Monthly Archives: February 2016

WHY DIPLOMACY?

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Vietnam memorial wallTwo years ago a national poll conducted jointly by NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, and Annenberg showed that 71 percent of Americans believed that the Iraq war was “not worth it.” That was up from 58 percent a year earlier, in an ABC News and Washington Post poll. Today, if the Republican presidential candidates are any indication, even the GOP, including establishment figure Jeb Bush, believe that invading Iraq was a mistake.

They, as well as a large number of Americans, regret the war because they have learned wisdom from the war history of the past 13 years. They see the unrestrained blowback that began with the insurgency in 2003-2004 and the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq. They see that the ISIS horror show emerged from al Qaeda in Iraq and the historic humanitarian crisis that is a result. They see the unprecedented, multi-aspected costs, and much more besides. In other words, this large group sees the bad fruit and now regrets the war.

But why has so much gone so wrong? Well, that depends whom you’re asking. Generals? Foreign policy analysts? Presidential candidates? Economists? Journalists? Other experts? Each will propose good and sufficient reasons that must be included for a credible picture of what went wrong. But there is a more fundamental answer. It  comes from those ethicists, theologians, and religious leaders who deal with the moral problem of war. These are the “just war” theorists.

In 2002 and early 2003, many and diverse just war theorists, with the support of their constituencies, presciently argued that the George W. Bush administration’s rationale for going to war in Iraq did not meet the requirements of just war, therefore it was immoral and unjust and the United States could expect all sorts of unpredictable things to go wrong in the Middle East if the war was launched.

Unfortunately, little was made of this in the news media at the time, despite the fact that so many Christian denominations and other religious bodies were stating it formally in letters to the Bush administration, including denominations to which the President, Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld belonged. An article by the theologian and political writer James W. Skillen, “Evaluating America’s Engagement in Iraq with Just-War Criteria,” shows very clearly why the U.S-led war about Iraq did not square with the five main principles of just war theory.

Just war theory brings a lot of gravitas to the question of “why diplomacy?”, which is the pressing political question of our time. Since President Obama took office in 2009, a very vocal, influential segment of American political commentators has been habitually critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. By and large, this is the same pack of pundits who supported launching the war about Iraq, and whose latent militarism today can be heard by anyone with ears to hear what their policy rhetoric about the Middle East implies.

Why diplomacy? Look at just the past two years, as Antony Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State, reminded Charlie Rose in a recent intervieKerry & Zarif shake handsw. It was American diplomatic leadership that mobilized the world to fight ebola, that brought 66 countries together to fight ISIS, that led negotiations to the nuclear agreement with Iran, that brought Cuba in from the cold, and that led to the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Afghanistan. Of course none of this, Blinken added, “has happened as well as it should [or] as effectively as it should.” But, “You take the United States out of any of these pictures [and] it doesn’t happen. We are the single country that has the ability to mobilize and move others more than any other country.”

Why diplomacy? Diplomacy will not bring heaven on earth. Far from it. But diplomacy seeks solutions even to the most intractable international problems through means other than war. One of its indispensable purposes – dare I add, a purpose under God – is to prevent types of hell on earth such as the ISIS movement from materializing. Surely promoting the art of diplomacy is wiser than regretting the annals of war.

This editorial was first published in The Mountain Press, Sunday February 21, 2016.  Charles Strohmer writes frequently on politics, religion, and international relations. He is the author of several books and many articles and is the founding director of The Wisdom Project.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Images courtesy of Creative Commons.

A note from Charles: If you want more of the perspectives that Waging Wisdom seeks to present, I want to invite you to follow this blog. Just click here and then find the “Follow” button in the right margin, enter your email address just above that button, and then click “Follow.” You will then receive a very short email notice when I publish a new post. And, hey, tell some friends! Thank you.

Mutuality: Recovering a Jewel for U.S. – Middle East Relations

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PeacemakingIn January on this blog, beginning here, were four articles that detailed the seemingly intractable problem of overcoming the secular / religious chasm of U.S. – Middle East relations. In a follow-up article, we looked at many behind-the-scenes initiatives by the U.S. State Department and many NGOs that focus on overcoming this problem. Today, I want to close off this informal series by calling attention to vital role that the wisdom tradition is playing in these initiatives.

It’s quite a dilemma, the political tug of war between secularism and religion in U.S. – Mideast relations. After all, what fellowship does religious disbelief in God (in political decisions) have to do with religious belief in God (in political decisions)? I hold the view that trying to wrest one side into the other’s camp as the means of resolution is a futile exercise at best and at worst moves the two worlds closer to a clash of civilizations, for their core beliefs conflict.

So what is the alternative? As we saw in this article, both the U.S. State Department and many NGOs and foreign policy think tanks have found a worthy and respected alternative, by bringing the secularly oriented and the religiously oriented around the table to work together on their common ground interests toward common good.

It is just here the historic wisdom tradition, especially its norm of mutuality, comes front and center into the picture. Lady Wisdom, as she is known in the book of Proverbs, cries to be heard at the rough intersection of both worlds, the religious and the secular. And she cries there not of conflict and war but of the possibilities for cooperation. She stands alongside that intersection as a focal point that offers for both worlds a way to follow her lead into a new narrative together.

What is that new narrative? The wisdom norm of mutuality offers considerable potential for building and sustaining cooperative arrangements among peoples who are different, even as different as fundamentally different as religious and secular political outlooks. How is this possible?

The wisdom norm of mutuality stresses a fact of life that we often taken far too much for granted: the interests and concerns of daily life that are held in common by all peoples everywhere, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, or whether we consider ourselves secular or religious. To use a Christian expression, the wisdom norm of mutuality concentrates more on who people are, not on what by the grace of God they may become.

If this seems an alien notion to us today, it is partly attributable to an age, our age, in which rigid ideological divisiveness has divided us and conditioned us to accept sectarian solutions to relational problems as normative. This sectarian dynamic has especially pitted secularly oriented worlds and religiously oriented worlds against each other.

Since time immemorial, every person on the planet has participated in the same creation, held the same basic interests, shared the common bond of what it means to be human. We all want to be able to provide for our families, to see our children raised properly and safely, to see our social environments improve, to find ways to ease the suffering of others, to increase possibilities for well-being in the world, to live peaceably with neighbors.

People everywhere have fundamental desires for such outcomes regardless of their core beliefs (provided those beliefs are not organized around violence). Believers and atheists alike are, for example, moved at the sight of starving children or families left homeless by a tragedy, and both will want to do what they can to alleviate the suffering. In fact, this is precisely where many religious groups, in particular, throughout history have excelled, in caring for people as they are, wherever they are, regardless of their beliefs.

wisdom traditionAs I understand it, the wisdom norm of mutuality does not require people to give up their core beliefs before they can start to build more cooperative and sustainable arrangements with each other (again, provided those beliefs are not organized around violence). The wisdom norm of mutuality does not require a religious or a secular party to ditch its core beliefs before cooperation between them becomes doable. What Lady wisdom does require of them is to turn their eyes to their shared human interests and concerns as human beings made in the image of God.

Our post-9/11 changed world has presented Washington and the capitals of the Middle East with landscapes of international sharp curves, turning points, and cul de sacs that diplomats, foreign ministers, policy analysts, and NGOs are trying to negotiate without misfortune. Here, wisdom is being brought in from the margins and applied with slow but increasing success. When this approach gets circulating more normatively in the DNA of U.S. – Mideast relations, a secularly organized system of international politics and a religiously oriented one will have a responsibly moral way for searching out peaceable ways ahead with each other.

However imperfectly this would be realized where these two worlds meet, it would nevertheless place vital international relationships on more cooperative footing – for the good of our publics and for a more hopeful future down the generations than current seems likely.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Images by permission of Creative Commons.

A note from Charles: If you want more of the perspective that Waging Wisdom seeks to present, I want to invite you to follow this blog. Just click here and find the “Follow” button in the right margin, enter your email address, and then click “Follow.” You will then receive a very short email notice when I publish a new post. And, hey, tell some friends! Thank you.

The News Media and the Middle East: An Indictment

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explosion 9/11The secularism of the foreign policy establishment of the United States and the religious influences coming out of the capitals of the Muslim Middle East can play adversarial roles in these state-to-state relations. That was the realistic picture painted by four posts on this blog in January, beginning with this one. Secularism vs. religion, of course, is not the only dynamic that makes these international relations difficult, if not conflicted. States asserting their identities, national interests, and political ideologies also contribute. But the secular / religious picture can seem gloomy indeed. Yet there is a hope.

During the past fifteen years, governments and their diplomatic teams, think tanks, NGOs, and high-level religious leaders have been pooling all sorts of resources to develop credible ways ahead for defusing tensions and peaceably negotiating the rough secular / religious intersection of U.S. – Middle East relations. In fact, there is now a large and steadily growing number of these successful initiatives, big and small. And yet even as I wrote that sentence I could hear readers thinking: What?! Are you nuts, Strohmer? That can’t possibly be true, given all the violence and war.

No, I’m not nuts, nor do I have my head buried in the sand. Of course violence and war is tragically a current fact of life in the Middle East, for any number of significant reasons, which national leaders are fully aware of and which any informed citizen can easily put names to. I don’t want to rehearse those reasons here. Instead, I want us think about a reason for the hopeless picture we have of the Middle East but that no one talks about, because we don’t know about it. It is as subtle as it is influential, and its neglect by us in public debate (in America if not elsewhere) is inexcusable.

I’ll get right to the point: I’m talking about the fact that many if not most Americans take their cues about U.S. – Mideast relations from the news, and the news is organized around the principle: if it bleeds, it leads. Of course, television journalists may say: “We are only mirroring what’s going on in the Middle East”; or, “These things need to be covered”; or, “We are only giving the public what they want.” Well, maybe this is what the public wants, but it is not the only thing the public needs. There are many other things going on in the Middle East other than atrocities, death, and war that ought to be covered, which the public needs to know. But they are not covered. As a result, the remarkable and diverse diplomatic initiatives of governments, think tanks, NGOs, and high-level religious leaders working to defuse adversarial relations and prevent violence and war seem non-existent. Even when an historic exception emerges on the world stage, such as the intensive years’-long struggle to negotiate the nuclear agreement with Iran, the pessimistic energy in America about the Middle East militates against its success.

Television news and Web reporting on the Middle East, with its perennial emphases on mayhem, bloodshed, atrocities, violent clashes, and war is a huge problem. If that is all we know about what’s going on, our understanding has been deceived and we are being made de facto contributors to the violence. We need to take a deep breath, push Pause, and think about this phenomenon.

It has now been over fifty years since Marshall McLuhan, a prescient philosopher of communications theory, introduced into public debate the now famous principle that “the medium is the message.” If so, then the only message in the American media about the Middle East during the past fifteen years is that it is a very violent place. During the past fifteen years, when it concerns the Middle East all of the dominant televison networks in the U.S. – CBS, ABC, NBS, CNN, and others – are constantly reporting on the latest atrocities and mayhem, and they cover these with a barrage of live images from the region.

Even if you don’t watch the national evening news programs, or CNN during the day, you will still get regularly hit with stories and images of Mideast violence on your local TV stations, who get their news feeds from the major networks; where else? (Of course reporting in magazines and newspapers also fans the flames.)

CNN HQWhen the only movie you watch about the Middle East is that of violent conflict, and when you have watched remakes of it for fifteen years, it affects your attitude, even your beliefs. If you are chatting with other parents after a PTA meeting and the topic turns to the Middle East what do you say? If you are working in a factory and talking during a lunch break with fellow workers and the conversation turns to the Middle East, what do you say? If you are a chiropractor working on a patient’s back and she brings up the Middle East, what do you say? If you are a lawyer or a sales clerk or a bricklayer, what do you say?

If television and Web news has determined our view of the Middle East, are we going to talk about the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), which was  formed to advance understanding of religiously motived conflict? Are we going to be able to say that Jerry White, a distinguished Christian thinker and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of CSO?

Are we going to talk about the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (ORGA), and say that it is currently run by the religiously savvy Shaun Casey, who advises the Secretary of State on policy matters as they relate to religion? Are we going to talk about how the ORGA complements the work of the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom?

Are we going to talk about the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group, which launched the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives to partner with faith communities around the world to help solve global challenges. Are we going to talk about the Secretary of State’s engagement with Muslim communities in the Middle East on issues of mutual interest in support of shared goals? Are we going to talk about the National Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement, in which U.S. foreign policy people work with religious actors and institutions to promote sustainable development and more effective humanitarian assistance, protect religious freedom, and prevent and resolve violent conflict?

If television and Web news is our picture the Middle East, are we going to share with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers about even just one pioneering book that makes a wise case for peaceable ways ahead at the rough intersection of the religious and the secular in U.S. – Middle East relations? Probably not, because we haven’t read one.

I’m thinking here of: Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds.); The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations (Scott M. Thomas); Ambassadors of Hope: How Christians Can Respond to the World’s Toughest Problems (Robert A. Seiple); Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Douglas Johnston, ed.); Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Marc Gopin); The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics (John D. Carlson and Erik C. Owens, eds); Religion and Foreign Affairs: Essential Readings (Dennis R. Hoover and Douglas M. Johnston, eds); Religion and Security: The New Nexus in International Relations (Robert A. Seiple and Dennis R. Hoover, eds). I could list others.

If television and Web news has determined our view of the Middle East, are we going to be able to talk to people about how Track Two diplomats (e.g., initiatives by NGOs, high-level religious leaders, private individuals) labor intensively with Track One diplomats (traditional state-to-state diplomacy) to defuse adversarial relations and to prevent and end conflicts and wars? Are we able to talk about the “relational diplomacy” of the Washington DC-based, Christian-run Institute for Global Engagement? Time-tested and much respected in the foreign policy communities of the U.S. and the Middle East, IGE’s relational diplomacy is grounded in a commitment to first study, listen to, and understand the local context before seeking to create partnerships and practical agreements between governmental and religious communities that promote social and political stability.

Ambassadors of HopeWhat more shall I say? Time and space prevents me here from discussing the impressive, monthly Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series run by the Council on Foreign Relations, which gives religious and congregational leaders, scholars, and thinkers the opportunity to participate in nonpartisan, cross-denominational conversations on global issues; or the work of the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the areas of religion and politics, faith based initiatives, legal protections of religious expression, and relations between Christians and Muslims; not to mention the quiet work of many stellar individuals and their small, dedicated teams, who have impressive track records and are risking much personally.

Do we talk about any of these things when we are on the phone, or waiting for our car to be serviced, or down at the pub, or driving a cab, or commenting on a blog post, or standing in the unemployment line, or having dinner with friends, or talking to a neighbor at Krogers? Probably not. We don’t talk about this picture because it doesn’t exist for us if all we know and believe about the Middle East has been determined by television and Web news.

There’s been an education of sorts taking place across our land by our news media about the Middle East. But we need to be re-educated. Look, I get it. You’re busy. Your time is taken up with a career, or course work, or the kids, or the parents, or ministry obligations – fill in the blank. So you only have time to catch the news on televison or the Web when you’re eating dinner, or on the radio when driving to work or to classes. Maybe once in a great while you have time to peruse a magazine article on the Middle East, but it too focuses on some new atrocity or explosion. I get it. Besides, where do you even look to see this other, non-violent picture of what’s taking place, if the only thing everyone else you talk to about the Middle East talks about the mayhem and violence? But even a busy person could take the following simple practical step.

First, you won’t see it or learn it from television and Web news. Second, if you have made it this far in this article, you now do know of many credible, respected, time-tested initiatives and projects – named above – where you can start to learn about this other picture. So, third, here’s your homework assignment for the next two months. Pick just one or two of the above initiatives or books or organizations and make it a priority to find half an hour here and there educating yourself about it. Afterward, take the next two months to educate yourself about one or two others, or learn more about the first one or two. And then repeat the process until your picture of the Middle East starts to change for the better. To grab an old word here, it behooves you to turn your eyes in this direction, to see the more hopeful picture. Finally, find the scene(s) in this picture where you can make a personal appearance as a supporting actor. Even if that support only appears in your conversations with people when the topic of the Middle East comes up, or only in your prayers, you will be doing a good thing.

If it is true that what we eat now can turn so sour, it is equally true that what we see uncritically is what we say believingly. If we don’t know about any Middle East reality other than the violence, what else is there for us to believe and say? We are then passively contributing to the violence, however unwittingly that may be, by talking only about that. I don’t expect the news media to change policy, to, say, eliminate two-thirds of its reporting on Middle East violence and replace it with he more hopeful picture.

But if we as individuals and communities re-educate ourselves by learning at least a few basic things about the groundbreaking initiatives discussed in this article (there are many others), and then if we tell others about them, rather than talking about the violence all the time, we will be actively helping these efforts, which are already in place, to change the picture for the better, toward defusing adversarial relations and ending violent conflict. This is a worthy goal.

The projects, books, and organizations discussed above are creating wise ways ahead for peaceably negotiating the rough secular / religious intersection of U.S. – Middle East relations. In a future article we will look at the role that the historic wisdom tradition plays, diplomatically, in this emerging picture.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Top image by Cliff, and all images via Creative Commons.

A note from Charles: If you want more of the perspective that Waging Wisdom seeks to present, I want to invite you to follow this blog. Just click here and then find the “Follow” button in the right margin, enter your email address just above that button, and then click “Follow.” You will then receive a very short email notice when I publish a new post. And, hey, if you really like this stuff, tell some friends! Thank you.

The Refugee Crisis: Make It Personal

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refugee men and boys shelteed in a community centerRegular readers of this blog will know that I post periodically to raise awareness of a truly remarkable initiative called the Cradle of Christianity Fund, which focuses on bringing short, midrange, and long term aid and support to the neediest Middle East refugees (chiefly those who have not benefited from UN relief). I hope, then, that you will be as moved to action as I was with the following article by Phil Reinders. His wisdom and pastor’s heart have combined here to address what the UN has called the “mega-crisis” of our time, straining the world’s relief efforts. C.S.

The Refugee Crisis: Make It Personal
by Phil Reinders

I’m a follower of one who began his life as an asylum seeker. I’m a member of a family of faith whose history stretches back to Abraham, and is summarized in refugee terms: “my father was a wandering Aramean.” The God who has called me has this penchant of binding up his life with those who are on the margins, with the vulnerable and the weak. To take on the name of Christ, then, is to bind your life with the plight of those very same people.

So it is no surprise that Jesus calls people to a care and compassion for others, regardless of the differences and circumstances. Every person who takes on the name of Jesus isn’t afforded the option of turning away from outsiders. In fact, our very reputation and the name of Jesus is wrapped up in that sort of generous care. “Listen also to the immigrant who isn’t from your people Israel but who comes from a distant country because of your reputation … do everything that the immigrant asks.” (I Kings 8:41ff)

The plight of refugees has never been more stark, obvious and in your face. And, no doubt, the complexity of the situation is vexing: the instability of Eastern European and Middle-Eastern political climates, the risks and dangers of radicalized jihadists, the sheer scale of the need.

So what do we do? Listen to the refugee-Jesus, where we find the simplest, clearest of wisdom. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

But that sounds too basic for this crisis, too simplistic for global geopolitical problems, right?

I’m convinced that the Jewish carpenter is actually the wisest, smartest being to live, and so I’m persuaded that his deceptively simple words are actually the wisdom of the ages, something that is meant to play out in personal relationships and between global neighbors.

It’s often called the Golden Rule, and thought to be another version of something repeated within different religious streams. And while a semblance of it is seen in other religious contexts, what Jesus says is unique and transformative. We see forms of this Golden Rule in eastern Confucianism, where Confucius urges, “do not do to others what you would not wish done to yourself.” Among Greek philosophers, the Stoic Epictetus said, “What you avoid suffering for yourself, seek not to inflict on others.” Socrates wrote: “What stirs your anger when done to you by others, that do not do to others.” And in rabbinic Judaism, Rabbi Hillel said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else.” These versions are both negative and passive. Avoiding or refraining from something I would not want done to me is a different standard of action than actively pursuing the thing I wish for myself for the sake of the other, which is the life Jesus invites into.

The brilliance of Jesus’ wisdom for how to respond pretty much to any situation is this: make it personal. The gold standard for moral action is to remove it from abstraction, from the pointed-finger deflection of “what others should do,” and from the resigned shrug of “it’s too complex so let’s leave it to the experts.” Instead, Jesus makes us the authority on how to respond to our friends, neighbors, and global, geopolitical issues: do to others what you would have them do to you.

Forget the professors, pundits and policy wonks; check your own heart.

Escher StairsFor a moment, as best as you’re able, enter into the story of a refugee. If it was your home that was riddled with bullets and bomb fragments, your neighborhood a rubble, with neighbors and extended family killed; if you had no money because the local economy was devastated due to the instability; if your children went to bed hungry; and if you made the sane but crazy decision to get out of Dodge and walk to wherever was safe, how would you want to be treated?

If you were stuck for years in the purgatory of a refugee camp, watching your children sink into the despair of a hopeless future, facing some Escher-like bureaucratic government approval process, how would you want to be treated? If you lacked all access to a flourishing life, far from any semblance of home, dependent upon the goodwill of others, how would you want to be treated? Think of the hopes refugees have for their lives and for their families. Imagine the fears that dominate their lives? Then think, “if I was in that person’s shoes, what would I want?” What would you hope for from foreign countries and governments when yours was corrupt or impotent to do anything to help you?

See what Jesus is doing? He taps into our own natural, God-given instinct to care for ourselves but then pulls the most liberating, redemptive move. He takes that inward-looking instinct but pivots us outward, redirecting all those good instincts for care and protection towards the other. Whatever we hoped and wanted others would do for us, he now commands us to go and do that for others.

And did you notice the first words: “in everything.” That’s a pretty comprehensive scope. Don’t try to limit this wisdom for small-scale issues. “In everything.” This is not a kindergarten lesson in niceness. It is the wisdom of the ages, saving us from inward-focused fear and self-absorption, aligning ourselves with the grain of the universe, which is God’s self-giving love, his fondness for the least, the last, and the lost.

A refugee is not a problem but God in disguise. They are a gift for anyone who carries the name of Jesus, helping us to know the meaning of that name and calling.

Phil Reinders, who pastors a church near Toronto, blogs here.

To support The Cradle Fund.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Top image courtesy of the Institute for Global Enagement.