SUNDAY DEVOTION: Blessed are the Peacemakers

War is an unfortunate part of the human experience. Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz explained that war is the continuation of politics, which means that the threat of war between nations will always exist. War occurs when diplomacy fails.

Most wars in human history have been small in scale, but it’s the big wars that we remember most. 40 million souls perished as a result of World War I, with another 55 million dying two decades later in World War II. The latter conflict has shaped not only the geopolitical layout ever since, but it has become the archetype for every potential conflict we face today:

Every leader of a belligerent nation is the next Adolf Hitler.
Every attempt to negotiate rather than fight is Munich again.
Every war must end with unconditional surrender.

I believe this worldview has made war more likely and peace more difficult to attain. It has locked us into a mode of thinking that maximizes destruction. Over the past 30 years we’ve been told that Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, and Vladimir Putin are all the next incarnation of Hitler, and failing to wage war on them is a drastic mistake.

Yet how many of our undeclared wars since 1945 have truly been justified?

Nearly a thousand years ago, Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas wrote that a just war:

Is declared by a legitimate sovereign authority
Has a just cause
Has righteous intentions

War is sometimes necessary, as Aquinas believed, but peace is almost always better than war, and peace requires negotiation, compromise, and above all, a willingness to communicate and cooperate with the other side. Winston Churchill, who led Britain through the Second World War, once said that “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”

I recently watched a fascinating video on game theory by Derek at Veritasium. More than 40 years ago, a political science professor at the University of Michigan named Robert Axelrod conducted a game theory tournament, inviting people to submit computer programs that would play against each other in a form of the prisoner’s dilemma. As you will see in the video, the optimal strategy turned out to be tit for tat — responding when attacked but forgiving afterwards. To put it another way, be kind, but don’t be a doormat.

That axiom applies to international relations as well. Consider the leadup to World War I: There were few in Europe who truly wanted war in 1914, at least not a war that would kill tens of millions and drastically reshape the global power structure. Yet in the weeks following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, the great powers nevertheless rushed into exactly such a war. In game theory terms, they defected.

Barbara Tuchman tells that story vividly in The Guns of August. Half a century later, as the Cold War threatened to turn hot, President John F. Kennedy asked his staff to read Tuchman’s book in the hopes that they would avoid the mistakes of the past. It worked —the Cuban Missile Crisis could easily have sparked World War III, but instead the great powers backed down. In game theory terms, they cooperated.

How did that happen?

Showing strength and saving face are important parts of international diplomacy. Shortly after his inauguration, JFK met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for a conference in Vienna and left the Russian leader convinced that America was weak. He thought he could take advantage of that perceived weakness to station nuclear missiles just off the cost of Florida. Kennedy needed to find a way to show strength while at the same time not escalating to full scale war.

The president ordered a blockade of Cuba, but at the same time he sent his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to communicate with Khrushchev through back channels. Both sides had to be willing to listen and compromise. Eventually, the Soviet Union backed down and removed the missiles from Cuba, but the US also quietly removed our own missiles from Turkey. Meeting jaw to jaw prevented war.

Today, the situation in the Middle East teeters on the same knife’s edge. There are powerful people in Iran, Israel, and the United States who want to provoke war, while others recognize that such a destructive conflict is in nobody’s best interest. There is an apocalyptic angle to this standoff as well. Some in Iran believe war with Israel will bring about the Twelfth Imam and the end of the world, while some in Israel believe the same war will bring the Messiah. Here in America, many believe that the Rapture, Great Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ are just around the corner, ready to be triggered by some event in the Middle East.

In this environment, a single spark could set off a chain reaction that, as with Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, ends with tens of millions dead. Are we on the verge of another great war, or will our leaders find a path forward like Kennedy and Khrushchev did in 1962?

Game theory is one thing that Donald Trump understands. In January of 2020, President Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at US bases in Iraq, but nobody was killed. Trump recently revealed that Iranian leaders called him ahead of time to warn him of the strike. Allowing nation-states to save face is often a way to avoid a larger conflict, which is something that Trump, with his experience with cutthroat business dealings, recognized.

Last week, Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing several top generals. Iran had to respond lest they lose face and show weakness, so on Saturday they launched several hundred drones at targets in Israel. Now the leaders of Israel face a choice: call it even, or escalate further.

Either choice carries risk. Not responding could invite more attacks, but escalation risks opening up a much wider conflict in the Middle East. The only people who would win in that scenario are the arms manufacturers.

I know some in our country are upset that President Biden has asked Israel not to respond too strongly, but I think that’s probably the prudent move at this point. The point is to avoid a war, not start one. In any case, I hope that Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet have read The Guns of August.

The last two and a half decades should serve as a warning to Christian conservatives about being too gung ho for military adventures. War is part of human nature, but civilized people should do their best to avoid it.