Alex Brandon | Reuters
“The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us….”
- Millard Fillmore, 1850 State of the Union Address
“Biden Weighs Deploying Thousands of Troops to Eastern Europe and Baltics” is the New York Times headline that just flashed across my phone.
In the story’s first paragraph we read,
President Biden is considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an expansion of American military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, according to administration officials.
The situation in Ukraine, long-simmering in the background, appears to be coming to a head. There are a number of issues contributing to the growing tensions between Russia and NATO, the most important of which is the possible inclusion of Ukraine in the NATO alliance. Russia has made it clear that NATO expansion into Ukraine is unacceptable. In the words of Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov, “It is absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never ever becomes a member of NATO.” American Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have countered by stating that Russia has no say in the matter of who is allowed into NATO.
What are Christians to make of this? Is Russia right to object to Ukraine joining NATO, or are the Americans right to seek to incorporate Ukraine in the NATO alliance? Are both sides wrong? Scripturalists, those who believe that the Bible has a systematic monopoly on truth, including truth on foreign policy, seek to answer these questions by appealing to the Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible. What do they say?
Lux Lucet 