Negotiations not War

Jesus did not say much about war, because he was not interested in it as a method for advancing his cause. He refused to start a war to protect his life or to advance his kingdom. Human kingdoms are worth less than the Kingdom of God, so it is not worth fighting a war for, then no other human government is worth it.

However, the one time that Jesus did talk about war, he gave some really good advice that Christians should heed.

Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace (Luke 14:31-32).

The principle in Jesus parable is very restrictive. War is only justified if the benefits are greater than the total cost. Most wars fail to deliver the hoped-for benefits, so very few problems can justify the cost of war.

If all governments applied Jesus’ principle, then war would be rare. Enemies with weaker military forces would be unlikely to attack stronger nations. And if a stronger nation is threatening a weaker nation, its enemy would generally have overwhelmingly superior forces, so any attempt at defence would be pointless and produce unnecessary suffering.

There are generally very few winners in war. The cost for the families of those who die is enormous. For the soldiers who survive the cost is also be high because many will have physical and mental injuries that blight their lives. War never produces benefits that justify the cost, so I am surprised that so many Christians are enthusiastic about war.

Jesus' principle applies to the current war in Ukraine. Despite what the western news media are saying, the Ukrainians lost the war almost as soon as it started. Their air forces and navy were destroyed in the first few days. Most of the Ukrainian army is in the east of the country because the US had encouraged their political leaders to break the Minsk peace agreements and take back control of the rebel Donbas provinces by military force. These forces are now surrounded and cut off (possibly with some of their American trainers). They can keep firing artillery in the Donbas region for a while but when their ammunition runs out, they will have no choice but to surrender.

The only sensible thing that the Ukrainian president can do is follow Jesus’ advice and sue for peace. The sooner he does, the better conditions he will be able to negotiate. The longer he leaves it, the weaker his bargaining position will be. Saying that you will fight to the last man for your democracy is stupid. No democracy is worth thousands of lives. Paul lived the Christian life effectively under emperor Nero, so no political system is essential for the advance of the gospel.

The US and UK leaders are doing huge harm by preventing the Ukrainian from negotiating seriously. They learned to hate “the Russians” when they were growing up, and they still want to put them down (they have lost sight of the fact that our real enemy is the spiritual powers of evil and that Jesus loves Russians as much as he loves Anglo-saxons). Unfortunately, these western leaders don’t really care about the Ukrainian people and are quite happy to use them as pawns in their bigger power game.

And the Western news media are also doing serious harm with their messaging.

• Training old women how to fire a rifle looks good on television but it will not change anything on the ground, except cause unnecessary suffering.

• Training young women how to throw Molotov cocktails at tanks is a romantic idea, but it will just produce more unnecessary suffering.

• Handing out guns to untrained civilians and telling them to defend their cities is foolish and will only lead to unnecessary loss of life.

• Sending thousands of right-wing crazies from all over Europe to fight in Ukraine is as stupid as training and equipping the Sunni Sons of Iraq, who morphed into ISIS. Blowback into the countries that they came from is inevitable..

• Allowing women and children to leave as refugees while making their husbands and father remain to fight will end in tragedy for many families.

• Telling the Ukrainian people that they are winning a war that they have already lost is doing them a disservice. The American and British military experts who say that Ukraine is winning are the same ones that said that the war in Afghanistan was being on the verge of being won, so they have no credibility.

• David's defeat of Goliath was a wonderful event, but it only applies when the Holy Spirit's annointing is on God's man. It does not apply to nations, no matter how plucky they are.

• Sending massive numbers of rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons to Ukraine is foolish, because they won't all be used there. They will leak into the rest of Europe and getting into the wrong hands there.

• Encouraging an insurgency in Ukrainian cities will only add to the pain and suffering, and for very little benefit.

The only way to end the suffering in Ukraine is to negotiate a peace settlement and stick to it.

The sad thing is that this is another unnecessary war. There were plenty of opportunities to negotiate a peace settlement in the months before it began. The Russian president described the issues that needed to be resolved and repeatedly asked for serious negotiations, but the US, UK and NATO leaders were too arrogant to engage seriously. Instead, they goaded the Russian president to invade because they thought he would be too scared, but that gambit failed. These leaders persuaded the Ukrainian leaders not to engage either. This was reckless because encouraging the Ukrainians to resist Russia and then refusing them to support them when it went wrong was an ugly betrayal.

The NZ foreign minister says that the window for a diplomatic solution is closing. That is not true. Diplomacy is always the only solution to war. Even when the guns go silent, a diplomatic solution to establish peace is needed. Jesus’ advice to negotiate for peace when you are likely to lose is as urgent as ever. President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov claim that they want a diplomatic solution. The best solution would be to seriously test that commitment.