorship under Saddam; Iran is a theocracy run by clerics and a morality police. Saddam was a believer in pan-Arabist socialism, which had problems of its own, yet did not come with Iran’s track record of exporting its ideology by funding and directing militias into de facto satellite governments. Saddam’s motivation in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War was countering the export of Iran’s theocratic revolution as it threatened his own power. Saddam had the Islamists within Iraq in check. While Saddam was a brutal dictator and a local bully, he was not on par with the Iranian regime, a regime that has carried out terror attacks against its neighbors and America through its proxies since the beginning. After Saddam’s regime fell, it was Iran-backed militias that killed Americans in Iraq while enflaming sectarian divisions in order to gain a foothold, just as in Lebanon through Hezbollah. These schemes did not stop with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. In August of 2024, Nadine Maenza, a long-time advocate for religious freedom in the Middle East, reported on the Iranian-backed militias in the Nineveh Plains. In her report, “10 Years After ISIS Genocide, Christians Are Under Threat,” she writes about the vulnerable Christian villages and the U.S.-sanctioned Rayan al-Kildani, the leader of the Iran-backed Babylon Brigade. Using extortion and bribery, al-Kildani stole Iraqi parliamentary seats reserved for Christians, instead presenting them to Shia Iraqis and thus robbing Christians of their parliamentary vote.  The Christians of the village of Qaraqosh “endure regular harassment,” Maenza writes, “it’s important to note that Kildani is not a rogue player, but working closely with other Iranian-backed militia and political leaders.” His loyalists hold a majority in the Nineveh Provincial Council; his alliance also took over the Kirkuk Provincial Council. Currently, four out of the five Christian quota seats in parliament are controlled by these militias. The ‘don’t rock the boat lest the Iraqi Christian community suffers’ response by some American Christians is a defeatist argument considering what Iraq has already been doing to the Christians.  Even more recently, on June 29, 2025, the Christian Alliance in Iraq issued an urgent appeal asking the international community to intervene for Iraqi Christians against the machinations, harassment, and threat of the Iran-backed militias and politicians to the Christians in Iraq. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis are all funded for one purpose: waging war across the Middle East and beyond against any nation in the way of Iran’s apocalyptic Shia Islamic theocratic vision. Saying that the Islamic Republic of Iran has waged war on the world to the best of its ability and reach since 1979 is a statement of fact. Saying that they will continue to do so is not mere speculation. Their well-documented aims for Shia dominance of their muslim neighbors and the world, including destruction of the “Great” and “Little” Satan of the U.S. and Israel, are not statements to be ignored. Iran’s leadership caste views conflict with democratic nations as a prophecy—something that will necessarily come to pass. For a time this threat could be downplayed owing to their incapacity to carry it out, but once Iran possesses nuclear weapons, their chanting “death to America” will be harder to ignore. In this context, their recent acquisition of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), which are capable of hitting nearly all of Europe, and their relentless and capable pursuit of both longer-range weapons and weapons-grade uranium make them a truly imminent threat to the world. Iran’s eschatological leadership cult would not make them a state on par with North Korea, which, for all the evil of the Kim dynasty, does not have an apocalyptic vision to immanentize. There can be honest debate about the application of just war doctrine to this situation, and it is understandable that many are wary of continued American involvement in the Middle East given our history of adventurism. And yet, before declaring absolutely that this war is unjust, the detractors of the American and Israeli attacks on Iran must acknowledge the Islamic Republic’s decades of undeterred, violent, fanatical expansionism. All of this so far is not even considering the plight of Iran’s own people, who, when their voices leak out from their internet blackout, are begging and demanding the removal of the regime. Total domination cannot abide plurality, as Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism; and so, through ideological indoctrination and terror, it attempts to organize humanity into one identity. Iran has had an Islamist totalitarian regime for forty-seven years—by nature such a regime cannot be negotiated with. This is evident through years of deceit. It has no intention of acting humanely with its own people, much less the surrounding region or the world. With all this, yes, I am unashamed to say that I support the actions of America and Israel to destroy the war-making capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and, God willing, the removal of its entire leadership, for the sake of the peoples of Iran, Iraq, the broader Middle East, and the entire world.

When an American service member is missing, captured, or lost somewhere behind enemy lines, a chain reaction is set in motion that defies logic. Hundreds of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars in military equipment and assets are dedicated to a singular mission that is difficult and costly to execute: bring them home. From an economic standpoint, it is an irrational reaction. But there are much deeper, more meaningful reasons behind such actions. The policy—leave no one behind—is embedded in the U.S. Military Code of Conduct. In 1955, President Eisenhower established the Code of Conduct via Executive Order 10631. The Code was developed in response to troubling reports that American prisoners of war were ill-equipped to withstand the physical and psychological torture they suffered under our communist foes in Korea and China.  The Code’s six articles bind every American service member in a kind of moral covenant. The first five articles describe how service members are expected to conduct themselves. For those missing or in captivity, they must survive, evade, resist, and escape. But behind those instructions lies an unspoken promise: you are not forgotten, we will come for you.  That promise has shaped American military culture for decades. Combat search and rescue missions are among the most dangerous operations undertaken. Helicopter crews fly into contested airspace. Special operators move toward, not away from, the enemy. Precious resources that could be deployed elsewhere are committed to recovering a single individual. But the logic is not purely strategic. It is moral. To leave someone behind would not only be a tactical loss; it would be a betrayal. The cohesion of a fighting force depends on trust—trust that orders are given with purpose, that risks are shared, and that, if the worst happens, you will not be abandoned to it.  On Good Friday of this year, the worst nearly did happen. A United States Air Force F-15E was shot down somewhere over Iran. Both crew members safely ejected, but only one was immediately rescued. The other crew member suddenly faced one of a pilot’s worst fears. But it is a fear that extends far beyond the battlefield and connects all of us: the fear of being cut off from those we care about, of suffering alone, of being unrecoverable. A downed Air Force fighter pilot might present an extreme case, but the underlying experience is universally human. Every person, at some point, confronts isolation—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual—and wonders whether anyone is coming. Our downed pilot spent the next 36 or so hours surviving, resisting, evading, and ultimately escaping capture by the enemy. And in the early hours of Sunday morning—Easter Sunday—President Trump announced that the second crew member had been successfully rescued.  The parallels are unmistakable. At its core, Easter is a search and rescue story.  A search and rescue mission begins with the decision that the person is worth retrieving. It demands sacrifice; those who go must accept real danger. And it culminates, if successful, in rescuing what was once lost. When our American pilot was finally rescued, his first words were reportedly “God is good.” It would be too easy to dismiss such a proclamation as merely an excited utterance of relief upon being rescued. But there is something much deeper to those three simple words. The Code of Conduct’s sixth and final article concludes: “I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.” American service members are exhorted to place their trust in something greater than themselves. In doing so, they can tap into a source of strength and resolve that serves as a force multiplier. Indeed, spiritual fitness saved that downed pilot every bit as much as did physical fitness. The comparison between Easter and a military search and rescue mission is not exact, and it should not be forced into one. Military rescues are uncertain. They can fail. Even the best-prepared teams cannot control every variable. Easter, by contrast, proclaims a decisive and final victory. But the resonance between the two lies in the shared logic of commitment: the willingness to incur risk for the sake of another, and the refusal to accept abandonment as the final word. There is also a shared emphasis on identity. A service member is not just an individual; he or she is part of a unit, bound by shared purpose. To be recovered is to be restored to that identity. Similarly, in Christian thought, redemption is not merely escape from danger but reconciliation—being brought back into right relationship with God and, by extension, with others. And Easter, for those who observe it, pushes that logic to its furthest conclusion: that no distance is too great, no cost too high, for the sake of bringing the lost home. In a world that often feels fragmented, where our institutions strain and trust erodes, the idea that someone will come—that you will not be left behind—retains extraordinary power. It is why rescue missions are launched against the odds. It is why stories of recovery resonate so deeply. And it is why, year after year, Easter continues to speak to something fundamental in the human condition. Whether on the battlefield or in matters of faith, the message endures: you are not forgotten. And someone is coming.

In the realm of international politics, few moments have been as consequential as the Treaty of Westphalia. Signed in 1648 to bring an end to the Thirty Years’ War, the landmark treaty represented the beginning of the international system of nation-states we know and take for granted today. However, while the modern West could not be conceived of without nation-states, the very idea of the nation-state has become a flashpoint with so-called “civilizational states,” including authoritarian examples such as Iran, China to democratic variants like India. In the case of the Islamic Republic, amid the ongoing war in the Middle East, Iran has rhetorically framed its defense against the United States of America and Israel as a form of “civilizational resistance.” This resistance, Iran asserts, is rooted in more than three thousand years of history, dating back to Zoroastrianism, founded by the prophet Zarathustra in the 6th century BC. And yet, on an ideological level, the invocation of “civilizational resistance” by Iran is part of a broader trend in which the other “civilizational states” of the world are challenging the universalism of the established normative frameworks of modernity.  In his book The Rise of the Civilizational State, Christopher Coker, the late British political scientist at the London School of Economics, defines a civilizational state as a country that traces its identity to a distinct socio-cultural core dating back to time immemorial. In civilizational states, Coker argues, culture becomes the primary anchor of national identity not in a sense of shared citizenship within a common territory or through a constitutionally bound social contract; rather, it lies in the perception of commonalities derived from belonging to a common culture. The votaries of civilizational states consider the idea of a nation-state as a “Western import” that is ill-suited to the collective consciousness of non-Western societies with deep historical roots.  In this context, countries like Iran, China, Türkiye etc., invoke the “civilizational state” tag to justify their policies in opposition to Western influence around democracy, human rights, and anything else that would cause authoritarians consternation. However, in the world of ideas, concepts like civilization are social constructs with fluid and dynamic dimensions and therefore subject to contestation. In this context, the idea of “civilizational resistance” that Iran and other “civilizational states” are invoking can be perceived as an extension of power politics.  The very idea of “civilizational statism” is therefore being used to politically mobilize populations in their respective countries to moralize the content of power. It is an attempt at concealing the coercive dimensions of political regimes by legitimizing them through an artificially constructed sense of civilizational continuity. In his book Moral Man and Immoral Society, the American theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr warned humanity against such tendencies through two of his important ideas—collective egoism and the irony of history. Niebuhr pointed out that while humans at the individual level can choose selflessness and altruism instead of self-serving to the detriment of others, at the collective level societies operate on the basis of collective egoism, marked by narcissism, tribalism, and exclusionary tendencies. It is in this context that, when countries invoke the idea of civilization to justify “resistance,” they ultimately undermine their own moral legitimacy. The historical justification of their claims is a façade to mask the exercise of power without accountability, humility and the most important of Niebuhrian social virtues: prudence. In such a context, civilizational states end up indulging in what Niebuhr calls the irony of history, where, in an attempt to project the moral righteousness of their power, they end up contradicting their moralistic claims. Such contradictions not only undermine their moral standing, but also damage their social credibility in the comity of nations.  This is precisely what is happening in Iran. In an attempt to portray itself as the custodian of the ancient Persian civilization of Zarathustra and Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Islamic Republic legitimizes the use of violence against its own population by muzzling calls for democracy and accountability. The theocratic government of Iran is therefore selectively applying moral standards under the guise of international humanitarian law to conceal its human rights violations against the Iranian people, most notably in the latest protests, where thousands of innocent people were killed by the Iranian state. If Niebuhr highlighted the external dimensions of collective egoism, Rabindranath Tagore, the poet-laureate of India, illuminated its inner core. He argued that, in an attempt to project superiority vis-à-vis others, civilizations routinely develop narratives of moral supremacy which cloak their own capacity for injustice. In The Religion of Man, he warned against indulging in competitive jingoism where one civilization is pitted against another. For Tagore, the jingoism that legitimizes civilizational egoism was the biggest roadblock in realizing the shared vision of human dignity. Tagore believed that the exercise of power must be anchored in responsibility, accountability, and humanism.  In invoking the language of “resistance,” states like the Islamic Republic of Iran do not transcend power politics but simply moralize it under the banner of civilization. Therefore, it functions as an attempt to legitimize nakedly unethical political actions through the grammar of culture and shared meaning. As if foreseeing the rise of civilizational-state rhetoric, Reinhold Niebuhr warned us that the greatest danger to collective life lies not in the absence of morality but in a false moral image that inspires nations to seek after a perverted sense of justice. Both Niebuhr and Rabindranath Tagore believed that, notwithstanding the fallen nature of humanity, there exist redeemable qualities among us, such as the virtues of perseverance, rationality, tolerance, and belief in the possibility mutual coexistence. The challenge, therefore, for civilizations and nation-states, lies in recognizing the limitations of civilizational heritage as justification for the moralization of power and instead choosing to embrace the positive virtues that enable civilizations to persist over millennia.

It is not hard to see why President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is incredibly controversial. There is plenty to criticize in the freewheeling execution of Operation Epic Fury or in the multiple rationales proffered to justify the war to the American public. Whatever battlefield successes have been achieved so far, frankly, the administration has not done a very good job reassuring the American people that it is approaching this crisis with all due seriousness. And yet some critics of the war have gone beyond arguments about prudence and into what my Law & Liberty colleague Daniel J. Mahoney described in a recent essay as “functional pacifism.” The stridency of their opposition to the conflict bleeds, intentionally or not, into a moralistic condemnation of almost any use of military force. This tendency is especially concerning among self-proclaimed advocates of “just war theory.” The reduction of the tenets of just war into a rigid, overly theoretical, almost-Kantian formula undermines the very rationale behind them. One recent example of this “just war pacifism” that appeared last week in the pages of Providence is my friend Henry Long’s “Catholic Case Against War with Iran.” While I applaud the ethical seriousness with which he approaches questions of life and death, I fear the rigidity of the moral standards he outlines ultimately fail to account for the responsibilities of states to their citizens. Rather than clarifying when uses of military force can help secure justice, Mr. Long’s humanitarian impulse obscure what statesmanship requires in periods of international crisis. In the first place, Mr. Long underestimates the particular threat posed by the Islamic Republic to the United States. Although he acknowledges that the Iranian regime has funded proxies that have caused hundreds of American casualties, he fails to recognize how this aggression does in fact constitute a decades-long war between the Islamic Republic and the United States. Far more aggressively than even Russia and China, Tehran has been working since 1979 through concerted, strategic effort to cause “grave damage” (Mr. Long’s words citing the Roman Catholic Catechism) to Americans and our allies. How else could we define the costs of a decades-long, shadowy war? We may never have a full accounting of how many of our countrymen have been lost to the regime’s fanatic jihad, but the number has certainly climbed to well over a thousand. The Iranian regime has proven, for decades, that it is intent on killing Americans however it can. We underestimate this threat at our own peril. The terror state shows no sign of slowing these attacks either—and that is not even counting brutalities committed against Israelis, Arabs, and the domestic Iranian population. The Islamic Revolution has been nothing short of a total catastrophe for the entire Middle East and represents the greatest source of instability in the region and indeed around the globe. Beyond its use of proxy forces to build an empire of terror in pursuit of regional hegemony, Tehran has effectively become an “arsenal of autocracy” and formed a new axis with China and Russia to challenge American interests. Thankfully, Operation Epic Fury has demolished many of the weapons factories enabling the invasion of Ukraine and aggression against Taiwan. But so long as the regime remains in power, it will continue to support America’s enemies as it seeks to cause “grave damage” to us. Mr. Long’s argument against war with Iran rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Islamic Republic. Tehran is not simply another regional power jockeying for position amongst its neighbors; it has an eschatological vision of global revolution. The mullahs—or at least those still left alive—may not have, at present, the ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Nor do they necessarily intend to immediately strike the United States. But that was never really the point of a nuclear breakout. What the regime’s leaders have always hoped is that through accumulating regional hegemony and embarrassing America they would inspire Muslims around the world to take up their cause and foment revolution on their own shores. In this sense, it is not unlike the revolutionary ideology of the French Jacobins. As Edmund Burke may have put it, “It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war.” Given these stakes, I cannot understand Mr. Long’s conclusion that “this war is neither a proportionate nor appropriate response to Iran’s crimes.” Counter-revolution is necessary to American security and regional peace. If anything, the Trump administration has been far too restrained and cautious about actually achieving the regime change that will once and for all put a stop to the madness of the Islamic Republic. In other words, Operation Epic Fury is not the commencement of a new war with Iran but rather, we should hope, the conclusion of a war that has been raging for decades. The great danger with “just war” arguments against the Iran war is that they reduce just war theory to a kind of Kantian absolutism that, by relying too heavily on theoretical precepts, fails to account for unique exigencies of the moment. However easy it is to theorize, the problems of statecraft cannot be solved by the rigid application of ethical formulae. Mr. Long, for example, demands certainty in order to justify war; he argues that only if we know without doubt that Iran will use a nuclear weapon against the United States specifically can we engage in military action to prevent an attack. Under such strict principles, it is difficult to see when almost any conflict could be justified. As C.S. Lewis warned in his 1940 essay “Why I Am Not A Pacifist,” later collected in The Weight of Glory, “moral decisions do not admit of mathematical certainty.” He saw that too many pacifists, even in the atmosphere of World War II, were seeking out platitudes about violence instead of a serious moral vision. The Oxford don dismantled various arguments in favor of the position, including strict readings of biblical texts and religious traditions that seek to sanctify it. Toward the end, he warned that pacifism can be the expression of a “warping passion” that distorts our sense of responsibility. War is certainly an evil, but most Christians throughout history have acknowledged it is not the worst of all evils. Mr. Long tends toward the kind of pacifism Lewis critiqued when he declares that bloodshed can be averted and American interests secured merely “through sanctions and other non-violent means.” Indeed, he insists that a kind of “nonviolence” is commanded by the just war tradition and the Christian religion itself. It seems to me, though, that this is where the argument descends into Mahoney’s “functional pacifism.” With regard to Pope Leo XIV’s various anti-war statements, he writes in the aforementioned essay that “his tendency to conflate Christianity with a kind of functional pacifism marks a departure from older Christian wisdom. In thinking about war and peace, one must remember that the prudence of citizens and statesmen—guided by right reason and the moral law—remains the proper locus of judgment in political life.”  Our Lord teaches Christians to turn the other cheek. He also commands us to render unto Caesar what is his. The individual Christian and the state have very different responsibilities, and just war theory has historically sought to navigate the uncertainty that arises from those differences. But the most zealous religious opponents of the war in Iran threaten to discredit this noble tradition by reducing it to a pacifistic ideology. Rather than treating the war as a question of faith, then, it would be wiser to view it as a matter of prudence.

Allan Hertzke’s Why Religious Freedom Matters: Human Rights and Human Flourishing is a welcome overview of the vital importance of religious freedom by a veteran writer of informed studies on the subject over the last 30 years. The book comes at a critical time since both religious freedom and knowledge of its salience are both sadly being eroded. He reviews a wide range of arguments on its importance in and of itself and as an indispensable foundation for other human rights. Retired Congressman Frank Wolf, a champion of religious freedom after whom the  1998 International Religious Freedom Act is now named, has recently lamented the diminished attention to religious freedom, something that others have also noted.  There are several reasons for this decreased attention: One is current U.S. domestic divisions. Some on the left have come to see calls for religious freedom as ploys to avoid adhering to anti-discrimination laws. Such suspicions undercut bipartisan international religious freedom advocacy. This continues even though such advocacy is not limited to Christians but includes Falun Gong and Uyghurs in China, Muslims in Myanmar, Buddhists in Vietnam, Baha’is in Iran, Ahmadis in Pakistan, and a host of others throughout the world. Another reason is that increasing secularism in the West leads to antipathy or, perhaps, simple apathy regarding religion. The European Union recently left its post for special envoy for religious freedom vacant for 16 months. A third may be a body of scholarship, often termed “secularism studies,” arguing that religious freedom is not a neutral, universal human right but a mechanism of state power that often marginalizes those it seeks to help. This critique maintains that legal definitions of “religion” are largely Western, Protestant, models prioritizing individual “belief” over collective “lived” practices. In turn this can leave unorthodox or non-institutional traditions legally “invisible” and unprotected. A problem with this approach is that, while it may offer valuable critiques, it reflects current Western academic trends on religion. Hence it tends to replace purported previous Western categories with other more recent Western categories. Then there is the growth of more self-described ‘realist’ international politics and policy, including in the U.S.  This downgrades human rights concerns in general in favor of a modus vivendi between major powers.  Finally, American evangelicals have less international concern. It has been argued, wrongly, that the stress on international religious freedom in the 1990’s was simply evangelicals defending their own. Apart from the fact that any such stress would itself be a perfectly legitimate, it overlooks the fact that the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act was supported by Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha’is, and many others. Indeed, as Hertzke has shown in an earlier work, it drew in most religious groups in the US. However, by sheer numbers and electoral clout it was evangelicals that made the campaign successful. But now, with many evangelicals increasingly restricting their focus to domestic culture wars, the energy for international religious freedom has been reduced. Some of this slack is being taken up effectively by Catholics, but a deficit remains. In this situation, Hertzke’s latest book is especially welcome. He builds on earlier studies by Brian Grim, Roger Finke, and Robert Martin, and more recent work by Nilay Saiya, Jonathan Fox and others. Whereas Grim and Fox are heavy-duty number crunchers, albeit with good explanations of the numbers so crunched, Hertzke weaves them into a compelling narrative. Well over a third of the book is devoted to notes and an index, but he still manages to make it flow. His overall thesis is that religious freedom is not only a major good but is also a primary driver of democracy, prosperity, the increased status of women and of the poor, and decreased violence.  His central argument is that religious freedom touches the core of “human personhood and experience”—the fundamental right to be who we are and to act on our deepest commitments. He contends that when this is protected, it frees and enhances personal agency that benefits others, both religious and non-religious. Conversely, when governments or society suppress religious liberty, it leads to destructive outcomes, including weakened democracy, increased violence, and eroding civil liberties.  He argues that there is both a strong historical and strong statistical link between religious freedom and the longevity of democratic institutions. This is because religious freedom limits government powers and, by allowing diverse groups to act independently, helps foster a robust and free civil society. Hertzke then summarizes the strong evidence that countries with fewer religious restrictions commonly have higher economic growth. He attributes this to increasing social cooperation, attracting skilled immigrants, and promoting a more stable investment climate. He reports that religious freedom is one of only three factors significantly associated with global economic growth. In particular, countries that reduced religious restrictions between 2007 and 2017 had GDP growth rates nearly double those where restrictions increased. In addition, he contends that there is a positive relationship between religious freedom and 10 out of 12 measures of global competitiveness, and that innovation is more likely in countries that have low religious restrictions. He then argues that religious liberty also supports a greater role for women and for programs that uplift the poor, since religious organizations are often the primary providers of social services. Research cited in the book shows a strong correlation with women’s empowerment. Finally, there are links to international security. Drawing on Nilay Saiya, he stresses that religious repression is a leading indicator of social conflict and terrorism, whereas religious freedom reduces fanaticism and builds broader loyalty to the state.  The interrelations demonstrate that religious freedom is rarely an isolated variable. Instead, it is highly correlated with many other indicators of societal well-being, also including lower levels of armed conflict and decreased income inequality.  Of course, correlations leave lots of questions: it might mean that it is these other goods that are enhancing religious freedom. But, while recognizing that causation is not all one way and that there are certainly reciprocal effects, Hertzke gives good reasons, often through historical narrative, that the religious freedom factor is formative. To be proactive in enhancing religious freedom, he advocates what is now commonly called “covenantal pluralism.” This calls for moving beyond a “passive religious tolerance,” in which groups refrain from restricting one another, toward active, respectful, and engaged relations between religions and with political and other key actors.  He concludes “We are witnessing a historical convergence of empirical evidence and events on the ground that corroborate a key ontological reality: Humans are spiritual creatures who thrive best and most harmoniously when they enjoy the freedom to express their fundamental dignity. Religious liberty is crucial to thriving societies and peace.”

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