Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, September 13

Religion and Geopolitics Review this week includes:

• As Scots eye independence, rest of UK gets nervous
• President Obama on the Way to the So-Called Ceasefire in Ukraine
• Viktor Orbán's Rejection of the Liberal Political Model
• Hungary eyes Russia's 'illiberal model'
• Nationalism, Not NATO, Is Our Great Ally

An article at the Washington Post's website describes what could be the unraveling of the United Kingdom, with Scotland voting on September 18 whether or not to seek independence. The article explains that the liberal-led Scottish independence movement under the Labour Party would take enough liberal representatives with them that it would leave Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party with a 37-seat majority. With this majority, Cameron could press forward with Great Britain's exit from the European Union.

As the United Kingdom distances itself from the European Union, the United States  presses ahead with plans to further integrate Ukraine into the European Union. This move by the US, however, is seen as the latest misstep in what Patrick Smith at the Fiscal Times ranks "among the worst of its numerous foreign-policy errors." In an article on Obama's foreign policy in Ukraine, Smith argues that President Obama's State Department, under Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, went forward with the coup in Ukraine despite the European-backed deal to hold a special Ukrainian presidential election last May.

Although tensions are on the rise between the United States and Russia, Hungarian-Russian relations have never been better. Hungary, whose new constitution explicitly speaks of the Christian faith in Hungary while rejecting the communist era and abortion, is beginning to reawaken as a Christian nation. As Hungary seeks to abandon the radical individualism of the liberal atheist West, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is now eyeing the illiberal political model used in "Singapore, China, India, Turkey, [and] Russia." Seeing Russia as its closest Christian ally, Hungary and Russia have begun deepening their ties.

Hungary and Russia are not the only ones looking at the "progressive" West with suspicion. Conservative  journalist and author Pat Buchanan has written on nationalism as a far greater ally than NATO (the armed wing of the atheist West). The rising tide of nationalism, Buchanan argues, will be a countervailing power on the European Union, Russia, and any imperial ambitions in China.