Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Part I

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Sometimes, Statecraft is Stagecraft: The Signals Being Sent from China About Global Shifting Power

Statecraft is often stagecraft, and you need to keep that in mind today as you look at some of the photographs, some of the video that will be coming out of the big meeting in China hosted by Xi Jinping. It is an exercise of statecraft, and it’s an exercise in trying to reshape world affairs and world alignments. For that reason, intelligent conservative Christians need to really have an interest in this. Because when you look at this kind of stagecraft as statecraft a large message, a huge message is being sent. And what Xi Jinping, the leader of the Communist Party in China, this the leader of China, what signal he wants to send, the stagecraft he wants you to see is of a new alignment of nations in which you have Russia with President Vladimir Putin, you have India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and you have those three leaders, India, 1.3 at least billion people, China, a billion people roughly, Russia, of course, major nuclear power.

What Xi Jinping wants to show is a realignment. It’s a realignment to and a realignment from. From alignment with the United States, particularly on the part of India, that’s the key player here. But also a closer relationship he wants to insinuate. He wants to signal a much stronger relationship between India and Russia. But by putting India and Russia on the same stage, what the Chinese leader intends to do is to show a massive global realignment at the expense of the United States of America, and to the advantage of China. This kind of stagecraft is intended to show where the real power lies. And the big signal here is that power is shifting from the United States to China. That means if you want to be a friend of a nation, you want to be the friend of China. The insinuation here is that the United States and the West are in decline, and this alignment particularly of China and Russia with India, but also some very interesting additions such as North Korea. This is a new alignment of nations.

Now, in its Belt and Road Initiative China’s been going hard at this now for a generation. Xi Jinping is not just looking to transform China, he is looking to transform the world to China’s advantage. And at least in this respect, the big question is, what happened to American leadership, and where will American leadership now go, and how was it going to be demonstrated? Now, even when it comes to India, let’s face the facts that India is now the world’s most populous nation. India is also one of those nations on the cusp of joining the developed nations. It is a developing nation in much of its vast territory, but it is going to be an economic powerhouse. And in so many ways in high technology and in other things, it is a sign of the future. And an alignment between the United States and China had been working pretty well for a matter of decades.

Now, the background to that is that during the Cold War India had been more allied with the Soviet Union and with the East than with the United States. That really began to change, especially with the decline of the Soviet Union. And of course, one of the big things about India is that it is locked in an absolute and enduring conflict with Pakistan. India, the majority Hindu nation; Pakistan, the majority Muslim nation, all of course a part of the legacy of the breakup of the British Empire. And so, when you’re looking at India, it was a seismic act when India began to turn towards the United States. It is a very significant act when India, at least at this point, appears to be turning away from the United States.

Why this action right now by India? Well, it is because of massive tariffs placed on India by the United States, particularly by the action of President Donald Trump. Massive tariffs, about 50% that will be crushing to India. It is not exactly clear what the White House wants from India in order to reach a trade settlement, but the signal being sent here by the Indian Prime Minister is that he has options. He has options closer at hand than the United States. He has options that don’t have to be so messily democratic as the United States and Western nations. So, it’s a very interesting thing. Just be looking at that picture and then understand a sideline to that picture.

And when you’re thinking about world affairs, and we should, when you think about world affairs, think about a fourth person joining in the picture. That fourth person, Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea. He arrived there for the meeting in China in his heavily armored personal train. He is a presence. He, of course, is a malignant threat. In one sense, he is a threat to China, and China has to worry about having North Korea with all of its instability and with all the eccentricities of Kim Jong Un right across its border. But nonetheless, Kim Jong Un has been invited to the party, a massive military party to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Now, here’s something interesting. At least by reports coming from China, Kim Jong Un is not a part of the trilateral conversations between India and Russia and China. He is going to be a part of the picture, so that tells you something. Not a part of the talks, but yes, a part of the picture. And what is the picture supposed to show? Here again, history laden with worldview impact looms large on the horizon. What does World War II mean? What you’re going to see coming today out of China is an argument. It’s an attempted reset of the history of World War II. It is a reset in which it’s going to be argued that the really big story about World War II was not Hitler and the Allies there in Europe, it was instead the war in the Pacific Theater. And the central actors were nations such as China and what became modern India is a recasting of the memory of World War II.

And what’s notable is who’s going to be in that picture: India, Russia, China, North Korea. Who’s not in that picture? The United States of America and Europe. So, remember again that stagecraft is statecraft, and statecraft is sometimes stagecraft. Look at that stage. What’s attempted is a realignment of the world order and a rewriting of world history. That’s all.

Part II

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Pregnant Mothers on the Front Lines in Ukraine: This is Not Just an Issue of Gender, but of Creation Order

All right, thinking about another issue here, Russia’s war on Ukraine. There are a couple of issues that have arisen in the press. These are not particularly new issues, but they have arisen in a new way and both are about the issue of male and female in war. And the situation with Ukraine’s fight against Russia, Russia’s the aggressor, invaded Ukraine of course, and has been carrying out a brutal war against Ukraine. Ukraine has shown remarkable resilience and courage in fighting against Russia, but it really is a war now that has been grinding on, and over time Russia has the advantage.

The big question is, on the Ukrainian side, who’s going to fight the fight? And the interesting thing is that two very independent news articles, they aren’t related directly. They tell us something of how war is being rewritten in Ukraine when it comes to male and female. One of the most interesting of these articles appeared in the New York Times full page, page A4 in last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times, the headline, “Fighting for Their Country and for the Babies They Carry.” The article is about the increasing number of not only women fighting in the Ukrainian frontlines, but pregnant women. And the article here demonstrates the difficulty, and you can imagine this, of being a pregnant woman there on the frontlines of war. And the subhead in the article, “Pregnant Soldiers in Ukraine Have a Dual Mission.” That dual mission is to fight for the country and to reproduce for the country.

Now, the other article is about something that comes on the other side of the male, female divide. It’s a headline “In New Rule Men 18 to 22 Can Travel from Ukraine.” All right, so what’s going on in Ukraine right now in terms of male and female, with the war, turns out to be really interesting. And I think it raises some very basic issues. And it’s a timely way of raising these issues right now, because these issues eventually are going to be confronted here in the United States and we’re going to have to decide what we believe about these things.

First of all, let’s look at the big article about pregnant mothers there on the front lines of the war. As you might imagine, this causes no lack of complications. The article explains, “Ukraine’s military is finding it hard to recruit young men as the war with Russia grinds on. But women, all volunteers are a bright spot. The number of women has grown more than 20% to about 70,000 since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Those who become pregnant often serve in tough conditions under relentless shelling, living without heat in the winter or running water and proper toilets. ‘It’s terrifying every single day,’ said one soldier, Nadia age 25, who has served as a frontline radio operator ‘until she was eight and a half months pregnant.’ The quandary here has made clear in a statement from her, you wake up wondering if everything is okay, if everyone is still alive.

She described how every morning she would brush plaster off her bed that had fallen from the ceiling after a night of explosions. ‘A pregnancy,’ she said,” I’m quoting her from the article, “Made it even more difficult. The clinic where she would get ultrasounds closed, so did nearby hospitals. ‘You’re constantly thinking about your child’s well-being,’ she said. She eventually gave birth to a boy Yaroslav in February. ‘It was non-stop stress every day combined with constant physical activity.'” This is the front line of war.

And then there is this explanation coming from the times. “While the U.S. Army and many other militaries remove pregnant soldiers from combat zones, Ukrainian women usually serve until their seventh month. And that is in a military that doctors and soldiers say is ill-equipped to support them from uniforms that don’t fit pregnant women to a lack of prenatal care and nurseries amid the costs and challenges of fighting the war.”

Okay, I want us to note something. It is evidently already at this point in history unthinkable, at least in a coverage like this from the New York Times to raise the question of whether women ought to be in the military, ought to be in combat units, not to be on the front lines. Evidently, you really can’t question that. And Ukraine here is clearly in need of soldiers, and we’ll talk more about why that’s so. But it is interesting that the New York Times reports on this. And the clear insinuation, the clear context here is that this is kind of a picture of the future. This is what the front lines of the future will look like. Once women are on the front lines of the future, then you’re going to have pregnant women on the front lines of the future.

And notice here that in Ukraine these women are kept on the front lines until we’re told here their seventh month. So, they’re into the late period of their pregnancy. And there are photographs of a soldier getting an ultrasound. And there are articles here about the difficulty faced by some of these women. But there’s another irony here. Some of these women evidently leave their babies and go back to the front lines. Now, I’m just going to raise an issue, and this may tear the fabric somewhere, but I’ll just tell you, I think as a Christian this has to point us back to a violation of creation order. And point to something that’s fundamentally wrong, something that is not in right order. I’m going to state what I think many Christians don’t want to think about. And that is that women ought not to be in combat. Women ought not to be on the front lines. This ought not to happen.

And that would have been unquestioned throughout most of Western history. The understanding would have been that there may be circumstances in some kind of absolute emergency where women would have to fight, and that would make history, but the fighting should be undertaken by men. And there is also understood in every war, at least two big fronts, one on the front line of combat, the other on the front line of family life and maintaining civilization at home. And there is just no question that women are more equipped to take care of children. Let’s just state the obvious, because it begins in biology, it begins in nursing. And it is also clear that there is in creation order a different role for men and women. And I’m not saying that one’s courageous and one’s not. I’m not saying that one requires more courage than the other. Frankly, the mother in the home requires courage and the man on the front lines here requires courage.

Both of them are absolutely indispensable to society. And when you confuse that, I think you bring in all kinds of problems. I think a lot of Americans looking at this would say, “There’s something not quite right about a woman seven months pregnant.” And I think that concern would go back seven months frankly. But a woman serving on the front lines. And there’s something here that we look at, and it is a full page print article in the New York Times. Evidently the New York Times thinks this is newsworthy, but The Times can’t possibly raise the question as to whether this is appropriate. It just is. And the clear insinuation here is that this is the wave of the future. And again, one of the most surprising things to me in this, and I’ll say it’s not just surprising, it’s heartbreaking in a way. Is that some of these women say that the call of the nation to the front line is more important than staying with their children.

And so, after some form of maternal leave some of them just can’t get back to the front lines fast enough. And I’ll simply say, I find that troubling. And I think an awful lot of people looking at this are going to find that troubling. But we live in a time of such cultural oppression on these issues, in which we are told that we are absolutely oppressive and we’re patriarchal and we’re wrong, if we raise the question as to whether there are essential differences between men and women, and there are appropriate roles and inappropriate roles for men and women. I think once you say, “Okay, we’re going to join the revolution, the feminist revolution, the sexual revolution, the modern revolution on reshaping family, reshaping, marriage, reshaping gender, and all the rest.” When you join it, then I just want to remind you, you have joined it and whether you intended to get to pregnant women on the front line as soldiers, you’re going to get there because of prior intellectual and moral decisions, policy decisions that you have either made or endorsed.

And the open insinuation in this article is that if you have a problem with this, that’s evidence of gender bias. That’s pretty explicit in this section of the article I’m going to read to you here. One woman, major cited in the article we are told, “Has served in Ukraine’s military for over 16 years, and is a psychologist who has researched the issue of sexism in the armed forces. She said women who get pregnant can face considerable barriers like commanders who question their decision to return to the fight after having babies or their fitness to serve.” In other words, a commander asking a basic, automatic, natural, necessary question, here we are told is showing bias. The major who is the psychologist here said, “It’s no secret that gender bias exists. She said that financial concerns are also a challenge.” I just want to bring this to our attention because every once in a while you see something like this.

This is downstream from the American military so far as I know, and so far is acknowledged right now, but it’s not far downstream. And if the United States or when the United States finds itself in a similar situation, you’re going to have arguments arise almost immediately. That saying that this picture is wrong is a form of sex bias. Even suggesting that a woman who has a woman’s soldier who has a baby, ought to stay for some time with the baby, that’s now a form of sexism. I think we need to look at this and be reminded as Christians, we have prior commitments including to creation order. And it is not just a gender bias, it’s a concern for human flourishing and well-being that grounds us in that creation order, and frankly restrains us. We’ve got nowhere to go.

Part III

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Why are Ukrainian Young Men Allowed to Leave Their Country? It’s An Odd Policy But It’s Grounded in Concern for a Future Generation

But as I said, there’s another side of this, and it’s the male side. It’s not just the pregnant women, the women and pregnant women who are on the front lines in combat for Ukraine. It’s also the absence of men, and in particular a crisis in the numbers of men, and specifically younger men. Okay, now this too is really, really interesting. Now, the article on the Pregnant soldiers in Ukraine, the women on the front lines said that they serve a dual role. And that dual role for the nation, that dual role was as combat soldiers. They’re on the front lines, but also the second role being the mothers of the nation. There isn’t a nation that survives that does not survive by fertility, by the mothers of the nation having babies and nurturing those babies and the families of those babies, raising them to be productive citizens. I’ll just put it in secular terms, a civilization that does not do that does not survive.

I often quote the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin who said, the first responsibility of every civilization is human reproduction, otherwise it simply ceases to exist or it grows weak and is wiped off the face of the map. And so, that’s the dual role, but that dual role means that women, if they’re going to be soldiers, are also going to have to be mothers at least on a large scale, to maintain the strength of the nation. Where are the men? How do they play in this? Well, it turns out that when it comes to men, it turns out there’s also a dual role. It’s also acknowledged in another article in the very same newspaper on a different day than New York Times.

I read the headline, you probably didn’t catch it, because the headline doesn’t tell you the big story. “A New Rule, Men 18 to 22 Can Travel from Ukraine.” So, 18 to 22, that’s college-age young men. Now, in every major war undertaken by the United States and its allies, this is the key age segment for intake into the armed services. And so when we had a draft, you had to register for the draft. The draft was active beginning on your 18th birthday. By the way, in at least some cases we know there were boys who were younger who volunteered, future President George H.W. Bush was one of them who snuck in at age 17. But certainly, 18 to 22, that four-year period you had an intake into the armed services. And those soldiers were often quickly trained and quickly put on the front lines. It is an exception to the historical norm that that age cohort of young men in Ukraine is not being sent to the front lines. Even this article tells us that they can travel from Ukraine, and that means for a period of time, frankly, a period of time of years.

Why would Ukraine do that? I mentioned this in a minor way previously. They’re doing it because of the very same concern about birth rate. They’re doing it because of the very same long-term concern for the nation. There is a thinning when it comes to the male population in Ukraine, and it is most acute at the ages of the older brothers or cousins and even some of the fathers of these young men aged 18 to 22. And that is because of the ravages of war, other health problems and pathologies. But the fact is that the future of Ukraine, even apart from the war, the future of Ukraine depends upon having at least enough young men that they can marry and reproduce with the young women and actually produce a reproductive future for the nation of Ukraine.

It’s a very strange thing though that you have so many of these young men now exempted from military service, overwhelmingly ages 18 to 22 exempt from military service. In some reports the average age of intake is above 25, and that’s at wild variance from the United States and our policy and history. And as I said, the history of warfare for that matter. But it is a policy from which Ukraine is not retreating. This news article is news, because it’s even expanding the ability of the young men that age to leave the country in a time of war. It’s the exact opposite of the situation in the United States, say during the cycles of our wars in the 20th century. It’s the exact opposite. If you left the country in that age period, most famously you were leaving to avoid the draft. So I just want to end this segment today by acknowledging that I certainly hope for Ukraine to gain the upper hand. I want to see Ukraine prosper and do well. I understand the unique circumstances, I think we all do, of this war that Ukraine is now having to fight against Russian aggression.

But I think we also have to say that there are creation order issues here that raise fundamental questions about not only the conduct of the war, but about the future of the nation. And when you have a full page article showing a pregnant soldier from the front lines getting an ultrasound of an advanced pregnancy, I think we all know something pretty seismic is going on here. This isn’t just interesting. This is a matter of concern.

Part IV

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Germany’s Military Needs Soldiers: Germany Looks for Ways to Add Troops Without Conscription – For Now

One final note, when it comes to the draft and war and conscription or even just recruitment into the armed services. The nation of Germany is in a tough spot, because Germany really needs to strengthen its armed forces. And service in the military has not been a major option for an awful lot of young men. They’re trying to figure out in Germany how to incentivize young men. We will say young people, but let’s face it, primarily young men, how they can incentivize young men entering the military.

They’ve tried different incentives thus far, but this is one of the signs, this is one of the things that a lot of people pointed to for a long time. When you have a consumer society that becomes a liberal comfortable, overwhelmingly, let’s just say soft society, it doesn’t produce soldiers, it doesn’t produce warriors. And in Germany, the big question is how are we even going to fill the ranks of the army? And so they’re looking at conscription, but can you imagine the political uproar if that were to happen? A nation discovers a lot about itself when it faces this kind of challenge. And I think it ought to be a wake-up call for us. When you look at that picture of the military parade there in China, it’s a military parade, face it. It’s going to show armaments and missiles and tanks and planes and all the rest.

It’s sending a signal about where the power now lies and who is willing to fight. Meanwhile, you have stories about western nations unable even to meet basic recruitment quotas, because their young men would rather be doing something else. That too, I think we know, says a lot about the nation and its prevailing worldview.