Friday BookReview -- ARMENIA: the Calvary of the first Christian nation

[first published February 13, 2015]

"Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" 

(The question offered by Hitler on the eve of his invasion of Poland, 

Sept 1939 -- one week after the Nazis and Soviets had become allies)

                 

A couple months from now, Armenians will mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre of their forebears by the Ottoman Turks. More than a million and a half perished. 

In many ways this slaughter was both a revolt against the Islamic structure of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire by the modern  nationalism of the Young Turks, as well as a mass murder of an Orthodox people who slowed the way of the emerging ethnic secular nation of Turkey.     

(It is one of the current causes for the increasing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The latter has more than three times the population of Armenia, and far greater wealth because of the Caspian Sea oil.)

This five-minute ABC News report provides an overview of the first of the world's many twentieth-century genocides.

From a review of a book by an Armenian priest, an eyewitness of the slaughter:

Given recent history, it would seem the term "ethnic cleansing" is of late 20th Century origin. Armenian Golgotha, Grigoris Balakian's firsthand account of the genocide during World War I, disabuses any such notion. Balakian notes several times that the Ottoman Empire embarked on an intentional campaign to "cleanse" itself of Armenians... 

Balakian was one of some 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders arrested by government order in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, the event commonly viewed as the beginning of the campaign against Armenians in Turkey. Calling what ensued "cleansing" is perhaps the least blunt description used in his memoir. Perhaps that is because Balakian attributes its use to a police captain who escorted him during part of his trip into exile. According to Balakian, "the Turks always used this term, especially the government officials, when referring to the massacre of Armenians."  

Massacre is a term used far more often [by Balakian]... He frequently says the Ottoman Empire's actions were a deliberate plan to "annihilate" or "to completely exterminate the Armenian race." First published in 1922, Armenian Golgotha was, sadly, a preview of what the world would become all too familiar with later in the 20th Century, whether the Holocaust in World War II or the "ethnic cleansing" that occurred in Europe, Asia, and Africa later in the century. Yet Balakian never uses the term genocide. There's good reason — it was not coined until 1943...  

Armenian Golgotha is actually a combination of two separate volumes written by Balakian after the war. The first, called "The Life of an Exile" in the book, was the work published in Armenian in 1922 and covers Balakian's life from the beginning of the war through his journey from Constantinople toward Der Zor, an outpost in today's Syria abutting a vast desert where thousands of Armenians died. The second volume, "The Life of a Fugitive," details his escape and two years of disguises, false identities, and struggles in an often harrowing effort to return to Constantinople. It was not published until 1959, some 55 years after his death, when it was discovered among his sister's papers when she died. With the assistance of a variety of people, American poet and author Peter Balakian began translating the work into English in 1999, a process that culminated in the book's publication in the U.S. in 2009. The book was released in trade paper last month.  

Balakian relates the stories of massacre upon massacre on the forced marches to exile... In addition to outright murder, thousands would die along the way or in overcrowded, filthy camps whose conditions Balakian says the Turks created in the hope of starting epidemics... 

"In reality," Balakian writes, "deport was synonymous with murder." In fact, "the life an Armenian was worth less than that of a chick or chicken."  

The effects of these events on individuals is seen even in Balakian. Although he credits his survival to his faith, there are times it appears even that comes into question. At one point, rather than pointing to prayer, he observes that "believing that wishing for something could make it happen, I used to repeat over and over to those around me, 'I have decided not to die.'" And the seemingly endless horror and atrocities leads him to conclude later that "we'd been abandoned by both God and mankind; our only salvation was the grave, but we couldn't even count on that."  

Balakian's perspective is unique in other respects. Fluent in Armenian, Turkish and German, he was able to speak directly with individuals who experienced or observed the events from a wide variety of standpoints. In addition, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austria-Hungary throne, was assassinated in 1914 and war was subsequently declared, Balakian was studying in Berlin and provides firsthand accounts of events there. And on November 13, 1918, he saw 44 warships of the Entente fleet steam past Constantinople into the Bosphorus.  

In addition to the extreme and excruciating events during the war, Balakian also recognizes an outcome that, while not physically painful or fatal, was at least as damaging and deadly for Armenians as a whole. He repeatedly comments that the deaths of the Armenian "martyrs" and one of the hopes that kept survivors going was that in pursuit of an independent Armenian nation once the war was over. Yet that dream was little more than false hope based on a belief the Entente powers were fighting for "rights and justice" and on misleading promises. "After the Armistice, all such promises would soon be forgotten, as each victorious power aimed first to secure the lion's share of territory for itself," Balakian writes. "An oil field would prove much more valuable than the fate of a small and weak Christian people." Thus, although an independent Armenian republic was proclaimed, in late 1920 it was invaded and subsumed by Turkey and the Soviet Union, giving pause to whether the suffering of the Armenians was meaningless.  

Those who deny or dispute whether the Ottoman Empire embarked on a genocidal campaign against the Armenians will, of course, find Armenian Golgotha biased and one-sided. Others will find it an excruciating firsthand account of ethnic torment. But the somewhat surprising fact that the Armenian genocide continues to cause debate nearly a century later doesn't detract from the fact Balakian accomplished his main goal — to commemorate the events of 1914-1918 and the people caught up in them.

Armenia was the first nation to embrace Christ en masse -- so early, in fact, it predated the Council of Nicaea by more than 20 years! Their gratitude for this is centered on their patron saint, Gregory the Illuminator.

The capital since 1918, Yerevan, has a population of a million (one-third of nation). The main religious center of Armenia, however, is Etchmiadzin -- the fourth largest city.
                               

                                                     

Etchmiadzin Cathedral

From the poem "Wishes for Armenia" by Bedros Tourian, who died very young of consumption (1872):

The starry sky no comfort brings:

To me it seems a veil

Strewn with the tears that Ararat

Sheds from his summit pale...

Armenia’s mountains dark may smile,

Siberia’s ice may smoke,

But stern, unbending spirits still

Press on my neck the yoke.

Inflexible and cold are they;

When feeling surges high,

And I would speak, they stifle down

My free soul’s bitter cry.

Forget thee, justice ? Never!

But ere my life departs,

Rather may I become a sword,

And make thee pierce men’s hearts!

When e’en the rich man and the priest

A patriot’s ardor feel,

And when Armenian hearts at length

Are stirred with love and zeal —

When free-souled sons Armenia bears,

These days of coldness past,

And fires of love and brotherhood

Are lighted up at last —

Shall I forget thee then, my lyre?

Ah, no ! but when I die

Rather may I become thy voice,

And o’er Armenia sigh!

UPDATE: One European visitor said he had to be almost dragged away from the Noravank monastery set in the red hills, it was so fascinating.

Here is an article on the newest Doctor of the Church.

Christian Realism: An American Strategy for our War with Saudi Arabia and the Salafists

[first published June 30, 2016 with a revision Jan 5, 2017]



by Dr. David Pence

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The purpose of our Thursday Christian Realism entries has been to apply the religious historical thinking of Christopher Dawson to American foreign policy. He understood that nations grow out of cultures, and cultures develop within religions.

We have argued here and in the press that the Ivy League careerists and power couples who fill our State Department and foreign policy think tanks have a blind spot in understanding the male communal forces of religion and nationalism which drive so much of human history.

We have defined our true enemy as those who hold the Salafist-jihadi ideology contending for the soul of  Sunni Islam. [Salafi means "ancestor," and the ideology is a movement among Sunnis to return to a purer fighting form of Islam]. This ideology is centered in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It is responsible for more than 95 percent of terrorist acts against the US. We then argued that we would have to realign forces with Shiite states (Iran and Iraq), Orthodox Russia, Hindu India, Jewish Israel, and Confucian China to isolate and destroy this movement within Islam that threatens to dominate the Sunni world.

The US has mistaken our enemy largely because we have tried to fight this new religious war within the structure of our Cold War alliances which tied us to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The baby-boomer presidents have also mistaken their generational revolt against gender and nature as a new chapter in human history. They brought neither historical intelligence nor matured character to the world stage where they found themselves as actors. They learned how to win elections, but they never became statesmen. Bill Clinton (with Sec of State Albright), Bush (Condi Rice), and Obama (Hillary Clinton) were utterly out-maneuvered on the world stage of religions, nations, and armed men acting in history. No matter how many awards a Bush would give a Clinton, or compliments a Clinton would give a McCain -- these officials would never approach the historical maturation of Eisenhower and Dulles, Nixon and Kissinger, or Carter and Brzezinski. This has led to a debilitating incoherence and misdirection in foreign policy since the Cold War was won. It got much worse after the 9/11 attacks as the worldly-wise Saudis played our partisan careerists like so many banjos.

The recent Orlando massacre, the exit of Britain from the European Union, and the growing Congressional movement to reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia have buttressed our earlier arguments. We offer six goals as a guiding framework for American foreign policy. These goals are not listed in chronological order. The art of strategy, in fact, dictates that the first goal will be achieved most effectively only as the latter goals are realized more fully.

First: The United States should declare war on Saudi Arabia and seek Muslim allies who will replace the Wahhabi Salafists as the keepers of the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. This should be in strategic conjunction with a warning to ISIS to evacuate their women and children before a final reckoning destroys their short-lived state.

As the great Lee Kuan Yew said:
"In killing the terrorists, you will only kill the worker bees. The queen bees are the preachers, who teach a deviant form of Islam in schools and Islamic centers, who capture and twist the minds of the young."

                                   

President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah

Second: The United States should seek deep alliances with our old allies in World War Two. We battled them during the Cold War. We made peace with our enemies -- Germany and Japan -- after World War Two. It is time to make a real peace with those who shed so much blood as our allies in WWII, and then all too quickly became our enemies in the Cold War. This begins with Russia, China, and India. We should concede to those great civilizational nations hegemony in their own regions. This means we should consider leaving NATO, and oppose the military build-up in the Russian western border nations. We should grant China hegemony in the South China Sea and encourage the development of that region as "a platform of cooperation," not a minefield for confrontation. China has a historical claim to territorial deference paid for by 10 million war dead in WWII. This is being ignored in the name of Eurocentric international rules of the seas. We should strengthen ties with India and its 125 million English speakers. We must end our alliance with the jihadists and Taliban enablers of Pakistan. We should concentrate much more effort on reforming our own nation and relating to the Christian nations of the Americas.

Third: The Salafist Sunni movement of Saudi Arabia is a sworn enemy to Shiites, Christians, and Jews. We must take seriously whom they are killing. The bombing of Shiites in Yemen is religious persecution and none of our claims as Christians for religious liberty is believable as long as we allow that slaughter in one of the poorest countries in the world to continue. Our country’s leaders have been deceived, misdirected, and manipulated by the Saudis. Somehow we think as long as the killing is from high in the air, and we have no "boots on the ground," that our hands are less bloody. Congress doing its duty in a time of war can reverse this policy. There are many indications that the Obama administration is open to correcting this contradiction that has been at the center of our policy for so long. This problem cannot be reduced to a debate of  Democrats against Republicans. A few men from each party will begin to see and speak clearly. Strange alliances will emerge as duty comes forward and careerism finally takes a back seat. We must work to deepen our cooperation with the Shiite states of Iraq and Iran. We must join with Russia to help broker a peace between Israel and Iran. The Shia have been the major victims of the Salafist Sunni religious persecution. This cannot be trivialized as "sectarian violence" or shrugged off as a thousand-year theological disagreement. Lynching black people was not a mutual  breakdown in interracial communications. Labeling the genocidal actions of Salafist jihadists toward the Shia as sectarian violence has been a decades-long scam to obfuscate the source of terror. Just "another instance of the Iran Saudi proxy war" has been another cover especially used by the Saudis in their invasion and bombing campaign against the Houthi Shia of Yemen. The Russian annexation of a willing Crimea and the Chinese port building in the South China Sea cannot hold candles to the Saudis' naked murderous aggression against Yemen’s Shiites. But, apparently, when Saudis cross national boundaries to employ high-tech warfare against religious enemies, there will be no outraged coalition organizing sanctions to protest the invasion. The Salafist/Saudi goal of annihilating Shia Muslims is a fundamental organizing principle of the terrorists. This stark fact necessitates a radical change in our alliances in the Mideast to defeat this demonic scourge.

The site of a car-bomb attack on Shiites in Yemen

Fourth: The alliances we must forge will be as religious men acting through nation states.  This includes an opening to India as an ally of Afghanistan in the battle against Salafist jihadists often based in Pakistan. Our NATO alliance has implicated us in the bombing of Christian Belgrade and the dismemberment of Libya. We must break free from the entangling relations of the Cold War. The nation-state is the fundamental actor in international relations. At the same time, as a Christian nation, we must make special efforts to align with Christian nations (from our South American Catholic neighbors to the Orthodox Russians). We must put forth the Christian goal for humanity as a fraternity of nations expressing the brotherhood of men under God. We must directly offer this as a more realistic vision than the Darwinian paradigm of perpetual war of all against all. We must not allow the Darwinian vision of Hitler to triumph as so called "realism.”
Our alliance with Israel must be much less covert and shaped by our new definition of the enemy to be engaged. This begins by accepting the territorial integrity of Israel as one nation. We must acknowledge the military irresponsibility of leaving Israel with geographically indefensible borders. The two state solution was dead long ago and impairs the clear thinking needed to make real progress. At the same time we must publicly acknowledge and criticize the dangerous alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia. We must attempt to broker a peace between Iran and Israel. One of the great sources of confusion in American foreign policy has been the de facto alliance of the Saudi royal family and Israel against Iran and all other manifestations of Shia Islam in the Mideast. A large faction in Israel sees Iran as the chief enemy and ISIS almost a welcome distraction and co belligerent against the Shia governments.  This is diametrically opposed to the US position.
We must learn geography and religion to understand the limits and providential design of territorial nations and religious communities. The states that are in a fundamental boundary flux are Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. What is their Ummah [an Arab word for community deeper and broader than nations]?  Is there an Arab nation? Is there a Greater Syria? Can there be an extensive new Palestine east of the Jordan? Who should govern the Holy Cities? Will the Shiite people of the Eastern Province and Bahrain be free to rule themselves and their resources? What is the role of the  Hashemites in reconfiguring religious and national loyalties? We know these questions cannot be answered until the demonic Salafist regime that is the queen bee for the jihadist hive is removed. Only then will these matters of religious authority and nation states be resolved by Muslims seeking to do God’s will.

Fifth: Our own nation must repent and turn our hearts back to God. We must culturally put an end to the disastrous baby-boomer project of drugs, sexual confusion, and libertine atheism in the name of feminism and personal autonomy. Our fight against the Salafist jihadists from Boko Haram to Al Shabaab to al Qaeda to ISIS cannot be won if we as a people turn away from God. What was true for Israel in the Bible is true for us: "Unless the Lord build the house, the workers toil in vain."

Atheism and gender ideology have turned American men away from our shared masculine duty and identities as protectors. The reason the nightclub in Orlando was picked for slaughter had nothing to do with hatred toward gays. Omar Mateen was very comfortable at the Pulse nightclub. He knew his soft target very well. He didn’t hate the place or the people. He enjoyed the anything goes atmosphere. There were no bikers or "let's roll" men there to thwart his murderous scheme. He did not go there because he was full of hate. He struck there because he had no fear.

If we are in a worldwide civilizational war and American liberty is represented by gay nightclubs for men and abortion clinics for women, we will lose the war. As Cardinal Sarah of Guinea has warned, these are death trips set against the protective culture of life. The African nations that sit on the dangerous and bloody Muslim Christian fault line must not be forced to choose between the twin demonic forces of Salafist ideology from the Saudis and gender ideology from the West.

We must end the failed experimentation of drug induced baby boomer sexual confusion. Our nation is in peril. We must return to our traditional sacral and sexual order. We must assume the protective relations of adult male groups in every city, town, and state to safeguard the nation. Our brotherhood knows neither class nor color line. We must actively socialize all young American men into an interracial brotherhood of local and national protection—that especially includes Muslims and new immigrants from Latin America. We cannot be strangers to each other—we are meant to be brothers. To love the nation is not to be racist. It is to give a territorial political form to male bonding which can make gangs, murderous brotherhoods, or brother citizens. American nationalism among men is not a form of racism, it is its antidote.

The shared male role of group protection is the fulfillment of the civil rights movement against racism and the answer to our urban strife between police officers and young black males. Black men were marching 50 years ago to be accepted as part of the civic community. The most important consequence of gaining local voting rights was to eventually become a county sheriff. They wanted to share in protection. The sexual confusion of gender ideology has stopped us from bringing young black men AS AMERICAN MEN into their natural role as fellow protectors in our schools and cities.

We must publicly assert a masculine Christian culture of fraternity, fatherhood  and protection so our enemies do not mistake us for a spiritually emasculated people. Nothing evokes the inner jihadist like an easy kill.

Sixth: Finally, how shall we speak of our enemy and how define our broad alliance? The Wahhabi/Saudi/ISIS alliance is of the Devil, and men of God must gather to stone him. The Salafist jihadi ideology is more diffuse than Saudi Arabia but that is its center. As long as the Salafists of Saudi Arabia  control the sites and practices of the pilgrimage, they will shape Islam. Christian nations must be the first to form this alliance of men who seek to do the Will of God. We must name  the Salafist-jihadi ideology for what it is and show above all that it will not be the winning force in religion or history. The Sunni nations and tribes will only join us when they know the Saudis will really lose their grip. The Salafists are not a radical form of Islam to be defeated by moderate Islam. No one should be moderate in his love of God. We are not fighting "radical Islam.” Islam means submission to the will of God. We must respect this religion(a set of practices binding men in obligation to God) while condemning the demonic death cult  of ISIS and the Wahhabis.  The Wahhabi/Saudi Salafists are a movement of Satan set against the will of God to elevate the prestige of certain men. All those who choose to follow God’s will are brothers in arms united to honor the name of God and to protect women and children by ridding the earth and Saudi Arabia of this parasitic death cult. Christian nations and Muslim nations are not fighting an Islam that is too religious. We are fighting a movement of Satan that has drunk too much human blood and thirsts for more.      

"It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible that this thinking -- and I am not saying the religion -- I am saying this thinking.
"This is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants -- that is 7 billion -- so that they themselves may live? Impossible!" 

― President el-Sisi of Egypt, calling for a religious revolution in Islam (Jan 2015) 

Catholic Sociobiology: Authority, Character, and Culture

by David Pence


The Catholic Organism can only thrive as a Body if those of us who are members of the Body are formed as personalities which perfect the larger whole. Christianity is transmitted by the vitality of Christians. A culture is carried by the characters it forms. When a culture loses its authoritative ability to seal the member’s soul, it will give way to some communal body with a more binding power. The test of any given manifestation of a Catholic parish or diocese is what kind of men and women are being shaped by its communal liturgical life. Are the men capable of being fathers, craftsmen, business and civic leaders, and strong priests? Are we forged into a public brotherhood of fathers? Are the women capable of being good wives and mothers? Is virginity a high-status role among women, and is courage a necessary trait to win respect among men? Above all, does our life of worship form men and women who submit their souls to the authority of a Living and Present God?

The destruction of such religious culture and personality types was a major cultural goal of Marxists throughout the Cold War. Theodor Adorno’s influential post-WWII book, The Authoritarian Personality, pathologized the character of religious believers as the cause of Fascism. It never occurred to the leftist professor and his Frankfurt school collaborators that it was not intellectuals fleeing Germany that ended Nazi rule. American soldiers, following orders as a disciplined army under authority, invaded Germany and vanquished the real totalitarians.
                 

When a culture becomes atrophied or corrupted, it produces men with the same attributes. If a culture is emasculated, it cannot make men. If it substitutes the ideology of feminism for the cult of Mary, it will not foster feminine women. The emasculation of Catholic priests and its effect on Catholic culture has led to an emasculation of Christian laymen and a subsequent diminishment of the martial virtue of citizens. Christ built the Church on a sacred apostolic brotherhood--that was the love relationship which forged his priestly caste. These new men and their brotherly love for one another manifested the Father/Son relationship which defined Christ. The modern corruption of this sacral apostolic personality has left us priests who are neither fathers to the people nor brothers to each other. This softness in the Catholic priesthood and the embrace of feminism and homosexuality by mainline Protestantism has created a softness in Christian culture which has led abroad to a contempt for us, and allowed a demonic death cult within Sunni Islamic culture to emerge. The breakdown of authoritative fathers in our urban areas has led to a disintegration of the protective brotherhood of City Fathers and the emergence of predator gangs and hyper-male brutes. The more we see a return of a masculine Catholic priesthood, the more we will see the emergence of serious Catholic laymen acting as political leaders committed to protecting their own cities and nations. There are, of course, remnants of apostolic men who give great hope. Among the most inspiring are some remarkable characters forged in the atheistic terror of the Soviet Union. There are many problems among the Orthodox, but the masculinity of their priests is a light unto the nations.


Three authors who teach about culture and character:
 
Philip Rieff (1922-2006) was a sociologist, an expert on Sigmund Freud, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote brilliantly about the decline of religious character and the spawning of therapeutic man. He understood the relationship of authority, character, and communal identity and was especially piercing in his analysis of Jewish intellectuals without G-d.
On Charisma and the necessity of prohibitions in defining character. Our book review of 'Jew of Culture'.

The Dominican priest, Nicholas Lombardo, on shaping character by disciplining the emotions in his book The Logic of Desire. This kind of emotional learning comes from being in contact with virtuous and authoritative teachers. Real virtue (because it is an ordering of loves by a disciplined practice of emotions) is transmitted more by mimicry and repetition than syllogism.

Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture of Narcissism in which he described the kind of personality which emerges from a political system dedicated to the maximization of consumerism. He began as a critic from the Left. He influenced President Jimmy Carter's 1979 speech admonishing Americans for choosing the "path of self-absorption and fragmentation." Lasch ended as a critic of the sexual revolution and saw modern progressives as consistently betraying the working class while forming a new soulless financial, bureaucratic, and cultural elite.


Before the social disruption of the Sixties there was a Catholic culture that produced a very different kind of man. Authoritative leaders who emerged from the public masculine fraternal culture of mid-20th century American Catholics were football icon Vince Lombardi, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, and President John F. Kennedy. It is interesting that many of the thin-chested Catholic intellectuals who are so shocked by the personality of Donald Trump have written equally negative posthumous critiques of the imperfect, but praiseworthy, American patriot and Cold War warrior JFK.

For a full outline of the  Catholic Sociobiology series-see here 

                                     

President Kennedy greeting Mayor Daley's family

MAP ON MONDAY: Three Geostrategists and their Maps: Mahan, Mackinder, Spykman

Although Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain all created globe-spanning, sea-dominated empires, it was not until the end of the 19th century that modern geopolitical thinking emerged. The great sea empires certainly took a map into consideration as they competed with each other for dominance, but as Russia began sweeping across the Eurasian steppe lands the thought of an ascendant land power arising added a new dimension to consider. Think Athens versus Sparta on a worldwide scale: if the Spartan land power could ultimately defeat the vast sea power of Athens, what could happen if a modern empire arose in the very steppe lands that spawned Attila the Hun, the Ottoman Turks, or Genghis Khan? Today we will examine how three early geostrategists began to grapple with this question and how their maps and theories still shape modern geopolitics.

Our first geostrategist is Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), considered by many as America's greatest strategist of the nineteenth century. Mahan is best known for his book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1890), in which he argued that nations with a large navy and maritime shipping would have a greater impact on world affairs. Mahan's ideas helped inspire the amazing growth of Japan's navy, leading to its overwhelming defeat of the Russians at Tsushima Strait in 1905. It also drove the German desire for an overseas empire, an important - but often overlooked - underlying cause of World War I. Mahan's geopolitical map, however, is found in his lesser-known book, The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon International Policies (1900). In this work, Mahan broadens his strategic thinking from purely naval terms by addressing the great landmass of Asia. Mahan, shaped by his naval thinking, organized world powers in terms of allied naval powers versus allied land powers. From his 1900 perspective, Mahan saw France and Russia, joined in a military alliance from 1892-1917, as the dominant land powers in Europe and Asia respectively. Although history would ultimately see Germany as a greater land power, in 1900 the Germans were following a Mahan-style naval strategy and was thus treated as part of the naval alliance of America, Britain, and Japan. As Mahan examined a potential conflict between these land and naval powers in Asia, he believed that the naval powers could dominate the continent's south while the land powers dominated the north. Up for grabs, however, were the four geopolitical choke points of the Suez Canal, the Dardanelles, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Danish Straits. Mahan also drew two lines at the 30th and 40th parallels which delineated the control of the landed north and naval south. In between, Mahan believed, would be the battle ground for control of Asia. Although the years and decades following Mahan's writing proved him incorrect in terms of national alliances, the geographical areas Mahan highlighted witnessed a great geopolitical tug-of-war which Mahan foresaw. As we shall see with our other two thinkers, his ideas were especially important during the Cold War as the Soviet Union sought fresh water ports on the Arabian and Indian oceans, and access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic via the Dardanelles and Gibraltar.

THE GEOSTRATEGIC MAP OF ALFRED THAYER MAHAN

Alfred Thayer Mahan, the greatest American strategic thinker of the 19th century, divided Asia into a land-dominated north (red) and a sea-dominated south (blue), with a competitive buffer zone in between (gray).

Four years after Mahan wrote on the problem of Asia, Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947), our second fundamental geostrategist, proposed another map explaining the geopolitical importance of the continent. An English geography professor, Mackinder sought to awaken the naval-minded British to the importance of any potential Asiatic land powers. Mackinder looked to history and the great empires of the steppe - Huns, Mongols, Turks - and noted that their permanent control of Asia's heartland proved untenable due to its geography. Modern technology, especially the railroad, meant that a rising land power like Russia could succeed where the past empires had failed. Such a power could expand to overtake all of Eurasia and Africa - which he called the "World Island" - and from there dominate globe (see map below). Access to the Heartland could be gained by one of three geographic regions, each with its own religious civilization: Christian Europe (with Germany and Russia as its two land powers), the Islamic Middle East (Iran being in the best position to access the heartland), and the Hindu-Buddhist monsoon region of east Asia's India and Pakistan.

Mackinder first outlined his theory in a paper entitled The Geographical Pivot of History (1904), but later expanded his work into the book Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919) which was aimed at convincing the powers at Versailles of the importance of eastern Europe. As he wrote in his book: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World." For Mackinder, it was imperative that eastern European nations remain independent of both Russian and German dominance so that neither land power could go on to fully control the Heartland and thus the World Island. Ultimately Mackinder's theory would place Eurasia at the center of future geostrategic thinking, from the time of the Cold War to the modern day.

THE GEOSTRATEGIC MAP OF HALFORD JOHN MACKINDER

Mackinder: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."

During the Second World War, a Dutch-American international relations professor at Yale named Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943) revised Mackinder's theory and laid the theoretical foundation for what would become America's containment policy of the Cold War. In the first of his two major works on geopolitics, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (1942), Spykman rejected an isolationist foriegn policy in favor of geopolitical realism. Spykman accepted the realist vision of the world as an amoral, anarchic power struggle between states where, à la Darwin, only the fittest would survive. Concurring with Mackinder's focus on Eurasia, Spykman believed that any power able to dominate Eurasia would overcome the Pacific and Atlantic and eventually dominate the Americas. The United States would thus need to emerge from its isolationist foriegn policy and begin engaging in a balance-of-power strategy wherein no state would become strong enough to take control of Eurasia.

Spykman's second work, The Geography of the Peace (1944), was released shortly after his death from cancer in 1943. In it he questioned some of the assumptions of Mackinder and presented his own theory that in many ways synthesized the thought of Mackinder and Mahan. The first aspect of Mackinder's theory Spykman questioned was the importance of the Heartland. Spyman rejected the the belief that the Heartland possessed enough natural resources to compete with the outlying Rimland territories of Europe, the Middle East, India, and China which surround the Heartland. He further argued that a power in control of the Rimland would have the capacity to overpower the Heartland, prevent any Heartland land power from building a navy on an open water port, and could besiege and economically starve a Heartland power into submission. Following the strategic outlook of Mahan, control of the Rimland would be maintained by strong naval powers like Britain and America. In his emphasis on the Rimland over the Heartland, Spykman rewrote Mackinder's famous dictum as: "Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." Spykman's Rimland theory was soon used as the basis for America's containment policy during the Cold War - but his realist, balance-of-power strategy would also be taken up by future geostrategists to resist any potential regional hegemon from arising in any Rimland territory.

THE GEOSTRATEGIC MAP OF NICHOLAS J. SPYKMAN 

Spykman: "Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world."

The geopolitical maps of Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman shaped history, our understanding of geopolitics, and the outlook of many modern geostrategists. Understanding their theories and looking at their maps helps us form our own idea of geopolitics in what we call Christian Realism. For more on Christian Realism .

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, January 7

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

THE ROAD TO PEACE IN AFGHANISTAN GOES THROUGH INDIA: Trump, India, and the Afghans.

TURKEY IS NOW IN THE WAR AGAINST ISIS: The nightclub bombing in Istanbul was a clear escalation of violence from ISIS against the Turkish government. For several years there seems to have been a truce possibly even collaboration in terms of movement of men and material through Turkey to ISIS. That era seems over. What is not clear to us but may be clear to the better-informed is how the Gulen movement relates to Salafism in general and ISIS in particular. This bombing was not an act of Kurds who often are sources of terrorism agains the Turkish government. Turkey is making a major strategic turn in no longer pushing for the fall of Assad in Syria and making a more open alliance with Russia. All of this after a huge purge of Erdogan’s old allies--the Gulen movement.

ISRAEL AND ISIS: Israel has never counted ISIS as a major threat. They in fact have allied with Saudi Arabia in fixing on Iran as their chief rival. The Shia/Sunni fight has been seen in Israel as a relief from the Mideast’s obsession with the Palestinians. Prime  Minister Netanyahu went so far as naming Iraq and Afghanistan as Israel's enemies.  These very divergent interests of the US and Israel contribute to our Mideast policy incoherence. The US does not want to fight Iran while we are abolishing ISIS and then rooting out the Salafist Sunnis. We count Afghanistan and Iraq as allies. We must cement our ties with Israel by abandoning the two-state fiction, and then broker a peace with Iran and Israel. As ISIS grows weaker it will try to play the card of all failed Mideast tyrannies - propose itself as Israel’s greatest enemy. That has not been its strategy so far. But it is time to ask: What of Israel and ISIS?

REMEMBER ISIS HAS NO INTEREST IN A PALESTINIAN STATE. FOR RELIGIOUS MUSLIMS, THAT TRAIN LEFT THE STATION LONG AGO (FROM ARTICLE LINKED ABOVE): "Islamic State and their local supporters consider as misguided Hamas’ core objective, the national struggle of the Palestinians, and promote the establishment and extension of the Caliphate instead."

HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON - AN EXCELLENT HISTORY: From anti-Israel to anti-Saudi, this group has been and will be a key part of the alliance against Salafist jihadists.It is not enough to list them as one more Islamic terrorist group. The Shiites of Lebanon needed a fighting group to represent and defend them. For better or worse, that is Hezbollah and many Christian groups in Lebanon see them as allies not enemies. US policy makers cannot leave our understanding of this group to John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

THE REAL ENEMY IS SALAFIST SUNNI JIHADISTS - FROM MALAYSIA: From the article: "Ayob Khan: Curbing spread of ‘Jihadi’ ideology critical to stopping IS threat," Malay Mail Online, January 1, 2017: KUALA LUMPUR,

The threat of Islamic State will continue to grow if the spread of the “Salafi Jihadi” ideology is not curbed, said the chief of Bukit Aman’s Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division. DCP Datuk Ayob Khan said all parties must play their part, especially government departments, institutions of higher learning, mosques and NGOs, by vetting those invited to speak on issues relating to terrorism, especially Salafi Jihadi ideology issues. “In my opinion, as long as the spread of the Salafi Jihadi ideology is not stopped decisively by all parties, then the threat of IS and other terror groups with the same ideology will not dissipate. In fact it will grow further,” he told The Sunday Star in an interview.

This was reported by Robert Spencer’s 'Jihad Watch' news service. Spencer was quick to obfuscate the distinction made by the Malaysian. Spencer and his group are dedicated to painting Islam in the whole as the enemy. William Kilpatrick is a similar critic in Catholic publications. Both Spencer and Kilpatrick are often the best news reporters on terrorist acts and jihadism in the world. However, their refusal to make distinctions of Sunni and Shia and Salafist Sunni from other Sunni schools is a fatal error in their analysis. They are mindful of the anti communists in the cold war who opposed Nixon's opening to China and Reagan's concessions to Gorbachev. Spencer and Kilpatrick are much closer to the truth than the Clinton-Obama strategy of treating terrorists as disgruntled unemployed "guys who want to kill Americans.” The Obama Clinton  and in many ways George Bush approach is now history. The anti Islam invective should not be its replacement. Spencer and Kilpatrick should be vigorously debated.  The distinctions of the Malaysian chief of counter-terrorism should be heeded.

YEMEN AND EUROPE: An interesting explanation of different forces. Many factions well explained. The crucial and sinister role of Saudi Arabia’s anti-Shiite policy is lost in the lengthy analysis. The inability of professional experts in America and Europe to see Saudi policy with any kind of moral or historical clarity is stunning.There are lots of facts and factions here that are instructive but the religious imperative of Wahhabi Islam to fight Shiites like the Houthi of Yemen  is barely mentioned. The forest has been missed for the trees once again.

WHERE CHRISTIANS CAN BE FREE TOO - A DREAM FOR ONE-STATE ISRAEL: Will there be any Christians left in Palestine? In the 1950’s 86% of Bethlehem was Christian; now it is 12%. This happened under the secular Palestinian Authority.  Freedom and Democracy does not necessarily mean one-man one-vote. The American electoral college and the communal representation formula in Lebanon are cases in point. The two-state plan in Israel has been a dead letter for a long time. To acknowledge that will only improve chances for nations and religions in the area to live in peace. Religions are always in great danger unless a state protects them. The Jews have learned that, and the one-state solution will be more committed to a Jewish nation than a "democratic" one if that means one-man one-vote everywhere all the time.

II. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

THE BACK ROW WORLD OF A GREAT PHOTOGRAPHER - HOW TRUMP WON: Peggy Noonan on what Chris Arnade saw across America.

THE TRUMP ELECTION AND INTELLECTUALS ON THE RIGHT: An interesting article.

III. RUSSIA AND EUROPE

NEWSFLASH - RUSSIA IS NOT THE SOVIET UNION: The argument against making Russia an enemy.

CAN PUTIN AND TRUMP AVERT A NEW COLD WAR? Pat Buchanan on the new nationalist possibilities is worth 100 other columnists singing from the same think tank script book.

IN GERMANY, NATIONALISM MAY COME FROM THE CATHOLIC SOUTH: Mrs. Merkel and Bavaria. They aren’t populists as much as traditional German Catholics.

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE 'SILENCE': Martin Scorsese’s movie based on Shusaku Endo’s book is an amazing meditation on the priestly Eucharist-centered Catholic religion, and that amazing social organism - Japan. An encounter not yet resolved. A beautiful cinematic meditation we will write about after more reflection. The Catholic Thing and Fr. Zulsdorf panned the movie, showing again the increasingly constricted vision of the old wave online conservative Catholics. At First Things, a much better review especially understanding the Japanese as the central Christian characters in the movie. Bishop Barron at Word on Fire was more critical then I would expect, given that the movie is based on a book based on real historical figures. But there is nothing constricted about the Bishop’s interesting take.

ARE THEY REALLY HUSBANDS? South St. Paul male homosexuals abuse multiple boys; then party; then do murder-suicide. Is this just another marriage gone bad, or something deeply twisted and allowed by grownups who have lost their moral compass? This predator was allowed in elementary schools as a teacher. Don’t ask any questions when the predators are called a protected class. Ivanka Trump and her children were accosted by the "husband of a gay professor." Such deep sexual confusion. Such a disgrace to American manhood.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, MALE SOCIALIZATION - WE NEED A NEW WAY: The anti-discipline movement in schools boils over into the malls. Two women write about this best: Heather McDonald of City Journal and Kathleen Kersten of Minnesota.

LBJ AND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY: A devastating well-written critique with startling numbers.