Missiles

Dr dear Dr: What are the lessons that Christian theologians can learn from Black Thursday on the 24th February 2022 and its Invasion of Ukraine?

One does not need to be a Prof A J Ayer or a John F Kennedy to know that these Cuba 62 style crises or rather Kiev 22 crises can teach us much about the human affairs of our little homeworld. To begin with it should never have come to this, with both sides appealing in the ante-chambers of the UN building in New York to the traditional template of the just war theories of CCC 2309 to embolden their efforts. Four conditions are needed for a just war to be just. Also if we look back beyond just war medieval models of this theory, we can note that even before such considerations, the Founder himself and lover of all humanity once said - “Qui gladio vivit, gladio morietur - he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” So just as the Kiev government had lifted up their sword against the ethnics of the East, so too they have found that nationalism is a costly policy. So too, the Russians have learned that invading a sovereign country even with the provocations of the shelling of Russian home territory in the Rostov Region on the night of the 23rd February 2022 is a very expensive business. But “Qui gladio vivit” - means a solemn lesson is to be learned by any and all regimes that turn their guns on their own people and citizens, and so fall foul not only just war theory which invites defensive wars for the most part, but also thuswise losing the right to sovereignty overnight too, as spelt out by the traditional terms of the 1945 Nuremberg Protocols and often invoked since then by the Allies in their wars against terror cells around the Middle East especially in Gulf War I and Gulf War II. Remember the Colin Justification for the War against Saddam and his Chemical Ali henchman that brought the Allies together in the first place. That seems to be the traditional theological background to the ground war thus far. So if one is asked as a Christian theologian or a Christian populist to comment about the War on Black Thursday, one would improve the quality of debate simply by reading the new catechism at CCC 2309 - very instructive, and thence injecting this sort of Christian theology into all debates surrounding Black Thursday. The Ukrainians need it, and the Russian too; both sides would benefit from analysing the events that led up to the Conflict of Kiev 22 by reading these four conditions before a war might be said to be a just war. Amen, to a more solemn discussion about the conditions for a just war. Christians should not avoid such a debate.