Mullen also reported an increase in attempts by Iranian nationals to enter the United States through the country’s northern border with Canada. The post Homeland Security chief says Iran used World Cup delegation to try to enter U.S. appeared first on World Israel News.

Mullen also reported an increase in attempts by Iranian nationals to enter the United States through the country’s northern border with Canada. The post Homeland Security chief says Iran used World Cup delegation to try to enter U.S. appeared first on World Israel News.

Uma nova escalada está começando no Oriente Médio. O frágil acordo de cessar-fogo entre o Irã e a coalizão israelo-estadunidense parece significar cada vez menos à medida que as hostilidades aumentam progressivamente. Irã e Israel retomaram a troca de bombardeios. … The post Ataque iraniano altera equilíbrio de poder no Oriente Médio appeared first on Global Research.

After a slight rift between Ambassador Huckabee and President Trump regarding Israel, the ambassador joked about his job being taken away from him by way of social media posts. The post WATCH: Huckabee jokes about Trump firing him over Iran deal appeared first on World Israel News.

After a slight rift between Ambassador Huckabee and President Trump regarding Israel, the ambassador joked about his job being taken away from him by way of social media posts. The post WATCH: Huckabee jokes about Trump firing him over Iran deal appeared first on World Israel News.

Em mais um caso de demonstração pública de simpatia pelo fascismo, o governo ucraniano decidiu homenagear colaboradores nazistas da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Uma unidade de elite ucraniana foi renomeada em memória de militantes nacionalistas radicais que lutaram ao lado dos … The post Regime de Kiev homenageia criminosos nazistas appeared first on Global Research.

Trump suggested the United States could become the "Guardian Angel" of the route and claim 20% of the oil moving through it. The post Trump warns Iran: Close Hormuz and ‘I’ll blow the s— out of them’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Trump suggested the United States could become the "Guardian Angel" of the route and claim 20% of the oil moving through it. The post Trump warns Iran: Close Hormuz and ‘I’ll blow the s— out of them’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Mais uma vez, o regime de Kiev demonstra sua natureza terrorista, atacando alvos civis sem qualquer relevância estratégica. Em 17 de junho, as forças armadas ucranianas realizaram um ataque com drone contra um ônibus que transportava uma equipe infantil de … The post Ucrânia ataca crianças bielorrussas na região russa de Bryansk appeared first on Global Research.

An Iranian source told the Tasnim news agency: 'If Israel does not withdraw from Lebanon, the negotiations will be halted.' The post Iranian delegation walks out of Switzerland talks over Trump remarks appeared first on World Israel News.

An Iranian source told the Tasnim news agency: 'If Israel does not withdraw from Lebanon, the negotiations will be halted.' The post Iranian delegation walks out of Switzerland talks over Trump remarks appeared first on World Israel News.

Vance did not push back against a reporter's claim that Israel is committing "genocide" in Lebanon, saying the Trump administration has done more for Lebanon than anyone else. The post WATCH: Vance silent when Israel accused of ‘genocide’ for fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

Vance did not push back against a reporter's claim that Israel is committing "genocide" in Lebanon, saying the Trump administration has done more for Lebanon than anyone else. The post WATCH: Vance silent when Israel accused of ‘genocide’ for fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

One of the locations being discussed is the Beaufort Castle area, a site that has become a point of disagreement among officials involved in the deliberations. The post Israel weighs limited Lebanon pullback ahead of Washington talks appeared first on World Israel News.

One of the locations being discussed is the Beaufort Castle area, a site that has become a point of disagreement among officials involved in the deliberations. The post Israel weighs limited Lebanon pullback ahead of Washington talks appeared first on World Israel News.

The compound held over 50 UAVs and 8 tons of weapons and explosives, and more than 20 Hezbollah terrorists, including 10 from the Radwan force, were eliminated in the operation. The post WATCH: IDF uncovers massive Hezbollah tunnel complex in Lebanese village appeared first on World Israel News.

The compound held over 50 UAVs and 8 tons of weapons and explosives, and more than 20 Hezbollah terrorists, including 10 from the Radwan force, were eliminated in the operation. The post WATCH: IDF uncovers massive Hezbollah tunnel complex in Lebanese village appeared first on World Israel News.

Will the projected 60 days of talks produce anything resembling peace and stability in the region, as many pray for? The post Did Trump cave into Iran? – analysis appeared first on World Israel News.

Will the projected 60 days of talks produce anything resembling peace and stability in the region, as many pray for? The post Did Trump cave into Iran? – analysis appeared first on World Israel News.

By Sunday afternoon, the view count had surpassed 18 million, making it one of the most-watched political posts in Israeli social media history. The post Ben-Gvir doubles down on viral ‘Lebanese mothers’ post after global firestorm appeared first on World Israel News.

By Sunday afternoon, the view count had surpassed 18 million, making it one of the most-watched political posts in Israeli social media history. The post Ben-Gvir doubles down on viral ‘Lebanese mothers’ post after global firestorm appeared first on World Israel News.

Senator Lindsey Graham stated that the U.S. will take over the Strait of Hormuz if this diplomatic effort fails to bear fruit, also calling on Iran to order Hezbollah to stop firing at Israel. The post WATCH: ‘Trump will takeover the Strait of Hormuz by force if deal falls through,’ says Lindsey Graham appeared first on World Israel News.

Senator Lindsey Graham stated that the U.S. will take over the Strait of Hormuz if this diplomatic effort fails to bear fruit, also calling on Iran to order Hezbollah to stop firing at Israel. The post WATCH: ‘Trump will takeover the Strait of Hormuz by force if deal falls through,’ says Lindsey Graham appeared first on World Israel News.

Boycotting the culture of the Middle East’s only democracy—its liberal, pluralistic, hypercritical, and pacifist culture—is easy. The post Without Israel, a Europe of fools would be disarmed – analysis appeared first on World Israel News.

Boycotting the culture of the Middle East’s only democracy—its liberal, pluralistic, hypercritical, and pacifist culture—is easy. The post Without Israel, a Europe of fools would be disarmed – analysis appeared first on World Israel News.

Over the weekend five IDF soldiers were killed following drone and missile attacks on troops in the area. The post Israeli Defense Minister: No restrictions on soldiers in Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

Over the weekend five IDF soldiers were killed following drone and missile attacks on troops in the area. The post Israeli Defense Minister: No restrictions on soldiers in Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

Authorities are investigating after a beach walker discovered what appeared to be part of a human skull in the sand at a San Clemente shoreline. SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — A Southern California woman walking along Linda Lane Beach made a disturbing discovery Friday when she spotted what appeared to be part of a human jawbone protruding from the sand, prompting an investigation by local authorities. The find drew attention from law enforcement and investigators as ... Read more

President Donald Trump told Iranian regime officials that if the Strait of Hormuz is closed, they won't make it back to their country, and he'll take it over entirely. The post WATCH: Trump tells Iranian officials they won’t make it back to their country if they close the strait appeared first on World Israel News.

President Donald Trump told Iranian regime officials that if the Strait of Hormuz is closed, they won't make it back to their country, and he'll take it over entirely. The post WATCH: Trump tells Iranian officials they won’t make it back to their country if they close the strait appeared first on World Israel News.

Extreme athlete Andy Lewis and Arizona resident Danny Joe Kregle died during a tandem jump in a remote canyon area. MOAB, Utah — A tandem BASE jumping accident in a remote Utah canyon killed two men on June 14, including renowned extreme athlete Andy Lewis, whose performance alongside Madonna during the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show brought national attention to the sport of slacklining. The deaths shocked the close-knit extreme sports community and drew renewed ... Read more

The court ruled that Ahmadi and the others offended 'public decency through the production and publication of obscene and immoral content on cyberspace platforms.' The post Iranian singer sentenced to 74 lashes for not wearing hijab during livestream concert appeared first on World Israel News.

The court ruled that Ahmadi and the others offended 'public decency through the production and publication of obscene and immoral content on cyberspace platforms.' The post Iranian singer sentenced to 74 lashes for not wearing hijab during livestream concert appeared first on World Israel News.

The Greek admiral also took an aerial tour of northern Israel and visited communities near the Gaza Strip. The post Israeli, Greek navies deepen ties during visit appeared first on World Israel News.

The Greek admiral also took an aerial tour of northern Israel and visited communities near the Gaza Strip. The post Israeli, Greek navies deepen ties during visit appeared first on World Israel News.

Iranian regime mouthpiece Mohammad Marandi claimed Iran won the war against the US and Israel while also confirming the regime's intent to toll the Strait of Hormuz following the MoU period's end. The post WATCH: IRGC mouthpiece – ‘No doubt Iran won this war, will continue to toll Hormuz’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Iranian regime mouthpiece Mohammad Marandi claimed Iran won the war against the US and Israel while also confirming the regime's intent to toll the Strait of Hormuz following the MoU period's end. The post WATCH: IRGC mouthpiece – ‘No doubt Iran won this war, will continue to toll Hormuz’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Authorities say evidence contradicted the defendant’s claim that the gun discharged during a struggle. BEAUMONT, Texas — A 44-year-old Texas man has been indicted on a murder charge after authorities said he fatally shot his girlfriend in the head inside his Beaumont home earlier this month and then claimed the shooting was an accident during a struggle over a handgun. The indictment marks a new stage in a case that began as a serious assault ... Read more

Bulgaria is apparently interested in revising its policy of alignment with the EU’s anti-Russian guidelines, adopting a more skeptical stance towards Brussels and the Kiev regime. Recently, the country positioned itself against the European proposal to expand sanctions against Moscow, … The post Bulgaria Opposes New EU Anti-Russian Sanctions. “Extremely Negative for Europeans” appeared first on Global Research.

The configuration of the American economy has always allowed the integration of the commercial sector and military industry. Precisely this fusion of a purely profit-driven economy and the United States Armed Forces created the infamous Military Industrial Complex (MIC). The … The post Blurring the Lines between the Civilian Economy and Military Industry”. Speed up Military Ops: Pentagon integrating Commercial Cloud Networks and AI appeared first on Global Research.

Pauline Hanson has been a fixture of Australian politics since 1996, when she appeared with piercing, shrill bravado as the federal member for Oxley, having been disendorsed for making remarks about Aboriginals by the Liberal Party that may, in time, … The post Lion’s Den Australian Politics: Pauline Hanson at the National Press Club appeared first on Global Research.

If the corporate media can be believed, the bromance between Trump and the genocidaires in Israel is over. Following the G7 meeting held in Evian-les-Bains, France, Trump belittled Bibi Netanyahu and Israel. To read this article in the following languages, … The post Trump Turns on Netanyahu and the Zionists. “Belittles Bibi” appeared first on Global Research.

The Left argues that workers deserve the fruits of their own labor, while the Right says that some workers contribute much more than others and so deserve higher pay. But that claim overlooks the dependence of individual contributions on collective labor.

Experiments with a shorter workweek have shown that shown that working fewer hours improves worker well-being and productivity. But we can’t expect employers to implement this transformative change of their own volition.

Speaking recently in Athens, Macron warned that the leaders of the United States, Russia, and China currently stand against European interests, and while he named three global powers, the weight of his criticism fell squarely on Washington, forcing Europe to … The post 12 Years After the Victoria Nuland “F**k the EU” Leak (2014) on Behalf of the State Department, Does President Macron Now Grasp What Washington’s Real Interests Have Always Been? appeared first on Global Research.

Every time our economic system generates another crash, the state is on hand with public money to bail out private losses. It’s time we stopped seeing bailouts as individual episodes and recognized them as a core feature of contemporary capitalism.

It all started on March 5, 2014: a US sponsored fascist coalition government under the disguise of democracy was installed in Ukraine. With historical foresight pertaining to the dangers of a Third World War, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot was … The post Ukraine: US Launches a Neo-Nazi Government, and World War Three? Felicity Arbuthnot appeared first on Global Research.

There is an unspoken "Big Money Agenda". Netanyahu's objective is not only to exclude Palestinians from their homeland, it consists in confiscating Palestine's multi-billion dollar Gaza offshore Natural Gas reserves The post Video: “Wiping Gaza Off the Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves appeared first on Global Research.

Police said two gunmen in a red SUV opened fire into a crowd on Chicago’s South Side late Friday night. CHICAGO, Ill. — At least 13 people were injured after two gunmen opened fire from a vehicle into a crowd gathered in Chicago’s Princeton Park neighborhood late Friday, according to police. The shooting happened during Juneteenth celebrations and left two victims in critical condition as investigators searched for those responsible. The mass shooting unfolded shortly ... Read more

Authorities say foul play is not suspected as investigators work to determine the cause of the couple’s deaths. REDDING, Calif. — An elderly San Francisco couple known for their support of the arts was found dead inside a running vehicle parked along Interstate 5 in Northern California on June 15, prompting an investigation by state authorities into what appears to be a medical emergency. California Highway Patrol officers identified the victims as Judith Sheldon, 84, ... Read more

The US biotech corporations have been peddling the adoption of their genetically modified seeds under the disguise of emergency aid and famine relief. The post Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa appeared first on Global Research.

Authorities are working to identify the child after a 3-month-old boy disappeared from a stroller in southern Germany. RENNINGEN, Germany — Police searching for a 3-month-old boy who was reported kidnapped from a stroller outside his family’s home made a tragic discovery Friday when they found the body of an infant near a stream in Baden-Württemberg. Investigators said identification efforts were underway and had not confirmed whether the child was the missing baby. The discovery ... Read more

Em meio à atual crise militar na Ucrânia, cresce o número de soldados que se tornam dependentes de drogas. Com o moral baixo, sem expectativa de vitória e forçados a enfrentar “missões suicidas”, muitos soldados ucranianos estão abusando de substâncias … The post Mais da metade dos soldados ucranianos usa drogas – mídia appeared first on Global Research.

Tech giants including Meta, Google, and Apple are facing increasing popular resentment and losing more and more major court battles. Yet their profits and power look about as secure as ever.

Friends and players are mourning Jorge Fonseca, known across the travel baseball community as “Coach George.” BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A well-known youth baseball coach was shot and killed outside a Birmingham barbershop Saturday after an argument escalated into violence, according to police. Jorge Fonseca, 34, died at the scene despite life-saving efforts by first responders. Fonseca’s death has sent shockwaves through Alabama’s travel baseball community, where he spent years coaching and mentoring young players. Authorities ... Read more

Police say an 11-month-old child was discovered in unsafe living conditions inside a North Charleston residence. NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A South Carolina woman has been arrested after authorities found her 11-month-old child dead inside an apartment that investigators described as filthy and heavily infested with insects. The child was pronounced dead at the scene after emergency responders attempted lifesaving measures. Authorities identified the mother as 27-year-old Janette Clayton. North Charleston police charged her with ... Read more

Brazil’s powerful agribusiness lobby advanced a raft of bills last month in a legislative shock-and-awe campaign. The most consequential would make Amazon deforestation — sharply reduced under Lula — virtually impossible to monitor and sanction.

The far-right National Rally boasts that it represents French workers, yet has increasingly close ties to big business. As the party nears power, the contradictions of its claimed social policy are becoming clear.

Authorities are investigating what sparked the blaze that heavily damaged a beachfront hotel complex. SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — A large fire swept through a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic on Friday, killing an Italian tourist and forcing the evacuation of nearly 1,700 guests and staff from a popular vacation destination in Bayahibe, authorities said. The blaze struck the Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach resort along the country’s southeastern coast, sending thick smoke over the ... Read more

Police are investigating the deaths as femicide followed by suicide. OURILÂNDIA DO NORTE, Brazil — A former mayor and city councilman fatally shot his estranged wife during a June 3 divorce meeting inside a law office, then killed himself, police in Pará state said. Authorities identified the victim as Icicléia Alves Veloso, 41, a businesswoman and mother of three known locally as Leia Veloso. Police said her estranged husband, Romildo Veloso e Silva, 69, opened ... Read more

The text below focusses on a number of geopolitical and historical issues. Scroll down to view the video or click here:  original in English, subtitles in 17 languages (scroll down). Introduction “Greater Israel” according to the founding father … The post Video: The Greater Israel Project is a Fraud appeared first on Global Research.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was one of the guests at the G7 summit — comprising the large economies Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, along with the European Union — even though the Ukrainian … The post Zelensky’s Presence at G7: Western Europe Wants Ukraine War to Continue appeared first on Global Research.

… The post BREAKING NEWS: We Are Winning! The Ivermectin Cancer Revolution Has Made the Mainstream Media appeared first on Global Research.

A new Ebola outbreak in central Africa has ignited a firestorm of criticism against billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, as the timing of a major vaccine funding grant aligns almost precisely with the emergence of a rare and deadly virus … The post Bill Gates mRNA Ebola Vaccine Grant Matches Deadly Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC). “Rare and Deadly Virus Strain” appeared first on Global Research.

Inflection point Time Magazine can’t explain, Ron Johnson’s fight to make vax injury a billable diagnosis, the 84% cancer response with generics, and a flesh-eating worm tamed by ivermectin * “Turbo Cancer” Is Here — Dr. Peter McCullough on the … The post Dr. Peter McCullough on the Post-Jab Cancer Wave, Vaccine Injury, and 31 Million Still Taking Boosters appeared first on Global Research.

Fructose acts as a metabolic signal that pushes your body to store fat and lowers cellular energy, which explains why weight gain and fatigue can happen even without obvious overeating Your body converts fructose into fat more easily than other … The post New Study Highlights Fructose’s Unique Role in Metabolic Disease appeared first on Global Research.

Trump believes that it’s now possible to obtain the “holy grail” that eluded the US even during the heyday of its unipolar hegemony in the 1990s due to the new “cordon sanitaire” around Russia. To read this article in the … The post Trump Now Seeks U.S. Control Over Russia’s State-Owned Natural Resource Companies appeared first on Global Research.

For more than a decade, one climate scenario exercised extraordinary influence over public policy, media reporting, corporate planning, and public consciousness. Most people never heard of it. It was known simply as RCP 8.5. Yet behind countless headlines predicting climate … The post The Climate Scenario That Changed the World — And Is Now Being Quietly Dropped appeared first on Global Research.

Kiev Regime’s Terrorist Nature: Drone Strike against a Bus Carrying Belarusian Children in Russia’s Bryansk Region By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, June 18, 2026 On June 17th, Ukrainian armed forces carried out a drone strike against a bus carrying … The post Selected Articles: Kiev Regime’s Terrorist Nature: Drone Strike against a Bus Carrying Belarusian Children in Russia’s Bryansk Region appeared first on Global Research.

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein Crisis as Gift Benjamin Franklin astutely observed that you can be certain of nothing in life except death and taxes. He neglected to include perhaps the most inexorable of all … The post How to Overcome All of Our Crisis appeared first on Global Research.

Far-right millionaire Abelardo de la Espriella has a narrow lead ahead of Colombia’s election runoff. Left-wing rival Iván Cepeda speaks of the outgoing government’s achievements, but rising violence has made the campaign especially volatile.

On June 17, Finnish Parliament voted to lift Helsinki’s decades-long ban on nuclear weapons, marking a major shift in Finland’s security posture. Over two-thirds of lawmakers voted for the new bill (125 to 61), showing overwhelming legislative support for the … The post Dangerous Crossroads: Why did Finland Lift a Ban on Nuclear Weapons? Potential EU/NATO Nuclear Weapons Deployment on Finnish Soil Directed against Russia? appeared first on Global Research.

New York’s Democratic primary elections have involved massive amounts of outside spending from corporate, pro-Israel interests in recent years. As socialists look to significantly expand their presence in Albany and Washington, this year is no different.

Football’s governing body, FIFA, won’t even stand up for players, referees, and fans who are being harassed by the US authorities. It’s no surprise FIFA boss Gianni Infantino has also offered his services to help whitewash Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The US-Iran ceasefire has allowed both sides to claim victory, yet Tehran has secured the more enduring strategic gains, with sanctions relief, and strategic leverage. Washington now faces a different problem altogether: whether it can restrain an increasingly dissatisfied Israel.… The post The US-Iran Ceasefire: Will Israel Accept It? appeared first on Global Research.

In New York’s “Commie Corridor,” democratic socialists have built the most advanced electoral beachhead in the country. Claire Valdez’s run for Congress tests whether that power can scale nationwide.

In the 2025 German election, socialist party Die Linke rallied round and defied predictions of its demise. Its membership has doubled, yet the buildup to this weekend’s party congress shows that many older cadres are stuck to the German left’s worst habits.

Ranking universities remains a misleading, fatuous exercise as useful as comparing the tasteful qualities of, say, dependable Russian piroshki with those of an aromatic beef rendang. Chalk and cheese; apples and oranges. But this nasty contrivance has become an annual … The post Nasty Fictions: The Global University Ranking System appeared first on Global Research.

“Every war is going to astonish you…”  … Dwight Eisenhower The Iran War fell considerably short of its advocates’ aspirations. There is no “unconditional surrender,” the regime is not overthrown, or arguably even much weakened, and the future of its nuclear and missile programs remains unclear, along with its support for regional proxies.  It can be hoped that, perhaps, the nuclear program has been impaired, that the regime is maybe slightly wobbled, that in God’s own time fissures in its ranks will emerge, that dissidents will someday be emboldened, that Iran eventually will enter a new day, freed from its theocratic shackles, no longer threatening its neighbors. That day is not here yet. Was the Iran War worth the costs? Thirteen American service personnel died, amid the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars in munitions. Likely thousands of Iranians died. Many were regime officials but many more were civilians, including 250 children at a school mistakenly hit.  All wars kill innocents, including children. War is always horrible and always to be avoided unless the alternatives are even more horrific. There will always be wars and rumors of war. But decent and sensible people will always seek alternatives whenever security and justice allow. War should never be treated cavalierly, jokingly or as a game. It is literally life and death. We must always remember: God is watching and judging. Theocratic tyrants have ruled Iran for 47 years, killing and torturing thousands of their own people, while fomenting war and terror beyond their borders. The tyrants seized power amid widespread, frenzied support. They almost certainly lack majority support now. They retain power thanks to fear and a bedrock of minority support.    America should never be reconciled to Iran’s theocracy and should rhetorically at least always support its replacement by a more humane successor. There is likely little America can do directly to precipitate that result. Urging Iranians to revolt was cruel, like implied urgings to East Europeans under the Soviet Bloc in the 1950s.  When or how the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard eventually collapse cannot be known and likely will surprise everybody when it happens, like the Fall of the Berlin Wall, or the sudden implosion of Syria’s Assad regime. Providence moves on its own schedule.  Wise statecraft waits on Providence and does not try to jumpstart it or bypass it, as the Iran War attempted. Tyrannies are best outwaited, not frontally assaulted. Time is on the side of stable democracies, if we are patient and watchful. There were hotheads in the 1940s and 1950s who urged preemptive war against the Soviet Union.  America’s postwar leadership was more sensible, instead crafting containment, which took 40 years but was one of humanity’s great successes.  The democracies grew and prospered while the Soviet Bloc stagnated and decayed, eventually collapsing. World war, which had killed tens of millions in its previous two iterations, was averted, through perseverance and calm calculation. Christian Realism counsels patience, perseverance and calculation. It warns against impulsiveness, overconfidence, rashness and hubris. Even when opposing wicked adversaries, our own designs are plagued by human limitations and sin, the chief of which is pride. We are never as strong as we imagine.  Our best designs will never go as planned. Our adversaries will always surprise us and evince hidden strengths. And even our greatest victories are only preambles to future conflicts.  There are basic lessons for democracies considering war. There should be strong public support, agreement between the executive and legislature, clear and realistic goals, strong alliances with other nations, and carefully considered plans with exit strategies. Our wars should be explicitly explained to the public and the world both morally and strategically. We will not persuade everyone. But neither can we afford to be cavalierly indifferent to opposition. America has great power to destroy, flatten and kill, whether in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran, but such destruction does not automatically bring victory or even more limited goals absent strategic and diplomatic savvy.  We celebrate our 250th birthday this year, having defeated a militarily much more powerful colonial power not so much by battlefield victories but by endurance, patience, and carefully sought allies. Colonial Britain could win battles with its armies and fleets, but it could not conquer a wilderness stretched across half a continent. Colonial Britain was presumptuous, avoiding accommodation with its colonies, shunning allies, relying on faw force.  Meanwhile, America gained allies from a continent resentful of British power. America, like all nations, especially democracies, needs allies and needs a certain level of goodwill towards it in the world. Caprice, hubris, braggadocio, and contempt do not serve national interests, nor do they align our republic with the divine interests. As described by Richard Neuhaus and the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s founders in 1981, America remains the “primary bearer of the democratic ideal” today. That vocation includes responsibilities to the world and to posterity. America’s defeats are defeats for democracy and for the aspiration around the world for self-government. Those in Iran, especially, who dreamt of democracy must be today extremely despondent.   Will America’s folly with Iran be our “Suez” moment, which was a tipping point against British influence in 1956? Or is it a Saigon 1975 moment, representing a major but temporary setback in a wider struggle?  Hopefully and likely the latter, if America recovers a sense of who it is. We are not a transactional great power only seeking power and material gain. We are a great republic that wants a world where democracy, freedom and human dignity can prosper. Our republic and its global influence must be stewarded responsibly, not misspent capriciously. Even as America, we hope briefly, falters to the benefit of Iranian despots, we can rejoice at the survival and triumphs of free people in Ukraine, who continue to outperform their Iranian aligned invaders and ignite the Moscow sky with their drones.    Neutralizing Iran’s dictatorship was in theory a noble cause, but the means and strategy were poorly considered, to the point of sinful recklessness. As Reinhold Neibuhr wrote, “All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.” Hopefully our nation learns from this imprudence, and, with calm reflection, outwits and ultimately defeats Iran’s tyrants, whose evasion of justice cannot endure forever.   

Executive Summary: On May 13, Special Assistant to the Pakistani Prime Minister Talha Burki expressed Pakistan’s interest in becoming part of the Russia-backed International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) by linking it with Pakistan’s Gwadar port. The Gwadar port is run by a People’s Republic of China (PRC)-owned company, the China Overseas Ports Holding Company (COPHC). The post Moscow and Islamabad Discuss Linking Gwadar Port With INSTC appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The Cossacks continue to maintain a consistent, resurgent presence both domestically in Russia and internationally. On June 16, the 7th International Cossack Bivouac was held in Hanover, Germany, bringing together Cossacks from all over Germany and a delegation from the Spanish Association of Volga Cossacks. Sergei Bodryakov, the ataman of the All-Great Don The post Cossacks Continue International and Domestic Resurgence appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The Kremlin is expanding its efforts to force the North Caucasians to change their ways of thinking and to adopt a common civic identity (RBC, June 9; OC-Media, June 11). Moscow is alarmed by new data showing that the non-Russian nations of the North Caucasus lag far behind others in the Russian Federation The post Moscow Pushing North Caucasians to Adopt a Common Civic Russian Identity appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: On June 1, the China Coast Guard (CCG) announced that it had launched “law enforcement patrols” in waters east of Taiwan (WeChat/CCG, June 1). CCG vessels entered Taiwan’s restricted waters around Dongsha Island a few days later on June 5. On the following day, the Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced The post Quasi-Quarantine Operations Held East of Taiwan appeared first on Jamestown.

On Sunday, Colombia will decide between the left-wing Pacto Histórico and the Donald Trump–backed far-right candidate. The country is only the latest target of the “Donroe Doctrine,” the conviction that Latin America belongs to Washington to run or ruin.

Executive Summary: In the past two years, analysts writing in the PLA Daily have begun to discuss what they call “battlefield execution” (战场执行). After the topic was introduced in February 2025, PLA Daily published a second Military Forum (军事论坛) article on the topic on June 4 of this year (PLA Daily, February 6, 2025, June 4). [1] Official The post Emphasis on Battlefield Execution Supports 2027 Goal appeared first on Jamestown.

Nearly 5,000 workers packed Labor Notes’ biennial conference outside Chicago last week. The mood was sober, the challenges immense, and the appetite for organizing as large as ever.

Young socialist organizers are entering electoral politics out of obligation, not ambition. Darializa Avila Chevalier, running for Congress in New York’s 13th District, explains why.

For most of the 20th century, class predicted voting behavior better than anything else. The recent process of class dealignment has proved disastrous for left politics — and to reverse it, we must have clarity on who counts as working-class.

The discredited “clash of civilizations” theory keeps bouncing back because it dresses up sordid resource wars in mock-heroic clothing. After another disastrous war informed by such fantasies, it’s time we changed the script.

Roger Kimball has assembled ten essays from The New Criterion where he serves as editor, centered upon Western civilization’s great dilemma: Where Next? The volume’s introduction notes that it serves as a memorial against the cultural amnesia that precedes civilizational decay. Inevitably, such a question requires a look at where the West has been. Here, however, the book is lacking. While several authors do make appeals to the past, with Andrew Roberts’s contribution rewriting American history as a John Bunyan-like dream, these appeals are limited. As Michael Anton notes in his essay, the term “crossroads” implies a map, and while the book is centered upon the present debates, few of the writers appeal to the riches of Western history beyond the standard example of the fall of Rome. Since Kimball offers this volume as a rebuttal to the onset of widespread cultural amnesia, the arguments found in the book would be strengthened by appeals to previous crossroads throughout the Western tradition. There are numerous events that shaped the West, such as the responses to 7th and 8th centuries Islamic conquests, the Great Schism between the churches of the East and West, the fall of Constantinople, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Revolution and Romanticism, and the World Wars of the 20th century; yet these are hardly referenced.  Kimball mentions in his essay Arnold Toynbee’s argument of the “barbarization of the dominant minority.” Allen Guelzo and James Hankins state in their essay “Civilization & Tradition” a similar observation that barbarism is a threat to civilization, and this threat often comes from within. While there is soundness in such statements, Kimball fairly notes that one of the West’s distinctive features is its dynamism. The Western tradition has at times rejected ideas that later became integral to the Western tradition. The Enlightenment sought Greek and Roman antiquity while despising the preceding age of Medieval Christendom. Or consider the ever-cursed Karl Marx and his clear anti-Western writings that found their initial influence in the writings of the established Western philosopher Georg F.W. Hegel.  Kimball’s shorthand definition of the “West” as “Christendom,” while concise, is limited. He sharpens this definition as a dispensation in which individuals possess an “intrinsic moral worth.” Indeed, this flows throughout Western thought from the Greeks and Christianity, but the West has not always  intrinsic moral worth at times. Even at its height and most united, Christendom has been plagued by division, the term “Christianity” seems to be a better definition but still falls short for defining the West. The power of dynamism in the West can be seen especially throughout the church, as contemporary Christianity, particularly Protestantism, is fractured with many mainline denominations and/or state churches across the US and Europe liberalized by the influence of Western intellectual and philosophical movements. Dynamism offers insight into the Western tradition’s ability to converse within itself and perhaps its greatest feature. Even when its practice falls short of its ideals, it is undergirded with the ability to react and self-correct. Guelzo and Hankins offer a more complex view by comparing the Western tradition to a great tree with a vast system of roots, stemming from Greek language, literature, history, philosophy, government/law, art, and architecture. Therefore, following their essay, Western civilization and tradition is comprised of an inheritance from the Greeks, Romans, Latin and Medieval Christendom, and Renaissance Europe up to the present day. They reason that to deny such a heritage or to replace Western civilization will accomplish what the “barbarian hordes of ancient and medieval times were unable to accomplish.” Again, this definition must face the history of the Western tradition as each successive age has denied and/or replaced certain aspects of what came before. Early Christianity did not throw away all the Greek and Roman traditions, but they did cleanse a larger portion of those cultures as antithetical to the church. Though the Medieval world did not replace Plato, it did forget many of his works which were not translated into Latin, until the late High Middle Ages saw the fall of Constantinople and refugees from that civilization bringing Greek literature, art, scholarship and the like back into the West.   Greece itself is an interesting note in these discussions of the Western tradition as it is considered the foundation and origins for the West, but also holds much in common with the East, particularly through the continuation of the Byzantine Empire after the fall of the Roman Empire. The boundaries of Western civilization are complicated, which Guelzo and Hankins give notice to through the spread of Western influence to nations not traditionally considered part of the West like Australia and New Zealand, but also Japan and India.  The Western tradition is a good that must be preserved and handed down. However, this phrase is so capacious as to border on meaningless. The West must remember its past in order to embrace the values which gave rise to the most humane society the world has ever known. Since the book’s publication in 2022, the West has witnessed the reelection of Donald Trump, the aggressive AI boom, the continuation of the Russo-Ukrainian war with no end in sight, the October 7th attack by Hamas against Israel, the assassination of Iran’s Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, and continued US-Israeli conflict with Iran. Given this state of affairs, “Where next?” remains an apt question.

Executive Summary: From May 12–13, Astana hosted the 21st International Capacity-Building Seminar on Trade and Transport Facilitation. The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the Transport Corridor Europe–Caucasus–Asia (TRACECA) Permanent Secretariat, and the Government of Kazakhstan jointly organized the seminar (UNECE, accessed May 25). The seminar focused on developing practical approaches to multimodal digital transport The post Regional States Consolidate the Resilience of the Middle Corridor (Part 2) appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections resulted in another victory for the ruling Civil Contract Party (49.81 percent) led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. This result may signify the continuation and consolidation of a Western foreign policy trajectory that has been underway since the Velvet Revolution in May 2018 (Armen Press, June 8). The The post Armenian Election Results Hold Contradictory Implications for Iran appeared first on Jamestown.

Prediction-market company Kalshi staged a fake viral video during the Knicks’ championship run in order to associate its brand with Zohran Mamdani’s democratic socialism. As the Left’s cultural reach grows, expect more attempts by capital to commodify it.

The Trump administration distressed one of Canada’s oldest mining firms, which operates a joint venture in Cuba, through blatant lawfare, apparently so a Trump-aligned oligarch could snatch up a majority stake for pennies on the dollar.

The commentariat has reached, almost in unison, for one word to explain Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella’s meteoric rise: populism. The label isn’t just inaccurate — it translates his elitist politics into antiestablishment complaint.

Was Donald Trump’s decades-long persona as a venal carnival grotesque all part of a brilliant scheme to launch an insane war and create the geopolitical conditions for a global energy transition?

Executive Summary: The Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, the governing body of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), held a meeting in Astana on May 26–28 (24.kz, May 28). [1] The topics of discussion included how to leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate trade movement and digitize the trade bloc’s economies. The latest changes unveiled by the trade The post Moscow Concerned About Armenia’s Wavering EAEU Membership appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Shares of Gazprom fell sharply on the Moscow stock exchange on May 20 at the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-day state visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This trip was his fifth since the beginning of the war and the 25th during his presidency. Putin again failed to make The post Putin’s PRC Visit Failed to Advance Power of Siberia 2 appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The water shortage in the five Central Asian countries continues to worsen. It has now reached the point where the “water surplus” upstream countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan no longer have sufficient water to send more downstream to the three other “water short” countries of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (Window on Eurasia, March The post Growing Water Shortages in Central Asia Threaten Region and its Neighbors appeared first on Jamestown.

As America’s 250th anniversary of independence approaches, the questions of what makes America exceptional, what makes being American so special, and how we should be celebrating American greatness anyway are circling around the polarized corners of the turbid public square like Noah’s dove which can find no place to rest. Luma Simms offers us a tantalizing olive branch, a sign of hope upon which we can focus our attention and endeavors: creed and covenant.  Simms’ two-part essay (Part I, Part II) outlining both the content of the creed and the nature of the covenant that forms the foundation of America’s national identity is bracing in its clarity: “Our creed is that there is a Creator who made man with equal dignity, rights, and obligations, and that America is a country that started when our forefathers (physical or spiritual) made a covenant with that Creator and with each other to combine into a civil body politic and structure a country according to that creed. We must internalize it, act upon it, pass it down to the next generation.”  Such, indeed, was the task facing Noah and his sons as they contemplated first that olive branch, then God’s bow in the heavens. But this is a daunting task, this internalizing, acting upon, and passing down of a creed and covenant. It involves the whole person: mind, body, heart, and soul. Thus, it does indeed require, as Simms articulates, “education, creativity, time, and civic courage.” Where does one start? How do we use our time and creativity to educate and catechize a society? In all the discussion and debate surrounding civic education and the American idea, I believe, there is an unspoken component necessary to the carrying forward of the project, one that is present though hidden just beneath the surface of Simms’ references to the Mayflower Compact, the Gettysburg Address, and the experience of immigrating to America. It’s present even in the rhetoric of Aristotle’s “polis,” Hamilton’s “proving ground,”  and the more general terms “states,” and “country.” And yes, it’s what lies between the dove’s olive branch and Noah’s witnessing God’s bow in the sky at the renewal of God’s covenant with man. It is land. A place. A locality upon which the polis is built, and its creed and covenant are enacted. Otherwise creed and covenant are, as Simm rightly quotes Justice Thomas, “just words.” I offer here not a critique of Simms’s excellent essay, but an extension of it by supplying both a missing component to the “creed and covenant” framework—call it “country” to preserve the alliteration—and a first effort to answer that question of education and creativity: How do we pass on creed, covenant, and country? Additionally,  how do we inculcate a love of the same? I’ll briefly note that I’ve already offered initial thoughts on how this could be approached from a Lewisian perspective, but we can go further and sum up the answer to the question with a phrase: American mythos. “Mythos” has become a word unfortunately captured by Anthropic and the architects of Western civilization’s new Tower of Babel, so let me attempt to recapture it in defense of what the term has historically referred to: a people’s stories, beliefs, values, and moral principles. Critically, the idea of mythos, as opposed to mere myth, is that it seeks to capture the very thing meant to be passed on in order to preserve a people. It’s not merely one story, but a network of stories tying a people together through time, space, and place. In the Western tradition, the philosophical virtues of the good, the true, and the beautiful provide the core pillars upon which such a national mythos is built. What, then, is the American mythos? Those parts of America that express the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Where do we find them? The Good: covenant, made between people and sustained by the virtues they embody. The True: creed, the moral truths upon which the covenant is based that give shape to our values. The Beautiful: country, the localities and expressions of those localities in sounds and images. The degree to which a person, place, or idea is an expression of the good, the true and the beautiful in America can rightly be termed as part of the American mythos. But what of America’s sins? What of our tragedies? Do they have no place in the American mythos? Of course they do. All great stories must have their tragic elements. It’s how we understand them that makes the difference.  Slavery, often referred to as America’s ‘original sin,’ is a case in point. A great evil, to be sure, but one whose eventual abolition refined and deepened our understanding and commitment to the creed and covenant of America, and ensured that creed and covenant covered the whole of the country. Additionally, the poetry, literature and music of slavery embodied the cry for freedom so central to the American creed as to make it impossible to ignore from Phillis Wheatley to Martin Luther King Jr. Slavery embodied a lie about humanity that was antithetical to the American creed, and its mere presence in a country endeavoring to enact a covenant based on that creed forced a reckoning that in many ways renewed the republic in the Machiavellian sense Simms suggests. Indeed, Harry Jaffa makes just such an argument in his Crisis of the House Divided about Lincoln’s rehabilitation of the Declaration of Independence as the American creed and the moral force behind the Union cause.  Another important case of tragedy as part of the American mythos: America’s deeply checkered interactions with the Indian tribes of the continent. Critically, the numerous Indian Wars and legal battles with various tribes throughout American history occurred specifically at the intersection of creed, covenant, and country. What one cannot escape in reading this part of American history is the acknowledged respect many, if not most, Americans had for the Indians’ relationship with the land and the skill that relationship created in terms of agriculture, woodcraft, practical natural science, and land navigation. Even the fiercest leaders of Indian resistance to American expansion (often illegal) into Indian territory hold a hallowed place among America’s heroes for their commitment to their creeds, covenants, and countries, especially in the face of broken covenants with Americans. There’s an honor and nobility there that bears witness against injustice. That, too, is rightly part of the American mythos and is why figures like Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo loom large in the American story and imagination. Of course, debate naturally arises over just what makes up the American mythos. What blend of people, places, and ideas are we to memorialize and celebrate this summer? That is where the idea of an American canon emerges. What is the American canon? Were it just creed and covenant, I think we would be mainly focused on people and ideas, but because I’ve added country to the mix, I think we necessarily have to add places and objects to the canon as well.  People, places, ideas. What people make up the American “Hall of Heroes” who embody our creed, live out our covenant, and defend our country? What places illustrate the beauty and vitality of our country? What writings, images and sounds, even foods, best encapsulate the creed, covenant, and country that make “America the Beautiful”? When it comes to educating and catechizing citizens in creed, covenant and country, the method is mythos, and the vehicle is a canon. I can think of few better ways to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary than to rediscover the American mythos of creed, covenant and country; and explore, perhaps even define for the first time, the canon that preserves it. 

In May 2026, the geopolitical landscape shifted again as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Beijing—the first state visit by an American president to China since 2017. Amid the pageantry and friction of great-power competition, Beijing’s official readout delivered what may prove the summit’s most consequential formulation. The two leaders, it announced, had assented to building “a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability” (中美建设性战略稳定关系), a “new positioning” intended to guide the relationship “for the next three years and beyond.” Washington used the same words, but folded them into a list of commercial deliverables and glossed them as “fairness and reciprocity”; Beijing elevated them to a doctrine. Both sides claimed stability, yet clearly drew different conclusions from what that entails. To many observers, particularly those wary of intensifying rivalry between the world’s two greatest powers, the formula sounds pragmatic and reassuring. Xi subsequently unpacked this framework into four dimensions—positive stability through cooperation, healthy stability through measured competition, constant stability through manageable differences, and lasting stability through attainable peace.  Yet from a Christian realist perspective, such formulations warrant careful scrutiny. Not because dialogue is undesirable, but because history repeatedly demonstrates that diplomatic language can shape expectations, redistribute political leverage, and influence how competition itself is understood. The significance of the Beijing summit therefore lies not only in what was discussed, but in how the discussion around U.S.-China relations was framed. For nearly four decades, U.S.-China policy rested on an optimistic assumption: that economic integration would gradually encourage political convergence and draw China deeper into the existing international order. Robert Zoellick’s 2005 call for China to become a “responsible stakeholder” captured this expectation. Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work remains foundational to Christian realism, cautioned that economic prosperity and interdependence should not be assumed to resolve the underlying tensions that arise from questions of power, security, and national interest. With the benefit of hindsight, several assumptions underlying that consensus proved more fragile than many policymakers anticipated. Rather than moving steadily toward political convergence with the West, Beijing has used the benefits of integration to strengthen its state capacity, accelerate technological development, and modernize its military. As China’s capabilities have expanded, Washington has, in turn, increasingly reassessed the premises guiding U.S.-China engagement. The disruptive turn in American policy under Trump reflected this reassessment, accelerating a broader rethinking of U.S. foreign policy assumptions in the post–Cold War era around how existing approaches fit with changing geopolitical realities. Yet disruption alone is not strategy. Indeed, disruption alone risks ceding the subtler terrain of framing to a rival practiced in exactly that art. One enduring feature of Chinese diplomacy has been its emphasis on shaping the conceptual language through which bilateral relationships are understood. The contest over terminology is often overlooked, but it can carry important strategic implications. The pattern is familiar. In 1997, then-paramount leader of China Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton pledged to work toward a “constructive strategic partnership.” At the Sunnylands summit in 2013, Xi Jinping promoted the concept of a “new type of great power relations” (新型大国关系), built on “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” Beijing subsequently suggested that Washington had accepted the framework. American officials, however, were more cautious. Embedded within the language of “mutual respect” was the possibility of differing interpretations regarding China’s “core interests,” including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Although some American officials initially showed interest in exploring the concept, the Obama administration ultimately avoided formally adopting the terminology. The episode demonstrated a recurring reality of diplomacy: concepts that appear benign can carry strategic implications that become apparent only over time. Once accepted, diplomatic language can shape expectations and narrow future policy options. For instance, Xi in 2013 stated to Obama that “the Pacific Ocean is big enough for both nations,” a veiled demand for U.S. concessions in the Western Pacific. The 2026 formulation reflects a similar dynamic. By emphasizing “constructive” relations and “strategic stability,” Beijing offers a framework that appeals naturally to policymakers seeking predictability in a period of heightened competition. Such language may help reduce tensions and facilitate communication. At the same time, it may also create political space for advancing broader strategic objectives. The key question is therefore not whether stability is desirable, but whose definition of stability ultimately prevails. A stable relationship between competitors is not necessarily synonymous with lasting equilibrium. Stability can preserve peace, but it can also freeze unresolved disputes, defer difficult choices, or mask shifts in the underlying balance of power. Policymakers must therefore distinguish between stability as an objective and stability as a political narrative. America’s enduring strength has historically rested not only on its economic and military capabilities, but also on its network of allies and partners. Coordination among democracies has long shaped the strategic environment within which both Washington and Beijing must operate. Effective statecraft therefore requires more than episodic pressure or transactional bargaining. It requires sustained investment in alliances, institutions, deterrence, and strategic credibility. The rivalry between the United States and China is expressed through disputes over technology, supply chains, and the balance of military power. Yet these issues are also connected to deeper disagreements regarding political order, governance, and strategic legitimacy. Such disagreements need not make conflict inevitable. They do, however, make competition more enduring than many earlier advocates of engagement anticipated. Christian realism offers a useful lens for understanding this reality. It begins from the premise that human beings and political communities are neither wholly virtuous nor wholly malicious. Nations pursue interests, seek security, and interpret their own actions as less purely self-interested than those of their rivals. Prudence therefore requires neither naïve optimism nor fatalistic pessimism, but a sober assessment of power, incentives, and unintended consequences. Viewed through that lens, the most important lesson of the Beijing summit may be neither cooperation nor confrontation. It is the continuing struggle to define the terms through which competition itself is understood. History rarely unfolds according to the designs of any single government. The challenge for policymakers is therefore not simply to manage power responsibly, but also to remain attentive to the language, assumptions, and conceptual frameworks through which power is exercised.

In the West many long-stable electoral patterns are disappearing. Centrist political parties have eroded in Germany, France, the UK, and elsewhere, and are being supplanted by polarized right- and left-wing groups. The UK now has at least five parties that have some real claim to voters’ allegiances. In the U.S. this is masked partially because of the deep-rooted first-past-the-post electoral system which almost guarantees that Democrats or Republicans will win. But the polarization manifest in Europe is present in America not only in electoral results but within the political parties themselves. Of course, there have always been coalitions drawing on disparate interests and ideologies in pursuit of pooled electoral success, but they are now very deeply divided internally, while radical figures such as Tucker Carlson and his ilk fluidly transcend left-right divides. The reasons for this are myriad, but one consistent theme is a fervent stress on identity. Everything may be challenged in a struggle to define who we are, personally and collectively. Similar stresses roil the international system. China, India, Russia, and much of the Muslim world, especially Iran, now strive to define themselves in terms of their civilizational inheritance, often, as in any deep historical excavation, drawing on powerful religious currents. There are similar contested attempts to delineate the key features that have shaped and now define the contemporary “West.” One feature frequently emphasized is that the West, while sometimes quite religious, has sought to demarcate specific realms of religious and political authority and thus is “secular,” a word that embraces a wide range of disparate and often contradictory ideas. In this context Kevin Flatt’s wide-ranging Secularization, Social Order, and World History is especially welcome and important. It is occasionally marred by dense theoretical prose since the author seeks to combine sociology, history, religious studies, and philosophy, but perhaps this provides necessary nuance for a very wide and complex subject. Rather than treating secularization simply as “less religion,” Flatt portrays it as a complex process that reshapes how communities understand, organize, and govern themselves, and make sense of changing social norms. He seeks to show how secularization has influenced both everyday life and large-scale institutions across different cultures and historical periods. To this end, he analyses traditions in China, India, the Islamic world, and beyond, though not Latin America, to illustrate different understandings of “sacred-social order.” He maintains that “the decline of religion” is not some natural and inevitable quasi-Hegelian process but a revolutionary break that has in turn provoked worldwide movements attempting to defend and restore inherited sacred-social orders.  There are several paths of secularization. In much of the West, it arose with modern states and bureaucracies, but in other regions it has been heavily influenced by colonialism, international trade, and local tradition.  The interactions between religion, politics, economics, and social order depend heavily on historical and cultural context. As one example, Flatt outlines how colonial history and local political structures created very different experiences of secularization in West African states. Drawing on Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, he argues that when religious authority declines, societies necessarily need new ways to maintain social cohesion. This can involve inter alia strengthening legal systems, shaping public education, and developing bureaucratic institutions. However, often these do not make society more stable since secularization creates tensions if the new institutions are not widely accepted. In turn, courts, educational institutions, and bureaucratic systems helped facilitate global trade, which also undercut traditional beliefs and ways of life. His criticism of the parallel development of capitalism and market economies as destabilizing traditional societies and their mores is an important analysis. But we should note that this shaking and uprooting of tradition is combined with a concomitant reduction of hunger and poverty, increased life expectancy, and raising the status of women. We find the same tensions within the west, including in the U.S. Economic and technological growth and change has undercut local communities, leading to poverty and alienation, while reductive individualism undercuts friendship and the relation between the sexes. This alienation fueled the accession of Donald Trump. Hence, Flatt not only challenges reductionist accounts of secularization that equate religious decline with inevitable progress, he also reviews analyses that emphasize the persistence of religion in modern societies. In outlining these perspectives, he, like Jose Casanova and Peter Berger, provides a nuanced account that neither idealizes secularization nor dismisses its significance. Apart from his global survey, in Chapter 7 he also describes the “Rise of the Secular Order” in the West. In this valuable overview he again shows that this was not inevitable progress but has been shaped by deliberate efforts and campaigns. He offers caution about the limits of his survey, noting that Charles Taylor said of his own 874-page A Secular Age “one could write several books this length and  still not do justice” to the topic (176), nevertheless Flatt gives a brief illuminating outline. He treats the West as something of an anomaly, with its own secularisms it has often sought to export. He portrays this as a provincial, modern innovation that has developed only over the last 300 years. The historical global norm has been aligning society with a transcendent reality: it is Western secularism that is the exception. The modern Western secular order is not a value-free, neutral absence of religion. It is a distinct political project with a specific social grammar. At his most critical, he warns: “Secular orders can harbor a deep impulse to attack and dismantle all sacred-social orders, because of their self-conception as natural, neutral, rational, and liberating, in contrast to the qualities they attribute to sacred-social orders.” (239)  However, he adds the qualification that “the secular order’s emphasis on human dignity and autonomy can also allow broad scope for the existence and expression of alternative social orders (including sacred-social orders) in microcosm in a given society.” But perhaps we may then question whether living in microcosm is sufficient for many sacred orders. Flatt’s description of the renewed international assertion of civilizational inheritance powers indicates that their history is a key factor in shaping their interventions in the modern world.  Much current US foreign policy engagement is with such historic civilization powers.  America is at war with Iran, engaged in proxy conflict with Russia, strategic rivalry with China, attempting to deepen ties with India, and enmeshed in many conflicts in the Islamic world. Perhaps it is time to reconsider Samuel Huntington’s often rejected thesis that conflicts in the modern world will increasingly be shaped by a “clash of civilizations.” Religion and secularity are crucial in understanding the modern world. If we do not take them seriously, our foreign policy will continue to flounder.

In a strange coincidence, within days of Chicago native Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, the University of Chicago’s Office of the President made the following announcement:  “As a next step in the University of Chicago’s overall approach to artificial intelligence (AI), the University is partnering with Anthropic to provide Claude Enterprise for all academics and staff starting in July, and for all students before the fall term. Claude Chat, Cowork, and Code will be made available to the campus community. Spanning the domains of research, education, and operations: these are powerful tools that are being made available to help individuals find ways to improve our pursuit of knowledge, our commitment to teaching students how to think independently, and the ability of our staff to support this work efficiently.” But then, maybe it is not a coincidence that, just as a Christian leader encourages people to remember they are human, a secular institution of higher learning shows its lack of regard for human learning by offering students tools that will rob them of the kind of education for which the University of Chicago was once famous. Indeed, as a graduate student at Princeton University, I spent one quarter as a visiting student at the University of Chicago, taking two seminars in areas in which my home institution did not at the time have expertise: Greek Papyrology and Greek Epigraphy. Predictably, the classes required me to spend the term reading large amounts of Greek papyri and Greek inscriptions. I walked away with a solid foundation in both subjects, on which I still occasionally draw, even as I did not become a bona fide expert in either.  Really, reading physical books constituted my entire educational journey, first as a double major in Classics and French Literature as an undergraduate and then in completing a PhD in Classics. When I was not reading, I was writing—including a 60-page honors thesis in French and eventually, of course, a dissertation in Classics. What I did in my classes along the way was remarkably cheap—requiring just books and a computer for typing papers. And I had no doubt about my professors’ commitment to “teaching students how to think independently.” They showed this unwavering commitment by assigning students increasingly difficult readings to analyze and use as foundations for research questions of our own.  In hindsight, the story of American higher education over the last two decades has been defined by ever newer and more expensive and technologically dependent pedagogies. And yet, for how much more expensive and tech-dependent these new forms of education are, they are so much worse than good old-fashioned books. Instead of showing students how to interrogate texts and participate in seminars, universities increasingly are moving all or most instruction online, especially for undergraduate core classes. Students only read short snippets of documents embedded into their institutions’ learning management systems—that is, when they actually read these short documents instead of having AI summarize them. Catching up with the times, such standardized tests as the SAT have reduced the length of reading excerpts for reading comprehension questions. And AI cheating at universities is rampant. In other words, American institutions of higher learning have invested significantly more money into technology than it ever cost to just tell the kids to read books. And in the process, student learning outcomes have only declined. Anecdotally speaking, if you talk to any faculty who have been teaching for a decade or longer, they will tell you that every single year of their careers, they have seen students arrive at college less prepared than the year before. An academic friend recently asked his freshman students a question as an icebreaker on the first day of class: what is your favorite book of those you have read recently? None of the students were able to answer the question, but then one student sheepishly thought back to elementary school and named a children’s book he had enjoyed then. It was, it appears, the last time he had read a complete book.  Even at highly selective institutions like the University of Chicago, this is the caliber of students professors can expect to be educating going forward. But given that overt reliance on technology in every facet of life is what led these students to be nigh-illiterate, can yet more technology possibly be the solution? Instead of chasing after the latest future-oriented fad in higher education, Christians especially should take a different approach: going medieval.  Institutions that choose to emphasize Great Books education, as was expected at a place like University of Chicago long before the advance of AI, will set themselves apart more than ever. Indeed, two and a half years ago, I argued, looking at enrollment numbers for universities where the humanities thrive, that “taking the high road” will bear rewards in tangible ways. This continues to be true. Chasing the latest gimmicks is no strategy for preserving a university—but pursuing the tried-and-true educational wisdom of millennia still works.  Indeed, I am encouraged by the emerging possibilities for small Christian colleges. When I walked away from academia three years ago, I was burned out on the online teaching that was dominating the work at the regional comprehensive state university where I had spent most of my career up to that point. I had not seen students in person in years. When I left the classroom for spring break in March 2020, little did I realize that my then-university would never be the same—and that I would never teach a traditional class there on campus again. But this fall, I am excited to be back in the classroom—this time at Ashland University, whose Ashbrook Program offers students the very sort of education that I once received and that too many universities are no longer offering. I will be teaching Latin—required for many Ashbrook Scholars—and an introductory seminar on Greek history. And I will be requiring my students to use only a slightly adapted version of the same technology that Plato and Aristotle once used in their teaching: words to read, words to discuss, words to write. The significance of this learning, Greek history reminds us, is civilizational. The Athenians emphasized the importance of developing the moral and intellectual character of their citizens through such programs as performances of tragedies and comedies. And the American Founding Fathers firmly believed the same applied to this country. Indeed, the need for educated citizens was the motivation Thomas Jefferson voiced in founding my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Virginia.  Too many institutions of higher learning have abandoned their mission to form intellectually responsible citizens, offering AI slop in lieu of education. But alternatives to AI University are available, and they are what America needs to flourish in the next 250 years. I am grateful for institutions that continue to do their part in this quest.

In the wake of Kuomintang (KMT) chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s current visit to the United States, speculation is growing over how her “peace” diplomacy might shape Taiwan’s fate. On Xi Jinping’s side stands a carefully drafted narrative of a “shared Chinese civilization,” presented as an unstoppable force driving toward unification. Xi has declared that “people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family” and that cross‑strait affairs are “family matters” to be handled within the family; he has also insisted that resolving the Taiwan question and achieving national reunification is China’s internal affair, “not subject to interference by any foreign force.” On Taiwan’s side of the strait, the drama has taken an unexpected turn. Taiwan’s future now appears tied not only to Cheng’s conspicuous warmth toward Xi’s agenda, but also the events of Lunar New Year’s Eve, when a shaking red rope at Dharma Drum Mountain was read by many Taiwanese as a dire warning from the gods not to place Taiwan’s future in Beijing’s hands.  At a crucial moment when Taiwan’s democracy faces persistent pressure, many Taiwanese do not see themselves as entirely alone. They still trust in their gods and that the divine will act when necessary. In Taiwan, religion still disciplines political power. Yet, across the strait, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spent years trying to eliminate one of the only lasting forces that any regime cannot fully control—religion—and to claim that role for itself.  A rope, a temple, and a very public tremor On Lunar New Year’s Eve, Cheng Li-wun took part in what should have been a routine ritual at Dharma Drum Mountain, one of Taiwan’s most revered Buddhist monasteries, pulling a red rope to ring the great bell to usher in the New Year. Then the rope in her hands began to shake—visibly, repeatedly, and seemingly on its own. On live television and online, millions watched as she stiffened, looking disturbed and unsteady, while officials beside her reached out as if to keep her from falling. Within hours, the “red rope incident” jumped from an odd New Year clip to a symbol of Taiwan’s contentious debate about religion, politics, and the island’s future. Observers quickly spoke of a “divine moment,” proclaiming that ghosts or gods had visited Cheng.   Heavenly blessing or ghostly warning? Liu Bojun, a former spirit medium turned social media influencer, described it as a spiritual encounter. She wrote that “dirty spirits” do exist and can affect Taiwan—while impossible to eliminate, they can be restrained. Thousands echoed “men act, Heaven watches” (人在做，天在看), an ancient proverb that whatever one does, good or bad, the gods are watching, good deeds will be rewarded, and evil deeds will be punished. Many insisted that Cheng had done such harm by cozying up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that even the gods had to intervene. Cheng did not deny the spiritual oddity. Instead, she embraced it, calling the experience enlightening and affirming: she felt a strong “response” from the divine, a surge of “positive energy,” as if Heaven were acknowledging her vows and, by implication, her party’s efforts. KMT Legislative Yuan President Han Kuoyu went further, telling temple crowds that the incident shows “men act, Heaven watches, and three feet above your head there are gods,” and that “the deities are urging everyone to do good deeds.”  Conversely, Cheng’s opponents from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) quickly flipped the script: for them, the rope was not a blessing but a warning. Commentators joked that “even the gods” could no longer tolerate what Cheng and the KMT had been doing, compromising with the CCP and harming Taiwan’s future. The contemporary Kuomintang, despite the legacy of Chiang Kai-shek’s opposition to the CCP, is today more reunification-oriented than the DPP, the other major Taiwanese political party. Whether Cheng’s religious statements were sincere professions of belief or mere political performances is beside the point. What matters is that both her supporters and detractors turned to religion to make sense of an unusual political event, underscoring religion’s significance in shaping public perception in Taiwan.  Religion as a powerful political force Taiwan is a deeply religious society. Roughly three-quarters of the population practices some combination of Buddhism, Taoism, or Chinese folk religion; another 5–7 percent are Christian; and even among those who claim no affiliation, belief in fate, ghosts, the afterlife, and unseen forces is common. In a land about the size of Maryland, there are about 18,000 registered religious organizations, including around 12,000 Buddhist and Taoist temples and nearly 3,000 churches.  Such religious diversity informs Taiwanese perspectives on risk, obligation, politics, ethics, and social order. Investors visit temples to ask for blessings for new ventures. Students seek help on exams. Men and women rely on deities to find love; mothers pray to cast out “evil spirits” so babies can sleep. Politicians burn incense to secure votes. Temples and churches provide disaster relief and host medical clinics in disadvantaged communities.  Some have criticized the transactional and pragmatic nature of Taiwanese folk religion, which lacks the moral doctrine of a Judeo-Christian society. Yet Taiwanese democracy functions within a landscape thick with altars, temples, churches, and religious networks—whether pragmatically to meet worldly needs, as political performance, or in genuine piety—under a pervasive sense that their actions are judged by both men and gods.  Buddhist and Christian organizations have underpinned the island’s democratic transition by cultivating civic virtues, interpersonal trust, and a vocabulary of the common good. Robert Weller and others describe religious discourses as creating alternative moral worlds, giving ordinary people concrete languages of good and evil with which to judge state action, coping with anxiety caused by social change and unrest. The red rope incident shows how religion, catalyzed by public criticism, enforces accountability. “Men act, Heaven watches” resonates as a cultural intuition that no leader can escape moral scrutiny.  When the gods can be co-opted  Because temples and religious institutions are central to Taiwan’s public life, they are also attractive to those seeking to manipulate faith. Some temples that mobilize voters and provide social services have become targets—and partners—of the CCP’s influence work. Scholars have documented how certain temples are tied into business ventures or platforms supported by the CCP. Pilgrimage routes, Mazu associations, and temple-led tour groups have long been channels for cultivating pro-Beijing elites, advancing cross-strait economic agendas, and shaping public opinion.  After Xi rolled out new measures to deepen cross-strait ties following Cheng’s visit, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council immediately warned that many “religious exchanges” had become vehicles for united front work, using appeals to “shared roots” and religious ties to shape Taiwanese political allegiances. In other words, temples are not only sites where “men act, Heaven watches” in a good way; under pressure, the gods can be used to deliver an authoritarian “heavenly mandate.”  When the Party declares itself Heaven Across the Taiwan Strait, the phrase carries a starkly different connotation. In mainland China, decades of communist governance, atheistic education, and tightened religious regulation have pushed beliefs such as “men act, Heaven watches” out of the public sphere. Although the post-1979 era has witnessed a remarkable religious revival—including rapid Christian growth and the reopening of temples—grassroots religious practices remain closely controlled. The CCP wants to manage not only religious activities but also eradicate “superstitious” beliefs, including “men act, Heaven watches.”  The long-term effect has been a moral and spiritual vacuum that the Party has tried to fill with its own ideology. In official discourse, “Heaven” is invoked as if it were another name for the Party. In a speech on Party discipline in 2015, Xi quotes “men act, Heaven watches” and asks, “What is Heaven?” His answer is blunt: “Heaven is the Party and the People.” It is not the gods, but the Party, that is watching you. Accountability is redescribed not as a moral mechanism but as political supervision inside a surveillance system. The Temple of Heaven tour during the Trump–Xi summit made this dynamic even starker. Long regarded as the place where emperors, as “sons of heaven,” affirmed that their power rested on a Heavenly Mandate, the site cast Xi’s rule in quasi-sacred terms. Read into Taiwan, that symbolism is even more unsettling: Beijing could frame unification not just as a strategy for national revitalization, but as the fulfillment of the inevitable course of Chinese civilization and what it portrays as the “Mandate of Heaven.” While religion provides the backdrop for much public discourse in Taiwan, the PRC system works to reshape the discourse of religion and morality around Party ideology. “Men act, Heaven watches” becomes “cadres act, the Party watches.”  What Taiwan can teach us For Western audiences, the concept of “first principles” in a democratic society may parallel, in a way, the role of “men act, Heaven watches” in Taiwan. It points to constitutional fundamentals or civic values that stand above day-to-day policy bargaining, reminding citizens that democratic resilience depends on something deeper than politics.  The landscape of Taiwanese democracy is colorfully dotted with deities, omens, fate, and rituals. Religious beliefs and moral norms, protected by the rule of law, provide a baseline against which political actors are judged.   After decades of Communist eradication of religion and “superstition” in mainland China, Taiwan may not be an exact model for China. But the principle would still hold—an open political future in China would likewise require drawing on principles rooted in Chinese religion and culture: that moral standards still matter for democracy, that politicians must be accountable to constitutionally protected public opinion, and that institutions must uphold freedom and human dignity—all grounded in a society’s own cultural and spiritual convictions. In the three decades since Lee Teng-hui became Taiwan’s first elected president in March 1996, the island has navigated its political identity under Heaven’s gaze, whether the vocabulary is drawn from Christian or Buddhist faith to from temple omens. Toward the end of his life, President Lee, a devout Christian, said: “The things I did in my life—was God pleased? … This is not for me to judge. In the end I must hand it over to God and see what He says.”  Power alone cannot justify itself, and rulers, too, stand under a higher judgment. This points to a politics where religious and civic life can both flourish, and where politicians listen to the voice of the people and respect the gods their citizens trust.

On its surface, Polis III Nona’s installation ceremony bore all the hallmarks of a thriving church. The new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, was flanked by clergy, adorned with traditional vestments, marking the transition to a new era for one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Yet the congregation he inherits has all but vanished since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before 2003, an estimated 1.5 million Christians called Iraq home. Today, fewer than 150,000 remain. Not all is lost: restored churches represent renewed hope, while holiday Masses still fill pews in Erbil and Qaraqosh. But Christian life has not recovered from the war. Nona’s entreaties for Iraqi Christians unity are not only out of spiritual concern, but also recognition of the reality that if the Christian community does not stand united, it will cease to exist. Solidarity represents the last hope for a once-vibrant community nearly obliterated by decades of violence enabled by state weakness that persists to the present. The 2003 invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, opening a power vacuum that al-Qaeda in Iraq quickly filled. The terror group branded Christians as Western collaborators and began a murderous campaign against them. The anti-Christian violence peaked in October 2010, when gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral in Baghdad and killed 58 people. By then, roughly half of Iraq’s Christians had already emigrated. Baghdad’s Dora district, once known as the “Vatican of Iraq,” emptied out following kidnappings, assassinations, and extortion. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, the exodus accelerated; by 2013 the Christian population had fallen to about 500,000. Then the catastrophe escalated. In June 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) seized Mosul and issued an ultimatum to Christians: convert, pay tribute (jizya), flee, or die. ISIS destroyed all 45 churches in Mosul, razed the Monastery of Saint Elijah—the oldest in Iraq—and drove about 120,000 Christians from the Nineveh Plains. By the time former Secretary of State John Kerry declared the campaign a genocide in 2016, roughly 90 percent of Iraq’s pre-war Christians had fled. ISIS was largely defeated the following year, but for Iraq’s Christians it was too little, too late. When Pope Francis visited Qaraqosh in 2021, only about half of its displaced residents had returned. Military success, recognition, and reconstruction have not led to a return.— especially as economic opportunities are largely nonexistent. The danger did not end with ISIS, however, even if highly visible massacres of Christians have abated. The threat now is attrition under militia rule that makes Christian life unsustainable. The Popular Mobilization Forces (an official Iraqi institution comprised largely of Iranian-backed factions) now dominate the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Waad Qado, leader of the PMF’s 30th Brigade, in 2019 for extortion, kidnapping, and illegal arrests. Treasury simultaneously sanctioned PMF member Rayan al-Kildani, an Iraqi politician and founder of the Babylon Brigades, for torture and the looting of Christian homes in Batnaya.  The U.S. Treasury Department also identified the Babylon Brigades as blocking Christians returning to their homes. While al-Kildani himself is Chaldean Catholic, both the soldiers he commands and his political support base are largely Shiite voters and his unit is similarly composed of mostly Shiite fighters. These militias seize land in Batnaya, Tel Keppe, and Bakhdida through forged deeds, registry intimidation, and squatting. They also control transit checkpoints, reconstruction contracts, and the lucrative Mosul–Erbil trade corridor. Post-ISIS, the Nineveh Plains should be attracting citizens previously driven away by terrorism and political instability. Instead, continued militia presence has made recovery impossible, discouraging sustainable resettlement and rebuilding. Sarah, a Christian who runs a volunteer organization in the region, believes that “Many here are losing hope, because they’ve realized that starting over will be an uphill struggle. There are no services, no jobs. We can help each other but it is hard to imagine a future.” Al-Kildani is also supported by Iran-aligned Shiite factions. As a Chaldean Catholic, his Babylon Brigades provide a nominally Christian vehicle for Iranian influence in the strategic Nineveh Plains and for converting seats in the Iraqi parliament reserved to Christians into pro-Iran political power. In order to guarantee Christians some level of representation in Iraq’s 329-seat parliament, five of those seats are reserved for Christians. Yet because Iraq’s quota system allows anyone to vote on who will fill those seats, so long as the candidates are Christian, Shiite blocs helped al-Kildani’s Babylon Movement win four of the five seats in 2021. Former Patriarch Louis Sako warned that al-Kildani “does not represent Christians in any way” the following year. Christian voters shared his sentiment, and Babylon lost two of these seats in the subsequent 2025 elections. In 2023, al-Kildani’s network helped also strip Sako of official state recognition as Patriarch, leading to the loss of his custodianship over church property, though Baghdad restored his title in 2024.  Given that Iraq also has a constitution that privileges Islam, including apostasy laws that forbid Muslims from leaving Islam for any other religion, and chronic unemployment among Iraqi Christians, the result is unsurprising: 57 percent of Nineveh Christians have considered emigration while 36 percent expect to leave in five years.  What can the United States do? The temptation is to keep treating Iraqi Christianity as a heritage cause by only funding the restoration of beautiful buildings and recognizing past atrocities. That work matters, but it ignores the present dangers facing Iraqi Christians. Today, the threats facing Christians in Iraq stem from a weak Iraqi state that has given control over its core functions to PMF-linked factions that have, with Iran’s aid, turned post-ISIS Christian areas into militia-administered zones. The most useful thing Washington can do is push to Baghdad reclaim those responsibilities. More than a decade ago, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged that Iraq be designated a Country of Particular Concern, the highest threat level for religious minorities. Yet, in recent years, despite continued threats to Christians, Iraq is only on the Special Watch List, representing a lower level of concern. Restoring the harsher designation would signal to the Iraqi government that ignoring the plight of Christians carries real diplomatic costs. Washington should sustain and expand the Treasury sanctions already imposed on Qado and al-Kildani and escalate sanctions on their Iranian backers.  Washington should also stand firm behind its insistence that Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, appoint no ministers who belong to political parties affiliated with militias designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States. So far, al-Zaidi has respected that demand. In the long run, making Iraq safe for Christians and other minorities depends on breaking the grip militias and their patrons in Tehran have on the Iraqi state. Washington can also press Iraq’s parliament to reform the minority quota system so parliamentary seats reflect the voters they are supposed to represent rather than the preferences of larger outside political blocs. Pope Francis, standing amid the ruins of Qaraqosh in 2021, urged Iraq’s Christians not to “forget who they are or where they come from.” Sako warned that without change in the Iraqi government, the country’s Christians may soon disappear altogether. His successor, Nona, now shoulders the burden of working to make sure that does not happen. Washington, as part of its broader strategy to counter Tehran, already seeks an Iraqi government willing to degrade Iran’s efforts to prop up militias and other nonstate actors. The same steps are necessary to protect Iraqi Christians. Whether the churches of the Ninevah Plains remain living centers of Iraqi Christianity or ultimately become mausoleums depends on whether Iraq, with American help, can protect its Christians.

Two recent articles have staked out the field. “What Do Conservatives Mean by ‘Western Civilization?’” by James Diddams begins with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using the same phrase with entirely different meanings. In his response to Diddams, John W. Burge sees Western civilization as an unbroken tradition of Logos (reason) and the Great Conversation, with modern radicalism from both the left and right as the source of discontinuity. Whether Diddams and Burge realize it or not, this argument is only another echo of a far older fracture. I want to say just one thing: stop. Both are correct—as Scripture makes clear. First, on both being right. The late Pope Benedict XVI, in an address to the Bundestag, argued that Europe must trace its identity back to the traditions of, and encounter among three cities: Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Whatever one’s confessional or political commitments, the importance of these three cities is beyond serious dispute. The debate within Western civilization concerns only how they are to be understood and weighted against one another, but not that they constitute the soul of the West. After all, the question “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” was first posed by Tertullian around 200 AD—a man who happened to be the son of a Roman centurion. Yes, the West today cannot agree on what the West is. But this is nothing new. Even within Christendom itself, the disagreement is as old as Christianity—to say nothing of the many writers outside the Christian tradition. The argument has always been there, and never resolved itself by persuasion. In a certain sense, this very argument is an essential feature of the Western tradition. “Western civilization” as such has always been defined differently by different people, each gathering a community of assent and calling it consensus.  But constant reference to intellectual tensions between contrasting views within a broader conversation does make for any kind of meaningful or coherent standard. Instead, for Christians, Scripture must be the standard. So let us look at what Scripture says about these three cities—or more precisely, what kind of people it places in them. Begin with Rome. The most famous Roman in Scripture is arguably Pilate, Roman governor of Judea under Emperor Tiberius, usually dated to A.D. 26–36. Power is in his hands, yet his most memorable act is washing his hands, as though moral responsibility for those in power could be dissolved by soap and water. As Rome’s representative, he tries to maintain order, pacify the crowd, and put “Truth” on trial. Then, sensing that something has gone wrong, he washes his hands in an attempt to absolve himself. Here’s the logic of empire: Truth is simply something that must submit to imperial interrogation and judgment. For this Rome, law and order matters more than truth. When necessary, truth can be sacrificed for order—and one can simply wash one’s hands. A perfect escape.  But Rome also gives us the centurion of Matthew 8, who, standing before someone of vastly different station, says: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” (Matt. 8:8). He will not place Truth beneath a Roman ceiling. By the custom of the time, entering under a roof meant entering a jurisdiction. So “I am not worthy” is more than courtesy—it is a soldier’s instinctive awe. He recognizes an order higher than Rome, one that cannot be contained under the empire’s eaves and does not even require physical contact to act. For Western civilization, the question is not whether Rome exists. The question is where its roof, its jurisdiction, begins and ends. Jerusalem is harder. Rome at least knows it is an empire. Jerusalem believes it is the bearer of God on earth. Here comes Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest. He buys off a traitor. He sends out subordinates armed with swords and clubs. He acts as both accuser and judge, dragging the so-called criminal before a higher official from a foreign land. His very successor does the same: delivering a man named Paul into Roman hands. Yes, this is the high priest of Jerusalem. Yes, he is considering a sacrifice—whether to sacrifice one man or an entire nation—but his real concern is which option yields the greater advantage. When he finally asks his question, he is not seeking an answer. He is seeking a confession. Then, of course, there is Nicodemus. At first, he conceals his identity, coming quietly under cover of night to seek the truth. After Truth is crucified, he could stay hidden—but he steps into the light. For him, having found the truth, no loss of standing in the Sanhedrin is too great a price.  This is the other Jerusalem. This Jerusalem has its limits. It possesses the truth, but not by itself the means to carry that truth to the nations. For that, it needs Rome. The Gospel leaves Jerusalem and travels along roads Jerusalem does not build, under a peace Jerusalem cannot enforce.  Years later, the scene shifts to Athens. The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers want only whatever novelty might serve as conversation. While the Socratic method, handed down from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, remained alive and well, it lacked orientation toward the highest good. Instead of faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), Greek philosophy lacked the divine revelation needed to reach the moral and metaphysical heights of Christian theology. But Dionysius, one of the guardians of Paideia (the Athenian tradition of civic and cultural formation), chooses to join the early Church and believe. While Nicodemus still has the testimony of the Old Testament, Dionysius confronts a truth entirely outside his Athenian frame of reference. Yet without Athens, that truth might never acquire the conceptual language through which it can be articulated beyond Jerusalem. Augustine (City of God, XV.1) observed that earthly cities are a mingled mass—the City of God and the City of Man woven together. Rome, Jerusalem, and Athens are no exceptions. The governor and the centurion, the high priest and the member of the Sanhedrin, the philosophers and the guardian of culture: each stands as a representative of his city. This is unlikely to be accidental. We have considered the problem of the three cities, and yet the question remains: why no fourth city, no fifth? Why not Assyria, Babylon, Persia, or Egypt? Rome occupied Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, but so did Babylon. Greek empire and culture reshaped vast numbers of Jews, but so did Egypt. Yet at the birth of Christianity, only the languages of these three cities are written on the same sign. Perhaps that is why the Gospel bothers to mention the three languages at all: “It was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek” (John 19:20). Christianity was the first to place these three cities within the same story about history and truth. If Western civilization has a birth certificate, it is that sign nailed to the cross. And it is precisely at this moment, within the boundaries of that very sign, that the fracture between the City of God and the City of Man is already clearly visible.

In the few days since the issuing of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, many across the globe are responding to this 42,000-plus-word document, including technology leaders, investors, CEOs, theologians, lawyers, politicians, and more. While many Catholic voices have praised the encyclical for its guidance concerning artificial intelligence and the proper use of technology, other readers have found the encyclical more confounding than clarifying. I happen to be one of those. Surely Leo is to be commended for attempting to contribute to Catholic social teaching, following in the footsteps of his namesake, Leo XIII, whose important 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum addressed “the social question” as it related to the industrial revolution. Fittingly, then, Leo XIV wishes to bring questions of human dignity, labor and capitalism, and the common good to bear on a topic of our day, AI. In summary, the document seeks to apply the Church’s social teaching to AI by reconsidering the enduring questions of theological ethics for our technological age. AI must serve wider humanity rather than only the elite. While technology is not inherently evil, it is not morally neutral and hence must be “disarmed.” The document thus calls for stronger oversight, given what Leo believes to be its contribution to “worker displacement,” uneven wealth distribution, and significantly for readers of Providence, the “normalization of war” and “unending wars.” This emphasis on war and peace has been a regular fixture in Leo’s public pronouncements since his election to the papacy in May of last year. His back-and-forth disagreements with the Trump administration on war with Iran in recent months have been exceedingly public in nature, causing even Vice President Vance, a Catholic convert, to react.  At a recent Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia, Vance, in a surprising degree of candor, responded to Leo’s earlier insistence that God rejects the prayers of “those who wage war” and that God is “never on the side of those who take up the sword.” Vance was moved to ask, on whose side was God when the Allies liberated France from Nazism and freed prisoners from concentration camps? Responding to the pope’s functional pacifism, the Vice President observed, “When the pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword,  there is a thousand-year—more than a thousand year—tradition of Just War Theory.” Vance concluded, “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” In a May 26 interview with NBC News, however, Vance offered praise for Leo’s AI warnings, calling them “very profound,” even when he conceded he has not read the entire encyclical. It is not insignificant that one of the five chapters comprising Magnifica Humanitas is devoted to war. To be sure, the encyclical’s most important contribution is its reminder that technology is not morally neutral; moral truth must shape humanity’s design and use of technology, therewith contributing to the common social good. And indeed the words “common good” appear more often in the document (eighty-two times) than “artificial intelligence” (twenty-four times). Fully aside from its length—245 paragraphs and 42,300 words—one is justified in questioning the overall coherence of the document. While Leo rehearses the development of the Church’s social doctrine with its undergirding principles—for example, human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and social justice (nos. 46-89)—as preparation for his main thesis, i.e., the dominance and dangers of AI (nos. 90-130), he injects other topics that appear unrelated. Among these are repeated, though vague, criticisms of “unemployment” (nos. 151-54, 166-67); his worry about the “climate crisis” and “climate change” as a “litmus test” for “social justice” (how this supposed “crisis” is a matter of “social justice” he does not say); the need to build a “civilization of love” (nos. 129-30, 182-87); and the Church’s past complicity in slavery and slave trade (no. 176). In a footnote, Leo identifies four papal bulls from the years 1435, 1442, 1452 and 1455 that are said to have expressly “relativized” the “problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience” (n. 174). Not included in this list is one of his earlier namesakes, Pope Leo X, who in 1514 renewed the authority of earlier papal bulls that had granted Portuguese authorities the right to subjugate non-Christians and reduce them to slaves. This, in turn, would help lay the foundation for the transatlantic slave trade. As it concerns the Church’s formal complicity regarding slavery, in the encyclical Leo confesses, “I sincerely ask for pardon” (no. 176). But if such confession, repentance, and need for pardon were a true and heavy burden that the Vatican actually carries, it would then seem appropriate that, at minimum, an entire encyclical in fact be devoted solely to the excruciating problem of the Church’s complicity in such evil. Perhaps such will be forthcoming. As one European Catholic theologian observed, one might argue that Magnifica Humanitas is less a theological document than a political one. Indeed, the fact that (a) one-fifth of the document is devoted to issues of war and peace and (b) the document fails to interact with the theological and moral foundations of the just war tradition as taught by the Church—historically as well as in the Catholic Catechism—seems to confirm this criticism. Moreover, Leo’s authority is not in the area of artificial intelligence, which “goes beyond the philosophical strength of his arguments.” With some justification, Father Gerald Murray, an expert in canon law and priest in the Archdiocese of New York, describes Magnifica Humanitas as “a tale of two encyclicals”: AI and war and peace. For Murray, the document advances a technocratic vision that encourages global governance (for example, by the United Nations, as stated in no. 226) and excessive regulation rather than offering true moral clarity in continuity with the Christian moral tradition as taught by the Church.  Indeed, there is verbal and situational irony in the fact that Leo, an Augustinian, has made it a central focus of his pontificate to continue the functional pacifism of his predecessor. In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Francis had warned, “War can easily be chosen by invoking all sorts of allegedly humanitarian, defensive or precautionary excuses, and even resorting to the manipulation of information. In recent decades, every single war has been ostensibly ‘justified.’” Thus, Francis concluded, “We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!” In a footnote, Francis acknowledges that St. Augustine “forged a concept of ‘just war,’” but it is a concept that “we no longer uphold in our own day” (n. 242).  The change in the Church’s official teaching is made clear in Magnifica Humanitas: the concept of “just war” is “outdated,” Leo announces. Since his installation, of course, Leo has taken a strong stance against war, making numerous statements specifically critical of the war against the Iranian regime. Yet, pronouncements codified in an encyclical are different; they are considered authoritative. “Today, more than ever,” Leo declares, “it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated” (no. 192). One element in Leo’s argument is to decry the implications of AI in contributing to war. “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable”; that is, “moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation.” Therefore, “it is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems” (no. 198). Part of Leo’s pacifist rationale follows: “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations” (no. 189). But this understanding of force does not align itself with the history of the Church’s thinking and teaching on “just war” and coercive intervention. Resort to arms is not only permissible, it is virtuous when and where motivated by “just cause” and “right intention.” The latter moral criterion was particularly important to St. Augustine, for whom charity and justice were wed. It is charity as well as justice, he believed, on at least three levels: to those who are committing evil, to those in society who are victims or who are watching, and to potential offenders who might be tempted toward evil in the future. Classic just war thinking understands war and coercive force as necessary for the express purpose of establishing a justly ordered peace. Its moral criteria apply to any age, even ours with its unprecedented technological developments. Francis and Leo notwithstanding, the Church is not pacifist in her doctrine, as the nearly 2000-year-long conversation on justified use of force reminds us. The just war tradition extends from Augustine through Aquinas to early-modern theorists such as Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez into the present moment. It is only in the late twentieth century that the Church has become functionally pacifist.  The tradition of “just war” may be viewed as the chief moral grammar in our wider cultural heritage by which moral judgments concerning war and interventionary force should be shaped. For those of us who profess Christian faith, it is a method of moral reflection, and of statecraft, that refuses to separate theology and moral principle from politics. It presupposes not that war or coercive force can ever be perfectly “just”; only that in the temporal world, on this side of the eschaton, we must seek moral wisdom and discernment in arriving at judgments about war and peace.

What do melting Arctic ice, a war for farmland in Ukraine, and the panic of Gulf petro-states have in common? Arthur Snell exposes the terrifying new geography of global conflict and how humanity can adapt to survive it.

An extract from Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s new book Seeking Sexual Freedom

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah on memory, risk and organising beyond backlash

Amazon and X’s policies on age verification and content moderation criticised in report on murder of three children and stabbing of others

Thousands clutching rosaries and dollars from Washington formed the march that paved the way for the 1964 coup

If Donald Trump fails to end the Iran war soon, its effects could last for decades, with unpredictable consequences

We speak to journalists and defenders of human and environmental rights about how their lives have come under threat

Keen to present itself as a key EU partner on migration, Morocco pushed migrants out of sight before tourists arrived.

What can progressives everywhere learn from Magyar’s historic victory over Orbán’s anti-democratic regime?

Europe’s great replacement prime minister lost on Sunday, and so did the global anti-gender movement

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are a reminder that Netanyahu will do whatever he can to avoid a peace deal with Iran

The government is seeking powers to allow ministers to rewrite significant portions of the Online Safety Act

Harsh Mander on solidarity, peace, and why holding together can be the real victory

I first reported on abuse in the NHS in 2022. Labour has made the right call on the unfair ‘five-year rule’

Having helped get the party elected, Anacta Strategies now helps its clients get what they want from Starmer's Labour government