Thursday, April 24, 2025

Part I

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Is There Real Hope for Peace? What’s Really Going on With Talks About Ending War in Ukraine?

Issues tend to come onto the headlines and then recede for a while. The big issues come up again and again and again and they come back into the headlines when something significant happens or when something in one sense doesn’t happen.

What hasn’t happened that has put Ukraine back into the headlines is the fact that the war is not over and that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others involved for the administration have been unable to bring Russia and Ukraine to terms in order to end the war in Ukraine. But let’s remind ourselves of how this happened.

Go back to 2014. In that year, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula and took the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. It had been a part of Ukraine ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Ukraine once again as an independent nation.

And the Crimean Peninsula is not just any bit of land. It is an incredibly important, strategically important portion of Ukraine. Russia has always wanted control of Crimea. Crimea gives it warm water ports and access for military and economic reasons. It simply seized it claiming that it should have been a part of Mother Russia all along. Now, it’s 2014.

Then remember that in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. And even as it invaded from the East, it was very clear that Russia’s intention was to capture all of Ukraine, defeat the nation, create it as something of a puppet state or an extension of Russia, perhaps even just a part of Mother Russia itself by its declaration.

But even as Russia was so confident of a quick win that some of its generals came with dress uniforms to wear in the victory celebration, turned out that didn’t happen. Ukraine fought back and Ukraine has fought back more successfully, more tenaciously than anyone could have imagined back in 2022.

But this isn’t 2022, this is 2025 and we are now in a very different situation. President Donald Trump, re-elected in 2024 to a second term in office, had made the claim that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president. And that was because of the fact that Joe Biden became president taking office in 2021. It was during that period, just about a year after Biden had been in office, that Russia invaded Ukraine and the war was undertaken.

Now, under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the United States and other allies gave aid to Ukraine and clearly declared that the democratic allies of Ukraine were going to fight for Ukraine’s survival, its existence, its independence from Russia.

And the lineup here was pretty predictable, but some of the effects were actually unexpected. A part of what was predictable is that the NATO allies and others would come to the defense of Ukraine. And the point of it was clear, if Russia can invade Ukraine and get away with it, then no nation in the region is safe. And so, it was Russian imperialism resurgent under Vladimir Putin, that led to many around the world, including the United States and our NATO allies, to say, “We have to arm Ukraine to press back.” And Ukraine rather stunningly did press back for a very long time.

And the bottom line is that Russia, though it invaded in 2022, didn’t have the victory celebration it had expected. It’s been bogged down in a protracted war. And there were points say a year ago when at least some in public were speculating that Ukraine might be more successful than anyone could have imagined in limiting Russia’s expansionism pressing back against Russian forces, even defeating the Russian army on the land. And Ukraine had many stunning successes and Ukraine has been tenacious. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president has demonstrated a great deal of resolve against Russia. And Vladimir Putin of Russia has had to do what no one would have, say several years ago, expected him to be required to do. He’s had to call up reservists. He’s had to actually bring in soldiers from China. It’s a very different military situation that anyone had expected.

But the bottom line is that Ukraine has not defeated Russia. And Russia is now controlling at least two major provinces in the eastern portion of Ukraine. Going all the way back to 2014, it took the Crimean Peninsula and thus the question is what now? I said President Trump ran on a platform of promising that he could bring a swift conclusion to this war and that the war would never have happened, that Russia would never have invaded under his presidential leadership.

But now, we’re in a situation in which the Trump administration is voicing its frustration at the fact that it doesn’t appear peace is close on the horizon. And there have been some very interesting developments just in the last few days, even hours. And that explains why we’re talking about it on The Briefing today.

If you rewind history, just we’ll go back to the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term in office, he was pledging that he would put energy into bringing adjust settlement to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And there were indications that there was an alignment potentially going into the future between the United States and Russia, that could not happen and certainly couldn’t be advanced so long as the war against Ukraine was continuing.

And so, even though the United States had been giving aid and support to Ukraine, there was a clear indication that under the leadership of the Trump administration, there was also going to be an effort to at least have better relations with Russia. But Russia has not played ball, so to speak, with the American president.

And even as President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have put a lot of their energy into trying to bring about a conclusion to the war, there’s been no real progress even though there have been talks. But the White House just in the course of say the last 48 or 72 hours has been making public statements about the fact that it just might be that bringing about a negotiated settlement will not be possible and the president and the administration will move on to other things.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the administration could effectively just walk away as the New York Times rightly reported, “The option was implicit in Mr. Rubio’s warning that it’s not our war followed by the reminder that we have other priorities to focus on.” A clear signal to both sides in the conflict that the United States does not have infinite patience in trying to work out a negotiated settlement.

But here’s what we need to recognize that the U.S. doesn’t always get what it wants. And even as we look at a situation like Russia’s war against Ukraine and Ukraine’s defensive war now back against Russia, you realize they’re incommensurate goals that come into conflict here. They’re not goals defined by the United States or any other nation. Their goal is defined by Russia on its part and Ukraine on its part. There are other parties, but those are the two crucial parties at war here.

So, what is Russia’s aim? Russia’s aim, as I said, is in the name of Mother Russia to capture, but Russia would actually argue to recapture territory that always should have been a part of Mother Russia, especially the Crimean Peninsula and the rest of it necessary for Russia’s defense and its military posture, et cetera.

On the other hand, Ukraine has, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, been recognized as a sovereign nation. It originally was granted the territory that included the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine has culturally identified, especially in the western region of Ukraine, far more with Europe, with NATO and with the United States than with Russia. You’re looking at a situation that just isn’t easily resolved.

And for one thing, Russia doesn’t intend ever to give up claims on at the very least the territory that it has captured thus far. At the very least, Russia is not going to be satisfied by every indication unless it holds onto what it has and that territory at least becomes recognized as a part of Mother Russia. Crimea, the Donbas, the two regions there in Eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has said that it is not conceding any of this territory, not just including what is now in Eastern Ukraine but this Crimean Peninsula as well. They’re saying, “No, we have to have it all back.” Even in recent days, Voldomyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine has said, “We’re not going to settle ultimately without getting all of our territory back.”

But there is no mechanism imaginable whereby Ukraine in military terms is going to recapture all of that territory. In one sense, the situation is at best, something of a stalemate, a stalemate between Russia and Ukraine. And here’s where we also have to recognize that Ukraine would not survive even now without massive amounts of Western support and military equipment. You also understand that Russia being Russia, it intends to win the long game, and Russia is always playing a long game.

Now, over the course of the last several days, President Zelensky has said again, “Ukraine is not going to concede territory.” And by the way, that includes Ukraine. It is also true that President Zelensky of Ukraine has admitted at least privately, and this is well documented in the press, has at least admitted privately that Ukraine has no immediate hope of recapturing the Crimean Peninsula by any kind of military action.

So, you have the president of Ukraine saying, “We’re not going to settle for Crimea, much less the regions in the east of Ukraine currently occupied by Russia. We’re not going to concede those to Russia.” They’re also admitting they have no real hope of removing Russia from that territory, and that’s especially true in the Crimean Peninsula.

And so, where does this stand? What now happens? Well, we are looking at a situation in which the American administration is growing frustrated. And it’s growing frustrated in both directions. It is interesting, however, that in moral terms, in moral terms, the Trump administration is signaling that Russia appears to be fundamentally uninterested in negotiating a peace, a stable peace.

In response to that, just in the course of the last day or so, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said that it will be willing to settle for the territory Russian forces currently occupy there in the east of Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. So, this is a classic standoff and Vladimir Putin is operating on the basis of a very long Russian memory.

And I think this is very important for Americans to understand. We think as a nation in our own form of civilizational pattern. We think of the United States as a nation from sea to shining sea. We have a west coast and an east coast and all in between is America. God bless America from California to the Carolinas, all American territory. To the north, the Canadian border. To the south, the Mexican border.

Obviously, the U.S. has interests elsewhere. We have a state in the north, Alaska. We have a state in the Pacific, Hawaii. But we know what our territory is and the United States will make the argument, “This is America.”

Russia looks at the world quite differently. Russia looks at the world over a far longer period of time. Russia’s not looking back to 1776. Russia is looking back throughout the second millennium of world history. Russia has an identity. It traces even longer than that. And it has a national sense of itself in the territory it both has and needs that is rather constant throughout centuries of Russian experience.

Russia looks to the west and sees Europe, sees European power, sees no physical obstacle of any size to prevent western armies from marching into Russia. By the way, the lesson of western armies is it’s easy to march into Russia, it’s very hard to march out.

And when Vladimir Putin says to his people, “Ukraine, the frontier is actually legitimately necessarily a part of Mother Russia, or at least these regions are a part of Mother Russia,” the fact is he has vast Russian popular support for that. He is not a standout in his nation. And that’s one of the reasons why Russians have not broken with the Russian president over this war, at least not yet.

Now, looking over that same period of history, for only a relatively brief amount of that time interrupted by this empire and that this war and then that, Ukraine has been an independent nation only for that brief period of time. And now, we’re talking about Ukraine as an independent nation since the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the 1990s.

And you also have the resurgence of a genuine Ukrainian nationalism. So, in other words, it’s not an artificial nationalism. And the Russian invasion has helped to build that nationalism. It’s helped to build the sense of Ukrainian independence. So even as Russia is with a millennium of history determined that Ukraine shall be a part of Russia, the Ukrainians looking at history in very different terms, insist they must be an independent autonomous nation. With all the territory that Ukraine had and was recognized as Ukrainian in the modern year, it must all be returned to Ukraine.

Now, Vladimir Putin says he’s willing to settle for the land he has. And President Zelensky of Ukraine says he’s not going to settle for anything less than Russia giving all that territory back and recognizing Ukrainian independence along with other demands. The point is that no one is taking that seriously.

Now, it may be taken seriously in moral terms, but not in military terms. And this is where the Christian worldview reminds us, the history is often a story best described as tragedy. Tragedy is more than just the story of something bad happening. Tragedy is the story of intractable human patterns that can only be described as sinful, and yet are so interwoven in the historical fabric of the world, that it is almost impossible just with human imagination to imagine how the pattern could be undone.

Russia sees Ukraine as Russia. Russia does not see itself as an evil invading force against a foreign nation that should be independent. It sees the breakup of the Soviet as a great historic tragedy. And Vladimir Putin who sees that breakup of the Soviet Union with intense personal interest, he intends to return Russia to a vision of greatness that will require at the very least much of Ukraine’s territory.

Ukraine, on the other hand, sees this independence as the singular issue. It sees itself as an invaded nation, rightly sees itself as an invaded nation fighting bravely against a Russian invading force. But the fact is that Ukraine is not the military equal of Russia. It isn’t the economic equal of Russia. And over time, Ukraine is going to lose the war if it is simply a matter of Russia versus Ukraine.

But the question is: “Is Russia versus Ukraine plus its western allies a very different equation?” And here’s where a lot of the western allies talk a good game, but at the end of the day, in private, they’re admitting this just isn’t likely to last.

Part II

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Foreign Conflict Solutions are Often More Difficult, Less Satisfying: Christians Need to Watch the World Through the Lens of Augustinian Biblical Realism

One of the conflicts you see here is between what is known as realism and idealism in foreign policy. Idealism says you have certain ideals and you don’t compromise them, you simply stand for them. Ukrainian independence is an ideal that the western world must be determined to protect and to advance even at the cost of war. But when you say even at the cost of war, even the most idealistic of Western leaders are not willing to insert their own troops into this conflict. You’re not going to see NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine fighting back Russian invading forces. That would mean a conflict directly between Russia and NATO. And that, given the nuclear stakes, is the one thing that Western leaders will not do, whether they admit that truth or not.

Even in recent days, Ukrainian President Zelensky has said, “We’re not going to give Russia Crimea. We’re not going to concede that territory.” And I understand in principle why he says that, and so do western political leaders. But the reality is, there is no scenario, absolutely zero scenario in military terms and any kind of foreseeable future in which Ukraine is able militarily to push Russia out.

And as I say, at least in quiet, President Zelensky is admitting that. So, where do we go from here? This is where the Trump administration says, “If we don’t see progress on this, we’re going to walk away from it. America has other interests, other priorities. We want to give attention to this. But if Russia and Ukraine are not going to come to terms, we’ve got other jobs around the world to do.”

And I think one of the worldview lessons we need to see here is that there are limits to the will and to the force and power and influence of the United States of America. You could say with our western allies, yes. But right now, just take the U.S., the most powerful nation on earth, militarily, economically, politically, culturally, you just go down the list.

But here’s one conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the United States has been unable to fix it, but we have to recognize there are patterns in the world, there are forces in the world that are older than the United States of America, older certainly than the emergence of the United States as a superpower.

And even though the United States does have out-sized influence and the President of the United States and the United States Secretary of State have enormous influence around the world, there are limits to that influence. Even the United States cannot force Russia and Ukraine to come to terms here.

I said that one school of thought in terms of foreign relations is idealism, the other is realism. And sometimes realism is painted as an evil force, as if it’s a sellout. This was true during the Vietnam War. It was true during the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Any form of realism that says, “This is the way the world is, we’re going to have to work with this nation even though we don’t agree with it in many terms. We find ourselves in a coalition with this dictator even though we don’t like dictatorship. We find this necessary in order to prevent Soviet expansionism.” That was some of the argument during the Cold War.

Some Americans say that’s the wrong way to conduct foreign policy, but I want to make a point and that is this. In theological terms, in Christian worldview terms, it doesn’t matter how idealistic the United States or any nation may declare itself to be. At the end of the day, its deployment of national treasure and lethal force does come down to some calculation of realism rather than idealism.

Here’s the interesting shift I want us to see. I think when President Trump was running for re-election, he was speaking of bringing about a conclusion to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. I think President Trump said that he wanted to reach some kind of idealistic accommodation, pragmatic but still idealistic conclusion to the war. I think right now, you have a shift towards a very clear acknowledgement of realism.

We’re facing the fact that these two nations simply may not be able to come to terms and the United States may not be a changemaker in trying to bring about a negotiated settlement. But then again, in the world of foreign policy and in a context like this, everything that is said by a national leader, a president of the United States, a U.S. Secretary of State, on any side of this, any statement like that is made may reflect the truth. It may reflect an attempt to shift the discussion in one direction or the other.

In this case, it is hard to imagine that those words were not spoken with candor and honesty by the U.S. Secretary of State reflecting the Trump administration. It is a sign not just of the limitation of the President of the United States, not just the limitation of this president or this Secretary of State, but the limitation of the real world that it just might be that as much as America wants to bring about a settlement, it isn’t necessarily able to do so.

One other historical note on this is that Russia looks at the world in imperial terms. Ukraine looks at the world in national terms. Russia is looking at this over a very long, much longer period of history. Russia sees itself in imperial terms. It must capture this territory or the very least control this territory in order for Russia to be Russia, in its role among the nations.

Now, Russia may be deluded about that, but you know what? If it’s a delusion, it’s a delusion shared not only by the Russian president and some others, but by the Russian president, and apparently most Russians.

On the other hand, the bravery and courage of the Ukrainian people shows out that actually, Ukrainian identity is a lot stronger than anyone thought it might have been when Russia invaded Ukraine. So, we have these two forces. We have evil on the earth. We have violence between these two nations and a war that has taken so many horrifying casualties.

Part III

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Britain Nationalizes Its Last Steel Mill: Why Britain and Its Citizens Suddenly Care So Much About Where Its Steel Comes From

Finally, we are living in a very complex world and we’re seeing things we never thought we would see. How’s this for a headline, “Britain Nationalizes its Last Steel Mill?” Now, what do you do with that? I think there are many listeners to The Briefing that would say, “That doesn’t sound all that interesting.” I want to tell you it’s really interesting.

You have a labor government. That is to say, the more liberal party government there in Britain, that was the party that for a long time was all in favor of nationalizing industries. That is to say, bringing them under government ownership and government control. But even the Labor Party during the period, particularly of Tony Blair in the 1990s, you had the Labor Party moving back from that kind of theory of nationalism. The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and her successors, was calling for a reversal of the nationalization of a heavy industry and so much of the infrastructure there in Britain.

But now, you have this headline, “Britain Nationalizes its Last Steel Mill.” The key word there might be “last.” Here, you have Britain making the determination that it cannot exist as Britain without at least one major steel mill in the country.

And here’s the amazing thing. On both sides, both the Conservative Party and the Labor Party came together in the agreement that this nationalization had to happen. The company was failing. It was likely to be purchased by a foreign entity.

And here’s the thing, Britain being Britain simply said, “We cannot be the Britain we intend to be and not have any domestic steel production.” This is a vast change in the world around us. To have, say, the Conservative Party giving at least some approval and some urgency towards calling a special session of Parliament in order to nationalize the nation’s last steel mill, that’s a huge thing.

The world is being transformed before our eyes. President Donald Trump and his administration are asserting a form of American nationalism and it is creating disequilibrium around the world. At the same time, President Trump is speaking of the loss of industry in the United States wanting to recover that, you can have an argument about whether his tariff policies and all the rest will result in a correction of that pattern.

But the fact is that a lot of Americans, millions of Americans, clearly in the election signal, they share the same concern. Now, I think in a Christian perspective, at least a part of what’s going on here is that you can say we live in a global world. You can talk about a global economy but eventually, politicians become aware of the fact that they’re accountable to a national identity and the people voting for them do think it matters whether or not Britain has a single steel mill.

In the United States, there was a proposed purchase of U.S. steel by Nippon Steel in Japan. It was going forward until the U.S. government stepped in and said, “I don’t think we want to see that happen.” And there is bipartisan concern. That was during the Biden administration. We’re not going to allow a foreign steel company to buy U.S. steel. That’s just one step too far. It’s not just the name of the company. It’s the fact that the United States cannot be without a major domestic steel provider.

Remember that steel is one of the most essential commodities of the modern age. It’s also a reminder that steel and its production has been around a long time in human history. But in the modern age, it became absolutely indispensable. The development of the Bessemer process for the production of steel about 1855 changed the world and made possible much of the Industrial Revolution as we know it.

And it’s not just about the old world in terms of Europe and Britain, it’s about the new world too. Go to the state of Alabama. Go look at the steel plants there. And look that outside Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham itself named for a major British industrial city is the town of Bessemer named for the British citizen who invented that steelmaking process. So, this just isn’t England’s story, it’s the American story as well.

There are so many people, particularly those who have a more globalist perspective, a more internationalist perspective who say it doesn’t really matter where a steel plant is. It doesn’t really matter who owns it. It’s a global economy and all you want is the best deal at the best price regardless where it comes from.

And then there is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And all of a sudden, you realize it does matter whether or not the steel is available because you can’t fight a modern war without the instruments of modern warfare and those include steel. And steel is involved in just about everything, still essential to our economy.

All this indicates that a lot of the old economic rules are passing away because they’re being replaced by an entirely new economic and political situation. We don’t know exactly what that is going to look like, but it is really significant that it is likely to look much different than what we’ve known over the last several decades.

At the very least, we’ll try to track some of these big issues and their development together.