Category: Empire

On voting for warmongers—or not [American Politics #11]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 9 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 26, 2024

I still haven’t figured out what to do with my ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Our mail-in ballots arrived the other day and are sitting on our dining room table. There are some things I am certain about—I won’t simply throw the ballot away. I will vote (though not enthusiastically) for the Democratic Party candidates for the House and the Senate. I will not vote for Donald Trump.

However, I don’t know if I will vote for Kamala Harris. Unlike in the past, I will probably not vote for a third-party candidate. But I might leave that line blank. Or, a slight possibility, I might decide at the last minute to go ahead and vote for Cornel West (kind of for old times’ sake, I have greatly appreciated his speeches and writings over the years).

Almost exactly twelve years ago, I wrote a blog post: “Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?” (plus, two follow-ups: “More thoughts about voting [or not] for a warmonger” and “Faith and politics [including voting]”). My answer, in relation to the re-election campaign of Barack Obama, was a carefully reasoned “yes.” That assertion elicited a truly enjoyable and lengthy conversation in the comments section of my post from a diversity of friends and other readers. Some agreed with me, and some did not. Those who disagreed were generally of a mind that not voting for president was a valid principled stance for Christian pacifists. Some who agreed with my decision to vote for Obama did not agree with my characterization of him as a “warmonger,” but were happy I was not sitting the election out.

What’s different compared to 2012?

Now, though, I am saying that I’m not yet persuaded to vote for Harris. What is different this time around? That is a challenging question for me. Before I looked at my 2012 post, I was not thinking about what I had decided back then. Now I realize that I am changing my argument. Why? Do I think I was wrong back then?

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Is there an end in sight? The US Empire sinks ever lower [American Politics #9]

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Ted Grimsrud—April 22 2024

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (Dylan Thomas)

I have come to feel one little sliver of gratitude for the current devastating violence that Israel (with the backing of the United States) is visiting on Gaza. It helps us see more clearly the reality of the US/NATO backing of the doomed Ukrainian war against Russia and the reality of the scaling up of American war cries in relation to China. The US Congress’s recently passed spending bill to fund billions for war and war preparation in Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan makes obvious the actual dynamics.

The motives of the US Empire: Corporate profit and domination

I’d say first of all, the US/NATO pursues these wars and possible wars in order to redistribute money from their taxpayers to corporate war profiteers. And, then, second, these wars and possible wars are justified as necessary to further the empire’s obviously failing agenda of being the dominant power in a “unipolar” world. This agenda, of course, is framed in terms of resisting the expansionist intentions of Russia and China. However, when we look at the whole picture in light of the destruction of Gaza, we see more clearly that there is nothing defensive about any of these situations—Gaza is simply about conquest and devastation. To see that about Gaza in turn helps us see what, in reality, the others are about as well.

A recent, typically insightful essay by Aaron Maté helps make all of this clear. He points out, first, that this new bill is all about directing money to the war corporations. He quotes House Armed Service Chair Mike Rogers: “Nearly all the money we’re spending to arm Ukraine [and, I may add, Israel and Taiwan] doesn’t leave this country,” but instead “goes directly to US companies and American workers to produce more weapons at a faster pace.” As it turns out, a lot of the money in this particular bill won’t even go to Ukraine or Israel in any direct way but rather will be spent simply to rebuild the American store of weaponry.

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More critical thoughts on America’s proxy war [American politics #7]

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Ted Grimsrud—October 5, 2023

[Early in 2022, after Russia greatly accelerated its military engagement with Ukraine, I wrote  several blog posts and then some shorter posts on Facebook  with my reflections. After many months, I decided to re-engage these issues as the war continues unabated. I posted several times recently on Facebook and consolidated those into a blog post, “And they call it democracy…. Critical thoughts on America’s proxy war.” Here are a couple more posts.]

History may not repeat itself but at times it sure rhymes (9.22.23)

I recently read a book from the late 1970s, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. It is a detailed report on the carnage visited on various countries around the world (e.g., Indonesia, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and—especially—Vietnam) by the American Empire in the 1960s and 1970s. The section on Vietnam especially caught my attention as I thought of America’s involvement in the current Russia/Ukraine war.

On the surface, the differences between the Vietnam War back then and the current war in Ukraine are obvious and significant. Back then, it was the US invading Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of our troops; now, we are mainly only offering military aid (no troops) to Ukraine as it is invaded by Russia.

However, I find it instructive to think of a few of the similarities. With the Vietnam War, the US military planners well knew by 1965 that it was a war they could not win. From that point on until the final withdrawal ten years later, the US pursued extraordinarily destructive military operations for purposes entirely separate from actually defeating their Vietnamese enemies. It was clear during that entire time that eventually the war would end with a US defeat. So, why did they continue? It had to do with broader American “strategic interests” in the world and with American “prestige.”

Is the same kind of dynamic present in our current conflict? The much-heralded Ukrainian “counteroffensive” seems not only to have failed; it seems quite likely that the US/NATO leaders who pushed for that effort knew it would fail from the beginning. Why would they do this? It is hard to imagine an alternative to the reality that it’s about “strategic interests” and “prestige” that have absolutely nothing to do with the wellbeing of the Ukrainian people.

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A Christian pacifist in the American Empire, part 3: The American Empire without blinders

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Ted Grimsrud—September 15, 2023

In the first post in this three-part Theological Memoir, “Embedded Theology,” I gave an account of my first two decades of life with a focus on how my “embedded theology” led me to accept the “blank check” regarding my loyalty to the American Empire, even to the point of being (reluctantly) willing to go to war if called. This acceptance of the blank check was, if anything, strengthened when I became a Christian and was taught that the “gospel” included an embrace of American patriotism.

The second post, “Jesus’s gospel of peace,” describes the circumstances around the transformation of my perspective due my encounter with Jesus—an embrace of Christian pacifism and a rejection of the blank check that involved a deeply critical disposition toward the American Empire. I also briefly sketch the Bible-oriented theology that undergirds that critical disposition.

My encounter with the gospel of peace has defined the rest of my life. Right away in 1976, I sought to bring together the two main elements of this new exciting vision for life and faith: First, an embrace of Jesus’s gracious and humane call that love of God and neighbor are the core meaning of life. Second, an ever-widening analysis in our social and political context of the vicious, expansionist, profoundly violent American Empire. From the very start, for me, these were two sides of a single coin. The call to love illuminated the realities of the Empire and the realities of the Empire continually challenged me to understand the practical and embodied character of the call to love. The more I studied the Bible, the more convinced I became of the radical nature of this story of God’s call of a people to bless all the families of the earth with their message of shalom. In this post I will outline my critique of the American Empire.

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A Christian pacifist in the American Empire, Part 1: Embedded theology

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Ted Grimsrud—September 13, 2023

At this stage in my life, retired but still trying to be productive with my research and writing, I find myself wanting to narrow my interests. I hope to find a level of focus that will enable me to reduce distractions and zero in on doing what I have left to do. The big theme that has my attention is trying better to understand why our world and, especially, the nation I live in are in such dire straits. I know that no matter how focused I might be enabled to be, this theme will be beyond me. But I hope that by putting my best energy into such a project I might be able to make at least a little progress.

So, I was happy to be invited to make a presentation on September 11, 2023, to the monthly meeting of the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society at Eastern Mennonite University. I decided to share what I call a “theological memoir” that, I think, sets a personal context for my “Why is America in such dire straits?” project. By “theological memoir,” I mean reflections on what I believe are some of my important theological convictions in the context of the elements of my life that brought them forth.

I have divided the reflections I shared into three posts. This one is the first, and I will call it “Embedded theology.” It has to do with the context in which I grew up, both my family and my homeland in rural America, and what I inherited theologically. By “theology” I have in mind a sense of what matters the most, what rests at the top of our hierarchy of values. Certainly, our sense of “God” is theological, but even if we don’t self-consciously affirm God’s existence, we still have some kind of theology. All of us have a hierarchy of values, convictions about what matters the most, about what core beliefs shape our lives.

The second, “Jesus’s gospel of peace,” has to do with the transformation that happened in my theology in the mid-1970s. This was when some of the key elements of my embedded theology became crystalized, and I embraced them as a consequence of my encounter with Jesus and peace theology. I at that point came to an understanding of “peace” that I still have: Peace as having to do with the wholeness, with the health, with the wellbeing of the global community. This wholeness means the health and wellbeing of all creatures within the global community and of each sub-community. Such a sense of wholeness requires being attentive especially to the vulnerable and marginalized members of the community. It also requires a recognition that a peaceful outcome requires peaceful means at all stages—that is, violence, especially warfare, is not compatible with health and wholeness. The inspiration for my understanding of peace comes from the Bible, especially the biblical concept of “shalom.”

Then, third, I will touch on my political journey as a pastor and theology professor. I call that post, “The American Empire without blinders.” By the term “empire,” I have in mind a general sense of the United States as a superpower whose influence and engagement encompass a great deal of the world. I am not using “empire” in a particularly technical sense, but more in an everyday, general sensibility kind of way. By “American Empire,” I mainly mean, “America’s role as a dominant power far outside of its own boundaries.”

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Trying to understand Putin and Russia better

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 8 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—August 28, 2023

I realized at the beginning of the current iteration of the Russia/Ukraine war that I knew very little about Vladimir Putin and present-day Russia. Since then, I have tried a bit to remedy my ignorance. However, I am uncomfortable with popular understandings of Putin in the US, characterized as they are by a tendency (in the words of historian Richard Hofstadter from the Cold War years) to view every enemy as “a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel who profits from the misery he has produced.” I found that tendency to be widespread in the treatments of Putin I have seen and heard.

When I recently read a review of several recent biographies of Putin, I noticed one was praised for its relative objectivity. So, I decided to read it. The author is Philip Short, a British journalist who has written biographies of other American “enemies” such as Mao and Pol Pot. The book has a simple title: Putin (no subtitle) and was published by Henry Holt. The manuscript was completed in April 2022, so it does include a discussion of the lead up to and early months of the Russia/Ukraine war.

I would like to share a few thoughts stimulated by my reading. I was glad I read the book. I found it to be pretty carefully researched and reasonably objective. I didn’t love reading it, and it is very long (864 pages total, including 140 pages of end notes)—though the writing is clear and generally irenic. The book helped satisfy my curiosity and provided some useful knowledge and analysis to put the present situation in context.

I appreciate that Short does not treat Putin as “a kind of amoral superman.” Perhaps his relative objectivity will lead those who are US/NATO apologists to criticize him as a Putin defender—but I think that is far from the truth. In fact, I think in the end this book does still give too much of the benefit of the doubt to the US/NATO agenda, but I have no hesitation in recommending it to others who are interested in trying to understand Putin and Russia. It makes a good contribution. Let me share a few observations that follow from my reading.

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And they call it democracy…. Critical thoughts on America’s proxy war

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Ted Grimsrud—August 24, 2023

[Early in 2022, after Russia greatly accelerated its military engagement with Ukraine, I wrote several blog posts and then some shorter posts on Facebook with my reflections. After all these months, I decided to re-engage these issues as the war continues unabated. Here are several recent Facebook posts.]

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! (August 3, 2023)

War almost always ends up way worse than those who initiate it expect. Classic examples are the American Civil War and World War I, in both cases famously entered into by all sides with the expectation the war would be quick and victorious. What followed were the two worst bloodbaths in human history up to the time with indecisive results. American history in the past 75 years is full of case after case of this dynamic (e.g., Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan).

Almost certainly, Russia expected its direct military intervention in the Ukrainian civil war to end quickly back a year and a half ago. There is a chance it might have had the negotiations of the Spring of 2022 managed to reach a conclusion. However, Ukraine pulled back, and the current devastating war of attrition accelerated with no happy ending in sight.

More controversially, some observers are suggesting that the US/NATO side of this conflict was also a miscalculation that is leading to profoundly negative unanticipated consequences for that side. One of these observers is the American political scientist John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is often categorized as a “realist” who, it could be said, believes in the American Empire but believes many of the past and current actions of the empire are ill-considered and self-defeating.

In a recent interview, he reemphasizes his perception that the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine right now is essentially a hopeless operation and has been from the start. The West pushed Ukraine into this operation, but to Mearsheimer, it was “like encouraging them to launch a suicidal offensive that is completely counterproductive.” Why the push? “The West is very fearful that time is running out, that if the Ukrainians don’t show some significant success on the battlefield in the year 2023, public support for the war will dry up and the Ukrainians will lose—and the West will lose.”

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The pattern of Jesus (Revelation, chapters 1–5)

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Ted Grimsrud—August 8, 2023

[This is the second of a series of four posts on the book Revelation. The first is “Reading Revelation with an Anabaptist Sensibility.” The third is “Healing amidst the chaos (Revelation, chapters 6–16).]

If we take up the book of Revelation expecting it to present a case for the truthfulness of the peaceable way of Jesus, we will find plenty of evidence to confirm that expectation. The first five chapters introduce us to Jesus and his presence among Christian congregations of the late first century. These chapters make it clear that Jesus’s way stands in opposition to the domination system of the Roman Empire of the time—and all empires since.

The pattern of Jesus (1:1-6)

The first six verses of the book set the stage for what the book as a whole will be about. This is the “revelation of Jesus Christ.” That is, this is the Jesus of the gospels. We may accurately say this revelation comes from Jesus. More so, though, I think the meaning is that this book is about Jesus. And about interpreting life in light of Jesus. Once we look for it, we will see throughout the book allusions to the way of Jesus—or, as I want to say, “the pattern of Jesus.”

The word translated “revelation” is apocalypsis, may also be translated “apocalypse.” I think that latter translation may be misleading for us, though. It often has the connotation of future oriented, catastrophe oriented, kind of magical. Revelation is all too often seen as a different kind of writing than the rest of the Bible (“apocalyptic” literature). We should note that the word is not used again in Revelation. The book does not seem to want to make a point of being different. I think the best meaning is that this is a book of insight about Jesus and applying his message to life. This book is about our world, both the 1st century and the 21st century.

The statement, the “time is near” is not about predicting the future but rather urgency about the importance of the message of the book. To say “near” is a rhetorical flourish that has to do with the importance of choosing between Jesus and the Empire as the bases for one’s approach to life. We see an increased sense of urgency as we move through the three sets of plagues that come later in the book—going from 1/4 destruction to 1/3 to full, not to signify chronology but to say with increased intensity that this stuff really matters.

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Why did Christianity move so far away from the message of Jesus? [Questioning faith #7]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 21, 2022

From the time I made a commitment to Christian pacifism in the mid-1970s, I have believed that Jesus and the Bible as a whole support that commitment. In the years since, I have learned a lot more about how this “support” is complicated and at time ambiguous. However, I still believe that the general message of the Bible and more clearly the message of Jesus obviously point toward peace, compassion, care for the vulnerable, and what we now refer to as restorative justice—even if some may quibble about whether it explicitly teaches pacifism.

A few years after my turn toward peaceable Christianity, my wife Kathleen and I spent a year at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. We gained a terrific foundation there of biblical peace theology, especially from Old Testament professor Millard Lind and New Testament professor Willard Swartley. I have preached through much of the Bible in the 40 years since attending AMBS, each year during my 20-year teaching career at Eastern Mennonite University I taught a class called “Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice,” and I have written several books on peace based on the Bible. I feel quite established in my sense that the Bible (especially, but not only, Jesus) gives us a strong message of peace.

The difference between the Bible and Christian practice

So, that leads to the obvious question. What happened to Christianity? The history of Christianity is a history full of wars and militarism, conquest and domination, crusades and the embrace of empire. One statistical piece of evidence comes from the United States. In 1940, after several years of intense lobbying by peace advocates, the legislation passed to begin a military draft included allowance for pacifists to be exempt from joining the military. So, this proved to be kind of a test case.

From my analysis, I would estimate that about one out of 1,000 American Christians chose the conscientious objector route. For the vast majority of the young men who were drafted, the option to be a CO—and the sense that Jesus would support such a stance—seemingly never even entered the realm of possibility. Not only have Christians around the world almost always supported their nations’ wars, even when they would be fighting other Christians, it actually seems to be the case at least in the United States that Christians are more likely than non-Christians to support wars and preparation for wars. It doesn’t seem farfetched to call Christianity a pro-war religion—the opposite of Jesus’s message.

So, again, the question: Why the transformation? This is a question that has interested me for a long time, but I have never devoted serious attention to it. I have come up with a preliminary list, though, of what seem to be key elements of the evolution away from Jesus’s teaching.

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More thoughts about Ukraine and the American Empire [Pacifism Today #8]

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Ted Grimsrud—June 23, 2022

[In early March, as the conflict in Ukraine gained the world’s attention, I began to write about that conflict, especially in relation to the American Empire. I posted a blog entry, “Thinking as an American pacifist about the Russian invasion” on March 3. On April 10, I posted “Reflecting morally on the conflict in Ukraine,” a collection of four shorter Facebook posts from the previous month. This current post also collects Facebook posts and leaves them essentially unchanged.]

So, what’s going on with Russia/Ukraine? [5.10.22]

I have struggled with how best to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and, especially, the American role in it—especially in light of Jesus and his biases toward peace and against the power elite. These are some brief points about which I have developed some clear impressions (subject to revision):

1. The US has been seeking a unipolar world at least since 1945 (for example, note the size of the American military budget in relation to the rest of the world and its extensive set of military bases around the world). This quest for global dominance has led to the US relationship with the Soviet Union/Russia to be very adversarial. Russia has a long history of facing aggression from the West going back to Napoleon.

2. Ukraine was the site of armed conflict before the Russian invasion in early February 2022, with thousands dying since 2014. What happened in February was an acceleration of the conflict, not an initiating of it.

3. There are great profits for arms dealers (war profiteers) in the deepening of this conflict. These profits come on top of the great profits throughout the Cold War era and the resistance to a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” These profits have been a key factor driving American policies.

4. Our mainstream (corporate) media are mainly repeating what they are being fed by government. Note the lack of dissenting voices in relation to the militarized American response in the core national media (e.g., Times, Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, New Yorker, Atlantic).

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