The Free Thinker

My Take on Paul Romer's Charter Cities Concept

I am a fan of Paul Romer's ideas, as represented in this video, and in general at this blog, about charter cities. I very much like it that Romer is thinking out of the national sovereignty box. This is one of the great moral imperatives of our times. National sovereignty is to the present rather as feudalism was to the present: it helps to organize things but is an enormous source of systematic injustice, and people of good will ought to mitigate, undermine, modify, hamper, and confuse it at every turn. The big political causes I support, like the Iraq War and immigration reform, are calculated to replace the worst iniquities of national sovereignty with something more free, just, and/or rational. One of the great virtues of organizations like the IMF and the World Bank (and one reason why I'm proud to have worked at the latter) is that they stand athwart the matrix of sovereign states.

Romer is probably the greatest living theorist of economic growth, and I expect he'll win the Nobel Prize at some point. In the video, he makes the case that Hong Kong is the most successful development project in history, and he wants to replicate it. He actually toys with the idea of "Give war a chance," and it makes me wonder if he's a closet Iraq War supporter, on the obvious grounds that it replaced a worse government with a better one, but he doesn't think, in general, that conquest, or even liberation, by military force, is a good way to remake the world in a manner that is conducive to growth, development, the betterment of the human condition, etc. He suggests, instead, that charter cities might be carved out of the sovereign territory of less developed countries, with their consent, and administered by wealthy countries, but with the citizens of the less developed countries having full access-- a little bit like Hong Kong. These areas could be magnets for enterprising people and would then spread development through their host countries, as Hong Kong became the catalyst for economic growth throughout southeastern China.

Brilliant! Of course, it would depend on developing countries agreeing to it, but I think that might be possible. I would propose a different plan, though, which borrows Romer's ideas but adds another dimension and motivation to them.

Generally speaking, the right to migrate was better respected in almost any past epoch in history than it is in the present dark age of border controls. In ancient times, in the Middle Ages, in the early modern period, in the 19th century, one might easily wander from the heart of civilization to the ends of the earth and back without encountering official interference. Today, this is impossible, unless one is willing, among other things, to risk one's life in the deserts of Arizona, as some brave and noble souls dare to do. One might say that in the past the whole world was more like the deserts of Arizona. One might indeed run a risk of bandits, but the bandits were less likely to wear badges and were not paid by taxpayers. Of course this institution of immigration restrictions is highly regrettable, unjust, inefficient, and so forth, and in the interests of human flourishing, commerce, Christianity, and everything else good and praiseworthy I wish to see it abolished, but that is not the point here. My point is that while the right to immigrate was better respected in the past (especially for travelers and sojourners; acquiring land and settling might still have been difficult) the right to emigrate is in theory more widely acknowledged today. Thus, serfs had more rights than slaves, but they were still tied to the land, albeit running away was often not too difficult for the enterprising. 20th-century totalitarian regimes, too, tried to prevent emigration (and in general their citizens were a lot like slaves) but they were pressured by the West on human rights grounds to allow it, and since the fall of communism there are few places in the world where the right to emigrate is restricted by the country that is being emigrated from. Often, however, prospective emigrants have no place to go. And it seems to me disingenuous to deny that this gives a country like America a good deal of guilt in all the crimes of regimes that do not respect human rights. A Chinese or Iranian torturer might have fewer victims at his disposal if Chinese and Iranians could board a plane to the United States and expect to be admitted. People are trapped under bad governments by the immigration restrictions of the West. The border patrol is working for, among others, Vladimir Putin and Ahadminejad. We are their jailors.

Now, if we want to mitigate this guilt, it is not necessary to open our own borders, but only that some emigration options be available to all the world's people. So this becomes a second use for the Hong Kong-style charter cities that Paul Romer wishes to create. To administer them, I think the best agency would be the World Bank. It is largely in the business of institutional design or you might say institutional export. When I was working at the World Bank and found that people were confused about what it did, I coined a half-joking aphorism which, however, puts it in a nutshell: "Think of World Bank as the British Empire. But think of it through the lens of Marx's dictum that 'history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.'" That's slightly more cynical than I would actually want to be about the World Bank but I think it captures a lot of things. First, the altruism. The British Empire was partly motivated, at least, by very high ideals, by the quest to spread liberty and civilization to benighted peoples. The abolition of suttee, the despicable Indian custom of forcing widows to burn themselves alive, is emblematic. Second, third, fourth fifth, and sixth, the creativity, flexibility, consultativeness, enlightenment and intelligence of the British Empire/World Bank: they like to work with local rulers and win them over, using reason and argument as well as the influence of prestige, plus, lastly, a bit of money. Of course, the British Empire also had guns. This is where the analogy breaks down, and it's also why the word "farce" is not entirely inapt: sometimes, indeed often, World Bank consultants develop excellent plans and schemes but are helpless against local vested interests and corruption. But they have lots of experience thinking about government, they have good intentions, they have a kind of international legitimacy that the US, for example, lacks, they are throughly multicultural and progressive (a word which has a much more creditable meaning internationally than domestically), they are technocratic and insulated from politics. They are trusted by multinational corporations.

So, my proposal. Launch a global initiative-- probably the US would have to help, but Europe could originate it too-- to make the right to emigrate a worldwide reality, by creating an archipelago of no-passport-necessary sanctuary cities, administered by the World Bank. A general offer would be made by which countries could alienate small pockets of territory to the World Bank, probably not permanently but as a long term lease, e.g., 49 years or 99 years. This would typically be relatively undeveloped territory; not major cities. It would be up to the World Bank and/or donors to build the infrastructure, ports and roads and power plants etc. Passport control lines would be erected between these new charter cities and the rest of the host country's territory, not to keep the host country's nationals out-- again, no one is to be kept out-- but to keep in the migrants to the charter cities, other than host country nationals or those with visas to travel in the host country. This is to ensure that host countries can agree to the creation of charter cities on their territory without entirely opening their own borders, though if they want to do that, too, great, and it might be encouraged with further offers of aid.

Why would any country agree to this? Several reasons. First, money. I envision this being a development project initiated by rich countries who are willing to pay to make it happen. The terms of the lease might be quite lucrative. I would suggest, too, that regular transfers should be arranged from the tax revenues collected in the charter cities to the governments of the host countries, so that if a real Hong Kong arose on one's territory, it would pay off well. And of course, a successful charter city could promote development in the host nation the way Hong Kong promoted development in China, buying its products, outsourcing jobs as wages in the charter city rose. Also, tourism: if the charter city was successful, its residents would surely want to travel in the host country. A second incentive might be security. It might not be a good idea to have US soldiers guarding the charter cities: too politically sensitive. I would picture UN troops or some kind of global security agencies (i.e., mercenaries); but there would be at least an implicit and probably a partly explicit guarantee of the charter cities' integrity by the US and/or NATO, and perhaps by other regional security bodies and/or the UN as well; and this might be extended on a case-by-case basis to the host country as a whole. The World Bank itself might outsource a lot of its own operations to the charter cities (World Bank staffers are sometimes irritated by the hassles of getting US visas and might feel more at home in a place where they called the shots) and this could give a certain prestige and global influence to host countries. And of course, when the lease runs out, the country would gain control, if all goes well, of a dynamic new modern city built by the World Bank... albeit one populated largely by foreigners whom it might be awkward to expel. So, how many countries would take this deal? I have no idea, but it doesn't seem improbable that some would. I'm thinking mainly of Africa, but Latin America or South Asia might, too. Rich countries might do it with outlying possessions: Guam, for example, or Guantanamo Bay. Of course, the territories would be unlikely to be completely uninhabited, and how to deal with the locals is a problem, but probably not an insurmountable one. They wouldn't be kicked out, after all, and while they would have to tolerate a flood of newcomers, they could be very well compensated for that, first in direct payments, second in the rising value of their land. (The "lease" would be design to leave residual ownership rights with locals while the World Bank would get administrative rights.)

The founding principle of these charter cities would be that anyone could come, and policy would have to adapt to that. Their assets would be some donor aid and the "imprimatur," as the financial press sometimes says, of the World Bank. Who would come? Initially, the most obvious candidates are entrepreneurial types of refugees of conscience. The "market-dominant minorities" (Amy Chua's term) that lead moderately prosperous but very insecure lives in all sorts of places would certainly trust the World Bank much more than the local governments in, say, Africa, and might be glad to move to a charter city, or to acquire a second home there and spend part of their time there, perhaps educating their children there. Western universities might be keen to set up satellite campuses; or perhaps the World Bank would induce them to do so. Multinational corporations might set up offices there too: they would be ideal if you want to do business in Africa but limit one's contact with corrupt local officials. Economic migrants would be disproportionately clever and entrepreneurial; religious refugees and refugees of conscience would be disproportionately orderly and ethical, so that these charter cities would probably have rather appealing populations. They would probably be predominantly English-speaking, since in any agglomeration of people drawn from all over the world English is generally the lingua franca; possibly if one were set up in Honduras, say, it would be mainly Spanish-speaking. English might enhance the appeal of the places: "go there to learn English," parents would say. I expect the World Bank would want to use the dollar for a local currency, though if they wanted to use the charter cities as bases from which to spread a rival global currency (along the lines of the IMF's SDRs) to the dollar, that would be interesting too.

If the goal is to apply the Hong Kong model, policy would presumably be rather libertarian. But is that the World Bank's philosophy? Sort of, yes, I think. I mean, the World Bank is always thinking about social safety nets, but if you're working in Africa, South Asia, Central America, and so forth, you have to get used to the social safety net being at a pretty low level. World Bank staffers might, a bit inconsistently, support a much more generous social safety net in rich countries, but they couldn't indulge such a preference in a charter city that was constitutionally obligated to accept all comers. On social issues and religious freedom and so forth, World Bank staffers' inclinations are quite libertarian.

I expect you'd get a lot of ideas fermenting, from tech entrepreneurialism to political radicalism. You might get a flourishing of the arts as well, just as a result of the blending of different cultures. You might get a lot of religious piety too. Christian missionaries would love them, but the international left might find them hospitable too: charter cities might be to the global left today what Geneva was to Lenin.

What about crime? A possibility. Why crime is high in some places and low in others is not well understood, and to the extent that it depends on social solidary (but I'm not sure it does) that would be hard for World Bank technocrats to foster. What about terrorism? Also a possibility.

If it were just me, I'd feel silly proposing something so ambitious and eccentric. But Paul Romer might just have enough influence to make it happen.

Why the West Invented Modernity (Comments on Joel Mokyr)

An excellent lecture by Joel Mokyr, highly informative and fascinating. A few remarks.

1. Guilds.I was struck by how positive Mokyr is about guilds. G.K. Chesterton would be pleased. I had thought of the guilds as basically rent-seeking organizations that inhibited progress, and to some extent they were. Adam Smith wasn't very positive about the apprenticeship system either. But Mokyr argues that one of the big European advantages was that they had high-quality craftsmen, and that, in turn, had a lot to do with the guilds. It's one thing to invent stuff, it's another thing to make it. If you don't have people who are dexterous with their hands, you probably can't get your inventions to work. Other civilizations would sometimes even have the same technology-- gunpowder, for example-- but the quality was much lower. Here is Chesterton:

When we pass from the strictly educational hierarchy to the strictly egalitarian ideal, we find again that the remains of the thing to-day are so distorted and disconnected as to be comic. There are City Companies which inherit the coats of arms and the immense relative wealth of the old Guilds, and inherit nothing else. Even what is good about them is not what was good about the Guilds. In one case we shall find something like a Worshipful Company of Bricklayers, in which, it is unnecessary to say, there is not a single bricklayer or anybody who has ever known a bricklayer, but in which the senior partners of a few big businesses in the City, with a few faded military men with a taste in cookery, tell each other in after-dinner speeches that it has been the glory of their lives to make allegorical bricks without straw. In another case we shall find a Worshipful Company of Whitewashers who do deserve their name, in the sense that many of them employ a large number of other people to whitewash. These Companies support large charities and often doubtless very valuable charities; but their object is quite different from that of the old charities of the Guilds. The aim of the Guild charities was the same as the aim of the Common Land. It was to resist inequality—or, as some earnest old gentlemen of the last generation would probably put it, to resist evolution. It was to ensure, not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed, but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers with their clothes; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the hundredth sheep; in short, to keep the row of little shops unbroken like a line of battle. It resisted the growth of a big shop like the growth of a dragon. Now even the whitewashers of the Whitewashers Company will not pretend that it exists to prevent a small shop being swallowed by a big shop, or that it has done anything whatever to prevent it. At the best the kindness it would show to a bankrupt whitewasher would be a kind of compensation; it would not be reinstatement; it would not be the restoration of status in an industrial system. So careful of the type it seems, so careless of the single life; and by that very modern evolutionary philosophy the type itself has been destroyed. The old Guilds, with the same object of equality, of course, insisted peremptorily upon the same level system of payment and treatment which is a point of complaint against the modern Trades Unions. But they insisted also, as the Trades Unions cannot do, upon a high standard of craftsmanship, which still astonishes the world in the corners of perishing buildings or the colours of broken glass. There is no artist or art critic who will not concede, however distant his own style from the Gothic school, that there was in this time a nameless but universal artistic touch in the moulding of the very tools of life. Accident has preserved the rudest sticks and stools and pots and pans which have suggestive shapes as if they were possessed not by devils but by elves. For they were, indeed, as compared with subsequent systems, produced in the incredible fairyland of a free country.

Without endorsing this word for word, I wonder if Chesterton was onto something here. I could put it in terms MacIntyre might like by saying that the guilds learning to value practices for their own sake, and not merely for the extrinsic rewards associated with them.

2. European space. Mokyr emphasizes the importance of political fragmentation, and in particular, the ability of the leading intellectuals, when persecuted in one place, to move somewhere else. I agree! And that's yet another reminder of how valuable it would be today to abolish the barbarous passport regimes which shackle and smother the human race and declare open borders. But there's another point here: even though Europe was politically fragmented, yet it was a unified cultural space. Europeans could talk to each other. They could travel and feel more or less at home. Prestige in Paris meant prestige in London and prestige in Berlin. There was a shared cultural frame of reference. That European space was a cultural unity made possible the respublica litteraria of the Enlightenment, but what made it possible; why was Europe a cultural unity? The answer to that lies deep in the Middle Ages, in the missionaries who brought Christianity to the far corners of the continent, in the monasteries that Christianized Europe and preserved literacy in Latin and mastered the ancient literature in the ancient languages, in the internationalism of the university of Paris and the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and so on. In short, it was the work of Christianity and the Church. The remarkable thing about this is that because the Church is not a temporal, political order (despite the efforts of a corrupt papacy to make it one, for a time), this unity did not depend on any regime. So it made possible political-fragmentation-admist-cultural-unity, which is precisely the fortunate arrangement that made the Enlightenment possible.

3. Slavery and the Middle Ages. One of the questioners near the end puts with peculiar eloquence how strange the rise of Europe is, when one considers how much more advanced the Muslim world was a few hundred years before, and challenges Mokyr to explain it. But this questioner very much overstates her case. As far as I understand, the Muslim Middle East was indeed richer in the high and late Middle Ages, but there were plenty of signs of Europe's coming ascendancy if one knew what to look for. The Muslim world absorbed Aristotle and to some extent responded to it, but much less creatively than the scholastic thinkers of medieval Europe. At the time of the Crusades, the Muslim states were indeed richer, but Europeans were by no means overmatched militarily. On the contrary, crusading knights were individually superior to their Muslim opponents, by a wide margin. Moreover, and very revealingly, the Muslims did not imitate the Crusader knights, even when it was clear that the knights were effective. They couldn't; they didn't have the cultural wherewithal to do it. The Crusader kingdoms were eventually overrun, but considering how disadvantageous was their position, with small contingent of "Franks" in a narrow strip of land surrounded by Muslim powers, that they lasted for a couple of centuries is suggestive of the precocious strength of Europe. The absence of slavery in western Europe, already an accomplished fact by 1200 or so, stands in stark contrast to the practice of slavery on an enormous scale in the Muslim world, and was a harbinger of the moral advantages and the greater freedom that Europe was steadily to enjoy and to increase in the centuries that followed. The Magna Carta was signed in 1215, and proto-parliamentary institutions appeared in several countries. Europe had the separation of Church and state, and its feudal social order contrasts sharply with the despotism that prevailed in the Muslim world. In fact, I don't know the history of the Islamic world all that well, but from what little I do know I've never heard of any blossomings of liberty or republicanism or representative government, such as exist all over the West, and even in the Russian city-state of Novgorod in the Middle Ages. As far as I know, the Islamic world was an unbroken record of tyranny for a thousand years.

If we imagine an astute observer in 1200, an observer who is somehow able to understand what an Industrial Revolution is apart from the particular history by which it occurred in the West, I think this observer could not only have forecast that it would occur in western Europe and nowhere else, but would have been surprised that it happened so late. Also, I don't think it would have happened anywhere else without the stimulus from Europe, or to be more exact, from Christianity, which is the key. Christianity contained moral forces that abolished slavery and softened despotism into lawful kingship. It contained the blueprints for an institution, the Church, which had an institutional life independent of the state, which could resist it, critique it, hold it accountable, though of course it often failed to do so. And it was able, to a greater extent than other forces in history, to create cultural unities broader than any particular polity, giving the human spirit more scope in which to develop.

I'd Almost Forgot How Silly the Bush Critics Used to Be

Andrew Bacevich's introduction to Reinhold Niebuhr's The Irony of American History is a great example of the idiocy of Bush critics in the middle of the last decade. Samples

The illusions of Osama bin Laden find their parallel in the illusions of George W. Bush. Each of these two protagonists is intent on radically changing the Middle East. Neither will succeed, but in their efforts they engage in a de facto collaboration that causes enormous mischief and suffering...

What's striking here is the arrogance of the "neither will succeed"-- when Bacevich thinks that he's denouncing arrogance. Starting with the Arab Spring, things are turning out differently. The Bush administration certainly transformed Iraq-- no illusions there-- and now the germ seems to have spread. I don't expect Bacevich to issue any apologies.

Today [Niebuhr] summons us to toss aside what he calls "the halo of moral sanctity" and to disenthrall ourselves from the self-aggrandizing parable in which we cast America as liberator of the world's oppressed.

Liberator of all the world's oppressed? True, that would be overreaching. But it's not arrogant to think we can liberate one strategically selected country here and there. That's actually quite likely. It would be one thing if Bacevich said the Bush administration's view that Iraq could be liberated and democratized, though plausible, was unlikely to be vindicated by events. That would be a sensible view, and he would deserve only a mild degree of embarrassment for not being vindicated. But no, Bacevich sets himself up as an oracle, and thinks the Bush administration's idea is only worthy of a sneer. Well, Bush was right-- and the humiliation to Bacevich is proportional to his arrogance.

The collapse of the Bush administration's hubristic strategy for the Middle East would not have surprised our prophet [Niebuhr].

Bush's strategy for the Middle East did not collapse. It worked, mostly. And it was never hubristic. It was bold, to be sure. It was a gamble. But one doesn't have to have overweening pride in order to take risks. The hubris is all on the side of Bacevich and other self-appointed wise men.

The masterminds who conceived the Iraq War imagined that they could sweep away the old order and usher into existence a new Iraq expected to be liberal, democratic, and aligned with the United States. Their exertions have only demonstrated how little they understood Iraq's history-- along with the dangers of playing God.

The "masterminds" sarcasm is juvenile, and is a reminder of how mature and serious the Bush administration was compared to so many of its critics. The "playing God" jibe is ridiculous: America was conducting a military campaign, and establishing a new regime, as the British Empire did in dozens of places and America did in Germany and Japan and elsewhere, etc., etc. It doesn't take "God" to do what America was trying to do.

As for history, about half the countries on earth have established successful democracies in the 20th century after never having done so before. To think that Iraqi democracy was destined to fail because of Iraq's history-- not likely to fail, but destined to fail-- is just a proof of ignorance. The architects of the Iraq war were hoping that Iraq would be liberal, democratic, and aligned with the United States; but if "better than Saddam" was all they got, that's an improvement; and the odds of that were always very good.

Besides, a war with Iraq was sure to be a "cakewalk."

Naturally, no footnote is provided here in support of this claim.

The lesson is clear: it is time for Americans to give up their Messianic dreams and cease their efforts to coerce history in a particular direction.

A typical claim of the Bush Derangement Syndrome-affected sages of the last decade: pompous, oracular, contentless. Were we "coercing history in a particular direction" when we fought the Nazis? Of course, and on the other hand, of course not. The question is meaningless. We were defending ourselves; but we were also trying to spread justice and humanity among men. The two goals are hard to separate and it's better not to try to separate them.

One good thing the Obama administration has done: by basically just staying the course in foreign policy, it has legitimized the Bush record in foreign affairs, and taken the wind out of silly windbags like Andrew Bacevich.

Leslie H. Gelb: The Horrible Libya Hypocrisy (Daily Beast):

There's nothing like a foreign-policy crisis, real or imagined, to ignite the worst among world leaders and foreign-policy experts. Out pop the nuclear weapons of the trade: phony analogies and unabashed hypocrisy. The manufactured crisis in Libya is a prime case in point. No foreign states have vital interests at stake in Libya. Events in this rather odd and isolated land have little bearing on the rest of the tumultuous Mideast region. Also not to be dismissed, there are far, far worse humanitarian horrors elsewhere. Yet, U.S. neoconservatives and liberal humanitarian interventionists have trapped another U.S. president into acting as if the opposite were true.

When the world is being turned up-side-down, it's almost reassuring that one thing, at least, is always the same: the blinding stupidity of foreign policy "realists," more accurately described as foreign policy amoralists.

Let's pretend for a moment that the phrase "vital interests" has some meaning. Let's suppose that it means, say, anything that poses an immediate existential threat to a state. If we assume for the moment that a state should only intervene when its vital interests are threatened, it would be relevant to point out that "no foreign states have a vital interest" in Libya. But of course, there is no reason at all that states should only intervene when their vital interests are threatened. They do not, in fact, behave this way, and it would be both unwise and immoral for them to do so.

If we define "vital interests" more broadly, to include events, situations, and trends that will affect the security and economic health of a state in the longer run, then just about every state has a vital interest in Libya. For a dictator to massacre a lot of his people with impunity would be a terrible precedent with far-reaching ramifications. It would signal to other dictators to do the same, and foster a world full of very nasty regimes. It would also give lots of genuine reasons, or pretexts, for other states to take up the humanitarian torch that the West would have dropped, and build large rival militaries which could be used against Western interests. To say that Libya does not matter to the West is profoundly silly.

As for the claim that there are "far worse humanitarian horrors elsewhere," this is true but irrelevant. If x is worse off than y, does that mean one shouldn't help y unless one can help x as well? Not necessarily. It might be easier to help x than y. Perhaps, in addition to benevolence, one also expects some advantage from helping x, but none from helping y. And anyway, if one ought to help both x and y, which may be the case, if one wrongly refuses to help x, that is not a reason not to help y. It would take a good deal of effort to explain just what needs to be assumed for "there are far worse humanitarian horrors elsewhere, therefore don't prevent massacre in Libya" to be a valid argument. This might be a valid argument if, for example, one were already dedicating all one's resources to preventing humanitarian horrors, but because of scarce resources one can't save everyone, therefore one should put all one's resources into the place where one prevents the most horror at the margin. That whole complex of suppositions is so inapplicable in the real world that I feel silly even writing it down.

The truth is that the West is intervening in Libya now is because the Libyans have shown, or at least have given us good reason to believe, that they deserve it, that is, that they can make good use of our help. The rebels have a chance of winning; there is an opportunity to advance freedom, and at relatively low cost, compared to, say, Iraq in 2003, or North Korea today. This is a practical argument. But "realists"/amoralists cannot comprehend practical arguments, because if you want a practical understanding of human behavior and especially of statecraft and international relations, the first thing you have to recognize is that moral principles, good and bad, are everywhere, and this is precisely the thing the amoralists, in doctrinaire, dullard fashion, insist on denying or ignoring. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and without it the realists can understand nothing about their world.

Congratulations Egypt!

Mubarak Leaves at Last (Foreign Policy):

It's frankly hard to believe today's news that Hosni Mubarak has finally stepped down as President of Egypt without a wave of bloodshed.  After yesterday's disappointment and today's anxiety, nothing could have been more welcome.   There will be plenty of time for post-mortems, and there will be an enormous amount of hard work to come to ensure that this actually becomes a transition to democracy and not simply to a reconstituted authoritarian regime.  But for today, it's okay to simply celebrate -- to stand in awe of the Egyptian people and their ability to topple a seemingly impenetrable dictator through massive, peaceful protests.  Nothing will ever be the same, and no Arab will ever forget today's scenes broadcast on al-Jazeera. This was an unprecedented victory for the Egyptian people, and at last a vindication of the Obama administration's patient and well-crafted strategy. 

There is no question that the first, second and third drivers of this Egyptian revolution were the Egyptian people.   The creativity of the youth and their ability to mobilize a wide range of Egyptian society around a common demand against daunting odds are simply an inspiration.  The fact that these massive crowds avoided violence under incredibly tense conditions and under great uncertainty speaks volumes.   This did not come out of nowhere --- Egyptian activists have been mobilizing for change for a decade, with the Kefaya movement deserving enormous credit for breaking the walls of silence and fear and bringing opposition to the Mubarak regime out into the public sphere.  But their success in the face of the power of a strong authoritarian regime was a surprise to everyone -- including to them.   And in the analyses to come, al-Jazeera's role will require a chapter of its own...  time for me to do an updated version of Voices of the New Arab Public!  

Egypt Erupts in Jubilation as Mubarak Steps Down (NY Times):

There is no question that the first, second and third drivers of this Egyptian revolution were the Egyptian people.   The creativity of the youth and their ability to mobilize a wide range of Egyptian society around a common demand against daunting odds are simply an inspiration.  The fact that these massive crowds avoided violence under incredibly tense conditions and under great uncertainty speaks volumes.   This did not come out of nowhere --- Egyptian activists have been mobilizing for change for a decade, with the Kefaya movement deserving enormous credit for breaking the walls of silence and fear and bringing opposition to the Mubarak regime out into the public sphere.  But their success in the face of the power of a strong authoritarian regime was a surprise to everyone -- including to them.   And in the analyses to come, al-Jazeera's role will require a chapter of its own...  time for me to do an updated version of Voices of the New Arab Public!  

A day of joy: Egypt's euphoria (Economist):

JUBILATION is catching. It is impossible, for me at least, to watch the crowds in Egypt, overjoyed at Hosni Mubarak's hotly-desired resignation, with dry eyes and an unclenched throat. The best explanation I have heard today for the mass euphoria rippling through Egypt came earlier this morning when one Al Jazeera reporter, choking back sobs, described the rise of Egypt's people and the fall of Egypt's dictator as "everything I've ever hoped for". Everything! Another correspondent, reporting from Alexandria, described Egypt's collective elation as the release of 30 years of bottled-up emotion. He said he had seen birth, that he had seen marriage, but he had never seen happiness like this, and it is everywhere. This is sublimely powerful stuff. It may be the most powerful stuff...

Whatever the future may hold, this is the happiest many people will ever feel. This is the best day of some peoples' lives. The tiny Dionysian anarchist on my other shoulder is no angel, but I cannot deny that there is something holy in this feeling, that it is one of few human experiences that justifies life—that satisfies, however briefly, our desperate craving for more intensity, for more meaning, for more life from life. Whatever the future holds, there will be disappointment, at best. But there is always disappointment. Today, there is joy.

Egypt and the future of Arab democracy: Get rid of Islamists, and freedom will thrive (Charles Krauthammer):

Today, everyone and his cousin supports the "freedom agenda." Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism - the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another sordid example of U.S. imperialism.

Now everyone, even the left, is enthusiastic for Arab democracy. Fine. Fellow travelers are welcome. But simply being in favor of freedom is not enough. With Egypt in turmoil and in the midst of a perilous transition, we need foreign policy principles to ensure democracy for the long run.

No need to reinvent the wheel. We've been through something analogous before. After World War II, Western Europe was newly freed but unstable, in ruin - and in play. The democracy we favored for the continent faced internal and external threats from communist totalitarians. The United States adopted the Truman Doctrine that declared America's intention to defend these newly free nations.

I'm happy to give the Obama administration credit for handling the situation in Egypt well, but Bush and the neocons are definitely being vindicated, too, and Krauthammer is right to drive that point home.  But wow!  What a glorious moment.  And it seems unlikely that it will stop with Egypt.  Subjects and sovereigns worldwide are watching, drawing their conclusions: how to get democracy; how to stop it.  Although the 18 days of protests seemed long drawn out, what's really amazing is that events moved so fast.  Thirty years' rule, overturned in less than one month!  And without too much violence.

One moral of this may be that if the coordination problem can be solved, revolution is cheap for those who do it.  If you're the one revolutionary when everyone else is playing the loyal subject, you'll have a hard time.  But if everyone can move at once, you can get freedom at not too high a price.  Still, you have to be willing to run risks.  It takes courage.

Even more interesting, though, is the role of the Egyptian military.  While they didn't lead the revolution, it couldn't have succeeded without, first, their benevolent neutrality, second, their active intervention at the end.  One thing the Egyptian revolution shows is that the military can win honor and glory by siding with the people.  Coup may, after Egypt, no longer be a dirty word.  People will ask, what kind of coup-- good or bad?  Why did the army side with the people rather than the regime?  Or, from a dictator's point of view, how do you make sure that your soldiers are loyal enough to you to attack the people at your command?  What kind of command structure would make it hardest for the officers to solve the coordination problem and get rid of the boss?

And then there's this exceedingly interesting point: what role did the military-to-military ties between Egypt and the United States play in shaping the Egyptian army's attitude towards democratic revolution?  Did all that aid that the US channeled to the Egyptian military eventually pay off in the form of a more pro-democratic military, one that felt less beholden to their boss, and a bit of solidarity with universal values?  Should the United States try to co-opt other militaries through military-to-military aid, in hopes of affecting how the soldiers will behave in a revolutionary moment?  And will dictators be more wary of military ties with the US, afraid that we will infect their soldiers with democratic ideas?

Another question is: what role did technology play in this?  How important were Facebook and satellite TV?  Of course, the internet and satellite TV, and mobile phones, have been spreading like crazy in recent years.  How vulnerable are other regimes to new means of mobilization?

Anyway, congratulations to Egypt!

Egypt and Iraq

Revolutions are exciting, though one should always bear in mind that a lot of them have ended badly. That usually happens because some bad ideology is at work, such as communism or radical Islam. Since communism is discredited and radical Islam has been in retreat for some time now, I am inclined to welcome the events in Egypt without much reservation. Mubarak was not as bad a tyrant as Saddam, but he was/is pretty bad. The latest news is:

President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not run for another term in elections scheduled for the fall, appearing on state television to promise an orderly transition but saying he would serve out his term. In comments translated by CNN, he swore that he would never leave Egypt but would “die on its soil.”

Television cameras showed the vast crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in central Cairo roaring, but not necessarily in approval. The protesters have made the president’s immediate and unconditional resignation a bedrock demand of their movement, and it did not appear that the concession mollified them. Reports said that thousands of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square chanted "Leave! Leave!" after the speech.

Mr. Mubarak’s announcement came after President Obama urged him not to run, effectively withdrawing America’s support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington.

The message was delivered by Frank G. Wisner, a seasoned envoy with deep ties to Egypt, the American diplomats said. Mr. Wisner’s message, they said, was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but rather firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader.

This back channel message, authorized directly by Mr. Obama, appeared to tip the administration beyond the delicate balancing act it has performed in the last week — resisting calls for Mr. Mubarak to step down, even as it has called for an “orderly transition” to a more politically open Egypt.

I'm inclined to think Obama has handled this well. I think he learned his lesson from Iran, where he made the mistake of seeming to side with the Ahmadinejad regime. This time he's helping to get the tyrant out, while not giving the protestors exactly what they want. It's definitely risky. One thing about revolutions is that they involve people solving a coordination problem. If the protestors say "good enough" and go home, then Mubarak backtracks, Obama could look like he lied to people struggling for their freedom in order to keep in power one of America's more nefarious allies. On the other hand, an orderly transition could give the silent majority and liberals time to organize. But I don't really know.

I've been surprised to see realists coming to the surface and saying we should back Mubarak. Maybe this doesn't make sense, but I thought Bush had shamed away the old cynical realism forever, by identifying even Republicans with idealistic foreign policy and spreading democracy. Of course, after Iraq a lot of people started declaring themselves "realists," but I see now that I didn't believe them. I thought it was just a way to say "don't blame me!" about the largely inevitable chaos and cost of the transition there. I guess they meant it.

The really interesting question here is how the Iraq War affected this. I don't know the answer, all I can do is speculate; however, I think one answer can be ruled out, and that is that it had no effect at all. The Iraq War was the cause celebre of the last decade. Everybody followed it, thought about it, talked about it, argued about it. It occurred in the heart of the Arab world. Egyptians were certainly paying attention. It altered people's expectations about the use of American power, still an important factor in the region. It gave people a model, certainly not a wholly appealing model, of what Arab democracy could look like. Possibly it delayed the revolution by making people fear the anarchy of regime change. That's certainly more likely than that it had no effect at all. But more likely still, "Iraq the Model", as the name of one blog has it, helped to bring on the Egyptian revolution. (It may not have much affected Tunisia, which is further away and closer to Europe, and obviously Tunisia was the immediate trigger for Egypt. But still.)

I don't exactly mean that Egyptians were saying to themselves: "Look what the Iraqis have got! We want that too!" But even to the extent that Iraq is partly a cautionary tale-- how regime change leads to anarchy and bloodshed-- that might still encourage Arab democrats. If the worst that can happen is Iraq, a few years of violent unrest may, after all, be a price worth paying for a future of freedom, especially for the young, who have less to lose and more to gain. And Egyptians may hope, not implausibly, that they can get the best of Iraq-- free speech; a democratic constitution; real elections and a more honest political life-- while avoiding the worst part, particularly the violence and insecurity (and of course, foreign occupation). Egyptian democrats may feel more confident, having the opportunity to learn from Iraq's experience.

The Iraq War may have affected Egypt in another way too, namely, by creating a tacit credible threat that Mubarak took into account. Mubarak might have been able to hold onto power (might still be able to hold onto power, though it seems unlikely) by a bloody crackdown with large-scale massacres that would have made his regime like Saddam's. Before the Iraq War, that might have been a more appealing option. Now dictators like Mubarak see another possibility: that they'll be overthrown in an American-led revolutionary war and hanged by their despising people. Better to go quietly.

Whether or not the Iraq invasion was a good idea, Tunisia and Egypt and maybe Yemen, etc., show that Bush was prescient in his vision of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. But Egypt also clarifies a couple of things. First, it is a reminder that the old cynical realism which some of Bush's less appealing critics shrieked with rage against him for abandoning, was actually still being practiced, alongside the new, idealistic freedom agenda. We were still allied with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, Pakistan's Musharraf, and so forth. The Iraq War puts us at least partly on the side of the rising Arab democrats. Yes, we kept channeling aid to Egypt's dictator, but we also expended blood and treasure to remove Iraq's dictator and supervise a difficult transition to democracy there, so we're not totally against the idea of Arab freedom. Arab democrats have at least a reason to be confused about whether we're a friend or an enemy, rather than sure of the latter.

Iraq => Southern Sudan?

"Southern Sudan's Historic Independence Referendum" (The Daily Beast):

“After all of the struggle, loss of life, separation, and killing, we can see that we are now allowed to vote freely for our destiny,” Valentino Achak Deng told me in the southern capital city of Juba, along the banks of the Nile. Deng, the subject of a “fictionalized memoir” by Dave Eggers, What Is the What?, helped tell the story of the Lost Boys and the suffering of Southern Sudan. Now he is both witnessing and participating in a new chapter in the deeply troubled history of the region, this one framed by hope for peace and stability. “We’re going to vote in large numbers, together, and then just look at our faces and our eyes and be happy,” Deng said.

At stake in the seven-day referendum is the separation of Africa’s largest state into two sovereign states. The divisions between the Muslim and Arab-dominated government in the north and the Christian and African tribal populations of the south have been festering since end of colonial rule in 1956. In 1983, those tensions erupted into a 20-year civil war that killed 2.5 million people. As North and South negotiated a peace treaty that would be signed in 2005, Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, began a genocide against Muslims in Darfur, a western province of Sudan; he has since been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his crimes there.

The Bush administration negotiated the comprehensive peace agreement of 2005 and set Jan. 9, 2011, as the date of a Southern Sudan referendum to decide the fate of the two-state solution.

Here's something I would be interested to know: Did the Iraq War improve the Bush administration's negotiating position in arranging this? You can easily imagine how it might. If you're Omar al-Bashir in 2005, you might well think, "If I say no to America; if I try to hold onto southern Sudan by force at the cost of committing more war crimes; will I end up like Saddam? Is it worth the risk?"

The Iraq War did not improve the West's ability to deal with a country like Russia, which (a) is too big and nuclear, and (b) isn't totalitarian/genocidal enough to be a candidate for regime change. But it may have created a decisive credible threat against small-scale tyrants and totalitarians. Time will tell.

I'll start posting again regularly sometime in the next couple of months, but in the meantime I liked this little tale of openness vs. tyranny:

Moscow angered by Georgian move that breaks the North Caucasus's isolation (Oct. 20, 2010)

On October 13, the Georgian government unilaterally introduced a visa-free regime for the North Caucasians. Tbilisi’s surprise move evoked divergent reactions in Russia - furious criticism from Russian officials and tacit appreciation across the North Caucasus. The new rules affect Adygea, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and North Ossetia.  Visitors from the republics of the North Caucasus can now cross into Georgia without receiving a Georgian visa and can stay in the country for up to 90 days. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze explained that the simplification of visa rules was motivated by the desire to restore Georgia’s traditional relations with neighboring peoples. At the same time, she said that many people want to travel to Georgia for commercial purposes as well as to enroll in Georgian higher education institutions. “[S]o it would have been inappropriate to have some additional barriers in this regard,” she said (www.civil.ge, October 11).

Russian citizens had to apply for Georgian visas at the Swiss embassy in Moscow or had to receive a Georgian visa at the entry airport. In September 2008, shortly after the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008, Georgian government reinstated the simplified procedure for Russian citizens that allowed them to receive visas at the entry airports. However, because of the absence of regular flights, Russian citizens had to travel all the way to Moscow to receive a Georgian visa. After the visa regime was lifted, inhabitants of the North Caucasus can travel to Georgia by highway via North Ossetia and the border point “Upper Lars/Kazbegi”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the Georgian government’s initiative to ease border passage as “another propagandist step.” Lavrov stated that visa-related decisions had to be made on a bilateral basis. The deputy head of the North Caucasus Federal District and former chief of Russian counterterrorist activities, Arkady Yedelev, called the new rules a “provocation.” The harshest denunciation came from the vice-speaker of the Russian Federation Council, Aleksandr Torshin. He discerned that the partial abolishment of the Georgian visa regime was an attempt to establish better links between the Georgian government and North Caucasian insurgents. “The Georgian government must be really short of messengers and so it needed to open as many holes as possible in its border so that the suppliers of cash, explosives and arms can scurry back and forth from Russia to Georgia and back, while some go there [to Georgia] from the North Caucasus to lick their wounds,” Torshin said (www.yuga.ru, October 12).

 

An express poll taken by the Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot) website taken among residents of Chechnya and Adygea on the lifting of visa requirements for Georgia revealed elated responses among the Chechens and mostly positive responses among those who live in Adygea. Those who were sceptical said they were worried about an attempt by the neighboring state to split Russians along the administrative borders (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 16-17). All but one leader of the North Caucasian republics refrained from commenting on Georgia’s decision, which from a Russian standpoint meant that they approved of it. Even more surprisingly, to date no condemnation has come from the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Responding to domestic security concerns, Georgian officials said humanitarian reasons were involved in their decision. “Those living in the North Caucasus are under the [Russian] federal power-wielding structures' terror,” Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said in an interview with Rustavi 2 TV aired late on October 16. “It is beneficial for us from the political, economic, as well as humanitarian point of view to have more integration with the North Caucasus people and to give them [residents of the region] the opportunity to be connected with the Western world via Georgia.” Merabishvili also predicted the number of people traveling for Georgian business, tourism and medical treatment would increase (www.civil.ge, October 17). 

Lifting the visa requirements for North Caucasians appears to be one of the first steps of the Georgian government’s strategy. In his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on September 23, President Mikheil Saakashvili announced his government’s new approach, stating that, “[he] came here to speak about this change and to promote a specific vision - a vision for a free, stable and united Caucasus.” Saakashvili hailed the North Caucasus as “a region where individuals and souls were fundamentally free but where citizens were politically oppressed, where people and cultures were deeply tolerant but where governments and authorities created artificial divisions” (www.president.gov.ge, September 23). 

The US could emulate this on a global scale by using foreign aid to pry open safe havens for all refugees.

What the BP Spill Has to Do with Iran

A year ago the falsification of election results in Iran led to what seemed like the beginnings of a velvet revolution of the type that led to the overthrow of communism in eastern Europe. They called it the Green Revolution. McCain's immediate response of unmitigated condemnation showed the kind of "tear this down wall" freedom advocacy we might have expected from a McCain administration. Obama responded with words so measured that, coming from an American president who ought to be playing the role of freedom advocate, they sounded almost like an endorsement of the Ahmadinejad regime. Sober experts scolded McCain for his forthrightness and assured us that Obama's mealy-mouthed prevarication was actually the best thing Obama could do for Iranian freedom, because the support of the Great Satan would discredit the revolution in Iranians' eyes, even though polls show that most Iranians have a favorable attitude towards America.

I am too ignorant about the engineering problems of deepwater oil drilling to voice an opinion about whether the Obama administration has been incompetent or not. But it's pretty clear they haven't surprised us with their technocratic solutions. It's not very plausible, by now, to attribute to Obama superior technocratic intelligence, such that we can presume his decisions are wise even when we don't see how. And that makes it, in hindsight, a little harder to believe that Obama's conspicuous indifference to the Green Revolution was actually a shrewd tactic for empowering them by disassociating them from the Great Satan.

Christianity and Politics

What are the implications of Christianity for politics?  When Christians are citizens of polities, how should they behave?  Should Christians ever be rulers, and if they are, how should they govern?  Should Christians try to abolish polities, or reform them, or create new ones where they are absent or bad, and if so, what kinds of polities should Christians seek to create, reform and/or abolish?  Should Christians be monarchists, or democrats, or even anarchists?  Should Christians be pacifist, or might there be a case for making “just war,” perhaps even a lot of it?  Should Christians be political quietists, or, on the other hand, civic-minded activists and agitators, constantly voting, campaigning, or even fighting?  Should they seek to abolish slavery, or communism; to prohibit abortion; to liberate oppressed peoples from totalitarian rule; to increase foreign aid; or to open borders to immigration?  Is there such a thing as a Christian state?  If so, is it desirable?  And what would it look like?

There are some Gospel texts relevant to these questions.  Although the political context of 1^st-century Judea is important, I think it also to useful to contemplate the texts separately from their context, focusing on the meaning of the words themselves, before considering how the context affects their meaning.  The Gospels actually do not have much to say about politics directly.  For some passages it is hard to say whether they are relevant or not.  For example, if we think of the scene where Pilate asks Jesus if He is the king of the Jews and He answers “It is you who say it,” this seems to be relevant: Jesus is claiming to be a king.  Not so fast.  Jesus also says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and His whole life and behavior makes it clear that, probably to the disappointment of many who were looking for a Messiah to re-establish the Jewish kingdom militarily, Jesus was not seeking to be a king in an earthly sense, so the passage does not have direct political implications.

The passage most cited from the Gospels with respect to politics is Luke 20:25 (with parallel verses in Matthew and Mark), “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”  I have often heard this read as if it were a prescient endorsement of the kind of church-state relations that prevail in late 20^th-century American jurisprudence, meaning something like, “there is a state [Caesar] and a church [God] which have separate claims on us, which must be distinguished, and the Christian citizen must fulfill the legitimate demands of each, obeying the church in matters of spirituality and personal morality, but not attempting to impose the church’s will on infidels or wayward believers through the power of the state, nor, on the other hand, using allegiance to the church as a pretext for disobeying the authority of the state, except in the special case that laws of men violate the Christian’s conscience.”  Such a philosophy of church-state relations is anachronistic as a reading of Luke 20:25.  It uses conceptions of church and state that would not have been available to Jesus’s 1^st-century hearers and hardly before modern times.  Indeed, if Luke 20:25 is read by itself, it is question-begging.  One wants to answer: “Yes, but what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?”  We will return to this passage, but for the moment we will start our inquiry elsewhere.

No, if any political message emerges clearly from the Gospels, it is not the attitude of obedience to rulers that authority figures like to read into “give unto Caesar,” but a principled Christian nonviolence.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus counsels his disciples “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5: 39).  Now, if violence is ever justified, surely it is justified as a means of resisting the wicked man.  If one is ever justified in slapping, surely it is justified when one is being slapped.  Self-defense is the least controversial form of violence.  Some people find other forms of violence acceptable.  To believe in a welfare state is to believe that men who are not specially wicked, who are minding their own business and harming no one, should be made, that is, coerced, under an implicit or explicit threat of violence, to give of their substance to the government for redistribution to the less fortunate.  This form of violence is more controversial.  If few would reject non-self-defensive violence absolutely and universally and consistently—it seems doubtful that violence solely as self-defense can provide the basis for any state at all—then almost everyone is at least wary about extending such justifications for violence too far.  So if Jesus rejects violence even in self-defense, as He does explicitly in “turn the other cheek,” it is hard to escape the conclusion that He is exhorting his disciples to refrain from all violence whatsoever.  But Max Weber is probably right in defining government as an entity that claims a monopoly of legitimate violence.  A nonviolent state is a contradiction in terms.  So “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” imply a rejection of government as such.

Such is the case that Jesus was an anarchist, or, to coin an unwieldy term which is unfortunately necessary to distinguish the attitude from two other attitudes which are less coherent but have large followings, a pacifist-anarchist.  A pacifist-anarchist is quite distinct, on the one hand, from the kind of anarchist that engages in random violence—bombing buildings, assassinating policemen and presidents—in hopes of bringing about anarchy by overthrowing governments, and on the other hand, from the kind of pacifist that opposes war in the foreign policy arena but takes it for granted that policemen should keep (violently if necessary) catching and locking up criminals.  A pacifist-anarchist rejects resistance to the wicked man—except of course by persuasion; this is presumably implicit in the Sermon on the Mount teaching and is advocated explicitly by Jesus elsewhere in the Gospels—both by private individuals and by “governments,” and without regard to the place where violence occurs or whether those who commit and suffer violence are fellow-citizens of any polity or not.  

Now, although I do not think Christian nonviolence is the whole answer to the question of what attitude Christians should have to politics, I am always surprised that it is not a more influential idea.  I have heard rumors of Christians who dismiss out of hand, as if it were absurd, the idea that Jesus was a pacifist.  If there really are such Christians, I don’t know how to regard their opinion as anything but a function of ignorance, prejudice, and/or unseriousness.  A simple and direct reading of the Sermon on the Mount points to Christian nonviolence or pacifist-anarchism so clearly that someone unfamiliar with this idea must, it seems to me, either never have read the Sermon on the Mount or not paid attention to it.  Yet through most of the history of Christianity, Christians have lived in states and been loyal to rulers and fought in wars and enforced laws and not felt this to be inconsistent with their Christianity.  Why?

As a way to underline the point it might be worthwhile to mention another argument that is superficially parallel to the one I am making, but much stupider.  I seem to remember seeing an anti-war bumper sticker that says “What part of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ don’t you understand?” and have heard arguments to this effect in a few other places.  Now, “Thou shalt not kill,” if taken literally and universally, would imply something like pacifist-anarchism.  All governments claim the prerogative of killing under certain circumstances, e.g. in the event of foreign invasion, and probably no government could do without it.  But it is clear that the Jewish law, of which the Ten Commandments are a part, is not a pacifist-anarchist program.  It prescribed the death penalty for some crimes, to be carried out, it seems, by judges or kings of some sort—different political arrangements occurred in different phases of Jewish history, as recorded in the Bible—and a distinctive class with special legal—we might say, “sovereign”—authority that suspended the ordinary prohibition on killing for these people while they were acting as enforcers of the law was clearly implicit.  Jewish history was also full of wars, not only just wars, but also wars which hardly seem to meet any standard of “just war” that could be articulated and defended today—we would call the conquest of the Promised Land “ethnic cleansing”—and yet which the Bible seems to condone.   Clearly, taken in context, “Thou shalt not kill” does not apply to soldiers or judges, but means “Thou shalt not murder,” that is, thou shalt not kill without provocation and in the capacity of a mere private citizen.

But “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” are different.  It does not involve any tendentious interpretation of the text to read these as a general or universal exhortation to nonviolence.  On the contrary.  Consider the verses in context:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’  39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  40 And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  41 If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

So Jesus introduces “do not resist the wicked man” by explicitly invoking the old law and signaling that His teaching is superseding it.  To read this as an exhortation to private citizens only with no political ramifications is deliberately to ignore this parallelism and seems exegetically indefensible.  The old law with which it is contrasted was not merely an exhortation to private citizens.  It was meant to be enforced by a judge or some other third party.  It would not have made sense as an exhortation to private citizens.  If A gouges out B’s eye, presumably he is able to do so because A is stronger than B.  If so, B cannot gouge out A’s eye in return.  Certainly there is unlikely to be any credible threat from B’s side that would deter A from violence in the first place.  The old law would have to be applied by someone who is neutral between A and B and stronger than either of them, who can recognize that A has done wrong to B and must be punished, and who can carry out the punishment, either overcoming any resistance A might make, or else deterring such resistance by its known superiority in strength.  In other words, the old law must be applied by some kind of state.  The old law implies and depends on politics. 

Jesus’s new teaching, by contrast, neither requires a state gives any opening for the state to have a role.  A private individual can turn the other cheek without the help of a government.  And if everyone practices nonviolence, there can be no governments.  There can be no entities claiming a monopoly of violence if everyone has renounced violence.  Jesus’s teaching, then, points to the disappearance of the state if it is universally practiced.  If only some practice Christian nonviolence, then since calling on the state for help is a way to resist the wicked man, those must, it would seem, turn their backs on the state or renounce it to a certain extent, and certainly must decline to participate in it, as rulers, magistrates, soldiers, or even plaintiffs (or for that matter defendants, as “if someone sue thee at the law…” states).

An adherent of Christian nonviolence will pay taxes to the state, but not on “give unto Caesar” grounds as that verse is usually understood, rather on “turn the other cheek” grounds.  They will submit to the demands of the state as they would submit to the demands of a robber.  This is not to say that adherents of Christian nonviolence would regard the state as a robber.  If we are not to resist wicked men, we are presumably also not to resist good men, that is, men who live by a lesser good than that which we aspire to live by, such as just and beneficent government in a secular sense.  We need not morally equate the tax collector with the bandit in order to submit to both for the same reason and in the same way.  The state is, first and foremost, a collective means to resist the wicked man.  To accept the Sermon on the Mount in this way is to reject the state’s not only particular means that the state uses but the end of the state.  It leaves the state without a raison d’etre.

The Roman Catholics have a way out of the radical implications of this reading of the Sermon on the Mount.  They argue that the Sermon on the Mount was advice but to a select inner circle, to the apostles, perhaps also to clergy or monastics and others who feel called to follow it, but not on Christians generally.  In support of this, they point out that the Gospel of Matthew says Jesus took His disciples up onto a mountaintop—thus the phrase “the Sermon on the Mount”—away from the crowds.  The physical setting of the sermon is taken as indicative of its narrower intended audience.  Possibly.  But in other cases where Jesus speaks to His disciples separately from the crowds, e.g., the parable of the sower, He does not say He is doing so because the teaching applies only to them.  On the contrary, the parable of the sower clearly carries a universal message.  And the reason Jesus gives on that occasion for speaking to them separately is that “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them,” that is, to the crowds.  Of course, the message is ultimately intended for all mankind, but there seems to be an initiation process, and there are some truths for which the mass of the people are not ready.  So this Argument from Audience for treating the Sermon on the Mount as a special calling for a select few is not compelling.  And the style of the argument, introducing an allusion to the old law with “you have heard that it was said,” then contrasting the new teaching that is to supersede it by the words “but I say unto you,” suggests the opposite.  The old law, of course, was intended for everyone, or at least for all Jews, for all those God had brought under His special direct rule, as all mankind is invited to be in the new dispension that came with Christ.  This at least suggests that the new law should be similarly universal in its scope.

Having said all that, the position I will ultimately arrive at may strike some as a variation, elucidation, or reiteration of this Roman Catholic view.  Still, for now we may register dissatisfaction with it and put it on one side.

A difference response to the direct reading of the Sermon on the Mount is to embrace it, to accept Christian nonviolence as an ethos or political philosophy, a rule of life.  I am aware of one historical example of a people that has done this, the Amish—I think there are other examples—and of three important intellectuals who, though none of them are orthodox Christians, have embraced this position, surely in each case under the influence of Jesus’s teachings: Henry David Thoreau; Leo Tolstoy; and Mahatma Gandhi.  The Amish have adopted nonviolence as a way of life for centuries.  Leo Tolstoy developed a political philosophy of nonviolence in The Kingdom of God is Within You, Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience.”  Gandhi adopted nonviolence as a tactic and ideology for his movement for Indian independence.  All these examples shed light on the virtue and the limitations of the pacifist-anarchist ideal.

Amish nonviolence is widely admired, other parts of Amish culture not so much.  Their practice of shunning, of strict and specific rules against interaction with those deemed persona non grata by the community, which involves alienating even family members, seems downright cruel and immoral.  Their rejection of so many modern technologies, a more salient feature of Amish society even than nonviolence, as well as of education above the 8^th-grade level, strike most as gratuitous and unappealing.  Why can’t the Amish be nonviolent without being so harsh and weird? 

But stop a moment.  How, after all, does Amish nonviolence set them apart from mainstream society (e.g., in America)?  If the Amish never kill, neither does most of the rest of the population.  In American society, as in all advanced societies today, and probably to a lesser extent in most civilized societies of the past for thousands of years, violence is a specialized function of professional policemen and soldiers.  Most people never engage in violence, just as they don’t repair computers, renovate bathrooms, cut hair, or teach sociology.  The Amish are against violence in principle, rather than merely refraining from it as a matter of professional specialization, but how much does that matter?  Does it have any effect on what one does, how one lives, given that most citizens perhaps not once in their lives encounter a situation in which they would be willing to commit violence? 

Suppose that Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan is persuaded by the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount of Tolstoy and the Amish, and makes an inward personal commitment to Christian nonviolence.  Having done so, he lives exactly as he did before, since he had never previously found it to his advantage or taste to use violence anyway.  It would seem odd to argue that this inward commitment that has no practical effect is really very important.  Is the principled nonviolence of the Amish more important than that of Mr. Tolstoyan?  There are two reasons why it might be.  First, as the Amish are known to be nonviolent, and as Amish dress and lifestyle makes them conspicuous and identifiable, their commitment to nonviolence subjects them to special risks.  If I am a thuggish sort of person who does not scruple to take what I want by force, and I see Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan walking down an isolated street with something I want, say a shirt or a bit of food or wine.  I do not know who Mr. Tolstoyan is or what he believes in.  I consider robbing him, but I notice that he’s a fairly strong man and reflect that he may, after all, be armed, and decide it isn’t worth the risk.  Mr. Tolstoyan is morally committed “not to resist the wicked man,” and would, in fact, let me take everything from him.  Nonetheless, he benefits by the presumption that he would resist, based on the fact that he looks like others—like normal people—who would do so.  By contrast, if I see an Amish walking down the street, with his beard and his odd clothes, and he has something I want, I know that he is forbidden to resist me, so I will rob him without hesitation.

The second reason that Amish nonviolence is more serious than that of Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan is that the whole Amish way of life cuts them off from many of the benefits of division of labor that the broader society enjoys with the help of its use of violence, especially in enforcing property rights.  If Mr. Tolstoyan doesn’t practice violence himself, it is done on his behalf by armies and police forces that are paid with his tax dollars and that regard his safety and that of his fellow citizens as their mission.  But that is not so true of the Amish.  Their technological primitivism and social exclusiveness make them less intensively dependent than others are on the society and economy they live in the midst of.  If society were to break down around them, they would probably suffer less than others, and it would be an exaggeration but not an absurdity to regard their community as more or less self-sufficient.  And just as they stand to lose less by a breakdown of society, so they stand to gain less by its continuation, since their various scruples make their lives poor and simple.

Still, if the Amish takes extra risks by advertising his nonviolence in the way he lives and dresses, he is still much safer because the state locks up so many of the criminal types who would be willing to rob him.  And though he may be less dependent than others are on the kind of advanced capitalism that is underpinned by violent enforcement of property rights and national frontiers, the American armed forces are, at the end of the day, protecting him too.  He could not practice his distinctive way of life if the Soviets had won the Cold War.  And this is a general problem for all these pacifist-anarchists: they depend on those who practices they disavow.  Tolstoy was a wealthy man.  His wealth was protected by the laws of the Russian state whose dissolution he willed.  Gandhi’s nonviolent methods worked only because the British Raj was too liberal and constitutionalist to resort to the repressive methods that might have stopped him.  Indeed, he didn’t survive long in the communal violence that ensued when that Raj ended, and he could have had no impact in Soviet Russia or French Indochina.  Thoreau spent only a single night in jail because someone else paid for him the tax (in support of the war with Mexico) that Thoreau refused on principle to pay, and this benignity of the society against he was protesting gives “Civil Disobedience” a slightly comic flavor. 

Are these principled practitioners of nonviolence ungrateful to the nonpractitioners of nonviolence who protect their lives and prosperity?  I do not think a charge of ingratitude is warranted, as long as the pacifist-anarchist acknowledges the benefits he receives from the soldier and policemen, even if he doesn’t exactly thank them.  In effect, the Christian pacifist-anarchist says to the soldier: “I accept that you believe that what you are doing is right. I agree, moreover, that I benefit from your efforts to protect me.  I also acknowledge that you risk your own life to do so, and respect your sacrifice.  Nonetheless I desire a world in which you cease to do so, fully recognizing the costs to myself if this world were brought about.  I am willing to face the risks of being plundered or murdered so that none may practice or threaten violence on my behalf.  Of course, I cannot stop you from exercising violence in ways that benefit me.  You will continue doing so for your own reasons, which may include a desire for my welfare.  I merely make it known to you that I do not consent to the arrangement, and will continue to try to end it through moral suasion.” 

All this is perfectly logical but I think it contains some moral dangers.  To put it bluntly, this might all be humbug.  As long as the policemen and soldiers do their work well, my claim to moral distinctiveness rests on a claim about how I would behave in a situation that never occurs.  But how do I know how I would behave?  Perhaps, faced with a real robber, I would resist after all.  Perhaps, faced with a weaker but murderous enemy, I would lack the courage to accept death rather than to kill.  Also, the argument is a too subtle.  Only an intellectual could understand it.  The ethic will inevitably remain abstract and utopian.  The believer in nonviolence will in practice live by the ethic of ordinary bourgeoisie who outsource the violent functions to others.  The pacifist-anarchist ethos will make little by way of demands, and be a temptation to pedantry and pride.  (The Amish avoid this problem by making many other demands on their members, which, unlike nonviolence, involve real and heavy sacrifice, but we are treating nonviolence as a separate ideal of its own.)

This is a good place in the argument to take note of another group of practitioners of nonviolence, namely, priests, monks, the apostles, the early Church and its martyrs.  It is characteristic of all these “not to resist the wicked man” and to “turn the other cheek.”  This is not to say that monks and priests never engage in self-defense, sometimes they do.  But they hardly ever fight with weapons or kill.  Apostles such as Peter and Paul, and according to tradition most of the rest of them as well, accepted martyrdom without resistance, perfectly following the Sermon on the Mount in this respect.  Monasteries are unique examples of durable miniature societies based on voluntary and noncoercive socialistic central planning.  The Rule of St. Benedict is a constitutional document, a set of rules to govern a society, but with this difference, that under no circumstances does it envision killing, or even severe coercion—beating is prescribed at one point but a penitent monk might consent to this form of discipline, and could presumably leave if not (this is forbidden by the Rule but no physical prevention of it is prescribed).  As with the Amish, complicated systems of shunning are used as a method of discipline, reflecting the fact that this method is effective yet avoids violence.  The forerunner of monastic voluntary socialism was the early Christian commune described in the Book of Acts.  There is a harrowing story in Acts about how a husband and wife who lied to the apostles about the price for which they sold some property in order to join the commune were miraculously killed, but importantly, though Peter foretold their deaths, it is clearly God and not Peter who does the killing.  And of course, Jesus himself practices His own teaching of “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” when, having ordered Peter to put away his sword, He goes unresistingly to His own death on the cross.

And so the Church, or if not quite the Church as a whole then certain agencies within it, gives an example of a society organized on the principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.  (I would argue that the Church, properly understood, has always practiced “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek,” but that the organization of the Church as it can be perceived from a secular point of view has often been infiltrated by hostile elements and instrumentalized by external powers, while the essence of the Church, the community of love among the believers, has remained mystically pure throughout, but this is a bit of a mystery and it would be beyond the scope of the present argument to defend the claim here.)  Unlike the Amish or the Tolstoyan, however, the monks and priests and apostles and martyrs have not, in general, felt the need to disapprove, either of the soldier and the policeman who uphold the secular polities in which they live.  Many, and perhaps those who best embody the ideal member of these classes of persons, seem hardly to have had any opinions one way or the other on whether there ought to be a state with a monopoly of violence.  Others definitely supported the state, and some actively campaigned for even greater violence.  Pope Urban II and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, preached the crusades.  So we’re left with our original question, “What are the implications of Christianity for politics?”, as well as a new one, “Why don’t most Christians seem to regard the Sermon on the Mount as the universal political program which it seems to purport to be?”

There is something else that we should note about the apostles, martyrs, monks, and priests: many of them were celibate.  Not all: Peter had a wife, plenty of martyrs were married (though many weren’t), and in the Orthodox east priests can marry and for those who wish to serve in parish this is even preferred or semi-required.  But it is a common pattern.  And I think it’s clear enough why living the Sermon on the Mount is connected with celibacy.  For it is very hard for a householder to take the Sermon on the Mount literally.  A householder, after all, has a reason to practice violence which is even more compelling than self-defense: the defense of his wife and children.  To turn the other cheek when one is slapped on the cheek may be regarded as brave; to stand idly by as one’s wife is raped or one’s child killed seems monstrous.  Again, consider the question of property.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches:

²⁵"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[b]?

 ²⁸"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This ideal of apostolic poverty is actually connected to the ideal of Christian nonviolence, because if one disavows violence, one disavows the defense of property.  As St. Francis said, “If we had any possessions, we would need weapons and laws to defend them.”  For a solitary individual to practice this ethos involves not only physical but moral risk, for it threatens to reduce him to a parasite, begging others for the bread which he refuses to hoard for himself.  Yet I think readers will have the intuition that a person who disavows worldly possessions for the love of God may—it is hard to foresee exactly how, but that is because the story of life is too full of the unexpected for us to predict it—not be a burden but be of great service to his fellow man.  Still, this hardly seems appropriate advice to give to a householder, or at least, to householders generally (Peter might have been a special case).  To consent not to know where one’s next meal is coming from may be gloriously humble and brave; but to consent not to know where one’s child’s next meal is coming from seems monstrous.

So unless we are going to take the view that Jesus wanted to impose universal celibacy—and this is hardly tenable since he made remarks on marriage that seem to uphold the institution—we seem to be compelled in the direction of thinking that Jesus saw two classes of people, “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12) who would give up marriage and family to serve God alone, and those who married and raised families.  The ideal laid down in the Sermon on the Mount can only be taken as strict and literal prescription for the first category.  God might, indeed, grant to some married couples to live in circumstances in which they can turn the other cheek and the rest of it without jeopardizing their children and family, but in general they may, for a time, have to remain in the world, with its polities that claim a monopoly of violence.  And these, for the householders, for those not yet ready for the higher path of apostolic poverty and Christian nonviolence, must still think about politics, must be prepared to wield and/or to support violence, must live by those ideals which the Sermon on the Mount supersedes but which are still ideals of a sort, which in the Old Testament seem to enjoy God’s blessing even if the Christian’s intuition is too strong to be gainsaid that some Old Testament writers did not understand God’s real nature and purposes as well as the early Christians did.

Unfortunately, if we are going to “resist the wicked man” after all, we can’t stop there.  John Locke is, I think, the most benign of the great political thinkers of modern times.  Most of the others—Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Sorel, Sartre, Spengler, Nietzsche, you name it—had a baneful influence, giving rise to one or another form of tyranny or totalitarianism.  Locke, by contrast, was the chief ideologist of the Glorious Revolution in England and the forerunner of the American Revolution, and is thus associated with the birth of the two great, free, humane polities that have been the model, bastion, and champion of liberty for three centuries.  This is not only because of Locke’s unique genius but, even more, because he was in large part the spokesman of a tradition.  Locke’s theory begins with the idea that people have rights, and he goes on to suggest that the origin of government is a social contract by which people agree to defend these rights.  Subsequent history suggests that states behave much better when this is their founding myth.  But the logic of Locke’s theory is flawed.  People don’t really sign a social contract, and it would surely be impossible to get them to do so.  Aside from the practical difficulties and the differences of opinion that would arise in any such attempt, there’s a temptation to free-ride.  If A and B agree to pay their taxes to support an army to defend the frontier, C’s best bet may be to have them count him out, and trust that the soldiers paid by other people’s money will also keep the wolf from his door.  With no justification, Locke gives the majority the right of deciding: A and B will take C’s money for national defense, whether he likes it or not.  But already we have stepped beyond using violence to resist the wicked man, to using it to confiscate the property of the good man.

A certain degree of violence, not against the wicked, but against those who have done us no harm, is an inevitable side-effect of bringing into existence any kind of state.  Even the most wisely and justly designed state in the world will be guilty of it.  And real states never limit their use of unjust (i.e., unprovoked) violence to the minimum amount needed to sustain government.  Most states historically have supported kings and nobles in parasitic luxury.  Few states are innocent of squandering and killing in campaigns of territorial aggrandizement.  Most states have compelled men to lie, or at least to conceal the truth: subjects are made to speak praise of rulers they hate, or to remain silent when justice demands denunciations of the wrongdoings of the mighty.  All states prior to the emergence of Christianity and most states since, including many whose rulers and populations were baptized Christians, have practiced slavery, subordinating some individuals to the wills and whims of others for their whole lives.  Today, the world’s advanced democratic states have organized vast systems of social engineering by which individuals not born within the borders of these states are compelled by men with guns to remain outside these states, depriving them thereby of the chance to fulfill just and natural desires to migrate, in many cases making these states complicit in religious and political oppression, and always exacerbating world poverty and inequality. 

What I suggest, then, for a Christian politics, is that Christians should strive to build up and strengthen the kingdom of heaven, the nonviolent kingdom based on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.  Those who are householders will have to live in the world and make various compromises, but they must not give their hearts to it, and even those who are in the world should try to emulate the ideal laid down in the Sermon on the Mount, the ideals of nonviolence and apostolic poverty, as much as they can.  A husband may have to live in a worldly manner for a wife’s sake, or a wife for a husband’s sake, or both for their children’s sake, if their loved ones have not yet consented to try to live by the Gospel ideal, but a married couple or even a whole family might all live in apostolic poverty and Christian nonviolence by mutual consent.  Meanwhile there should also be some who forsake marriage and family so as to follow the Gospel ideal in as literal a manner as their faith and strength enable them to do.  All Christians should remember to “trust not in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.”  And Christians should be very careful about all the subtle ways in which they can become enmeshed in worldly injustices through the complex division of labor that occurs in modern society.  It will often be their duty to look for ways to “flee the world,” not only in the extreme sense of retreating into the desert or emigrating to America to practice their faith, but in more limited senses, e.g., leaving a law firm or a vacuum-cleaner-selling job that requires them to be dishonest; giving up a corporate or government sinecure which they recognize as an abuse of taxpayer or shareholder money; refusing to engage in payday lending or in a trade associated with gambling; refusing to fight in an unjust war, etc.  If they live in a slaveowning society, they should at least treat their slaves with exceptional kindness and should probably manumit them and refuse to own slaves altogether.  Of any property they may own, they should regard themselves not as owners but as stewards, and in spending it they should seek not their own good but the good of all their fellow men.

There are two particular current or recent issues where I want to bring to bear a Christian perspective.  The first is immigration.  Of the immigration restrictions of today’s rich countries, both the ends—the exacerbation of global inequality to protect the privileges of the American-, or British-, or French-born, etc.—and the means—the separation of families, the expulsion of children from the countries where they weren’t born but have spent nearly all their lives, the use of violence against peaceful workers—should be intolerable to each and every Christian.  Every Christian ought to regard it as his duty never to collaborate with such laws by reporting an illegal immigrant to the police.  Those whose personal or family position allows them to make relatively fewer compromises with the world may be called on to defy the law by employing or giving accommodations to those whom the laws of men reject but whom God loves, risking fines or prison thereby.  Christians should stand with their illegal immigrant brethren when these protest to demand decent treatment.

The second is the Iraq war.  Here I am a bit less sure of myself.  It would be odd to say that Christians who don’t choose the higher way of nonviolence and apostolic poverty are therefore bound to practice violence not only in their own defense but also to save others from totalitarianism.  Though on the other hand, I think that if one is not called to the apostolic way, to fight for distant just causes is just as appropriate as to fight for nearby ones.  Why not?  If I am being robbed, I can defend myself.  If I see my neighbor being robbed, I can equally well go and defend him, no?  More than that, though, world trade, global political organizations like the UN, and the nature of modern weapons have created a sort of integration of all the world’s political systems, which, even if limited and/or shallow in extent, gives us a certain stake and a certain complicity in what goes on far away.  We were complicit in Saddam’s regime.  We helped bring him to power.  We supported him against Iran.  The oil-for-food program strengthened him.  The weapons inspections served our interests but worsened the plight of the Iraqi people, even making us, in a way, their co-oppressors.  That’s why I think we had a duty to extricate ourselves from that.  The monk, busy fleeing the world, trusting not in princes and the sons of men, would have no such duty.  But worldly people, who benefit from the geopolitical system which in turn collaborated in various ways with the Baathist regime, did, I think, have that duty.  Liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam may or may not have been the only way to discharge that duty, but it was one way.  As for the objection that it’s a violation of “Iraq’s sovereignty,” I don’t think it should have the slightest weight for the Christian.  I simply don’t think there is any basis for the concept of sovereignty in a Christian approach to politics.