Tag Archives: Ann Gaylia O’Barr

A Still Regional Nation

Though Americans move frequently compared to citizens of many other nations, the United States still maintains regional differences. For many of us, how fellow Americans live in another region may seem vastly different, even perhaps strange.

I have moved about the country probably a bit more than most Americans, even though we are called a nation of movers. In the beginning, I lived with my family in the same house in Nashville, Tennessee, until I went off to college in Birmingham, Alabama.

After college, I began moving around: first within my native state of Tennessee, then a big change to the northeast—rural New Jersey. Later, Indiana, then California, then back to Nashville, then to a couple of places in Georgia.

After that, I joined the Foreign Service of the U.S. State Department and the changes were even further out of familiar territory. Washington, D.C., of course, for training. Then to different countries: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Canada.

After the Foreign Service, my husband and I retired to his boyhood home on an island up from Seattle.

Even here, I still feel a little out of it—my accent, for one thing, nails me as soon as I open my mouth. After years of moving around, I never lost that accent.

So, yes, even though I’ve moved around more than most Americans, even in a nation with a lot of movers, I still see America’s distinct regions, remaining through generations.

The differences still exist between the Midwest and the South and the east coast and the Pacific region and New England—and all the others in between.

We remain, in some ways, sectional Americans. That is not a bad thing in itself, perhaps even a blessing. It gives us different perspectives and spices our national story, especially as the story is being added to by even more varieties of people.

It does require what has brought America, sometimes badly, but has brought us through all these centuries. That requirement is a tolerance for often very different views of looking at the country and sometimes with different goals in mind.

What is required and has to be prevalent in order for the country to work, is tolerance. We have to be willing to let others win when they have the votes. And we have to abide by those votes and guard with a vengeance any who would attempt to overcome the votes with false counts or narratives. In court case after court case, the past election has been ruled legitimate.

When you don’t have the votes to win, then have enough love of country to yield to those who do. When the other side wins, have the patriotism and love of America to become the loyal opposition—with emphasis on loyal.

When We Have Enough? What Then?

Americans certainly include those who are poor, but America in the last half century or so has known an age of prosperity unlike any in history. What do we do with our prosperity?

Those with money left over after their basic needs are met will make choices, whether purposefully or not. Understandably, “basic” is a moving target. Nevertheless, American prosperity has long given a significant number of us disposable income.

Most would agree on uses of income that we would abhor—use of income to sexually exploit others, especially children, for example. We generally would agree, in principal at least, that paying bribes to obtain political favors is wrong.

But what lawful ways do we agree are acceptable? Vacations, probably. Surely, time away from routine duties refreshes and renews us. But vacations can range from a few days of hiking trails to mind expanding foreign travel to expensive sojourns in exotic locations.

We can use extra money to fix up our house to be more livable and create space for relaxing hobbies or entertaining or bringing people together in community. Or we can make our house some kind of useless god which devours our money and time and keeps us from more useful pursuits.

We can support political causes. We can support international efforts to feed people or develop democracies. We can support soup kitchens and affordable housing.

We owe it to the gifts given us to give thought as to how we use them. Money itself is not the root of all evil. As always, our decisions about the use of our money determine whether money is good or evil.

Reconciling Christian and Patriot

I grew up in the days of the cold war between U.S. led western democracies and the Soviet Union. Easy, perhaps, to equate democracy with Christianity. The Soviet Union encouraged atheism, actively curtailing many expressions of religion, including Christianity. The encouragement of democracy by the United States, by default, included freedom of religion.

At this time, Christians were a growing and active part of American society. Religious crusades often included local officials and leaders. Not surprisingly, some of our inheritance includes a legacy of nationalistic Christianity.

Unfortunately, Christians—American or other—are not exempt from temptations. Sometimes Christian leaders took advantage of their favored status and used it to hide financial, sexual, and other personal sins. As these personal failings came to light, American Christianity was tarnished.

National affiliation and Christian calling are not in themselves enemies. The missionary preacher Paul sometimes used his Roman citizenship to his advantage, allowing his continued preaching of the gospel.

Jesus, when religious leaders attempted to trap him by asking if taxes should be paid to Caesar, replied “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

The problem comes when we set up our country as a kind of god. We sometimes unthinkingly equate America with Christianity. Some of the early leaders of the United States were practicing Christians. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, appeared to regard Christianity as merely a philosophy. Many of them owned slaves and saw no problem with this practice of human ownership and abuse.

We are inheritors of this double speak. Christians should be loyal but not unthinking American citizens. It is not a Christian nation. No nation is or can be.

Living By Ourselves

One of the greatest threats to our societies today is our growing lack of community.

The normal family for most of recorded history has seen family members either living with each other in a single household or close by. Whether living in the same house or merely a short walk away, however, children usually grew up knowing their grandparents and other kin.

Major changes began a century or two ago. Some of it happened to immigrants leaving native countries to settle in places with better opportunities, an understandable choice.

However, the coming of suburbs to developed countries led to a great sifting out. The more well-off parents and their children moved to newly built suburban houses while other family members stayed in the old neighborhood. As time passed, the suburbs increased and grew further from the city center. Fathers and then mothers spent more of their time commuting. More separation increased the distance between these families and those with less opportunities and talents.

In the past few decades, separation has increased due to many factors. More young adults went away to college or to distant jobs and stayed away. Most recently, the ability to work hundreds of miles from the big city where the jobs traditionally were located was increased by both computers and the Covid pandemic.

Alienation has increased and no doubt contributed to our epidemic of harmful drug use. Surely our decreasing human contact and caring have fed alienation and a feeling of purposelessness.

Lately, some worry about artificial intelligence leading to less and less need for human input.

Regardless, for the first time, a record number of people live alone. Any community must be sought out: Vocational? Political? Religious? Leisure?

The new arrangements often have nothing to do with families. Singles may marry or establish relationships, but they tend to produce fewer children, often none at all.

Interestingly, immigration, which is feared by many, has been a blessing to those societies who tend more and more to not reproduce themselves.

Has our striving for ultimate independence finally reached the breaking point? How do we come back together?

Rainy Day Soldier

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 1776)

Thomas Paine wrote these words in a pamphlet after the American army under George Washington had suffered serious defeats by the British at the beginning of the American war for independence. Though the war had barely begun and other hard times like Valley Forge lay ahead, Paine’s words may have made the difference between an early defeat of the colonists and eventual independence.

We can find parallels today in choosing to slog along and not give up. Ukraine’s war for independence from Russian leader Vladimir Putin is an example.

Other examples of holding on during a bleak time are less clear cut. For all of my life, the Middle East has experienced one crisis after another. Indeed, even long ago, soon after the time of Jesus’ life on earth, the Jewish people attempted to rebel against the Roman Empire and were completely defeated. Most have continued to live in other countries ever since, but a remnant has always sought to return. After the trauma of Hitler’s attempted murder of all Jews, the historic trickle of Jews returning to their ancient land became a flood.

Of course, other people live there, too, as indeed they always have. Today we are called to a harder but much more necessary task: to work for a just peace between all who call the Middle East their home.

Today’s rainy day soldier is not one who fights but one who is a peacemaker. The lines are not clear cut, as is usual in a physical war. Winning is not physical conquest but working so that every man, woman, and child in that historic place has a chance to peaceably make a life.

Exiting Gaza

“After decades of failed international engagement in Gaza, we owe it this time to the Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians—and to ourselves—to get this right.” (Yair Lapid, speech to Israeli Knesset, October 16, 2023, as reported in “A Positive Exit Strategy From Gaza,” The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, by Robert Silverman, October 2023.)

In his speech, Mr. Lapid outlines steps for achieving a real victory. “The real victory comes not from defeating our enemy but from achieving a better place for Israel and our Palestinian neighbors.”

Further, “Instead of taking the easy way out of town by dumping Gaza on some set of beguiling expatriates, the multinational governance team should be prepared to work with the local Gazans to build governance capacity—over the course of years.”

Mr. Lapid calls for withdrawing the Israeli Defense Forces as soon as possible. They would be replaced by a multinational force “with two separate missions . . . under a single head.”

One mission would be a multinational force “to maintain order and begin training a new Gazan police force . . .”

The other mission would be “a multinational civilian governance to help the Gazans rebuild economically and begin the process of governing themselves politically.”

Israeli-Palestinian issues became a tangled web due to the interests of numerous groups, nations, and historic events over centuries.

Mr. Lapid’s suggestions would seem a fair start toward a practical solution.

Timeout

Israel/Palestine; Republicans/Democrats; labor/management; Russia/Ukraine—and so on.

Perhaps it’s time to sit back and breathe deeply. Time to stow the rhetoric. Time to watch an eclipse and marvel at our solar system and our universe. Time to take a walk with family/friends. Time to read a book for fun.

Obviously, solving problems requires engaging with them, but sometimes we become so involved that we think the universe can’t succeed without us.

Best to understand that we’re part of the process, not the whole answer. We have choices as to how we engage. Perhaps we can develop a bit of modesty—we’re all of value but none of us has a perfect solution.

Best to listen before we spout off. We might ask divine guidance once in a while, perhaps even for the gift of loving our enemies.

Missing the Holy Land

I worked for much of my U.S. Foreign Service career in north Africa and the Middle East. However, I was never able to visit Israel, even though many places in that country are memorable reminders of my Christian heritage.

At that time, visiting Israel from a Muslim-majority country was difficult. It would have meant making a special trip to one of the few countries allowing me to receive the visa I needed. I never got around to doing that. So, I regret to say, I never visited or “walked where Jesus walked.”

The Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on innocent civilians, striking unexpectedly in recent days, have shocked us by their cruelty. Israel’s tourism may suffer, but that, no doubt, is far less a priority for Israel than deciding on their response to the attacks.

We wait as responses work themselves out. Of course we expect responses, as we expected the United States to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Only the terrorists and their supporters would deny Israel the right to respond, but what kind of response? How can Israel fight terrorists without harming civilians, including innocent children? Without stoking more calls for hatred?

Thomas L. Friedman, an opinion columnist for The New York Times suggests that a sometimes overlooked partner for Israel in dealing with Palestinians is the Palestinian Authority, a more moderate group. (“Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment,” New York Times, October 10, 2023)

The Palestinian Authority is autocratic and appears at a low ebb in popularity with Palestinians. Nevertheless, in such a time of hatred and suffering, any possible breakthrough should be explored.

Response is vital, but we must work for a just response. Hatred is such an easy choice, but it only fuels more hatred.

Letting the Other Side Win

Many years ago, when one of my sons played on a church baseball team, I remember a heated confrontation between players at one of the games. I don’t remember the exact play which started the argument, but the young boys, all presumably church goers, fell into a heated debate about the call. Fortunately, the leaders were able to tamp down the hostility before blows were exchanged.

Unfortunately, Americans today in the political realm too often appear in need of adult supervision. Granted the stakes are high. Abortion, election results, sexual identity, and other issues have bitterly divided us. Surely, no one can deny either the importance of the issues or the major impact of political decisions on them.

What should be questioned is our hostility, even seeming hatred, toward those who disagree with us. How can we find paths that allow disagreement, but without hatred, even on matters we consider of utmost importance, even dealing with human life?

How should we choose to fight when we lose a political round? Even when we are sure our cause is not only right but morally right?

The only acceptable path, it seems to me, is to allow the winners to win, then become members of “the loyal opposition.” To correct political directions we believe to be wrong, we have the freedom to organize peaceful campaigns, present our arguments through newspapers and social media, and talk to our friends and neighbors.

No matter how absolutely sure we are of our beliefs, no one, in fact, including us, is infallible. Surely the height of arrogance is to assume that we are.

Healing Before Leading

I worked at a U.S. consulate in a Middle Eastern country many years ago during a government shutdown over congressional budget disputes. It was hard to explain the shutdown to the people in that country, those we were trying to interest in a democratic form of government. They may have wondered why they should accept a kind of government that couldn’t even keep its government functioning.

The country is even more divided today. Yet, we persist in trying to overcome those with whom we disagree by following a “take no prisoner” kind of approach. If we don’t win, we’ll make it impossible for the winners to govern.

Democracy, however, requires that the losing side let the winning side govern, as it was elected to do. We don’t come up with ways to impede the government when we’re on the losing side. We write and speak our criticisms, but we don’t shut down government functions.

Americans have generally prided themselves on sportsmanship—the referee makes a call, and we expect the losing side to acquiesce. For the game to go on, the players must follow the rules, even accepting penalties when the referee so calls them.

It helps if we recognize that no human or human movement is without error. We may think those on the opposite side of an issue, with whom we strongly disagree, are wrong. If they win, however, we accept it and govern as “the loyal opposition,” with emphasis on loyal. We don’t act like children in a temper tantrum because they must share a toy.

Western Christians in a Post-Christian West

The road to Christ’s kingdom on earth is a decidedly bumpy one, including detours.

Looking back over history, we see a pattern: When Christianity appears on the cusp of spiritual world conquest, some failure snatches away the victory. Christ’s followers must regroup.

Perhaps most Christians in the first few centuries after Christ thought of the world where they spread the religion of Jesus as mostly or primarily the Roman world into which Jesus came. As then, Christians again and again have had to jettison their small world view for a larger one. This revelation often seems to happen during times of threat to Christianity.

The civil government of Rome collapsed, and Christian missionaries discovered, in the ruins of that world, the larger European world. That world continued its influence for many centuries. The world for Christians was mostly Europe and nearby areas: the Near East and North Africa.

When that world was shaken with stunning victories by tribes out of Arabia, the idea of a Christian world was put on hold while Europeans fought for survival.

However, during those dark times, Christianity continued to quietly spread—to the Anglo-Saxon world and Ireland and into the far north of Europe.

When Europeans defeated their enemies and began to claim power, the church, which had comforted and sustained its people during the dark times, was tempted toward power instead of seeking the way Jesus had walked. Even as Europeans began centuries of world conquest, Christians had to make choices. Some people calling themselves Christians too often sought domination rather than service. Horrible wars, surely an abomination to the spirit of Jesus, have left aftereffects in the repudiation of a Christianity by some who saw its adherents as seeking physical conquest, not spiritual.

Yet, despite the difficulties, some Europeans broke through the nationalistic wall and spread the religion of Jesus to the non-European world, just as their ancestors had spread it to the non-Roman world.

American Christians may have to choose between a religion which worships a nation and the one begun by Jesus for the entire world.

Saturday Night Live Politics

Lately, the American political scene resembles the old Saturday Night Live TV show at its best, before Covid and Hollywood actor strikes. In a kind of comedy of errors, political groups sling accusations at each other, sometimes so absurd as to be comical. They form cabals, making it almost impossible even to appoint routine government officials.

Meanwhile, our tax system continues to favor the rich, allowing political clout to be based more on political donations than on what voters want.

In addition, state voting districts too often favor gerrymandered divisions having little resemblance to actual population distribution.

Our foundational documents are showing their age, beset with modern problems undreamed of in the 18th century.

Even if our foundational documents were all updated, however, issues like abortion and gender identity would not be easily solved. The problem is not with any one issue. The problem is the absolute certainty that tempts us, we fallible humans. We do not listen to our opponents or oppose them with arguments, or God forbid, talk responsibly together. We prefer to demonize each other.

Perhaps it would help if we realized our human imperfections and noted that our founding documents, indeed, were written by imperfect humans. Yet, the country’s founders also made them difficult to change. We can hope that one day we may come together in a more conciliatory age and update our constitution.

At the present time, however, we may simply have to muddle along—in other words, work within the imperfections of our founding documents. What is a greater impediment to our political functioning is our refusal to recognize that no political group or human being has all the answers. It would help if we humbly recognized the possibility that the other side could be right or, at the least, have ideas worth considering.

Taking valuable time by throwing up unnecessary roadblocks to ordinary government duties is not just maddening but possibly deadly to the country’s influence and even survival.

Choose Your Influence

An article recently highlighted young career couples and their decisions on having children. In many cases, if they decided to take the parenthood leap, they opted for one child only.

Taking time to raise a child may cut into a career. It may mean less money in retirement. It may mean less influence and less time to succeed.

Yet only a few people influence for generations: a few political and/or military leaders, certainly a few religious leaders, a few creative geniuses. Most of us will die and be forgotten in a short while, including our career accomplishments.

We should pick our influences carefully. Careers influence. So do children.

Parenthood should be a choice. All choices bring risks, and parents can be deeply disappointed in how a son or daughter turns out. Sometimes children die, leaving behind a different kind of heartache.

Still, even a baby can soften the views of those around them, can be an object of love that leads a parent and others toward better choices, to think long term. And children who live and become successful adults influence beyond the lives of their parents and usually their parents’ careers as well.

Bread for My Neighbor

“Bread for myself is a material question: bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.” (Nicolas Berdyaev; The Fate of Man in the Modern World,; translated by Donald A. Lowrie (London: SCM Press, 1935)

We all have certain material needs in common, such as water, food, and basic shelter. In most industrial nations, these basic necessities could be provided for all, whether the economic system is a form of capitalism or socialism or a combination.

The economic system is not a barrier to meeting basic needs of a people. The barrier is an unconditional acceptance of accumulating wealth without a corresponding concern for the left out.

Who are the left out? Any child who does not have adequate food and shelter and access to basic education. Also: those struggling with conditions not of their own making: the handicapped, those affected by natural disasters, and those who lose jobs because of changes in technology.

The Old Testament championed a “year of jubilee.” Those with the ability to earn wealth were not condemned, but every so often, they were asked to return their excess accumulation back to the original families.

Wealth is not a sin. Unrestrained wealth may be.

A Little Humility

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, generally liberal, asks: “What if anti-Trumpers are the bad guys?” (Published in The Seattle Times, August 6, 2023)

Obviously, as he says, he mostly identifies with the anti-Trumpers and those who fight discrimination. However, he cautions that the anti-Trumpers tend to have benefitted from privileges denied to many of those who champion Trump.

Brooks writes: “This story begins in the 1960’s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments.” He mentions continuing class shifters, like school bussing into working class neighborhoods of Boston but not into more upscale communities.

As Brooks points out, the system of meritocracy favors those whose parents can afford to send them to the best schools, who tend to marry those from the same social strata, and who tend to find well-paying professional jobs. They tend to fill “leadership positions in almost every vocation.”

The causes they support tend to be, for example, liberal immigration policies, which may impact the working classes but seldom the upper classes. “Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China,” writes Brooks.

The more educated in society upended social norms, like those supporting marriage before pregnancy. Yet, “Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do do that.” Thus, out of wedlock births most often happen to those with less resources.

Brooks concludes, not with supporting Trump’s policies, but suggesting that those who oppose them “stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.”

Taxing the Second Million

Earning the first million dollars of income is the hard part, we are told, but the second million is comparatively easy. A financial advisor could line out this truism, as well as the time required, depending on the investments. Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain that investing most of your million (even after saving out a little for conspicuous consumption) would net you another million within a reasonable time frame. I’d bet it would certainly be sooner than earning the first million.

What are the reasons for wanting a second million? And should we not place a higher tax on that second million?

One reason for earning money far beyond our basic needs could be a desire to improve and/or grow a company. Another might include growing wealth in order to give much of it to charitable causes. Others: comfort in old age; passing to children; buying the things we lacked growing up; or simply a desire to own as many things as possible.

We make our own judgements of right and wrong ways to use wealth. Along with these judgements is the question of what is the proper taxation of that wealth. How do we in the United States decide this issue?

I wonder why, with all the wealth in this country, we not only experience tax deficits but also poverty, especially child poverty. Yes, I know, the drug epidemic has certainly fueled some of it. However, plenty of low wage earners work hard, stay off drugs, and still have problems meeting basic needs.

Some of it happens because men don’t support the children they father. Some of this can be tied to the breakup of a common belief that a man and a woman should be committed in marriage before they have children.

Nevertheless, the children should not suffer inadequate food and housing because of what their parents did or didn’t do.

Yes, we should establish safeguards and checks against welfare going to the wrong people. However, every child in this wealthy country should have basic needs met. That includes proper schooling as well as food and a safe place to grow up.

If this requires more taxation, I believe the taxes could be raised on our wealthier citizens without any injustice to them.

The Psalms of the Old Testament were written thousands of years ago. Yet, the call for justice to “the poor and oppressed” is often stressed in its pages. For any of us who value justice, the care of the poor and needy is a minimum requirement for a just society.

Children of Slaves and Slave Owners

In a small town in Georgia, a white mother of three found that her white ancestors had enslaved the ancestors of a black couple, close friends of hers. She was understandably upset. (The story is told in “Living Reconciliation” (Christianity Today, July/August 2023.)

The black husband, a minister, spoke a prayer over his white friend, asking God to break the chain of generational racism. The three led efforts at racial reconciliation in the community.

Years later, a local historian’s genealogical research indicated that the two families were related by blood. An ancestor of the white woman was one of the black slaves. The black woman who had descended from the wronged slave called her white friend to ensure her that it didn’t change the love she had for her.

I was reminded of my own finding years ago that one of my ancestors had owned at least one slave. Whether my ancestor further abused the slave and fathered a child is not recorded. I hope not, but, regardless, I’m not proud of my ancestor’s choice to own a slave.

That ancestor later died in a federal prison camp of pneumonia. He had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was captured. His death was attributed to illness caused by poor health care. Apparently, rations for the southern prisoners were cut in protest against the substandard treatment of federal prisoners in southern internment camps.

So much evil, including hatred and a horrible war, grew out of that early choice to own human beings as slaves. What recompense can we offer for that great sin, present from the beginning of America?

White Americans can begin with repentance and a refusal to those who would lull us by telling us “it was a long time ago” and “we need to move on.” The results remain with us today in a legacy of segregation, not seriously contested until the latter part of the twentieth century.

American school children need to know their history, all of it, warts and all. The purpose is not to induce a guilt complex. Our children are not guilty of the sins of past Americans. Indeed, some are the children of recently arrived immigrants. The purpose is to understand how easy is the temptation to do terrible wrong for a spur of the moment “benefit.” We have paid for the cheap labor of slaves many times over.

The Neighborhood

They gathered—my parents and our neighbors. On hot summer evenings, the neighbors would walk over and chat with my mother and father while they all relaxed on the open porch. As a small child, I sat on a step and listened to them sharing bits and pieces of lives. They joked a lot and told stories.

In the winter, they still stopped by. We moved inside to the living room. Our house, built just before the Great Depression of the thirties, had no “den,” just a small living room. Again, my parents and the neighbors crowded around a small coffee table and shared and laughed a lot. I don’t recall any kind of formal organization. Neighbors simply stopped by.

I don’t claim a particular righteousness for that time. After all, our society knew plenty of ills, like racism. Nevertheless, we’ve lost things, too, like that simple neighborhood sharing.

New inventions worked to change us from those earlier times, and some of them gave us new insights. We relaxed before the television and watched different kinds of shows. We learned more about other countries, including wars in far off places. For the first time, we watched political conventions choose candidates for public office.

Eventually we bought portable phones that allowed us access from anywhere to home and friends. We could use the phones to ask for help when we needed it. They also allowed us to connect with friends, even when on public transport or when driving in our cars. People began to carry them everywhere all the time, sometimes constantly consulting them.

Despite the sometimes goodness of those older days of my childhood, though, I wouldn’t want a return to them. I don’t deny that we could profit from more face to face sharing, and from more putting down of our cell phones, and from more reading of newspapers. However, we’ve also profited from the changes. We’ve discovered cures for diseases, built safer airplanes and highways, and enjoyed more accurate weather forecasting. We are more aware of society’s failures that we need to address.

What we lack are the old neighborhoods. We would profit from better arrangements of our housing to encourage a return to neighborhood sharing. What could that involve? Perhaps housing clusters rather than large suburban plots–neighborhoods that we can walk through and where we greet our neighbors.

Especially after the isolation of Covid, we might consider lessons from the neighborliness I knew as a child.

How to End a War

Writing about Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Margaret MacMillan, an Oxford professor, compares it to the beginning of World War I: “In 1914 and 2022 alike, those who assumed war wasn’t possible were wrong.” (“How Wars Don’t End,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2023)

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, she points out, had made clear his belief that Ukraine was historically a part of Russia. He apparently assumed he could easily conquer it and incorporate it into Russia. Similarly, leaders of Europe in 1914 assumed “war was a reasonable option” and began taking sides when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist.

European leaders at the time assumed that any war would be short. Few envisioned the years long slog in muddy trenches and the slaughter of thousands of young men.

Europe, of course, had fought wars for centuries. Indeed, World War I was sometimes seen as merely another war to settle scores left by the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

Wounded pride also played its part in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin was a Russian intelligence officer in East Germany and witnessed the Soviet Union’s loss there, as the Cold War receded and Germany reunited as a democracy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, in a sense, an as yet unfinished part of the Cold War.

When Ukraine’s war with Russia ends, as it eventually will, MacMillan suggests using the ending of World War II as a better example to follow than that of World War I. “In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Marshall Plan helped rebuild the countries of western Europe into flourishing economies and, equally important, stable democracies. . . . Even former enemies can be transformed into close partners.”

It seems the idea is not to defeat enemies but turn them into partners.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective