Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi Against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must typically resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis went beyond citing ethical principles to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 Urbi et Orbi (i.e., to the city and the world) address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian kingdom of God, both as a concept in the Gospels and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the instinctual ways of our species as worldly. In other words, there is value in terms of international relations from people being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.  Celebrating Christmas can be a means of bringing to mind what the Jesus in the Gospel narratives stands for and represents, which in turn stands as an alternative, which Gandhi realized, for how international relations can be done even by very human, all too human, and thus flawed, political leaders desirious of God's mercy.

Russia's attack against Ukraine on Christmas, 2024 (source: AP)

On Christmas Day in 2024, “Russia launched a massive missile and drone barrage . . . , striking a thermal power plant and prompting Ukrainians to take shelter in metro stations on Christmas morning.”[1] Specifically, over “70 rockets, including ballistic missiles, and over 100 attack drones were ued to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”[2] In short, Putin’s strategic objective was to leave Ukrainians without electricity. Because he chose to do so on Christmas, which many Americans strangely call “happy holidays” or just “this holiday,” prompted Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to write, “Putin deliberately chose Christmas for an attack. What could be more inhumane.”[3] Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, described the inhumanity as “(d)enying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas.”[4] That many urban Ukrainians had to spend Christmas morning in underground subway stations rather than at home celebrating Santa’s bounty and enjoying fellowship for its own sake is indicative of just how little respect Putin had for Christianity; his utter lack of respect for Ukrainians was by then well known.

On the same day, Pope Francis “urged ‘all people of all nations’ to find the courage . . . ‘to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions’ plaguing the world, from the Middle East to Ukraine, Africa to Asia.”[5] This language in itself is rather lame, or vague—a statement to be expected from any pope. That he “called for an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, . . . ‘particularly in Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.’”[6] This statement could be expected to be received by the people the world over like a repeating recording, which is to say, as more of the same impotent normative language to which both Putin and Netanyahu had been so terribly unresponsive.

Fortunately, the Pope added a line seemingly too utopian to matter, but with arguably huge effect in terms of changing perspectives around the world. The pope “called for reconciliation ‘even (with) our enemies.’”[7] Such compassion is two degrees of separation from the ruthless killing of civilians in Ukraine and Gaza—in the latter, 1,200 Israeli deaths and a few hundred hostages do not ethically justify killing over 44,000 residents of Gaza, as if they had all been culpable in the attack by Hamas. I suspect that both Putin and Netanyahu easily dismissed the pope’s distinctly Christian valuing of compassion extended even to—and I would argue especially to—one’s detractors and enemies. In doing so, Putin in particular, who claimed to be Christian and enjoyed the political alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy, could be seen from around the world as a hypocrite.

That the pope was not just extoling compassion, which is a moral virtue, but also invoking Jesus’s preaching on loving one’s enemies—which both as being based in love, which is deeper than ethical conduct, and being specifically oriented to one’s enemies—renders the invocation theological in nature. One thing about theology is that it can be applied in ways that moral principles are typically not.

For example, Timchenko wrote that the attack on Christmas was “a depraved and evil act that must be answered.”[8] What is binding on Putin and Netanyahu theologically is also binding on “the good guys.” Timchenko’s claim that the attack must be answered in retributive vengeance flies in the face of having and showing compassion for one’s enemies. Timchenko cuts off even the possibility of this by claiming that vengeance must take place as the response. At least Putin and even Netanyahu might have admitted that reconciliation by showing compassion to the respective enemies was possible. Unlike in ethics, where Timhenko can be distinguished normatively from Putin and Netanyahu because only the latter two are responsible for having harmed and killing innocent people, the spiritual value of the Jesus preachment in the Gospels to love thy enemies (and detractors more generally) by being compassionate rather than aggressive towards them applies to everyone. Why? Jesus's claim that loving one's enemies applies to anyone who seeks to enter the kingdom of God, the experience of which is possible at any time, reflects the religious belief that the spirit of God's mercy applies to every one of us, as what we all deserve in terms of divine justice is worse than what we actually get from God, which, as God is existential love, is life.  It is no accident that God's mercy was a lietmotif of the pope's homily on hope in the Midnight Mass that Christmas. 

Although by the end of 2024, the Israeli government had certainly blown any good-will that Gaza residents would show in kind to a sudden two-degrees-of-freedom switch by Israel to showing compassion to that enemy, had over 44,000 Gaza residents not been killed and over 2 million left homeless (and even bombed at least once while staying in tents), a cycle of reconciliation could have been initiated by the Israeli akin to how Gandhi treated even the British who had imprisoned him. Such a cycle, wherein serving the residents would naturally have resulted in good overtures by the residents to even Israeli troops, is that which Jesus preaches in the Gospels for how the kingdom of God can be at hand already and spread like a mustard seed grows.

To contrast the way to world peace through individuals reconciling by being compassionate with detractors with Putin’s attack on Christmas is to see Putin (and Russia’s government) as two steps removed, and thus especially sordid. That Putin regarded himself as a Christian, especially considering that Paul had written that faith without works is for naught, only adds hypocrisy to the two degrees of separation between inhumane treatment of others and being compassionate to one’s enemies. The pope’s Christmas Day speech thus helped the world to situate not only Putin, but every other militarily aggressive head of government in the world. We, the species that has been described as killer angels, are indeed capable of holding both poles in mind simultaneously.

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1. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Lucy Davalou, “Pope Francis on Christmas Day Urges ‘To Silence the Sound of Arms,’” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Euronews, “Russia’s Christmas Day Missile Strikes ‘Inhumane,’ Zelenskyy Says,” Euronews.com, December 25, 2024.

Israel Invades Syria Preemptively without Declaring War: A New Norm?

In the wake of the downfall of Syria’s Assad in December, 2024, that he had used chemical weapons against civilians in rebel areas against international law not only means that the victors of the coup would have ready access to chemical stockpiles, but also justifies other governments in breaking Syria’s national sovereignty by bombing the locations at which the noxious chemicals were being stored. This does not justify, however, governments hostile to Syria invading the country and destroying its military. Otherwise, the norm could be established, as valid, that any time there is a coup in a country, it is “open season” (a hunting expression) for any government in the world to snatch up territory and destroy the military. Although absolute sovereignty, which ignores international law, is too much, presuming a country with a new government to be valid prey goes too far in the other direction. I contend that both absolutist and nullified national sovereignty are contrary to the interests of the whole—the global order—wherein the protection of human rights (and thus international law) is in the interest of humanity especially given the horrendous destructiveness that a government can have against its own people and other countries in the nuclear age.

Just after the Assad regime folded, the BBC reported, “Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of [Israel’s] efforts to neutralize military assets [in Syria] after the fall of the Assad regime.”[1] Fifteen vessels were docked at the port of Latakia. Israel also announced, moreover, that “its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarized buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.”[2] Just three days after that announcement, CNN reported that Israel had struck "nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out . . . 90% of Syria's known surface-to-air missiles."[3] Essentially, the Israeli government was taking advantage of the momentary weakness of a transitioning foreign goverment to rid a sovereign nation of its right to a military. 

Israel’s defense minister said Israel wanted to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel.”[4] Because Syria had not been militarily active against Israel, the threat was not actual, but only potential. Israel said it invaded Syrian territory “to prevent attacks on its citizens.”[5] Israel had “a long history of seizing territory during wars with its neighbors and occupying it indefinitely, citing security concerns.”[6]

Israel invades Syria, taking the highest mountain there. (Source: CNN)

It seems that Israel no longer felt the need to bomb and invade another country during a war, as neither the media nor Israel would admit that bombings and an invasion constitute war. The implication, should Israel’s actions to rid another country of its military become the norm internationally, is that it is ok to eliminate the entire military (i.e., not just chemical weapons) of any country that finds itself in a brief interregnum following a coup (or power dispute) and whose military is even just potentially a threat or even just a security concern. This essentially opens the door to unfettered aggression anytime another country’s government is temporarily weak. Is it not the case that national sovereignty includes the right to have a military, or is that right conditional on the approval of the Israeli government? 

Such a squalid, opportunistic norm would not only violate international law, but would fall under the theory of political realism wherein states follow their own strategic interests unfettered by international norms or law. Hobbes’ state of nature is also relevant, as Israel’s military aggression against another sovereign country follows the dictum that might makes right. Syria had not ceased being a country, and the mutually-agreed-upon demilitarized zone was so obviously contracted, and thus violated, by Israel’s ground invasion that situated military forces in the zone that no justification save the law of the jungle could be sited by the Israeli government.

That Russia had unilaterally invaded Ukraine in 2023 and was still doing so as Israel was attacking and invading Syria could be enough to give the underpinning norm some de facto grounding to potentially become de facto valid, or at least more widely acted upon and with impunity. During Israel’s invasion of Syria, the media in both the E.U. and U.S. notably did not refer to the military action as a war, as would be expected when one country bombs and invades another country. With both Russia and Israel acting as kingdoms seeking empire militarily, it could be concluded that the “modern” twenty-first century was not fundamentally different than world history, as evinced by the Qing Dynasty (especially Emperor Kangi) in China, the ancient Romans, the Mongols, Alexander the Great, and the various European colonial empires. 

After all, even with the promise of genetic engineering, human nature was still pretty much unchanged since the incremental changes through the process of evolution during the long, prehistoric hunter-gatherer stage. Put another way, human nature has been a constant from the ancient military invaders to Russia and Israel in the (technologically) “advanced” 21^st century. In political-military matters, the raw power opportunism in modernity belies any claim to political development in international relations, even taking into account the impotent UN. 

It seems unfathomable even to contemplate whether international relations were gradually returning to the dark ages of the state of nature in which aggression and political realism—essentially self-interest--are the only real guidelines. The trajectory unleashed by Russia and Israel in the century following two world wars—the second having ended with two nuclear bombs—does not bode well for humanity, whose exploding population and related energy pollution could render the question of unfettered international aggression moot. 

At the very least, it is not at all antisemitic to label bombing and a military invasion as a war—and an unprovoked one at that, seeking the total destruction of another (sovereign!) country's military. A world of preemptive strikes based on security concerns to rid undesireable countries of their very defenses may be what humanity may be heading for since the U.S. invaded Iraq at the beginning of the “post-modern” century ostensibly to remove weapons of mass destruction. It seems to me that the emerging norm being foisted on the world by Israel and Russia is itself a weapon of mass destruction.

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1. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet,” BBC.com, December 10, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Mick Krever, "Why Israel Captured Syria's Tallest Mountain Just Hours After Assad Fell," CNN.com, December 14, 2024.

4. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet.”
5. Rory E. Armstrong, “Israel Strikes Syrian Military Sites While Troops Move into Golan Heights Buffer Zone,” Euronews.com, December 10, 2024.
6. Ibid.

Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as even more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems, and thus could be countered ideologically as a wsy of stopping the repression and murders. The shameless, naked power-aggrandizing, non-ideological violence against non-violent individuals evinces power as an end in itself. It is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.

Around the time of the 2020 election in Belarus, a woman accused of insulting Lukashenko was sentenced to 3 years at a penal colony, an entrepreneur was sentenced to 3.5 years for rioting (i.e., attending a peaceful political protest), an engineer who merely went to a polling station to view the results was detained and beaten by riot troopers, and a poet was detained for having walked his dog on the day before the 2020 election.

The entrepreneur later reflected on his experience by asking, “How can you imprison an entire nation?” The engineer remarked, “When people stop obeying [the president’s] orders, the system will collapse.” The poet pointed out that if no factory workers had shown up for work for three days following the election, the regime would have collapsed. The thread here is essentially about the collective action problem. An IT contractor who had been arrested subsequently pointed out that virtually none of the people who depend on the state for a job would risk being fired by joining in even peaceful protests on the rigged election. It could even be said that the problem of collective action inhibited the numbers that would be necessary for Gandhi’s kind of non-violent moral resistance to work. It seems that not even the use of social media like Facebook to notify residents of a mass protest can facilitate enough additional people to come out that the problem would be solved. Hence, violent dictators around the world could continue to count on the problem of collective action to keep the size of protests down to a manageable number of people who can be beaten and taken away to be imprisoned. After all, this cannot be done to an entire people.

The moral contrast between a Belarusian policeman saying to prisoners that he would burn them all alive if he got the order even though he was presumably not enraged by the non-ideological protestors and the prisoner who subsequently said that he would not bear a grudge or take revenge on that riot trooper is just the sort of contrast between good and evil that Gandhi’s non-violent passive resistance fits.  So too, the moral contrast between the young women handing out flowers to riot troopers in military vehicles while knowing that the police could get an order, which they would obey, to beat, detain, and even torture the non-violent women. Handing out the flowers is something Gandhi would certainly do, even while being beaten. Were the problem of collective action not such an obstacle, perhaps the sheer number of followers of Gandhi’s method of political resistance would be such that dictators could no longer take advantage of the problem by knocking off individual protestors with impunity. With sheer numbers, the moral shock of people around the world would not have to be relied on for pressure to build internationally against a given dictator. A whole people cannot be arrested; the system would come to a halt. Ultimately, courage would have spread while the problem of collective action is alleviated somehow. Until then, a world without brutal dictators will be possible, though not probable.

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1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

The United States: Complicit in Genocide

In December, 2024, Amnesty International, a highly reputed human rights international organization “found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.”[1] The International Criminal Court (ICC) had recently issued arrest warrants for a former defense minister and the sitting prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, and the UN’s high court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had also ruled that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank violates international law. When Amnesty’s report came out, the ICJ was considering whether to declare a genocide in Gaza. Considering the series of determinations against Israel in Gaza, did it matter that the ICJ had not yet ruled specifically on genocide? Formally yes, but the currency of formal rulings and determinations regarding Israel based on international law had lost considerable de facto value, given Israel’s ongoing infliction of such widespread and dire suffering on civilians in not only Gaza, and Russia’s attacks in Ukraine (the ICC had already issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s sitting president. Oddly, news that Israel was committing an apartheid genocide seemed at the time to be old news, whereas that the U.S. was complicit, as an accomplice in providing the weapons, in a genocide was news.

So even legalists can let themselves hold that Israel was indeed treating the Palestinians in Gaza (and even the West Bank) to a genocide, and thus that the United States Government was acting as an accomplice by continuing to sell weapons to Israel used in Gaza. Agnes Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, said at the time of the organization’s resounding report, “Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”[2] It may be said that Amnesty had uncovered the true motive of the Israeli ministers of state in destroying residential housing such that over 2 million Gazans were by then in camps and in restricting how many food trucks could enter Gaza even as famine existed in 2024. As harsh as this determination is, it is not clear that a report even with damning findings would “serve as a wake-up call to the international community” even though Callamard said it would.[3]

Because Israel had likely “heard it all before,” and so had the world with respect to the rather extreme vengeance of the Israeli Knesset, as if the millions of Gazans had all been culpable in Hamas’ killings and kidnappings in 2023 as Israel’s president had said back then, Amnesty’s report is perhaps more striking in how it characterizes the role of the U.S. than in finding indications of a genocide in Gaza. “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time,” Callamard went on, “must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.”[4] At the time, the U.S. was the most glaring or significant of the accomplices, though the E.U. was hardly blameless. Even though it had been no secret in the United States that President Biden was strongly in favor of selling weapons that had been and could be expected to be used by the Israeli military in Gaza, the complicity in Israel’s genocide had not hitherto reached the consciousness of public discourse in America.

As for the fine print, Amnesty noted in its report that the organization had “examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences. The organization considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.”[5] The effort was neither shotty nor unsystematic, and it took “into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation.”[6] The report’s basic conclusion is that the Israeli government was intent on eradicating Palestinians in Gaza (for they could not leave!).

The fecklessness of international law had been readily apparent, given the obvious lack of any legal enforcement mechanism; that the U.S. had played a major role in the genocide was not often realized and digested. It may be a factor in President Biden’s very low approval ratings and the fact that Kamala Harris lost Michigan while Jill Stein of the Green Party did noticeably well there—Stein long having been a recurrent presidential candidate with no hope of winning but very useful nonetheless in providing voters with a way to vote against their government being complicit in genocide. As startling as this sounds, its exuberance would surely fade and the inherent weakness of international law once again become the undercurrent of discontent not only in the U.S., but in the E.U. as well. Amnesty’s report can be interpreted as saying: Yes, it can get this bad—this painful—in a world in which international law is law in name only (i.e., sans regular enforcement).

1. Amnesty International, “Amnesty International Investigation Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty.org, December 5, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.