“Over? Did you say over? Nothing is over until we say it’s over.” Bluto (John Belushi) in “Animal House” (1978)
The current world war is the consequence of the Protestant Revolution that shattered Christendom. With the loss of Christendom there ended the international authority of the Pope to resolve disputes as well as the moral imperatives that weighed on the consciences of rulers to obtain peace and justice as between the different peoples. There also ended the moral force of the Catholic religion as a limit to the desires and appetites of the private interests, the plutocratic classes of the societies of the world. Without a common religion, international law became a set of customs, a few principles, and positive actions by the state actors. The independence of states from any authority – civil and ecclesiastical — other than their own, characterized the international society of states since at least the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Effectively isolated and existing in a world where strength and “real politick” govern, states were taken over by the plutocratic class that sought their own gain. This dynamic gained speed with the rise of republican forms of government, especially with the creation of the USA. It also gained strength and effectiveness with the increasing complexity of society which was aided by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. While international law had grown up along two disparate tracks – the Catholic Church and the international commercial enterprises or undertakings of the day – the moderating influence of the Church and the Catholic Faith over the commercial enterprises and law was muted after Martin Luther’s day.
The United Nations Charter with its mandates for peace and operation of the sovereign entities in accordance with good faith, is neither strong enough to prevent wars nor to stop wars. That is because the thing the popes warned of – the divorce of the Divine Positive Law from international law – has come to pass. The consciences of the leaders of countries, and the consciences of the powerful private interests that are so controlling in modern states, are not bound by a common faith which is the Catholic Faith. Regardless, states are moral actors and they are required to serve the common good both domestically and internationally.
The United Nations Charter
The United Nations Charter came into effect on October 24, 1945 and made clear the primacy of peace, or at least the end of war. The main purposes of the United Nations were set forth in Article 1, and the first among those was “To maintain international peace and security.” This obligation was extended to the taking of “effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace,” the “suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and the “adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”[1] The Member States, each of which are sovereign and equal,[2] are to “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems.”[3]
Each Member State is to “fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them”[4] in accordance with the Charter and they are to “settle their international disputes by peaceful means.”[5] This does not leave much room for failure to resolve matter as the Members States are mandated to settle their disputes peacefully, not just try to settle their disputes. The good faith requirement means the Member States cannot be “released by their own unilateral decision from their obligations.”[6] The Member States have to do what they agree to do – avoid war and the provocations for war and make peace once war has broken out.
Clearly, in the case of Russia and the Ukraine, “threats to the peace” abounded for years. We all know by now the explanation by University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer as to how the West kept pushing NATO eastward despite the protests of Russia. Other diplomats and experts also warned against this eastward push and joined in blaming the West for causing this breach of the peace. These include Defense Secretary William Perry (1996), Ambassador Jack F. Matlock, Jr. (1997), George Kennan (1998), Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (2014), Scholar Stephen Cohen (2014), Dr. Noam Chomsky (2015), journalist Vladimir Pozner (2018), and Professor Jeffrey Sachs.[7] In 2013-2014, the legitimately elected Ukrainian government was overthrown by the Euromaidan Revolution. That revolution involved CIA assets, Western sympathizers and private organizations and individuals who sought to install a pro-West government.[8]
Since the start of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022, there have been a number of attempts at making peace if we believe the press accounts and government reports. These included mediation or offers of mediation by the Pope, the President of Israel and the President of Turkey. None of these came to fruition and so the war continues despite the fact that Russia, the Ukraine and the countries of Western Europe as well as the USA are Member States of the United Nations.
The reason for this state of affairs is structural and foundational. The United Nations was created by the victorious powers who assumed an unprecedented degree of power in the world as a result of their successful conclusion of World War II. While all Member States may have “sovereign equality,” the reality is that those with more power, wealth, and better position and influence exert disproportionate power on peoples, institutions and events. This is the same situation we find in the domestic societies of Western democracies or republics. While everyone in the Western societies may be “equal before the law” or “created equal,” the reality is that those with more wealth, influence and ability have an advantage over other citizens.
The Liberal Order of social organization that came about beginning in 1789 in the USA and in France, gave, and continues to give, real power to powerful private interests or a plutocracy. The people and entities with position, wealth and influence to shape events, institutions and people come to rule as there is neither a strong independent Church nor is there a strong enough government while the opinion shaping institutions are in the hands of the private interests without any sort of check. Without the establishment of the Catholic Church and religion in the Liberal societies, and with a philosophy that elevates the civil society making a necessary evil of the government, the appetites and powers of the plutocratic class are not effectively limited in those domestic societies. It is only logical that the domestic plutocracies would grow into an alliance with others around the globe.
Unrestrained in the domestic sphere, the powerful private interests embarked on a course of world domination beginning before, and with, World War I and continuing to today.[9] The United Nations came about after the defeat of the Axis Powers. East Asia and Western Europe were subdued and under the control of the USA and the UK with their ruling socio-economic classes. It was a master stroke especially given the power of these private interests and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that followed in 1948 which defined a new morality without reference to Christ and His Law. The Universal Declaration established on a global scale as the ideal of social organization the principles of the Liberal Order found in America and Western Europe. It was a formula for equality, human rights, and most importantly, control by the plutocratic class. Between the concepts in the Declaration, the right to self-determination of peoples, and any of a number of other issues that could be manufactured, without a solid grounding of society – international or domestic – the people would be sifted like wheat in the pursuit of what they thought was their best interest. Without the Pope to determine the morality of matters, then votes of the majority of countries in the General Assembly on one resolution or issue or another became the official international view on the morality of events. So the UN General Assembly may pass a resolution calling on Russia to withdraw from the Ukraine as it did on March 2 or it may pass a resolution calling the annexation of the four regions known collectively as the Donbass illegal as it did on October 12, but can a majority vote determine what is moral and what is not? The Catholic Faith says generally, no.
The International Order and the Divine Positive Law
The popes since at least Leo XIII have written on the need for the international order to be based on the Divine Positive Law even though Christendom passed.[10] In Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae (The Reunion of Christendom) (1894), Leo XIII wrote:
“For to repress ambition and covetousness and envy – the chief instigators of war – nothing is more fitted than the Christian Virtues and, in particular, the Virtue of Justice; for, by its exercise, both the law of nations and the faith of treaties may be maintained inviolate, and the bonds of brotherhood continue unbroken, if men are but convinced that Justice exalteth a nation. As in its external relations, so in the internal life of the State itself, the Christian Virtues will provide a guarantee of the commonweal much more sure and stronger far than any which laws or armies can afford.”
Pope Benedict XV in Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrimum (1920):
“Venerable Brethren…there can be no stable peace or lasting treaties, though made after long and difficult negotiations and duly signed, unless there be a return of mutual charity to appease hate and banish enmity….It is the teaching of history that when the Church pervaded with her spirit the ancient and barbarous nations of Europe, little by little the many and varied differences that divided them were diminished and their quarrels extinguished; in time they formed a homogeneous society from which sprang Christian Europe, which under the guidance and auspices of the Church, whilst preserving a diversity of nations, tended to a unity that favoured its prosperity and glory….”
Pope Pius XII in Summi Pontificatus (1939):
“[T]o tear the law of nations from its anchor in Divine law, to base it on the autonomous will of States, is to dethrone that very law and deprive it of its noblest and strongest qualities. Thus it would stand abandoned to the fatal drive of private interest and collective selfishness exclusively intent on the assertion of its own rights and ignoring those of others.”
Studying the teachings of the popes from the late 1800s until the early 1900s, English Professor A.C.F. Beales concluded that “It is unlikely that there can be any stable international order so long as chronic social ill-health persists within individual states.”[11] The internal condition of the states affected their relations with others in the international community, but until such time as these conditions may be rightly repaired, the Faith reminds individual states that they are moral actors and that their actions are subject to the moral order.[12]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sets solidarity as the principle to be followed between different countries.[13] John Cardinal Wright explained in his doctoral thesis the bases of any international order based on Catholicism. These considerations are part of the virtue of solidarity which is based on charity. The five foundational principles calling for solidarity are: an interdependence of the human community to secure the particular good in each fatherland or national community; the existence of the same nature of all humans on this planet along with the need to be a system for satisfaction of needs, conciliation of interests, and regulations for the amicable resolution of differences; “the good of one fatherland is a condition of the good of others and…is the cause thereof”; all societies are subject to the moral law, as they all face the universality of problems and obstacles; and mankind’s common good is based on universal principles.[14] Professor Beales, in citing to the Jesuit Taparelli d’Azeglio’s Essay on the Natural Law (1846), wrote that “the international society seeks principally the good of political order…In the international society, the object is, by maintaining political order, to enable each nation to develop its own internal activity as a society.”[15] As said elsewhere, while the domestic society exists for the good of the person, the international society exists that the domestic society may facilitate the good of the person, and therefore the rights of the individual societies or countries cannot be greater to that of the international community.[16]
Solidarity calls for the material and spiritual development of the person.[17] There is something called a “universal common good” with “common good” meaning the sum total of conditions that make it easier or more likely for a person, and society, to achieve fulfillment, which is understood to mean beatitude in the case of individuals and right order in the case of society.[18] States exist for the person, and the rights of individual states cannot exceed the rights of the international order which is to regulate relations between individual states for the good of the person.[19] That entails avoiding things like unjust wars and vast economic disparities.
Recognizing the realities of the current situation, and that wars come from distrust, inequalities and disorders of human hearts[20] the Faith acknowledges that countries have a right to self-defense unless there is a strong enough international order that will suppress the violence between countries.[21] The threatened destruction of that unique common good that is found in a domestic society triggers the right to self-defense, [22][23] and the West advances a world view, societal view, and family view that is at odds with that presented by the Russian leadership. LGBTQ, gender ideology, allegations of racism are used to attack and destroy ethnicity and are all dangers to any traditional culture which Russia has. The leadership of countries, in their prudential judgment, may decide to wage war when all means of peaceful resolution of an aggression have been exhausted and other rigorous criteria are met.[24] The war must be waged in accordance with the laws of war and for the appropriate, proportional end.[25]
Not surprisingly, the West has its view as to the morality of the war, and Russia has its view as to the morality of the war. The two divergent views proceed from different emphases on different aspects of the situation. The Western leadership emphasizes the actual military operation or invasion that Russia launched in February, 2022. The Russian leadership emphasizes the reasons for the military operation.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said the special military operation (SMO) was for self-defense by neutralizing the Ukraine as a platform from which to attack Russia. The neutrality of the Ukraine as well as the safety and self-determination of peoples in the Donbass Region were sought.[26] It is not clear that an attack on Russia was imminent by the Ukraine and hence the applicability of the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense, as that is understood in international law, is undetermined.[27] Some of the Russian goals have been met but the Ukraine with Western help continues to fight.
The Russian war aims changed with an emphasis on national survival as the Western rhetoric intensified. Joe Biden’s September 21, 2022 speech to the United Nations accused Russia of wanting to eviscerate the Ukraine, and that the cause of, and blame for, the war rested with Putin. Biden said the USA along with its allies was engaged in a war for democracy and against autocracy.[28] Biden’s speech, coupled with the increasing and widening sanctions regimes leveled on Russia and its leadership, came after Western leaders openly called for the removal of Putin, and some urged strikes into Russia. The message at the UN was clear – Putin had to go. Removing Putin is regime change in Russia and after Putin it is likely a more Western friendly regime would be installed. That is essential to achieve the ultimate goal which is the removal of Xi and the subjugation of China. It is easier to change the Chinese leadership with Russian oil and nuclear weaponry firmly in the hands of an ally. This makes the war about more than the Ukraine. Putin’s speech of September 30, 2022[29] signaled that in his mind the war had now become a war of national survival, and was no longer limited to a conflict to protect Russia’s borders or to neutralize a neighbor. The war has escalated, and the aims of the West been enlarged much as happened in World War II. As in World War II, the West, especially the USA, provoked Japan into striking first militarily. That has always been the necessary sina qua non for American total involvement and total war. In other words, the American leadership has a history of provoking the other side to hit first, and then the Americans come back with everything they got to destroy the enemy.
There does not appear to be any serious effort at reaching a solution, nor does it appear likely given the most important thinkers of the Western elites wanted to teach the world a lesson. Yuval Noah Harari, a homosexual Israeli and secular, or ethnic, Jew,[30] espouses ideas that should terrify every human. Touted as a great thinker of the elites, in early 2022 he set out the significance of the war in the Ukraine. He wrote that “[T]he Russian threat to invade Ukraine should concern every person on Earth. If it again becomes normative for powerful countries to wolf down their weaker neighbours, it would affect the way people all over the world feel and behave.”[31] To stop wars, then, a war must be waged, and so it sounds like Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” of more than a hundred years ago. Ending evils without Christ and the Divine Positive Law, is not so much the ending of evil as it is the imposition of a type of tyranny. It is as Professor Thaddeus Kozinski has said, the cross without Christ.[32]
In the space of several months, a war to protect Russia became a war of Russian national survival and regime change without any peace prospects. Over the course of years and in the face of warnings from scholars, diplomats and the Russians, one side (the West) pushed east such that provocation for war was clear. This is hardly the exercise of good faith by Member States of the UN to avoid war or the conditions of war, nor is it the peacemaking demanded from each Member State by the imperatives of the United Nations Charter. From where many of us sit, it appears more war is on the horizon and won’t end until the plutocracy says it’ll end[33] regardless of the United Nations Charter.
The Imperative of the Internal Order of States
In 1941, John Cardinal Wright (then a young priest completing his doctoral thesis) wrote:
“[O]ne of the most urgent obligations in modern patriotism is that which urges the patriot to seek the furtherance of the common good of his national community by collaborating, so far as is possible for him, in the establishment of that international order without which the national community cannot fulfill its own functions.”
In other words, the patriot in seeking the common good of his own country, obtains the common good of the world order. Common good, as you will recall, is defined by the Faith as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.” (CCC, Section 1905; Gaudium et Spes, Section 26, para. 1; Dignitatis Humanae, Section 6.)
The current World War will likely bring about a period of greater global consolidation of power even though a period of multi-polarity may be in store until the war resolves. This will not resolve the issue of how countries with very different societies can co-exist in such a way as to avoid unwanted conflict. America, with its Federalism and Bill of Rights, always presented the world with a way to organize itself internationally, and so America has always been a laboratory of sorts.
It is in this context that we may look at the works of Professors Patrick Deneen, Philip Vincent Munoz and Adrian Vermeule,[34] three Catholics who have written on the ordering of American society as we pass into post-liberalism. Their works have significance in justifying or explaining a view of the American system of social organization. America is still the world leader, and her experience and example for the last 240 years or so is significant to the rest of the world. Federalism and a republican form of government extended over such a vast area comprising so many people is of value to, and instructive of, the ordering of a world with over 190 countries and many different cultures. The American view of social organization has relevance to the international community. However, without the grounding of any system of social organization in the Divine Positive Law, and without a critique of systems that exclude the Divine Positive Law, it is hard to see how the admonitions of the Popes and the Catechism can be adequately and completely addressed, answered, and implemented in a proposed system. Without Christ’s law, without the Divine Positive law as the basis of the laws of society, then the evils that arise domestically and that create disorder in the international community will persist as will the disorders in the international community. Without this, then there is lost a sense of societal “friendship” that transcends mere being, consists of a shared identity and sense of a shared destiny, and is a common understanding of our common nature. All of this is possible with the Divine Positive Law which once injected into societies and becomes the operating set of values and social organization, creates a new people, a better people.[35] Without the Divine Positive Law, I fear that a new mode of tyranny will be justified by relying on the work of the well-meaning people of the world.
If we are to avoid wars and the conditions that lead to such, then the internal order of states is in need of reform to be in accordance with the Divine Positive Law, or at least the Natural Law as understood by the Faith. That will require conversions, and like any successful revolution or counter-revolution, that must happen at the top as well as in society at large. The hard part will be placing wealth and the need for wealth in their proper place in the hierarchy of goods and to order societies such that the love of money is not greater than the love of God. Placing wealth in service to God, and serving God first, is to address the most important issue in society today. It will require the authorities neutralizing the power of the plutocracy, exercising control over some of their property, and perhaps even calling some to justice. But all starts with preaching against the allure of wealth, and such is akin to St Boniface cutting down Donar’s Oak. So, while conversions at the top are needed, we also need martyrs.
References:
A.C.F. Beales, The Catholic Church and International Order (Penguin Books, New York: 1941)
Antonio Cassese, International Law: Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997)
Iain Davis, “Multipolar World Order,” Zerohedge.com
“From Churchill to NATO: How the West Built and Empowered Italian Fascism,” October 19, 2022, MRonline.org
Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment (GSG and Associates, 1981)
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time (GSG and Associates, 2004)
W.G. Smith “International Law,” In the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) as retrieved September 10, 2022 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09073a.htm.
Antony C. Sutton, The Wall Street Trilogy: A History (Global Alliance Publications, 2018)
“United Nations Charter”
David Wemhoff, “The Catholic International: Order More Important than Ever,” April 6, 2022, The American Proposition.
John J. Wright, National Patriotism in Papal Teaching (Stratford Company, Boston, 1942)
[1] United Nations Charter, Article 1(1).
[2] Ibid., Article 2(1).
[3] Ibid., Article 1(3).
[4] Ibid., Article 2(2).
[5] Ibid., Article 2(3).
[6] “UNAI Quiz: Good faith,” from un.org.
[7] Tweet of Arnaud Bertrand, February 28, 2022.
[8] See, “Anatomy of a Coup: How CIA Front Laid Foundations for Ukraine War,” July 6, 2022, MROnline.com accessed at https://mronline.org/2022/07/06/anatomy-of-a-coup/
[9] I consider the Cold War as World War III for it was a war waged ostensibly to defeat Soviet Communism but the subtext was to subjugate the Catholics; the Global War on Terror as World War IV for while it was officially directed at Islamic terrorism, the subtext was the subjugation of Islam by reordering societies to do away with radical or extremist or terrorist elements; and the current conflict, World War V as it is the subjugation of nationalist tendencies as represented by Putin and Xi, Russia and China. The efforts of the plutocracy to rule the world are described in works by James Perloff, Antony Sutton, Carroll Quigley, myself, Iain Davis, to name just a few. Of note, earlier this month the following work was published by Mario José Cereghino, and journalist Giovanni Fasanella: Nero di Londra (The Black of London), which explains that Benito Mussolini was a British asset before becoming and as dictator of Italy.
[10] Pope Pius IX famously explained the dynamic that exists in every human society in recent times in his encyclical Quanta Cura (1864): “But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?” para. 4.
[11] ACF Beales, The Catholic Church and International Order (Penguin Books, New York: 1941), 145.
[12] See, Pope Benedict XV, Pacem Dei Munus Pulcherrimum (1920), para. 14.
[13] See, David Wemhoff, “The Catholic International Order: More Important than Ever,” April 6, 2022, The American Proposition.
[14] John J. Wright, National Patriotism in Papal Teaching, (The Stratford Company, Newton, Massachusetts, 1941); also, see Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus (1939).
[15] Beales, The Catholic Church and the International Order, 152-153.
[16]See, Pope Pius XI, Caritate Christi Compulsi, “Now if this excessive love of self and of one’s own, by an abuse of the legitimate care for our country and an undue exaltation of the feelings of piety towards our own people (which piety is not condemned but hallowed and strengthened by the right order of Christian charity) encroaches on the mutual relations and the ties between peoples, there is hardly anything so abnormal that it will not be regarded as free from fault…”
[17] Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), Sections 2438, 2441, 2461.
[18] CCC Sections 1905, 1911, 1927; Also, see Gaudium et Spes (Vatican II Council, 1965) and Declaration on Religious Liberty (Vatican II Council, 1965).
[19] See, Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus (1939), para. 71.
[20] CCC, Section 2317.
[21] CCC, Sections 2308-2309.
[22] See, Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, para. 66.
[23] See, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2265-2266.
[24] CCC, Section 2309. The analysis of the just war criteria is beyond the scope of this article but should be undertaken. Allow me to list the elements in accordance with the Catechism: “ [1]the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain; [2] all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; [3] there must be serious prospects of success; [4] the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.” This article presents a summary of the evidence that supports a finding that in “the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good” criteria [2] was met by February 2022. If criteria [1] was not readily apparent at the start of the Russian special military operation, then it has become apparent by now as the war has shifted from one of self-defense by neutralizing the Ukraine to one of national survival by preventing regime change in Russia that will signify the beginning of societal reorganization. Criteria [3] is problematic the more I consider it. If Russia were just battling Ukraine, then there are serious prospects of success, and there is evidence Russia did achieve its primary goals by the end of September 2022. If we consider as part of the evaluation the American and Western practice of provoking an enemy to justify a launch of total war for regime change, then we have to reconsider whether this criteria is met. However, the West’s “upping the ante” in the war could also be viewed as the start of a war against Russia initiated by the West and so the original evaluation of the factors needed to arrive at criteria [3] would stand as having been met. As to criteria [4] the efficiency of military efforts is the issue, and my sense is that with the state of precision munitions, this criteria could be readily met if the targets are carefully delineated. Again, all of this is to be accomplished by the prudential judgment of those responsible for the common good, and so the Russian leadership, and the Western leadership, have best access to the necessary information or data.
[25] CCC, 2309, 2312-2314, 2328. I render no opinion or view as to the conduct of the war. That is something that is usually sorted out after the war, and often to the benefit of the victor. The war aims are however very important and this article discusses those war aims as made clear in the speeches of the leadership.
[26] See, David Wemhoff, “The Ukraine Is About China,” March 3, 2022, The American Proposition.
[27] See, Antonio Cassese, International Law 2d Edition (Oxford University Press, 2005), 357-362.
[28] “Remarks by President Biden Before the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” September 21, 2022, “Briefing Room,” White House website.
[29] “Signing of Treaties on accession of Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia,” September 30, 2022 English version from the Kremlin website.
[30] See, https://www.ynharari.com/about/; Andrew Anthony, “Yuval Noah Harari: Homosapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so,” March 19, 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/19/yuval-harari-sapiens-readers-questions-lucy-prebble-arianna-huffington-future-of-humanity
[31] Yuval Noah Harari, “Humanity’s greatest political achievement has been the decline of war. That is now in jeopardy,” February 9, 2022, June 8, 2022, The Economist.
[32] See, “Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski on America and His Book `Modernity as Apocalypse’,” February 21, 2022, The American Proposition.
[33] I am reminded of Bluto’s (John Belushi) big speech in Animal House: “Over? Over? Nothing is over until we say it’s over.”
[34] Professor Deneen has a book due for release next year entitled Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future and he is of course the author of Why Liberalism Failed (2018); Professor Munoz’ newest book is entitled Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Clauses; Professor Vermeule’s book is Common Good Constitutionalism.
[35] See, Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, para. 35; Benedict XV, Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrimum, para. 18.