The Nations of the Buddhist World: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Nations of Christian Africa: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Nations of the Orthodox World: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Nations of the Islamic World: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Nations of the Americas: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Nations of Catholic and Protestant Europe: Short Videos from Stratfor

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Of the following short (2-4 minute) videos, each provides the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries.

The Road to Constantinople Passes Through Moscow

In the wake of Vladimir Putin's visit with Pope Francis last week, many were hoping Francis would be formally invited to Moscow to meet with the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a central leader in the Orthodox world. While no such invitation was extended, it is very important for us to not overlook the checkered history between Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

In 1204, Catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople and established the Latin Empire which lasted until the Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261. The Byzantine Empire, which had lasted for almost a thousand years, was now in its twilight as the Muslim Turks slowly strangled what little life the empire had left. The resulting enmity between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church festered for centuries. As historian Alan Palmer writes:

In 1452 a Byzantine official, critical of his Emperor's attempts to reunite the Eastern church with Rome, is said to have remarked, "It would be better to see the royal turban of the Turks in the midst of this city [Constantinople] that the Latin mitre."

Less than a year later the official got his way as the city capitulated to the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire. Many Christians, however, welcomed the Turkic invaders, finding more religious tolerance from the Turks than from their Catholic brethren. Indeed, two hundred and fifty years after the Ottoman conquest, a Holy League of Catholic powers began the liberation of the Balkans, bringing with them renewed Catholic clergy resumed imposing Latin practices upon them. After twenty-five years of liberation in southern Greece, however, the Greeks gladly welcomed the return of the Ottomans. The Muslims of 1713 were still preferable to the proselytizing Latins.

While tensions remain between the Orthodox the Catholic Church three hundred years later, there is something else which 1713 and 2013 share in common: the rise of a strong Orthodox Russia. In 1713, Russia was emerging as an international power under the leadership of Peter the Great, who officially proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721. The new Orthodox Christian nation to the north succeeded in energizing the Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands - which helped ensure Ottoman decline and its new status as "the sick man of Europe."

As a strong Orthodox Russia reemerges out of the ashes of atheist communism, we cannot overlook its status as a standard bearer of a renewed Christian civilization. As it renewed the vigor of Christians in Islamic lands in 1713 and sought to protect the Holy Land in the Crimea War, Orthodox Russia today is playing a central role in Middle East while building up the faithful at home. As the Catholic Church seeks a rapprochement with the Orthodox, the road to Constantinople runs again through Moscow.


Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis reverence and image of Mary. How many representatives of other major powers have you seen do this?

The Battle of Tours, 732 AD

On this day in the year 732, the century-long tidal wave of Islamic expansion came to an end at the Battle of Tours in modern day France.

Some scholars, however, downplay the significance of the battle. While it is true that the Battle of Tours was not of the same size and scope of a Gaugamela or even a Cannae, no one who honestly looks at a map of the period can deny Tour’s strategic significance at the time or its long term macrohistorical significance.

In the one hundred years following Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula, conquered and converted Persia, captured the Holy Land, and seized Egypt, north Africa, Spain, and Asia Minor (what is today Turkey). Only Constantinople and the Byzantine use of Greek fire kept Islam from invading the Balkans and marching into the heart of Europe – which is precisely what happened after the fall of Constantinople to Islamic forces in 1453.

Islamic conquests from 622 through the mid-eighth century AD.

With the majority of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic control by 717, the Pyrenees presented the only modest obstacle to Islamic conquest of what is today France. In that very year, while Muslims lais siege to Constantinople, Islamic forces began crossing the mountains along the Mediterranean coast. This area of southern France, called Septimania, spent the next fifteen years under the dominance of Islamic rule. It was only a matter of time before an advance was made across the Pyrenees along the Atlantic coast.

Image Source: Battle of Tours at Wikipedia

When the advance finally came in 732, it was aided by forces marching from the Islamic Septimanian capital of Narbonne. The local Christian lord, Odo of Aquitaine, found himself caught between two forces attacking him from two directions. His only hope was to abandon his lands and flee north with his army in hopes of finding aid from the Franks, a Germanic tribe that had settled in Gaul as the Roman Empire collapsed.

There he met with Charles, who was effectively the king of the Franks but held only the title of prime minister out of deference to the Merovingians who still held on to the throne. Long had Charles known the Islamic threat to the south, and he had prudently prepared for war by steadily strengthening the Frankish army. Odo of Aquitaine pledged Aquitaine to the Franks in return for their protection and arms. Charles agreed and the united Christian forces marched south.

On October 10, 732, Charles earned the name “Martel” (“the Hammer”) at Tours as his men dealt a stunning defeat against the invading Islamic army. It was a rare instance of medieval infantry standing victorious against cavalry. At one point Charles was nearly struck down, but his comitatus, true to the noble Germanic warrior spirit, formed a wall of men around their leader and saved his life. The same could not be said of the Islamic leader, Abd-al-Raḥmân, whose death in the battle also meant a general retreat of Islamic forces.

A new power was rising. The German warrior wielding the Christian standard finally halted the Islamic advance in western Europe and marked strengthening ties between the Franks and the Catholic Church. For his part, Charles Martel aided St. Boniface’s missionary work in what is today Germany while the Church played a pivotal role in the peaceful transition of power from the Merovingians to the descendants of Charles – the Carolingians. Charles’ son, Pippin, finished driving Muslim forces out of Septimania around 759 while Charles’ grandson, Charlemagne, helped launch the 700-year long Reconquista (“Re-conquest”) of the Iberian Peninsula.

While Charles turned the tide, his grandson Charlemagne established a Frankish foothold in Iberia and began aiding in the re-conquest of what is today Spain and Portugal. 

Strategy Games: The Gateway to Culture and Geopolitics

While we live in a very complex and multifaceted world, the events that shape the world – many of them involving the use of arms – are not irrational. In the realm of geopolitics, violence is very rarely senseless. The jihadis who attacked us on 9/11, for example, were neither nihilists nor anarchists and their attack was as much grounded in their geopolitics as their personal religious beliefs.

History’s great strategy games act as a meeting place of culture and geopolitics. Their creators, having themselves been formed by their culture’s worldview, introduce the player to a manner of strategic thinking and problem solving which roughly correlates to the broader geopolitical situation of their nation or civilization.

There are three classic strategy games that all men should have at some time in their lives played; three games which introduce them to the interconnectedness of culture and geopolitics. The following is an introduction to each.

1. Chess

As most readers of this blog have undoubtedly played Chess, the game needs little introduction. What makes it culturally unique is its focus on concentration of power with the aim of eliminating the other player’s forces and ultimately checkmating his king. Chess is the game of European-style warfare in which strategic thought emphasizes decisive battle through force concentration with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy’s armies and decapitating his leadership or seizing his capital. For an excellent analysis on this style of warfare and its interconnectedness with culture, check out Victor Davis Hanson’s book Carnage and Culture.

2. Go

The difference between the games of Go and Chess are as vast as the difference between the cultures that produced them. Indeed, perhaps the only thing the two games have in common is that both are played by two players. Unlike Chess, the pieces used in Go are not ranked in a hierarchy of points and abilities; Go uses simple white and black stones all of equal power and value. Strength is to be found not in individual stones but rather in the formations the stones can make when placed next to each other.

The strategy of Go follows the strategy of Sun Tzu, who, placing little value on attacking enemy armies and seizing enemy cities or capitals, instructed would-be generals to attack an enemy’s strategy and an enemy’s alliances. In short, Sun Tzu said fighting is a general’s last resort; his best strategy is to win without fighting. Unlike Chess, which focuses on engaging the enemy’s forces and decapitating his leadership, the masters of Go engage in limited fighting across a large grid board. Their goal is to seize as much territory of the board as possible without a great deal of fighting between formations. New Go players often treat the game like Chess, with many stones being captured on both sides – but such aggression leads only to defeat when matched against a master.

In his work, On China, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued that modern Chinese foreign policy could only be discerned by one who knew the strategic thinking of Go along with the cultural past underlying its conceptual framework.

3. Diplomacy

While Kissinger drew heavily from the game of Go in his analysis of China, his own personal favorite board game is Diplomacy, a game also favored by President John F. Kennedy. The game's creator, a Harvard graduate who was fascinated as a child with his an old book of maps he found in the attic, died this past February.

Like Chess and Go, Diplomacy uses no dice; unlike Chess and Go, Diplomacy is a seven-player game set in the real life geopolitical climate of pre-World War I Europe. As the name suggests, Diplomacy requires the social skills needed to maintain the balance of power between other nations while finding ways to increase one’s own political and military expansion. The original title of Diplomacy was Realpolitik – and players of the game experience firsthand the international power politics that brought about the Great War and why President Washington implored future American statesmen to avoid getting entangled in a messy web of overseas alliances.

For those who play Diplomacy, the game teaches geography, history, and a hefty dose of social skills. Indeed, where an aggressive, Chess-like strategy is a no-starter in Go, the silent strategist, the Go master, and the arm chair general will all find themselves quickly behind in a game of Diplomacy where face-to-face negotiation is a prerequisite for advancement. Since the death of Allan Calhamer, the game’s creator, his daughter has received countless letters and emails from Diplomacy players and this is how she summed up their content:

“…what I'm seeing over and over again in these emails is that the recurring theme is: ‘I was a really, really nerdy awkward kid who had trouble relating to people, but because ‘Diplomacy’ required interpersonal skills and required you to get people to do what you wanted them to do, that's how I built my social skills.’”

Whether we learn decisive battle from Chess, the power of order and formation from Go, or how to negotiate international affairs and territorial boundaries from Diplomacy, these three games remain quintessential classics which introduce us to the larger world of culture, geopolitics, and strategic thought. If you haven’t played these games, it’s time for you to visit a game store and invite some friends over for a game day. You won’t regret it.

St. Paul’s Letter to the Celts?

While we typically associate the Celts with the green countryside of Ireland, the Celtic peoples used to be the most dominant ethnic group of Europe. Although their numerous tribal divisions and warrior individualism meant that they never formed a unified civilization capable of fielding a phalanx or legion, the Celts managed to migrate into what is today Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Balkans, and even Turkey before being swallowed up by the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes that succeeded it. A map below shows the full extent of the Celtic peoples in comparison to Rome, Carthage, and the Greek city-states of the third century BC.

The Celts were also known as Gauls in ancient times. Today we tend to think of the Gauls only as those peoples who lived in the land of first century BC Gaul, which is today modern France - but ancient Gaul was much larger. By the time of Julius Caesar’s famous conquest of Gaul, Rome was expanding into Gallic and Greek eastern Europe, and Gallic Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) had already been brought under the control of Rome. Thus the continental lands of Gaul in Caesar's day were liminted in the first century BC to what would become modern France, and this is a major reason why we mentally limit the ancient terrority of Gaul. The lands of Gallic Britain and Ireland, however, remained predominantly Celtic until the Germanic Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th century AD.

The Gauls were known as fierce and mighty warriors – an asset that undoubtedly helped them spread across Europe. In the year 280 BC (only 43 years after the death of Alexander the Great), multiple Gallic tribes, with warriors numbering in the tens of thousands, invaded Greece. The Gauls split into multiple groups and were eventually all driven out of Greece. One group fought a battle at the Thermopylae (the site of the earlier epic Greek-Persian battle) in 279 BC and even made its way to the Greek holy site of Delphi before being defeated by the Greek defenders. The Celts were skilled warriors, but they emphasized the individual warrior over unit cohesion and thus could not seriously challenge the unified Greeks at war. Because of this, the great Greek general Pyrrhus, upon defeating them in battle, incorporated some Gallic warriors into his army as a kind of ancient special forces team rather than attempting to use them in large numbers to fill the ranks of his phalanx.

This is a Roman replic of the ancient Greek statue "Dying Gaul" which was made by third century BC Greeks to depict the final moments of a fierce Celtic warrior defeated during the failed Celtic invasion of Greece.

Although most Gauls fled north, another group went east, crossing over the Bosporus into Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and laid siege to Byzantium – the future location of Constantinople. Comprised of three tribes, this group of ten thousand Gallic soldiers (and another ten thousand women and children) eventually found itself settling in an area of Asia Minor known as Anatolia. Their capital, Ancyra, is today the capital of Turkey: Ankara. What’s more, since they were Gauls the expanse of their territory was called Galatia. There the Gauls of central Asia Minor grew in numbers over the next two hundred years. Despite becoming a Roman province during the first century BC, St. Jerome noted that the Celtic inhabitants of Galatia were still speaking a Gallic tongue into the 4th century AD.

Long before St. Patrick went to Ireland, St. Paul preached the Gospel to the Celts of Galatia in the first century – and his famous letter to them can be found as the ninth book of the New Testament.

Province of Galatia (red) within the Roman Empire

Vatican I: “The Really Radical Council”

While Vatican II is rightly described as revolutionary, scholar Russell Hittinger (University of Tulsa) and writer John O’Malley (What Happened at Vatican II) reveal the far more radical character of the First Vatican Council and the effect it had on the relationship between church and state.

Although most people are under the impression that Vatican II gave more power to the laity, O’Malley reminds us that the laity “enjoyed their strongest position in the first eight councils” of the Church. It was Constantine who called the Council of Nicaea, declaring himself an “external bishop” who claimed the authority to govern the temporal affairs of both the state and the church (e.g. leadership over councils, appointment of bishops, etc). At the Council of Chalcedon, nineteen imperial envoys were given special status, seated on an elevated platform at the center of the gathering. Lay involvement was not limited only to emperors and envoys: it was a Byzantine empress who convoked the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.

As the locations of ecumenical councils shifted from east to west, lay involvement in conciliar affairs continued. King Philip IV, for example, dominated the Council of Vienne, while in the latter middle ages professional lay theologians were sometimes allowed to vote during the councils themselves. These laymen were even given their own congregation at the Council of Trent – the final council prior to the twin Vatican Councils.

Three hundred and seven years passed between the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563 and the short-lived First Vatican Council of 1870. During this time, the Church experienced the traumatic wars following the Reformation, the rise of the nation states, the Enlightenment’s darkness, the brutality of the French Revolution, the atheist reign of Napoleon, and the end of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States – which were replaced respectively by the newly unified nations of Germany and Italy.

The rule of the old kings and emperors of Europe, who saw themselves as “external bishops” in the mold of Constantine, was succeeded by the rising nation states. This ultimately forced the Church to make a very difficult choice: maintain the last vestiges of Christendom by allowing new governing bodies to inherit the ecclesial authority of deposed Catholic kings, or, at great risk, declare Christendom dead, thus severing all ties between church and state. The decision to follow the latter course is the reason Hittinger declares that Vatican I “is really the radical council, not Vatican II.”

In 1870, it was the Catholic Church – not a government shaped by the Enlightenment – that finally imposed the separation of church and state.

The writing was on the wall before the council even began. O’Malley states that when the council was called, “Catholic monarchs were urged to promote the success of the council, [but] they were not invited to attend or participate, and no lay person of any status took an active part in the council.” This act was a first step towards what Hittinger bluntly calls “a writ of divorce” between church and state. In response, three countries threatened to send troops to break up the council – but it continued nonetheless.

Besides defining the more well-known Dogma of Papal Infallibility, Vatican I declared the universal jurisdiction the Holy See, doing so precisely because it declared independence from the temporal affairs of the state. Thus the Church freely gave up any ambitions of temporal power and in turn declared her universal spiritual power as the Church amidst the nations.

Christendom was dead, and the Catholic Church killed it.

Retribution, of course, was swift. Only Belgium and Ireland approved of the council’s teaching. Meanwhile the larger nations of France and Germany confiscated church property and imprisoned half of the Church’s clergy respectively. But the Church was free in a way she hadn’t been since Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313. O’Malley writes that the fruits of the council included the resurgence of religious orders, increased missionary activity, and the best-catechized laity in Church history.

To learn more on how Vatican II picked up where Vatican I left off, check out John O’Malley’s book, and Dr. Russell Hittinger’s Lumen Christi Institute talk, on Vatican II.

The 2010 Census and the Electoral College

The map above may look familiar. Although it dates from the 2000 election, it could very well mirror the coming electoral map of 2012. A 2012 repeat of 2000, however, would yield drastically different results in electoral votes. As we all recall (pardon the pun) in 2000 George W. Bush won with 271 Electoral College votes – just one vote over the needed 270 needed to win. But if Mitt Romney wins the same states, he will win with a whopping 285 votes.

It’s the 2010 census that makes all the difference. After each census, the Electoral College’s 538 votes are allocated to the states based on population. A simple comparison between the 2000 electoral map and the 2012 electoral map reveals the great effect a census has on the location of electors (click to enlarge):

Distribution of electoral votes in the year 2000

Distribution of electoral votes in the year 2012

If we were to examine the blue states by region, we would find that since the 2000 election, the northeastern bloc has lost a total of ten electoral votes, while the Midwestern bloc has lost six and the western bloc has risen by a mere two votes. Red states like Texas and Florida have gone up by six and four respectively, while others like Georgia and Arizona have gone up by three.

Here's one final map which depicts a hypothetical 2012 electoral map:

Given the current makeup of the Electoral College, Mitt Romney does not need to win all of the states George W. Bush won in order to win the presidency. The map above reveals that Barack Obama could retain Colorado as well as Nevada and Mitt Romney would still win.

What a difference a census makes!

Persians and Arabs

As America prepares to watch the final Presidential debate prior to Election Day, the focus has shifted to American foreign policy – particularly on Iran. It was just announced that the Obama Administration is seeking to meet one-on-one with Iran regarding its nuclear ambitions. But as we consider Iran, recent events across the rest of the Middle East should remind us of what happened between the years 602-651 when all eyes then turned to Persia (ancient Iran).

The map above depicts Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East around the year 600. By this point, Germanic and Eastern European tribal peoples had swallowed up a sizable piece of the old Roman Empire. The east, now known as the Byzantine Empire, continued until its conquest by Islam in 1453. Though the Byzantines seem to have a rather vast empire, it found itself pressured between a resurgent Persian Empire to its east and the tribal peoples to its west and north. While the Germanic tribes proved a grave threat from the 4th-5th centuries (indeed the Visigoths had even killed a Roman emperor in battle in the year 378), from 602-621 the Persians were the fiercer foe. 

During the first two decades of the seventh century, the Persians conquered Byzantine Syria and Armenia before advancing on Egypt. Capturing Jerusalem along the way to Alexandria, the Persians to the dismay of Christians claimed the True Cross as a war trophy.  These conquests, however, placed a heavy strain on the Persian coffers and soon the treasuries of Ctesiphon (Persia’s capital) were running low. The Byzantine Empire took this as an opportunity to pool its own dwindling supply of money and manpower for a last-ditch counter offensive. From 622-627, Byzantine armies marched through the territories conquered by Persia, winning a string of impressive battlefield victories. Soon the Byzantines set out to capture the impregnable fortress city of Ctesiphon. They no doubt carried with them the hope for peace along with the sobering memory of Emperor Julian the Apostate – who died in battle upon retreating from the walls of Ctesiphon in 363. Before they arrived at Ctesiphon, however, the Persians sued for peace. With the return of the True Cross to Jerusalem in 630, it seemed that both sides could lick their wounds and begin rebuilding.

The peace, however, was short-lived.

What neither the Byzantines nor the Persians knew was that the Arabs to the south were emerging in the seventh century united by Islam. Two years after the Cross was returned to Jerusalem, Muhammad died having unified the Arabian Peninsula. In the following years, Muhammad’s successors showed that Arabia was only the beginning. In 633 the Arabs invaded the Persian Empire, and by 637 they had accomplished what neither Julian nor his Byzantine descendants had achieved: the capture of Ctesiphon. What followed was the conversion of Persia to Islam and the spread of Islam across the Christian near east, North Africa, and Spain. The Byzantine Empire was itself eventually swallowed up in the Islamic tidal wave.

Today all eyes are once more trained on Persia. As the map above shows, the Islamic civilization is now divided between the Persian Shiites (Iran) and the Arab Sunnis. Unlike the Byzantines who could never have predicted the rise of Islam in Arabia, we must pursue a foreign policy regarding both Shiite Persia as well as the Shiite leadership of Syria wide-eyed to the rise of Arabian Sunni Islam which could very well result if we choose to intervene in either Syria or Iran. There’s a reason why the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia have given Israel airspace to strike Iran and why the Sunnis of Turkey are inching closer to war with Syria. Al Qaeda, the chief terrorist organization which we have spent more than a decade fighting, is Sunni not Shiite. 

As Libya and Egypt are signs that the Arab spring is approaching winter, we must recall the fate of Byzantium before we rush headlong to defeat the Persians.

RePosted: Has Germany Lost its Mojo?

As the European debt crisis intensifies, Uncommon Knowledge’s Peter Robinson interviewed British columnist James Delingpole who said in the interview that: “I think it is inevitable the Euro will collapse. It’s a question of whether it’s going to be ugly or really, really, really disastrous.” Europe’s choice is between two bad options: let the Euro collapse or agree to Germany’s demand for a new European fiscal union in which Germany would fund a massive economic bailout while having the ability to pull the national purse strings of European debtor nations.

Or put another way: European nations can give up sovereignty for a bailout or take responsibility for their choices and suffer economically.

David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, rejected the German option in what Pat Buchanan calls “David Cameron’s Finest Hour.” Buchanan insists, however, that Germany is “exploiting the crisis to impose [its] model on the eurozone today and all of Europe tomorrow.” But is this really the case? The irony is the appearance of a new German hegemonic power over Europe the likes of which have not been seen since 1941. The reality, however, is not that Germany is trying to impose itself on the nations of Europe but rather that Germany is running away from a German national identity of which it is ashamed.

In other words, while the nations of Europe are reawakened to their own national spirit, the Germans are eager to lead the way into a new “European spirit” because doing so will finally dilute Germany of its national guilt by diluting Germany of its own national identity. The answer to Germany’s problem, however, is not in a kind of national suicide but rather in a rediscovery of a German identity to be proud of. This means looking back to Germany’s Catholic roots and recognizing that the high days of the Medieval world were the result of a union of Greek philosophy, Roman law, the Christian faith, and the German warrior.

The Christian knight is certainly nothing to be ashamed of – and if the Germans can return to their roots, they’ll regain their confidence and be a leader among the nations once more.


[Has Germany Lost its Mojo was originally posted on December 15, 2011]

Viva Cristo Rey!

As Phillip Lawler points out, a war with no long-term objectives and no clear allies leaves us with the question, “who are we fighting for?” Indeed, it was this very problem that allowed the Obama Administration to weaken our relation with traditional Muslims and minority Christians in the Mideast and instead solidify our mission to promote “gay rights” and abortion across the globe. While President Bush failed to protect religious minorities and the American clergy was more concerned with opposing the wars rather than promoting religious liberty, no one could see that they were only leaving the door open to a liberal cultural imperialism which would leave the survival of Mideast Christians to Syria’s Assad and Russia’s Putin. Moreover, it is this unchecked cultural imperialism which will drive nations like Egypt and Syria into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, leaving their lands soaked anew in the blood of Christians.

In a peculiar and roundabout way, the American bishops are now finally concerned with religious liberty. Though they may have arrived ten years too late to save the thousands of Mideast Christians who have and will continue to perish, perhaps they can learn from Catholic clergy and laymen south of the border who did not “expect to die in bed” while the next generation “[died] a martyr in the public square.” I speak here of the Mexican priests and laymen of the Cristero War. Though this war may have a better stake to the title of “The Forgotten War”, the Cristero War was a revolt in the 1920s against the Mexican government’s attack on religious freedom. The war produced many martyrs and many saints. It was a testimony to the piety of Catholic priests, the bravery of Catholic soldiers, and the ingenuity of Catholic women (who secretly supplied and nursed Cristero soldiers as members of the Feminine Brigades of St. Joan of Arc).

The Cristero War is finally being told to an American audience through this weekend’s release of For Greater Glory (formerly titled Cristiada). Be sure to watch the preview below – and see the movie this weekend – but also remember that it is our Hispanic brethren in America who possess a lived experience of shedding blood to protect religious liberty. We, too, must learn their hymn and sing their battlefield song:

The Virgin Mary is protector and defender against that [which] we fear / She will vanquish demons with a cry of "Long live Christ [the] King!" / Soldiers of Christ, let us follow this flag, for its cross points to the army of God / Let us follow the flag and declare, "Long live Christ [the] King!"

Anti-Nationalism: Medieval and Modern

After the fall of Rome and the limitation of Byzantine power to merely the old eastern Roman Empire, the Papacy found itself able to establish a new Holy Roman Empire in western Europe with the Pope reigning above the emperor himself. While the Pope saw himself as the universal ruler over a dawning universal Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor believed himself to be the true universal ruler with the Pope and Church as his royal subjects. This caused a tension between Church and State which was only exacerbated by the rise of new European nations, each seeking to rule its own lands apart from Imperial or Church control.

Thus in the rise of nations, both the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church fought for their own forms of universalism, and by doing so both Empire and Church stood against the nations. The Church sought a borderless, universal realm governed by the Pope and bishops with a king or emperor under their leadership, while the Emperor sought an unending Imperial rule across the lands. Neither understood their roles in the world of the nations. Indeed, no mere political force has what it takes to unite the nations with their distinctive customs and cultures. This, however, is also true of the Church if it sees itself acting primarily as a political entity.

This is the danger of today’s Church-State situation in Europe and the Americas. While the Secular West is attempting to create a borderless Europe, a godless single-state of atheists, socialist movements in the United States seek to bring European “progress” to our lands. The old imperial universalism has been replaced by an atheist universalism. As the Church confronts this crisis, it would be well if we recall that Christ sent the Apostles to make disciples of all the nations, not exert political authority over a single, united Catholic nation. Christ loved the nations, and God has ordained their existence. Let us not compete with the Secular West – or the Islamic caliphate – in seeking to deny the nations by rekindling the old anti-national, politically universalist dreams of medieval Christendom.

South Sudan

Samuel Huntington’s civilizational fault line dividing Africa's Islamic north from the sub-Saharan south ran through one nation in particular: Sudan. But as of 2011, the region south of the fault line has become the nation of South Sudan. Although it is not a majority Christian nation, South Sudan has a Catholic president and boasts 80% of the untapped oil supply once owned by the Muslim north – an export which pays for 98% of South Sudan’s national budget and is the reason why Islamic Sudan’s currency is dropping in worth while inflation increases.

The departure of South Sudan, however, has given Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir the go-ahead to declare Sudan an Islamic state. With a new constitution in the works, Sudan’s laws will be rooted in Sharia law and enforced throughout the nation. This has left the Christians remaining in Sudan worried about a coming persecution and religious discrimination. Many Christians – and some Muslims – are now currently waging a rebellion in the boarding states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan (see map). Both South Kordofan and Blue Nile boarder South Sudan.

Writer Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi says this could lead to war:

In any event, it is clear that the events in the two border-states could well provoke a war between Sudan and its southern neighbor, with the former accusing the latter of orchestrating the rebels' activities. South Sudan denies this allegation, but may feel compelled to support the [rebels] in the near future should Khartoum's forces overwhelm the rebels and carry out mass killings on a similar scale to what happened in Darfur.

Given the demise of Gadhafi, Darfur itself may profit from arms coming across its boarder with Libya, and if a new rebellion breaks out there Sudan may be torn apart by economic and military woes in addition to ethnic divisions and the culture conflict of imposing Sharia law as the law of the land.

African Economics and Civilizations

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting map of Africa (see below) late last month which Thomas Barnett commented on in his blog. As he notes, Africa has more nations per square mile than any other continent – which can make life difficult for Africa’s landlocked nations. To help with the economic situations confronting different regions, the map shows three economic blocs or networks established to connect the inside of the continent with the coast – and the world beyond that.

Needless to say, this map should be overlaid with a civilizational map of the continent (see above). In such a map we see what Samuel Huntington would call a civilizational fault line running east-west across the north-central stretch of the continent and then running south along the east coast. When we compare the two maps we see that the Islamic north cuts right through the “Economic Community of West African States" and creeps into the newer economic bloc on the east coast.

Given this civilizational fault line, where eruptions break out between Christians and Muslims, it should not surprise us that the southernmost economic network has encompassed the same number of nations as the slightly older West African bloc and could continue expanding to include the budding eastern coastal bloc. As time passes, it’s safe to say that the African Christian south will form more cohesive ties along the civilizational fault line running across the continent.

The Euro and the Nations

Back in 1860 as the United States was entering the Civil War, the southern states formed a Confederacy in which each state was in essence its own nation. States’ rights is what drove the South into secession and it was states’ rights that helped defeat the Confederacy. Why? Because each state, seeing itself as an independent nation, refused to centralize power in Richmond and instead focused on its own interests. Monies and troops were withheld, rail gauges changed throughout the South (making transnational troop transport difficult and inefficient), and each state had its own currency.

Which brings me to the Euro.

Europe began introducing the Euro back in 1999, in a sense forging one massive economic power consisting of multiple nations. We see in the 1860s, however, that the Southern Confederacy failed in large part because it wanted to be a confederacy of eleven separate nations. America tried this with the Articles of Confederation but moved to the current Constitution because a Confederacy was simply too weak for a nation stretching from coast to coast. If Europe is to remain a continent of separate nations, it must allow each nation to retain a national currency. The potential failure of the Euro will mean the survival of the European nations. The two cannot coexist.

UPDATE: The chief financial officer of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development now says there are only seven working days left to prevent the collapse of the Euro. National sovereignty is the new wall standing in front of the Euro's survival, for European nations using the Euro are looking at a massive bailout by Germany - in which case the Germans will be able to influence the future economic decisions made the debtor nations. As it stands, the strong national identities of Europe may prevent the German bailout, thus bringing the Euro closer to collapse.

That is unless the United States offers its own bail out. Let's hope not.

The World According to Tom Barnett

The PowerPoint will never be the same after Thomas P.M. Barnett. In the time following 9/11, Barnett began using his presentation, or brief, called The World According to Tom Barnett, to get across his idea of the "big picture" and the role America should play in the twenty-first century.

His thesis was simple: take a world map, draw a circle around the areas where violence occurs on a regular basis and then ask, why? His answer is connectivity. As the nations become further globalized, wars are found within what Barnett calls the non-integrating gap. The world according to Tom Barnett sees the United States playing a key role in shrinking the gap.

Now I originally saw the brief on C-SPAN in 2003 and I remember being so impressed that I recorded it when it was replayed later that evening. Barnett's theory may not be fully correct, but he joins men like Samuel Huntington in seeing the world through the eyes of a map and a story that explains it.

Catholics are in need of their own macrohistorical metanarrative - but watching Barnett's brief is a great way to see how effective we can be if we use a map and tell a story. It's worth checking out.