On January 25th 2022, America Magazine ran with a headline to an article by John Davenport which read:
Just war theory and Ukraine: Why military action against Russia is justifiable
Davenport proposes six reasons as to why this is the case, citing Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, criticising Russia’s ‘invasion of Crimea and the eastern half of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces’ and claiming that ‘wars of conquest are illegal’.
This is the same John Davenport who has called the United States of America’s illegal invasion of Iraq a ‘liberation’ and who has lamented the failures of the US Army to properly subdue Syria, Libya and other places that fell victim to the bloodthirst of Samantha Power and other neocons. A 2016 article by Davenport expounds his foreign policy, it is without doubt one of the most superficial and naive pieces on foreign policy that one could ever read. He accuses Putin of lying, of self interest, of having covert support for various military groups. Pot, kettle, black.
Regarding his six claims of justified military conflict by the Americans in Ukraine, firstly NATO is no normal ‘alliance’. It is also no guarantee of peace, rather it can be the opposite. Take for example the conflict in Armenia last year with Turkey. As the Turks desecrated the Hagia Sophia, they embarked on another Holy War against Christians in Armenia, brutally torturing and beheading Christian soldiers and desecrating churches, getting away with because they were in NATO. If you want to know how pervasive support for NATO is, even Donald Trump was supportive of the Turkish efforts to ethnically cleanse the region of Armenian Christians. Turkey, knowing that they had NATO backing, proceeded to attack their neighbour viciously and without mercy. It was left to Russia to back Christian Armenia and it has been Russia who have been recently trying to reach a peace agreement between the two countries.
Secondly, he states: ‘just war theory allows legitimate governments and their alliances to respond militarily if negotiation fails to reverse unjust aggressions, such as Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the eastern half of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces’. Not to minimise the experiences of people in Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, but the overwhelming majority of ethnicities across the three regions are Russians. The Colour Revolution of 2004 and crisis of 2014 had openly American influences on the ground. Why?
Thirdly, Davenport calls ‘wars of conquest’ illegal. What was his country doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? ‘Liberating’ people? Only someone who has endured conditioning like Sirhan Sirhan could believe Orwellian doublespeak such as this. Yet Davenport regards all of these as legitimate, even necessary, conflicts. As mentioned above, the ethnic makeup of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk casts doubt on the idea that this would be a ‘war of conquest, since these areas are already predominantly Russian.
Fourthly, ‘secession is legitimate only as a last resort to end oppression of the seceding region or minority group. Fomenting civil war without such a just cause, as Mr. Putin has done with separatists in eastern Ukraine, is another crime of aggression’. Again, it must be stated, that Mr. Davenport has a much lower threshold when it comes to American led wars. The Russians will argue that ethnic Russians in those three regions are in danger, whether one agrees or not, it is not as black and white as suggested.
Fifthly, ‘just war theory tells us that while the need to rescue people from atrocities such as ethnic cleansing can be just grounds for military intervention, the fact that a minority group in a given nation no longer controls the national government cannot be used by another nation as a pretext for “rescue.” That was Hitler’s pretext for seizing the majority-German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and Mr. Putin has employed it in his attempts to control parts of Georgia and eastern Ukraine’. Again, the United States simply cannot be trusted on this. From staging attacks allegedly by Assad in Syria to falsely claiming Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, the USA specialises in pretending that anyone that it does not like is a reincarnation of Hitler in 1939. To play down the seriousness of the possibility of ethnic cleansing seems to completely contradict Davenport’s other claims.
Sixth, ‘Russia’s repeated cyberattacks on Ukraine from 2014 through 2022, which have cost billions and caused collateral damage in other nations, count as military aggression. A proportionate response from NATO to such attacks need not be only cyber; it could include reprisals that destroy equipment and infrastructure’. This vague assertion of ‘proportionate response’ seems more reasonably on the surface, but it is highly unlikely that any NATO incursion would result simply in infrastructural damage rather than the deaths of individuals.
What is really occurring here is that the aptly named America Magazine is cloaking American jingoism in Catholic dressing.
Some of Davenport’s other comments in this article are simply American propaganda:
To let another Russian tyrant reoccupy any nation in eastern Europe would be a retreat and a betrayal.
Mr. Putin’s clear motive for wanting to invade Ukraine is that its people freed themselves from Russian domination and thus have encouraged other liberation movements. Since 2014, Mr. Putin and his foreign puppets have mounted attacks on democratic movements in Venezuela, Moldova, Syria, Belarus, Kazakhstan and of course within Russia itself. Sanctions cannot deter Mr. Putin because he believes his own regime is in danger if democracy spreads.
Trying to appease Mr. Putin any further would endanger more of eastern Europe and encourage him to escalate his assault on democracy.
Peace, as the aim of just wars, should not be the false peace of life under tyranny. After years of trying to placate Mr. Putin while he tries to rebuild a Russian empire, and watching him poison his enemies, lock up his political opponents and assassinate journalists, it is time to stand up to his aggressions.
This disingenous presupposition that Russia is poised to recreate an Empire implicitly suggests that suggests that Americans are simply liberators and not in fact trying to create and empire of their own. The ‘pro Democracy’ fighters that Davenport lauds in Syria include Islamic fundamentalists, those hostile to Christians. This is something that we saw in Iraq, where 81% of Christians were expelled or killed after what Davenport calls their ‘liberation’. Likewise, the domino effect that the USA uses to destablise regions in the name of democracy could lead to the violence spreading the nearby countries, such as Poland. Just because we are European and Christian does not mean that we are any less expendable to the American Empire, just ask the Armenians or the Iraqi and Syrian Christians.
In 2014, the Washington Post published an article which stated: ‘War may well be the worst way imaginable to create larger, more peaceful societies, but the depressing fact is that it is pretty much the only way’. This apocalyptic perspective is that of a nation which has never seen a major conflict on its own shores, hence their eagerness to take them to other people’s.
When pro Iraq War Joe Biden took office in January 2021, we published the following:
In recent months, there has been a barbaric rapidity once again. The extremist elements amongst the Globalists such as Samantha Power, have made foreboding noises that contained veiled threats about treating Poland and Hungary as they once did Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi.
If you want an insight into what could potentially be on the horizon, you simply need to observe the hyenas speaking about their fellow Americans in the same breath as they once spoke about the Iraqis, they are even now drawing parallels so as to justify the two of them.
The hysterical Russian phobia which surrounded criticisms of the Presidency of Donald Trump was actually eclipsed by that which surrounded the 2018 World Cup, with Russia’s relative pivot back towards Christianity being seen by many Western Liberals as a great tragedy. Russia was seen as homophobic, anti woman and excessively Christian by Westerners, a myth quickly shattered by those who travelled to the tournament in huge numbers and who were welcomed with open arms.
Much of the rhetoric about Russia is echoed by other sentiments aimed at their Eastern European neighbours, including Poland and Hungary. Both countries have been bombarded with Globalist propaganda, aimed at reducing their birth rates, increasing abortions and decreasing religiosity and nationalist sentiments. In Poland, the West has had some success, with German asto turf abortion groups helping to organise terror attacks on Catholic churches and large demonstrations in favour of abortion, but in Hungary this has not been the case, with birth rates rising, the recent success of the Eucharistic Congress and GDP continuing to increase.
In short, this is not as simple as America Magazine claims.
People will die, Christians will suffer, non combatant countries (such as Ireland) will have to deal with the after shocks of refugees and spiralling energy prices. Hollywood rhetoric clamouring for bloodshed is no solution to the urgency of this crisis.
This article seems like a serious misjudgement from America and a departure from previous editorial opposition to wars in Iraq and elsewhere.
For the record, lest there be any confusion, our criticism of America Magazine is not a defence of Russia. It is, however, a criticism of Catholic Americans who are carelessly wishing for violence in Europe, evidently putting NATO on the same pedestal that allowed it to watch Turkey destroy churches in Armenia recently (which Joe Biden actually criticised, though perhaps to get at Trump moreso than for the sake of Christians).
A more subtle approach has been taken by at least one Catholic priest, in an episode of The Brendan Option podcast where Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne discusses the lack of comprehensive coverage from Western Media outlets, who (like America Magazine) are merely echoes of the pro war elements of American foreign policy.
He stated:
I’m asking you to inform yourself…Catholics should revere knowledge, it is one of the many faces of God.
The discourse is naive and we’re being peddled a discourse that doesn’t tally. …deal with reputable non biased news agencies. This is too important to allow jingoism to rule the debate.
It is a reasonable video and a reminder to Catholics to avoid getting caught up in the world’s affairs too much, Pope John Paul II bravely reminded us of this with opposition to the USA’s illegal wars of the early 2000s.
Pope John Paul II wrote:
When terrorist organizations use their own followers as weapons to be launched against defenceless and unsuspecting people they show clearly the death-wish that feeds them. Terrorism springs from hatred, and it generates isolation, mistrust and closure. Violence is added to violence in a tragic sequence that exasperates successive generations, each one inheriting the hatred which divided those that went before. Terrorism is built on contempt for human life. For this reason, not only does it commit intolerable crimes, but because it resorts to terror as a political and military means it is itself a true crime against humanity.
