I heard Christmas in the Trenches when it was played during Thanksgiving. On the Thistle and Shamrock, John McCutcheon described trading stories and memories with a Black cleaning woman at a studio where he was performing, until she told him about soldiers who put down their arms on a Christmas eve during World War I and shared some camaraderie, though they’d be trying to kill each other come morning. McCutcheon turned it into a powerful song, ending: “Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well. That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame. And on each end of the rifle we're the same.”
All our religious faiths proclaim the goal of peace, Shalom, Salaam, or, as Pete Seeger sang, “Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.”
But we’re more taken with the very real risks of appeasement. World War II might not have happened if the free world hadn’t tried to appease Hitler in 1938. By contrast, World War I was the result of miscalculated military threats. Too few expected either war. Those were some miscalculations. More than seventy million people lost their lives as a result of World War II, ten times the toll of the Holocaust. It’s not clear humanity could survive miscalculation with the power of the weapons we have now.
So I’ve been more focused on avoidance. I urged some time ago that we should station troops in any country we wanted to defend as a trip-wire to prevent invasion by making our commitment to defend it clear. The invader would face incalculable risks and, for the cost of supplying troops, we’d be spared the agony of defending potential flash points.
Our clear and convincing commitment to NATO members and theirs to us is a strength of NATO. President Trump undermined that commitment with his attacks on NATO. One of the most important accomplishments of President Biden was that he restored that sense of commitment within NATO and restored international recognition that the US stood firmly behind the member countries. That shift that should save us from going to war to protect its members.
And it’s one of the reasons that Russia objected to expansion of NATO.
But we weren’t prepared for conflict in Ukraine. It isn’t a NATO member. We didn’t have troops there. So I didn’t support Ukraine eight years ago, especially since Russia had been fighting for Crimea since what we call the Crimean War nearly two centuries ago; I concluded the risks were too great. And I confess I’m torn now. Putin, like Stalin, Mao and other dictators, often treats his people as so much cannon fodder. With nuclear weapons in their hands, this is scary. Empires have a way of coming apart from the inside. Putin might lose more by absorbing a totally disaffected Ukraine. But then there are the people of Ukraine. I’m not sure there’s a likely solution to this crisis that I’m going to feel good about.
Biden used the war in Ukraine to rebuild and reunite NATO. Withdrawing now would make NATO look weak and invite more Russian aggression. Giving Ukraine the help it needs now, however, could escalate hostilities with outrageous consequences.
So I’m praying for Biden to get this right. It’s far beyond politics – it’s about survival.