Why Support Ukraine’s War with Russia? October 8, 2023 Dr. Roger Ray
Wikipedia: Thomas Aquinas’ Just War Theory - According to Aquinas, three requirements must be met. Firstly, the war must be waged upon the command of a legitimate
sovereign. Secondly, the war needs to be waged for just cause, on account of some wrong the attacked have committed. Thirdly, warriors must have the right intent, namely to promote good and to avoid evil.
When I have been asked why I decided to become a minister, I always say that the primary factor was the way which the Vietnam War radicalized me. My father was a W.W. II vet and though he was traumatized by his war experience, he stuttered and night terrors until he died at the age of 92, still, he was proud of his service.
He wasn’t the sort to go to military reunions or to hang out at the VFW, but we discovered, when he died, that he had continued to send donations far beyond what he could afford to wounded veterans’ charities.
W.W. II was always thought of as the “good war.” I am sure that no one in my rural Kentucky town ever questioned how the US embargo against shipping metals to Japan, slowing their industrialization, might have caused the attack on Pearl Harbor. But in my Southern Kentucky context, such things as “causes” or “reasons” were not considered. Furthermore, because my father’s generation had been convinced that W.W. II was the great war, they tended to credit every military action taken by the United States to be a “fight to defend our freedom.”
Just as no one in Glasgow, Kentucky talked about our embargo of industrial supplies to Japan created the tensions between us and the Japanese, they certainly knew nothing of how we got involved in Vietnam, taking over the defense of a French colony that was the world’s leading source of natural rubber which was still needed by the growing automobile industry.
I don’t recall anything ever being said in the news about this issue and the propaganda about having to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam because of some “domino theory,” was obviously absurd, even to a 14-year-old high school student in Glasgow, Kentucky, where, as I have told you before, the zip code is E-I-E-I-O.
I read books written by imprisoned draft resistors that our school librarian probably didn’t even know that we had on the shelves. I was convinced that our involvement in that war was wrong, morally wrong, and the only way that I had to express my objections in a way that wouldn’t get me kicked out of the house for being a communist, was to express my beliefs in religious terms. I rehearsed those speeches so many times through high school and college that I could have hardly ended up anywhere other than seminary.
In those days, I wanted to think of myself as a religious pacifist. Certainly, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. had championed non-violent resistance in something like that voice. Martin Luther King very clearly insisted that the suffering of black Americans certainly wasn’t coming from Vietnam, and he insisted that our country realign its priorities.
But it deserves to be asked, are there ever good and just causes for going to war? Certainly, repelling an invasion is justified. What about stopping a genocide or a holocaust, even if our own country is not being threatened, that would be a noble cause wouldn’t it?
For centuries, philosophers and kings have offered “Just War” theories. Augustine spoke to this issue voluminously, but it was St. Thomas of Aquinas who formalized a statement of the conditions of a just war. His work has stood up to the test of time pretty well. He said that:
Firstly, the war must be waged upon the command of a rightful sovereign. That is, it can’t be a terrorist act or a rouge rebellion. Only a government can wage war.
Secondly, the war needs to be waged for just cause, on account of some wrong the attacked have committed. That is, it can’t be to steal another nation’s land or wealth. Which limits countries pretty much to self-defense or to stop an egregious crime like a holocaust or a genocide.
Thirdly, St. Thomas says, warriors must have the right intent, namely to promote good and to avoid evil. Because, even when we seem to be going to war for the right reasons, soldiers often seem to behave badly, adding rape, torture, murder, and robbery to the battlefield. St. Thomas envisioned an army of noble soldiers.
I’m not a historian, but I don’t think that many just wars have been fought if we take Thomas seriously because none of this is simple and the real causes of a war are never so black and white. We understand that bombings by citizens in Northern Ireland are in protest of British rule, but would we be sympathetic if Native Americans began to set off bombs in American cities in protest of the Europeans invasion and genocide in North America? We have objected strongly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but there is a lot of history there. Russia historically got its start in what is now Ukraine and the borders have changed many times over the centuries. There are parts of Ukraine where Russian was the dominant language and the majority of the population preferred to be a part of Russia.
When do boundaries become permanent? What is legitimate territorial reclamation and what is invasion and occupation? Does Israel have a right to claim the West Bank because, possibly, during the time of King David, it was Jewish controlled? What about the people who have lived there for the last two thousand years? People who don’t think that the Hebrew scriptures are telling the truth about God promising real estate to one ethnic group or another?
As a pacifist, I would like to “Rodney King” the whole issue of modern warfare and just say, “Why can’t we all just get along?” But it is never just that simple.
Those of you who have followed my work for a while will recognize the name of the famous WW I general, Smedley Butler, who wrote the book, “War is a Racket,” A very short book but worth your time. Butler was convinced that nearly all wars ended up being an excuse to transfer wealth and power into the hands of a very few people and that the soldiers were just exploited for this purpose, costing them life and limb to make war profiteers rich.
Butler proposed an amendment to the constitution that, were it put to a popular vote, might well pass in an afternoon. His amendment proposed that our soldiers could never be sent off of the United States, unless of course they were defending the Panama Canal. His proposed amendment would limit our navy to sailing no more than 500 miles from our shores and our air force had to stay within 750 miles of American territory. This adamant non-interventionalist position sure could have saved us a lot of lives and money over the past century and I know most Americans would absolutely love it, but is it just for a nation of our size and power to take a hands-off approach to the rest of the world? Is that, in and of itself, just?
This is especially significant in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To put this conflict into context, let me remind you that when the Soviet Union was falling apart, NATO countries were legitimately concerned about how reliable some of those Eastern European countries were going to be, not only to govern themselves, but to sensibly manage the nuclear arsenals, located on their land, that had once been managed by the Soviet government.
Russia and NATO powers persuaded Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons, and their stockpile was the largest in the world, based on the promise that the west would come to their defense if they were ever invaded by Russia, and we promised Russia that we would never try to expand NATO any closer to Russia.
That set of circumstances worked pretty well for about 30 years. However, we didn’t defend the Ukraine when, in 2014, Russia took the Crimea. I don’t know that we have ever gotten an honest account of that failure to live up to our promises, but I suspect that Crimea was “Russian enough” to be a plausible acquisition and it was needed for both shipping and oil and gas pipelines. Who are we to object to taking military action to defend our economic interests?
Early in February of 2022, when Russia was positioning troops on the border with Ukraine, I thought it was a bluff. In fact, I remember saying at the time that Putin was chest thumping because we had, in fact, been working hard to move NATO influence closer and closer to Russia, as we had solemnly promised that we would not. So, I thought it was a threat to send a signal to the west. Evidently, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thought so too, because he literally made fun of President Biden for making so many public warnings about an immanent Russian invasion. Clearly, American intelligence was better than Ukrainian intelligence because Biden was right, and Zelenskyy was wrong.
However, Putin did not want to just warn Ukraine about getting too close to NATO, he intended to annex the whole country and end the debate. And in so doing, Nixon’s old “domino theory” excuse for war started to look pretty plausible. In February of 2020, I thought Putin had very rational reasons for concern. But I have not been able to use the word, “rational” in reference to Putin since that time because his conduct of the war has been anything but rational.
War is never black and white. There is never just one good side and one bad side. However, when we start to wonder what makes up a “just war,” Putin’s Russia has made this war appear to be about as black and white as modern warfare can be.
In 1989, when the Soviet Union was disintegrating, my old college roommate went to the Army language training center in California because, he believed, the Army would pay him to study Russian but that within a couple of years, industry would hire him to be a translator in the huge business explosion that would be taking place in Russia. I adopted my daughter from Korea in early 1989 and she was among the last of Korean babies adopted out to the west and so we thought that our second baby would probably be coming from Russia.
But corruption in Russia made western businesses pull out almost as quickly as they had rushed in and parents who tried to adopt, most often found themselves being asked for bribes to government officials that became so exorbitant and the whole Russian adoption thing virtually never happened.
Russia went from being a corrupt communist government into being a corrupt oligarchy, ruled by oligarchs who had become rich through bribes and corruption.
Ukraine was similarly famous for the same kind of corruption. In fact, my first introduction to Volodymyr Zelensky when he was described as being Eastern Europe’s Jon Stewart. He was a comedian who had a TV show making fun of the corrupt Ukrainian government. He played a corruption fighting president on TV before his popularity got him into politics and he was elected to be an actual corruption fighting president.
I’m not going to stake my reputation on this, but I don’t know how much progress he was really making in fighting corruption until Russia did invade a year and a half ago, and everything got real. Most western leaders didn’t take Zelensky very seriously at first until history turned a comedian into the leader the Ukraine needed.
Mind you, our media likes to keep things simple and so they have mostly described this conflict in only black and white terms. War is dirty business and there is no way to fight a war and remain morally pure. And, Putin’s allegations of Ukrainian government corruption and of Nazi influence in some regions of the Ukraine were not false. He had a point but its not like you can say that being taken over by Russia would not simply make matters worse for Ukraine.
To get and keep the military and financial support of the United States and the rest of NATO, Ukraine has been having to clean up its act very aggressively, although some of those Nazi influenced soldiers seem to be pretty good at fighting, any visible government corruption is being addressed quickly.
Were it not for support from NATO countries, Ukraine wouldn’t have survived more than a few weeks of this war. And, sadly, if Trump had won the last election, he would not likely have done anything to thwart Putin’s designs on taking over the whole country. For whatever reason, be it sympathy or blackmail, Trump will never stand up to Putin.
So, we have an election coming up in just over a year that is more important to this war than any election in the Ukraine. President Biden has been the glue that has brought NATO together in support of Ukraine in this war and without him, I don’t that NATO’s unity would survive. If Trump is elected, next November then the Ukraine will quickly fall into Russia’s hands and things may not be looking too good for Poland.
A lot of religious people are so opposed to war that they have been calling for immediate negotiations with Russia, even if it means giving up big pieces of Ukraine. I, frankly, tend to share General Smedley Butler’s cynicism about almost all wars. Even when there is just cause for conflict, that doesn’t keep war profiteers from getting involved to fleece the country.
In fact, though said tongue in cheek, I have often said that I am personally so opposed to military conflict that I am already against the next war, wherever it may be. But now I think that we must take a more sober view of what it means to enter a just war, even if, because of the nuclear potential of getting involved more directly, it must remain a proxy war.
In the early 20th century, General Butler made an exception for his non-interventionalist views in the case of the Panama Canal because the Panama Canal was crucial to world trade, especially regarding food. The longer some foods are in the hold of a ship, the more of it gets lost to spoilage and vermin. So, I see why he made that exception.
But the world of the early 21st century is even more interconnected than Butler could have even imagined. For example, Russia is blocking sea traffic in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. That’s not hard to understand since Ukraine’s resupply of ammunition and war related supplies comes through those ports. But the Ukraine is also a major exporter of grain, most of which goes to some of the poorest nations in the world in the Middle East and Africa. That creates and economic hardship for Ukrainian farmers, a humanitarian crisis, especially in Africa, but that loss of grain on the world market also makes the price of my Cheerios go way up and inflation in the USA also hurts the most poor and at risk people all over the world.
We are trying to embargo Russia’s oil and gas to cut off their ability to fund their illegal war but that drives up the price of heating oil all over Europe and threatens the energy needs of industry in India and China. Still, is this level of global destabilization sufficient reason to prolong the war by supplying Ukraine with the sophisticated and powerful weapons we are giving them?
When Russia took the Crimea, and the rest of the world stood idly by and watched, only 6 people were killed, and three of those six were protestors, not soldiers.
Six people but compare that with the casualty count in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At this point, we estimate that a quarter of a million Russians have been killed and about 130,000 Ukrainians. It is important to note that most of these deaths have been civilians with only a fraction having died while in battle. The war is nowhere near being over and almost 400,000 people are dead. What justifies this? Can anything justify this?
If I could believe that the rumors are true and that Putin is gravely ill and will be dead soon, maybe that would be reason to keep fighting. But if I could believe that he really would settle for holding onto some part of Ukraine as an additional buffer against NATO, I might be inclined to trade some real estate for an end to the bloodshed. But, of course, that’s not my decision to make, nor is it the right of anyone living outside of Ukraine to decide to give up a part of their country in exchange for peace.
I will not conclude this sermon in the way that I have so many others, saying that this is just my opinion and that I just so happen to be right. This is, however, just my opinion, but I know that I could be wrong.
Here are the things which I believe that spiritual persons, people who have a social conscience, should consider:
1) This is undoubtedly a proxy war in which NATO is willing to fund the Ukrainian military so that they fight a war to weaken Russia that we cannot fight ourselves without starting a nuclear, possibly world ending, war.
2) The cost of this war is not just the lives of brave Ukrainians but it is also draining the finances of the USA and many European countries so this war’s costs include healthcare not provided to millions of poor people, public housing projects that don’t get built, schools, fire stations, renewable energy resources, that don’t get built, and bridges that don’t get repaired, because we are spending our money on bombs, bullets, and airplanes.
3) And finally, I will offer this; If Putin is not near death, any concession we make to him now will make every other country in eastern Europe less safe. I was wrong to believe that Putin wouldn’t really invade the Ukraine and I don’t think the rest of the world should be at all Cavaliere about the fact that Putin is a 21st century Hitler who must be stopped, even though stopping him comes at a very high price. Placating tyrants always ends up costing more than it costs to stop their empire building delusions.
Which, though no one asked, is why I think that it is important for Donald Trump to serve real jail time for his many crimes. Democracy itself is not safe if we allow a tyrant like Trump to get away with leading an insurrection and trying to set our constitution aside, and ignore the results of a free and fair election. Bu t that observation is for free and isn’t really related to the topic of this sermon.
The corporations that manufacture bombs, bullets, and airplanes are getting rich off of this war, even though we want to resupply the beleaguered Ukrainian army, the military industrial complex wins when countries fight, no matter which country ultimately wins the war. In that sense, General Smedley Butler is 100% right. We should avoid military conflict in virtually every instance except for these times when failing to take up arms causes much more suffering than the more satisfying pacifist response.
Non-violent protest is always best . . . except for when it isn’t. War is never black or white. No war is a “good war.” But some causes are more just than a dogmatic neutrality because, as Elie Wiesel said, “neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed.”
So, it is my belief that it would be wrong to remain neutral in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I have chosen a side, and even a post-theistic pastor can say at a moment like this, “God help us.”
From the founding of our church, our motto has always been, “Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By.” To choose to sit this one out is to give aid to the tyrants who cause death and suffering all over the world, and that, my friends, is not our portion.
