Monday, August 11, 2025

Part I

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A Battle of World Stagecraft is Coming to Alaska: Presidents Trump and Putin Set to Meet in Alaska

The location is Alaska, we’re not sure exactly where. The date is Friday, we’re not sure exactly when, but it’s Friday of this week. It is Alaska. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are now scheduled to meet face-to-face. And the big issue of course is Ukraine. And there is so much to this. Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has not been to the United States for an event, other than an event related to the United Nations, since 2007. Strains between Russia and the United States have been growing during that period. And of course you are looking at Russia’s annexation of Crimea, that was Ukrainian territory, going all the way back to 2016. Now you’re looking at Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine seeking to basically eliminate the nation that was undertaken beginning in 2022.

Year by year, this very grueling military conflict has continued. Ukraine, very bravely, has stood up against the Russian invasion, has stood up against Russian aggression, and Ukraine is even as it has been more tilted to the West, that is to say western civilization in recent years, it is the front line right now for what is not only a battle of aggression when it comes to Russia versus Ukraine, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is also a battle of ideas and it is a battle of world stagecraft. And that’s what makes any representation of stagecraft thus of extreme importance. And so there’s an awful lot at stake when the American president meets the Russian president on American soil. And by the way, we are told that that was at the request of the Russian president and the White House evidently agreed. And again, the details are not yet available about even where in Alaska this is going to happen. You would think on the one hand, the options would not be all that many where you’re talking about after all two presidents of the United States and Russia meeting together in one place.

In terms of world history, this kind of thing really only became a matter of let’s just say current national conversation during the Cold War. And there was a period in which, say between World War I and World War II, there was say, a newspaper awareness, even a radio awareness. Now you’ve got television and you’ve got streaming media. And so of course the immediacy of all of this just adds to the importance of the meeting and what is at stake. Now, when we talk about what is at stake, let’s just rehearse the moral context for a moment. That moral context goes back to the rivalry between Russia and much of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.

That context goes back to the Cold War after the rise of the USSR and the Soviet Bloc and Soviet communism, over against the West with a declared intention to bury the West. And then you had the breakup of the USSR, you had the emergence of Russia as a post-Soviet nation. And one of the things that now becomes very clear is that the breakup of the Soviet Union, which by the way, one of the near misses in human history. As a Christian, I’d have to see it as providential. The fact that you had a nuclear armed Soviet Union that just basically dissolved and broke up into various republics, the awkwardness of all of that is demonstrated by the fact that Russia’s never been satisfied with the fact that it has not included Ukraine within its territory. That goes back to Boris Yeltsin and others. It goes back to Russian figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was very clear in his argument that Ukraine is actually a part of Russia.

But Ukraine argued that it is an independent nation and it has been recognized as an independent nation since the breakup of the Soviet Union. And by the way, one of the big questions is whether or not Ukraine as a separate republic, as a separate nation would be nuclear armed. And that’s because just given the strategic location of Ukraine there to the West of mother Russia, a lot of the nuclear weapons of the USSR were forward-deployed there in Ukraine. And once the Soviet Union basically ceased to exist, I think it’s hard for most Americans to remember that happened formally just over a period of hours. It took some time to figure out whether or not Ukraine would be armed with nuclear weapons. For all kinds of reasons, it was determined by the United States and others that that should not be the case. And so America and its allies gave to Ukraine a form of assurance that it would be supported militarily in the event such would become necessary.

I don’t think most people at the time thought there was much of a chance it would become necessary. Well, clearly by 2022, it was obvious that it was going to be necessary. You could go back to 2016, as I say, with Russia’s annexation, they called it, of Crimea. But you’re also just looking at the fact that realpolitik, that is a form of understanding world affairs in terms of realism. It’s impossible to dismiss. And when you look at it that way, Russia has advantages just in terms of size, in terms of army, in terms of technology, in terms of the nuclear weapons. Also, in terms of initiative here and a sense of civilizational impulse, Russia clearly seemed to believe that it could not lose when it invaded Ukraine. And of course, the most obvious objective of Russia was to gain control of much of Eastern Ukraine, and what’s called the Donbas region, which in some areas has a preponderance, or at least had a preponderance of Russian-speaking citizens.

In the awkwardness of all of that, they became a part of Ukraine. It also turned out that after Russia’s invasion, well, it appeared that a lot of those people, even in those Eastern regions were actually quite allied with Kyiv and consider themselves authentically to be Ukrainian. Nonetheless, it’s also clear that Vladimir Putin thought that the massive force of the Russian invasion would mean that it would be successful all the way to Kyiv and the falling of the administration of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That didn’t happen, and it is now known, for example, that he sent, Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops even in tanks, with dress uniforms, so they’d be ready for a victory celebration parade shortly after their invasion. Clearly, that has not happened. Ukraine has shown enormous moral backbone, and it has also shown enormous national pride. It has shown furthermore, national determination, and the military inventiveness. It has proved that it can at least thwart Russia’s invasion plan.

The long-term question is whether Ukraine has the resources, even just in terms of troops and all of the resources that are necessary for war, whether or not even with massive help from the West, it’s going to be able to survive. The bottom line is, that you have people in the United States and elsewhere who are saying, “You shouldn’t award aggression,” and that’s absolutely true. That appears to be one of the clearest lessons of the midpoint of the 20th century. And in particular, one of the clearest lessons when you look at the historical rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. However, all parallels historically are imperfect. And when you look at the world in the views of realism or realpolitik, and you consider the fact that Russia’s advantages are just absolutely massive, and its will particularly as represented by Vladimir Putin is at this point not deterred by any reality on the ground or inside or outside Russia at this point.

It’s also clear that he has remade Russia into a war state. And it’s also clear that there’s another thing going on here that will also bleed over into our next conversation, and that is the fact that if you really sell your nation on the fact that your brand is a war leader, arguably it’s difficult to bring the war to an end, because you’ve identified your leadership, your regime, your government, so clearly with the war. What I find very puzzling is the approach taken by many Americans, including many American diplomats who simply say: “The bottom line is that Ukraine must be continued whole, and Russia must basically just retreat and go back into what had been the recognized borders of Russia before the 2022 invasion.” Some of the same foreign policy leaders were saying the very same thing about the Crimean Peninsula, that Russia had “annexed” militarily in 2016.

And so ever since at least 2016, there have been some Americans, especially in places of government and foreign policy who’ve been saying, “Russia simply has to be defeated in this context and has to accept that defeat and withdraw. It must gain no territory in all of this.” The bottom line is I think that’s rather unreasonable. I don’t think that’s very realistic, and some of the very people who are saying that will admit they also don’t think it’s realistic. And so at this point, I think this is where President Donald Trump thinks that something has to change, something has to be forced in this equation that’s going to lead to some kind of change. And of course, what he wants is some negotiated piece, and he sees himself as a deal maker and he sees this as a potential deal to be made.

In the preparation for the meeting after the announcement, President Trump made statements to the press to the extent that it would come down, he never defined this, and of course it would’ve been wrong if he had defined it, he said to some kind of swap to mutual advantage. Now, what would be the advantage of Russia? Well, it wants the territory. What would be the advantage to Ukraine? It wants to stop the war. What would Ukraine be on the other side of such an agreement? Would that be acceptable to Ukraine? Well, Ukraine’s President has said over and over again that no territorial concessions could be made. Now, he’s also said that something like that could be discussed after an absolute ceasefire. But here’s where another principle of war, this goes back to von Clausewitz, the famous German theorist of war. The invading force has the initial momentum. Now, often that momentum shifts to the defending force once it consolidates its defense. It’s very hard to continue an aggressive invasion of territory that’s not your own, just even supply lines and all the rest.

But over time, it is the larger, better equipped, stronger willed nation, when it comes to military force, that is generally going to prevail in some sense. And I think Ukraine has shown enormous courage, but at the same time, it is a much smaller nation and it even at this point is largely dependent upon support from outside. And that includes NATO governments that have put an awful lot of money and symbolic heft behind the Zelenskyy government. And one of the things that comes up here is that no one wants to take responsibility for what would be judged in history as a bad deal. And even when it comes to Ukraine, Ukraine at this point, it has not been announced is going to be even a part of the conversations in Alaska. And so you have the President of the United States and the President of Russia negotiating in a sense, but the party that is not there is Ukraine.

And at this point, it’s not even clear what the dynamic would be. It is unlikely that Putin would appear if Zelenskyy is going to be a part of the conversation. Now, let’s understand, this is very personal and as a matter of fact, it is just widely assumed and very well-documented that Vladimir Putin, one of the aims of Russia is just to eliminate Zelenskyy as a political obstacle. That would make that kind of meeting rather awkward to say the very least. It is also clear that when the president said, the President of the United States, when President Trump said some kind of a swap of exchange is going to have to be necessary, I think just about every same person observing the situation knows that that is true. The question is how can that be determined in any way that can be described as just? On the one hand, there are those, as I say, who insist that there must be no reward for aggression, but there is no concrete plan for how that aggression would be totally undone.

So I think an insertion of honesty here would be incredibly helpful. And I do think at this point that President Trump wants to insert honesty. Now, the threat against Russia that he brings to this meeting is increased sanctions and the fact that those sanctions really hurt Russia is evidenced by the fact that Vladimir Putin wants this meeting. And so that tells us that President Trump has his attention. Now, it is also clear that Vladimir Putin goes into any meeting intending to leave with the upper hand and President Trump and his advisors must surely know that. I think there are a couple of other big worldview moral issues we have to put on the table quickly. 

Before we move on to other issues today. In anticipation of the meeting between President Trump and President Putin, I think we need to make very clear there’s some moral issues about the conduct of the war, not just the fact of the war, not just the aggression of Russia, not just the brutal invasion undertaken by Russian forces at the orders of the Russian president.

It’s also the fact that so many horrifying things have taken place in the context of the war, and a reckoning for those is going to be extremely difficult, under the best of circumstances, extremely difficult with Vladimir Putin continuing as the President of Russia. And there’s absolutely no indication that anything else is likely to happen that’s going to be, if not impossible, it’s going to be close.

One other thing here is that President Zelenskyy and his government have made very clear that the president of Ukraine is not authorized to trade away land. It would require some kind of territory. It would require some kind of action, which we are also told by at least one major Ukrainian figure yesterday is a constitutional impossibility. Now, of course, that’s one of those statements that’s going to have to be figured out and deciphered in the midst of the actual negotiations here, but at the very least it indicates that so much is at stake on Friday. And we’ll have to see what happens even between now and then.

Part II

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Prime Minister Netanyahu Declares Intention to Take Complete Control of Gaza: What Will These Next Steps for Israel Look Like, and How Will It Affect the Global Scene?

But here we are on a Monday and international headlines do dominate. That’s just so often the case, the way history unfolds, so many of these things happen over the weekend and the news cycles, international news often tends to break over a weekend, and that’s exactly what has taken place not only in terms of the meeting between President Trump and President Putin on Friday, but also having to do with Israel’s war against Hamas and particularly in Gaza. And the announcement that came just at the end of the week that Israel’s war cabinet had agreed upon a strategy of a total occupation of Gaza with the repeated underlined determination to eliminate Hamas as a threat permanently. So you have headlines such as The New York Times, “Israeli Control Over all Gaza is Declared Goal.”

But you also have similar headlines in terms of the international press, and you have the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the cabinet is unified in the sense that it is determined that Israel must press this simply because Hamas continues as a threat. Israel must press this military action in Gaza to the total occupation of the territory in order to try to eliminate the threat of Hamas. The problem is, and here’s where the Christian worldview reminds us, that you have people with deadly intent and you have ideologies that show up such as the Islamic extremism that shows up with Hamas. It’s a terrorist organization, but the dimension of material reality has to be matched by our understanding of the ideological reality. And the fact is that Hamas as an idea may well survive Hamas as an organization and particularly as a military threat.

Now, Hamas is the big obstacle here. Hamas was the invader of Israel. Go back to October 7th, 2023 brutal invasion. Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the absolute annihilation of Israel as a state. Israel had every right to defend itself. It continues to have that right and responsibility to defend itself. The invasion of Gaza, certainly in the aftermath of the Hamas invasion of Israel was absolutely necessary. And it has also been accompanied, of course by headlines that have come having to do with Israel, having to deal with the threat from Hezbollah, quite successfully, having to deal with issues such as, well, the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran, in Syria. Also, in terms of the Houthi rebels, Israel’s got its hands full. It has been surrounded by enemies ever since it was established in 1948. It has had to fight for its existence. When you talking about the term existential threat, Israel has never known a second of its existence in which it was not surrounded by existential threat. 

Now, there are a couple of twists and turns here. One of them is internal to Israel. Israel’s cabinet includes a coalition. Of course, it is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it’s a very different coalition than he led in some of his previous years as Prime Minister. This one includes some far-right parties. One of the things we will talk about this week is the two-party system in the United States. And one of the reasons why as problematic is that sometimes is, a multi-party system is often much more unpredictable, much more unstable. 

Benjamin Netanyahu has had to put together a coalition which includes some parties. Now, again, I use this term exactly as it’s used in the press, “far-right parties,” and they are absolutely determined to gain more territory for Israel and in particular, see the continued presence of a major Palestinian population that close to Israel as a threat to the nation. So in his own way, it is really clear that Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has vast support deservedly in the United States and elsewhere as a defender of freedom and as a leader of Israel, and by the way, the military advances made by Israel, its success against Hezbollah, against Hamas, against so many others, absolutely remarkable, and not to mention the attack on Iran.

But it is also clear that the political dynamic internal to Israel is something that no one can just ignore. And so it is going to present increased complications for America and for the US government trying to figure these things out. I don’t think there’s much chance the United States will be deterred at all from its support for Israel, but that might become far more difficult when you have European nations such as Britain and France putting pressure on Israel and even threatening to recognize, announcing practically that they will recognize the Palestinian state. As I’ve raised the issue over and over again, I want to know where that Palestinian state is, who that is and who’s going to run it. It is one thing to declare a state as a political act of protest. It’s another thing actually to produce a state.

Interesting development in this is the fact that you have Arab nations. And this is one of the most interesting twists in the statement made by Prime Minister Netanyahu going into the weekend. He said that the effort would try to be on the part of Israel to gain control of the territory, but not to hold it, to eliminate Hamas as a threat, but then to hand it over to Arab neighbors to help to reconstruct the community there. And that’s where I just want to make a prediction. I’ll be clear about this. I don’t think there is much chance whatsoever that those Arab nations want such a role. I don’t think they want any part of it to be clear. I think that we need to recognize that the threat coming from, let’s just say the Palestinian question, is a threat to many of those Arab nations as well as a threat to Israel. And I think those Arab leaders know it, but they have to deal with their own internal publics, and they have to deal with their own pan-Arab relationships here. It’ll be very interesting to see where this goes.

In an interview going into the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.” Well, that’s a worthwhile goal, no doubt. How exactly that might be accomplished is another question. And the grave danger to Israel, the giant danger to Israel is that it will become bogged down in a territorial conflict that it will not be able to extricate itself from, nor will it be able to claim a credible victory within a reasonable amount of time. And this is no suggestion of a weakness on the part of Israel. It is just, again, a realistic understanding of the challenges long-term of defeating a group like Hamas, which is determined to hold onto its arms and to continue as a military threat. As we saw in what was called asymmetrical warfare at the end of the 20th century, that is to say you have Israel, a legitimate nation state. Over here you have a terrorist organization. There is no doubt which one is legitimate, which one is evil and illegitimate. But that does not mean that the normal way of understanding war between two nations applies at least cleanly when you’re talking about a nation against an ideology and a terrorist mentality.

We also face the fact that there is such a moral challenge with the suffering of the people of Gaza and so many of the Palestinian people there in Gaza, they’ve suffered so much. They need food. They need humanitarian assistance. And it’s going to be very difficult to see how continued military action will not make that problem even larger, at least in the short term. It’s also clear, and the Christian worldview makes this very, very evident, if you’re going to create a state, if you’re going to have a working civilization, even before a state, if you’re just going to have a working civilization say in a village, you have to have order, you have to have respect, you have to have an understanding of law, you have to have a commitment to justice.

And so the very ideology of Hamas is antithetical to that kind of legitimacy. And the people of Gaza are suffering mightily, and it’s very easy to blame Israel for this, and Israel has a real moral responsibility. But the fact is, Israel didn’t go into Gaza unprovoked. Israel went into Gaza because it was from Gaza that Hamas launched its lethal attack on Israel with the intention of eliminating Israel altogether. That has been its goal from its inception. And of course in that, it’s not alone. We go back to 1948, Israel surrounded by its enemies and by ideologies that are at war, not only with Israel, but with us in the West, and we can’t forget that.

Part III

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Democracy Makes a Difference: Israel’s Culture Includes Public Argument About the Morality of the War. Don’t Look for the Same Among Her Enemies

But about this, I also want us to look in conclusion at a headline that came last week in the Wall Street Journal about this situation. The headline is this, “More Israelis Dare to Question Morality of War in Gaza Strip.” And the subhead here in the article, “Protests and criticism of Netanyahu policy grow along with the humanitarian crisis.” And that Peled is the reporter here. The point I want to make is this, you don’t see this kind of conversation among Israel’s enemies. You see this conversation in Israel. That shows you the difference between civilization and chaos. And in this case, a civilization that actually takes the shape of its own form of democracy, with the freedom of the press and with deliberative politics in the Parliament there, the Knesset in Israel.

And so you have in Israel the possibility of a headline showing up in which you have more Israelis daring to question the morality of the war in the Gaza Strip. And the fact is, you don’t have this kind of dynamic in most of the nations that surround Israel, and that too needs to be a part of our thinking. It’s a part of the truth as well.

Alrighty, we know there is a lot for us to think about and talk about this week. We will seek to do so faithfully and to do so together.