Pope Leo’s First Christmas Message: On International Relations

That severe, systematic inflictions of suffering on whole peoples were going on in the world even on Christmas Day in 2025 did not require a papal announcement for people the world over to be informed of those atrocities. Russia’s military incursion in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza had been going on with international impunity for years. The suffering in Yemen and Sudan was less well-known, but substantial nonetheless. Speaking out against the sordid state-aggressors on the first Christmas of his pontificate, the pope provided an alternative basis for international relations that is so antithetical to military invasion and genocide that the message could seem utopian and thus practically of no use whatsoever. Because “might makes right” had made such unimpeded “progress” even in becoming the default and status-quo, the principle of humble compassion to the humanity to one’s detractors and even outright enemies could seem like a fairy tale. 

The full essay is at "Pope Leo's First Christmas Message."

Russia’s Bottom-Line on Ukraine

As American, Ukrainian, and Russian negotiating delegations were flying around the world in early December, 2025 to conduct various negotiating sessions, all the while without the presidents of Russia and Ukraine meeting, it was difficult for bystanders to keep an eye on the proverbial ball as it was being kicked around by offers and counter-offers, and complicated by the high-profiled presence of the businessman, Jared Kushner, who happened to be married to one of U.S. President Trump’s daughters. Kushner was also highly visible in the negotiations on Gaza, which almost certainly included real-estate development. To be sure, commercial and investment deals can easily remain subterranean while the public discourse stays on the political relations between nations, and even just the latter may lack transparency. Democratic accountability in democratic republics as concerning the conduct and results of foreign policy can be difficult. Especially difficult to gauge was the hand being closely held by Russia’s President Putin. I contend that his willingness to negotiate was consistently overestimated by the West and Ukraine.

After a meeting at the Kremlin with an American delegation led by special envoy Steve Witkoff, who had recently been caught coaching Kremlin officials on how to win over U.S. President Trump, Putin arrived in India on December 4, 2025 while Ukrainian officials were travelling to the U.S. to hold talks with an American delegation on a proposal to end Russia’s invasion. How close the Russians and Ukrainians were to deal was at the time unknown likely even to themselves. To an extent, they may have been talking past each other and relying too much on surrogates, some of which, the Europeans, were not even at the negotiating table on behalf of Ukraine.

As a case in point on how badly the negotiating was going, Putin’s statement, which he made in India, that Russia would “liberate Donbas and Nororossiya in any case-by military or other means” went along with his stated intention that Russia would finish the special operation in Ukraine “when we achieve the goals set at the beginning of the special operation, when we free these territories. That’s all.”[1] To be sure, such determination and certainty can be taken as a negotiating tactic, but the statements are consistent with Putin’s pattern of ignoring overtures for peace. It is no accident that Putin could afford to do so because Russia was “negotiating” throughout from a position of strength on the battlefield. The law of political physics applied, Putin and Russia stood to gain little if anything by unilaterally giving up the Ukrainian territory that, as U.S. President had said, had been won. Lest it be assumed that Crimea and even Donbas regions would be enough, it is highly significant that Putin “revived the term” Novorossiya that referred historically “to territories toward the west during the Russian empire.”[2] This is just the sort of move that made Poland and the Balkans nervous, and legitimately gave the E.U. a stake at the negotiating table. In short, Putin’s vision of renewing the historical Russian Empire, which predates the U.S.S.R., gives his statements made in India more substance than merely that of being negotiating rhetoric. A historical vision with the political realism of a position of military strength rendered Putin’s real stance rock solid.

Of course, Russia’s position could change were the E.U. to begin in earnest to hold some of its own wayward states back at the federal level and aid Ukraine militarily to an extent that the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine could finally be swayed toward Ukraine’s advantage, but the E.U. remained mired in its own state-centric federal system as the American, Ukrainian, and Russian delegations were moving around and talking in various, indirect combinations.

It is precisely in this context that the following statement made by Ukraine’s President Zelensky as Putin arrived in India can be criticized: “Our task now is to obtain full information about what was said in Russia, what other reasons Putin found to prolong the war and put pressure on Ukraine, on us, on our independence.”[3] Putin was not finding reasons to prolong the war; rather, he stated that he would not stop until his initial military goals have been accomplished. He had no intention of giving up those goals in a negotiated peace.

To be sure, commercial deals spearheaded by Jared Kushner, involving Russian rare earth minerals for instance, could potentially lure Putin into accepting territory less than the whole of Donbas, but such a political-commercial nexus would be a hard sell given Putin’s vision of resurrecting the Russian Empire of old in Eastern Europe. At best, a commercial mega-deal would likely serve as a resting stop for the Russian dictator. Of course, political forecasting is such a plight that smart analysts remain aloof from that occupation. The Europeans could surprise the world and proffer Ukraine with a spurt of military assistance capable of pushing Russian troops back in spite of Ukraine’s shortage of troops. Russia, whose territory was already empire-scale, versus Ukraine, a kingdom-scale country, was never a fair fight. This has been Putin’s advantage all along, and his statements in India are consistent with it. The problem is that Zelensky’s statement seems to display a lack of political realism regarding Putin’s strategy and objectives, given the Ukrainian territory “won” by Putin without being dislodged by Ukraine and the European Union. This doesn’t even count the possible commercial deals being quietly negotiated by Jared Kushner on behalf of silent investors unknown to nearly everyone, including Zelensky.

The invasion was occurring during, and even abetting, the ascendence of militarized political realism at the expense of international constraints on naked power-aggression. It seems that the Europeans, including Zelensky, had not received this memo, and were still expending Putin to give and take as if Ukraine and Russia could reach justice as equals. It bears remembering Nietzsche’s point that justice is only achievable between parties equal in power. That equality itself is an illusion is a point made by Hume. At any rate, the disparity of military power between Russia and Ukraine as 2025 was drawing to a close should dispel any idyllic thoughts that Putin might give in on his initial military objectives not only with respect to Ukraine, but also with the broader Novorossiya too. It bears remembering that appeasement with Hitler didn’t work, and that that strategy gave not only Britain, but also Germany time to militarize. The E.U.’s self-inflicted handicap of the veto-power of its states, and the refusal of the Europeans to make the necessary structural/procedural correction even in spite of the anticipated enlargement, but also Russia’s ongoing aggression to the east, can be viewed as tacit appeasement even though Trump’s enabling of Putin’s government went far beyond appeasement. Indeed, the stance of the Trump administration alone should have bolted the Europeans into reforming their own federal system even though state officials quite obviously didn’t want to give up (i.e., delegate) more power even for collective action to push back Russia’s invasion in Eastern Europe. All of this only fortified Putin in staying the course.  

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1. Jessie Yeung, “Putin Vows Russia Will Seize Donbas Region by any Means, as Ukrainians Prepare for More Peace Talks with US,” CNN.com, December 4, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Putin's Fear: Autocratic War Triggering a Russian Revolution

Having watched Oliver Stone's lengthy interviews of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, which had been taped several years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I noticed something very different about the autocrat's demeanor in a video made after a year of the war: his shifty eyes.[1] It was not difficult to infer that the former KGB spy's trained suspiciousness of people had intensified. At the very least, the man looked pensive or nervous. A few weeks earlier, an anti-Putin Russian group may have been responsible for flying a drone over the Kremlin to blow up the dome, and even more recently such a group may have attacked militarily on Russian soil elsewhere. Putin may have been afraid of being assassinated. It is even possible that he had realized that a full-blown revolution could happen. 

Days after an anxious Putin had sat down with the head of Russia's constitutional court, the head of the mercenary military Wagner group, which fights for Russia, warned that if Russia continued to suffer more casualties, "all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917."[2] It is highly improbable that Vladimir Putin would release power as easily as the weak Russian emperor Peter III did after just six months of his reign when Russian troops loyal to Catherine enacted a coup even though she was German and the Russians had been fighting a war against Fredrick's Prussia. 

Whereas the Russian revolution in 1917 was in line with Russia's autocratic-state historical culture, a revolution against Putin could be in democratic direction because Putin had squandered the opening for democracy in the 1990's by incrementally tightening his reigns until it could be said that he had become a dictator. Russians were being locked up during the war just or calling the conflict a war; protests against the war were firmly put down by police wielding clubs. Police initiating violence against non-violent people, as if they were disobedient dogs, naturally triggers the impulse for democratic accountability rather than for tightened autocracy. While this impulse was up against a formidable cultural headwind when absolute monarchy was the norm in the world, the world in 2023 provided the prospective Russian revolutionaries with enough functioning democratic republics abroad for there to be a tailwind in moving in a democratic direction. 

Of course, I am biased in that I was born and raised in a democratic system in which the ideology was instilled in me even when I was a child. Even so, I have not read of a country in which its dictatorship has been held accountable from within the system of government. Furthermore, Rousseau had a good argument against dictatorships in claiming that we are born free but live our lives in chains. The liberty is innate whereas the chains are artificial, hence, I submit, a natural right can be derived. 

1. "Putin's Latest Move Includes a Map of the 17th Century," CNN, May 23, 2023 (accessed May 24, 2023)

2. Rob Picheta and Mariya Knight, "Wagner Chief Warns Russians Could Revolt If Invasion Continues," May 24, 2023. (accessed same day)

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

 Together, the fear of the Syrian Christians and the “foreign policy” of the Moscow patriarchate were forestalling internal and external forces, respectively, from having achieving enough power to stop the human rights abuses in Syria. This is ironic because Jesus preached selflessness, or self-emptying love for one’s neighbor (agape seu benevolentia universalis). I suspect that the martyrs of the early Church would be shocked to find such self-serving provincialism in the sectarian groups, both in Syria and the Russian capital.

The following observation from Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is telling if not poignant. “What we see now in Syria is systemic failure—it’s brutal, it’s now an insurgency—but in the end its just systemic failure. If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they’re going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn’t have a long-term future.” I would add that the hitching makes the Christians and their leaders into hypocrites. That is, it contradicts Christian love as preached and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, compassion when it is least convenient was being thrown under the bus in the service of a sectarian interest.

                                              Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church             NYT

When Russian Patriarch Kirill visited Damascus in late 2011 after 3,500 Syrians had been killed by government forces and the Arab League had suspended Syria’s membership, he “made a sympathetic appearance with [Assad], praising Syria’s treatment of Christians and making no mention of the mounting death toll,” according to the New York Times. Apparently the death of thousands of people is fine as long as one’s own kind is treated well. The good of a part outweighs the good of the whole. This point applies as well to the related opposition of Putin to efforts at the UN’s Security Council to take measures against the Syrian government. That is to say, Putin’s relationships to the patriarch and to Assad are more important than a higher good, such as stopping the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Syrians.

It follows that the vetoes held on the Security Council can and should be questioned because the parts holding them cannot be assumed to have any regard for the “big picture” or the common good at the global level. Even if the violent acts by Assad’s men are consistent with the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government, the international system is not served by a government that gets away with violating rather than protecting its citizens’ human rights. 

Source:

Ellen Barry, “Russian Church Is a Strong Voice Opposing Intervention in Syria,” The New York Times, June 1, 2012. 

Russia Invades Ukraine as World Squashes Anti-Semitism

At a joint EU-US news-conference on 26 March 2014, Presidents Barroso, Van Rompuy, and Obama discussed the problematic Russian invasion of the Crimea province of Ukraine.  The “chairman” of the European Council and the “chief executive” of the European Commission both responded to concerns that the European Union had not stood up to its business interests in order to enact economic sanctions capable of putting Putin back in his pen. Even though the two EU presidents sought to "puff up" the force latent in the sanctions already in place, Barroso insightfully made the more significant point that aggressively sending tanks across a border was no longer tolerable. Perhaps from “lessons learned” from Hitler’s exploits in the twentieth century, global challenges such as global warming (and, relatedly, the species’ over-population), and an internet-enabled closer world in the twenty-first century, a paradigm-shift in international relations may harken some sorely needed progress in international relations (i.e., political development)  in the new millennium. The key would be a stark refusal to tolerate a practice that had been tacitly accommodated, even in opposition, just decades earlier. 

Did President Obama miss a chance to put Putin's exploits into historical perspective? President Barroso may have come out of the news conference as the visionary leader. 

(Image Source: Reuters)

The turn from one century to another is admittedly artificial as far as empirical (i.e., observed) change is concerned. Indeed, the internet actually took off during the last decade of the twentieth century, rather than in the new millennium. Even so, a temporal benchmark, especially one involving a new millennium, can spark a moment of reflection “taking stock” of gradual shifts that would otherwise go unnoticed in their accumulated significance. This “product” can in turn leave its own imprint, such that a new paradigm is “born” (i.e., recognized). On the individual level, while turning 60 does not instantaneously turn a person into an old man or woman, the milestone can prompt a person to re-evaluate previous lifestyle choices and thus have a real impact on the person’s life as well as self-identity. Additionally, the “big picture” reflection that a benchmark birthday triggers can easily enable recognition of the many gradual changes in the aging process that would otherwise go unnoticed and thus without conscious effect. The same dynamic can occur at the societal level, especially when a new millennium is in the mix.

Considering the dramatic technological advances that took place in the twentieth century, the relative dearth of political development in or out of the nation-state system is telling. The American invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Crimea in the first and second decades, respectively, of the twenty-first century dispelled any hope that the internet revolution might make the increasingly integrated world a “kinder and gentler” place in which nations can play together. Yet I suspect something subtle had changed between the two invasions, as evinced in Barroso’s statement at the EU-US news conference in 2014. “The real problem is this,” he said. “(I)n the twenty-first century it’s just not acceptable that one big power takes part of another sovereign country recognized by the United Nations.” Hearing this, I could not remember such a “new epoch” statement having been made by a country’s president as the U.S. military was toppling statues in Baghdad. Something had changed—but what exactly?

To be sure, the status-quo dies hard. Obama essentially reinforced it by serving up a warmed-over dish. “It’s about the kind of world in which we live,” he said, citing the familiar respect for national sovereignty and international law, both of which Russia violated in invading Ukraine. At least as far as the U.N. Security Council is concerned, Putin was well aware of the concept of national sovereignty. Obama’s response does not begin to get at Putin’s belief that his legislature had given him the right to invade Ukraine. As political rights apply only within the polity that grants them, Putin’s avowed right would have to be natural, as in the right of the strong to subdue the weak by sheer might. Barroso’s line in the sand effectively says that the world had moved on from tolerating the law of the jungle.

Generally speaking, a person used to doing something as it’s always been done will need to feel the considerable force of the “new rules” for them to have any effect. Such is the force of habit, and the presumption that goes along with it. The muted force of the European and American economic sanctions fall short from effecting a course correction in line with new standards. Resorting to the (also antiquated) knee-jerk military response would have only meant that the E.U. and U.S. government officials had decided to reaffirm “the old way.” Instead of being countered, Putin would feel the added confidence of a paradigm reaffirmed.

It thus appears that a new paradigm making invasion a heretofore relic of an early epoch in history had not sufficiently gelled. Another way of seeing this is by looking at a more firmly established post-twentieth-century paradigm: one forged by the horror of the Nazi holocaust.

As unmarked Russian military men were fomenting civil unrest in the eastern parts of Ukraine, masked men handed pamphlets to Jews leaving a Passover service in Donetsk. The Jews were presumably to register and provide a list of their respective properties and pay a registration "fee" of $50. The pamphlet read in part, "ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion . . . as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you."[1] Noncomplying Jews would “be deprived of their citizenship and deported outside the republic and their property confiscated.”[2] Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (the newly declared pro-Russian government) had signed the leaflets, giving them the connotation of authoritative legitimacy. 

Not surprisingly, it did not take long for scathing reactions to come in from around the world. US Secretary of State John Kerry (who once tried to convince me that he is a fiscal conservative because he believes in efficient government) issued a statement saying, "This is not just intolerable--it's grotesque."[3] A rabbi who had received one of the leaflets told NBC News, "[I] couldn't believe it was real." Such reactions as these indicate that the anti-semitic paradigm that had held such currency in prior centuries, including the previous one, was essentially "dead on arrival" in the twenty-first century. 

That is to say, the intellectual "blown away" aspect of the ensuing international condemnation eviscerated any semblance of credibility for the leaflets; the anti-semitic paradigm had been so resolutely discredited by the world's discovery of the Nazi holocaust some seventy years earlier that the stunt fell flat on its face in the Ukraine. Barroso’s reaction to Putin's invasion could easily apply. Registering one's Jewish religion just isn’t done anymore. Not today. Not in our world. Considering all the bloodshed in WWI and WWII, Barroso's clarion call of a paradigm change has just as much merit as Kerry's statement. Both the leaflets and Putin's presumed prerogative can leave onlookers around the world saying to ourselves, I can't believe this is happening. So why is one essentially being allowed while the other was stopped in its tracks? The explanation probably lies with the respective paradigms--one of the two still having some residual currency in our collective mentality.

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1. Oren Dorell, "Outrage as Jews Told to Register in East Ukraine," USA Today, April 18-20, 2014.
2. Andrew Kramer, “Demands That Jews Register in Eastern Ukraine Are Denounced, and Denied,” The New York Times, April 17, 2014.
3. Dorell, "Outrage."