The charade is up. It’s now apparent that Nidal Hasan was acting upon the Islamic doctrine of holy war when he carried out mass murder at Fort Hood. But will this fact, like so many others, make any appreciable difference in our future course? Almost a decade has passed since the September 11th attacks, but Americans are more confused than ever on the origin, meaning and intent of Muslim militancy. We deceive ourselves with our own false vision of humanity; in doing so we race further toward destruction.

Through the evil he willed, Hasan delivered news the post-Christian West can’t bear to hear: modern universalism, the movement toward a secularized, borderless world of voters and consumers, is an unsustainable fraud. Witness the delusion that reigns at the highest levels of power. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, gave us a perfect display of the elites’ unswerving dedication to its ideological program:

It would be a shame—as great a tragedy as this was—it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.

Given the establishment’s response to the atrocity, its representatives prefer death (not their own, of course, but yours will do well enough) to facing not only the reality of jihad, but the bankruptcy of the liberal project.

Hasan also reminded us about the very nature of the centuries-long war waged by Islam against Dar el-Harb (the House of War, i.e. the world outside Islamic power). Actions ranging from full-blown invasions to smaller-scale operations that would today be termed “crime” or “terrorism” form the original basis of this faith’s expansion. Today’s West has actively facilitated the other key component of the growth of Islam, migration. With little regard to vital cultural and historical context, our elites have sown the ground for the current conflict by importing Muslim peoples en masse, a feat of recklessness without precedent.

This is not to imply a special animus against Muslims. But we must be cognizant of an enduring antagonism between civilizations that cannot be explained away by fashionable theories. Only an ignorant and fevered imagination would deem violence carried out in the name of Islam worldwide as some sort of contemporary anomaly.

Those who shrug about the growth of Islam in the West will obfuscate their way to an apology for multiculturalist policies at home and interventions abroad. Favorite terms used by officials and media commentators to expel all clarity from discussion include “extremist” and “Islamist.” It would be laughable to think about Mohammed and his followers as they fought to dominate the Arabian Peninsula and beyond as “Islamist extremists.” Were the Moors who overran Spain and threatened France also “extremists”? Or the Turks who captured Constantinople and ravaged their way deep into Europe? They were warriors fulfilling the imperatives of conquest laid out by their religion’s founder.

9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

We are confronted with a belief system that since its inception has claimed nothing less than dominion over the entire earth. Liberal society cannot admit this, for to do so would subvert its organizing principles and its very own pretense to universality. 

Liberalism celebrates our common humanity in the most superficial manner (individual desire), while denying the essences of cultures and peoples. The exaltation of “human capital” as interchangeable and “enriching,” no matter the country of origin, has led to the phenomenon of Londonistan. America attempts to lay the foundations for Main Street in places like Kandahar and Mosul, and with its blood and debt buys only disaster.

All these frenzied exertions to assert the universal validity of the liberal ideal are speeding its demise. The pseudo-religion of the philosophes, bourgeois revolutionaries, and today’s managerial class was designed to destroy Christianity by mimicking and supplanting it. Yet it has now encountered an alien faith against which it possesses few defenses.

Modern Westerners have no historical context, no notion of the centuries of Islamic campaigns against Christendom because they have forgotten their faith and cultural heritage. Only a decadent society would invite waves of immigration from a culture with a well-established record of hostility. And only a society truly unhinged would then undertake military interventions in those nations for the sake of an ideological chimera. The Fort Hood massacre is an acute symptom of our civilization’s suicidal tendencies.

How can America and the West step back from the brink?

Honesty would make for a fine start.

The hysteria from U.S. “conservatives” over the White House’s decision not to base missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland has been as shrill as it was predictable. The editors of National Review, the flagship publication of the right-liberal half of the establishment, rose to the bait:

The president has sent a chilling message about American resolve in the face of Russian saber-rattling. Georgia, Ukraine, and the rest of the world have learned a disturbing lesson.

Any step away from the stupidity of needless confrontation with Russia chills the blood of neoconservative policy wonks. Their ability to transport us back to 1938 Munich is unfailing. What will become of plucky, freedom-loving Georgia and Ukraine’s long-sought accession to NATO, complete with a war guarantee from Washington? U.S. credibility to nations of marginal interest will surely disintegrate if we choose to abstain from provoking Moscow!

While the administration’s announcement may have cast a sinister shadow on the catered luncheons of think-tanks in our nation’s capital, the disturbance will pass. Obama’s team has said nothing of respecting legitimate Russian concerns in its sphere of interests. Secretary of Defense Gates spoke mainly of repositioning and optimizing anti-missile architecture. This new initiative would likely include sites offshore and in southeastern Europe, with the possibility of system deployment somewhere in the Caucasus. Global democracy enthusiasts should take heart; they can still look forward to a potential standoff with Russian forces in the Black Sea basin.

Prior to Obama’s change in direction, U.S. officials were engaged in a full-court press for a powerful radar facility in the Czech Republic and interceptor batteries in Poland. One wonders how our diplomats kept a straight face as they claimed that the system concerned solely Iran and had nothing at all to do with Russia. Yet magical thinking now becomes reality, as the White House’s new concession to Moscow has little to do with Russia and much to do with Iran.

The U.S. is looking to isolate Teheran with an effective sanctions regime, but in order to do so it needs the Kremlin’s cooperation. Russia could easily circumvent measures aimed at blocking Iranian gasoline imports. Since the U.S. and Israel are contemplating air strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, the Russians could supply sophisticated antiaircraft systems like the S-300 to complicate any such operation. The White House is hoping for something like Russian acquiescence to a resolution at the UN Security Council, but Moscow is still waiting for the rest of the deal—namely, an explicit U.S. recognition of Russia as a major regional power.

Under the pressure of independent Israeli action, the Obama administration is moving to deal with Iran in the near term. Striking bargains with the Kremlin now would bring the U.S. closer to a showdown with the ayatollahs, a goal long advocated by the neoconservatives. With the White House leaning in the same direction, the editors of National Review and the entire AEI-Commentary complex should be overjoyed that their desires are closer to fulfillment.

The Russians will demand more than the cancellation of U.S. missile defense plans for Eastern Europe in return for any agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow has regularly opposed solutions to the issue based on force or coercion, though not out of any special love for Teheran. Russian strategy is informed by the knowledge that Washington can meddle less in inner Eurasia if it is engaged in the Middle East. If U.S. policymakers are on course for yet another intervention in the Islamic world, the men in the Kremlin won’t stop them, but they will find a way to extract geopolitical advantage from the next proposed war.

If the United States or Israel launches an air campaign against Iran (and effective gasoline sanctions would heighten the possibility of conflict), a third active front would be opened in the interminable and ill-conceived “Long War”. U.S. troops in Iraq would likely face renewed mass strife and an Iranian-sponsored insurgency. Energy prices would rise considerably and expose the structural deficiencies of the supposed economic recovery at home. Iran’s intelligence service and its militant proxy Hezbollah maintain a formidable network capable of carrying out large-scale terrorist attacks in the West.

Attacking Iran is a recipe for disaster that will produce consequences foreseen and unforeseen for the United States. Despite the obvious dangers involved, the White House is setting itself squarely on the road to conflict. Russia, meanwhile, has opposed action against Teheran, but will gain freedom to maneuver as Washington becomes entangled in a struggle with Persian power. Perhaps, when this next imperial adventure has produced its share of death, ruin, and unsustainable debt, the neoconservative commentariat will ascribe the entire debacle to a plot engineered by the Kremlin. How else could such pure and noble souls be led astray?

National Review columnist David Satter fears that scaling back U.S. antagonism toward Moscow will result in “serious negative implications for the cohesion of the West.” Concerning hostility to Russia, there will be plenty in the future—Washington is still bent on dominating Eurasia and its energy networks. As for the West, Satter’s lament over its loss of political cohesion is in vain. The postmodern empire “conservatives” champion has always been a dissolute and spiritually bankrupt enterprise. 

The Blackwater affair has all the clichéd elements of Hollywood conspiracy “thrillers”: an atrocity cover-up, a right-wing Christian villain at the helm of a powerful corporation, assassinations, and illicit sex.

Blackwater (now known as Xe for image reasons) is the world’s most powerful security firm, having expanded its operations in tempo with U.S. intervention in the Middle East. And for the last 6 years, it and Haliburton have been, rightly and wrongly, the ultimate war-profiteering bogeymen in the minds of the antiwar Right and Left. Now, Erik Prince, the company’s founder and chairman, stands accused of killing witnesses who were cooperating with a federal investigation into the deaths of several innocent civilians in Iraq.

Lending the story another twist of intrigue, Prince and like-minded colleagues reportedly viewed themselves as a band of crusaders in the tradition of the Knights Templar. Such a claim seems almost fantastic; in court affidavits, it is followed up by allegations of money laundering, child prostitution in Iraq, and a wife-swapping ring for Blackwater executives. None of this behavior is particularly chivalrous, but it inclines us to ask: who were the mysterious Knights Templar, and do Prince and his contractors have any right to their spiritual heritage?

The Templars were a military order founded for the defense of Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem in 1118*. The battlefield exploits of these warrior-monks were legendary, and the tragedy of the order’s end in 1307 ensured that the history of the Templars would be enveloped in myth. King Philip IV of France had the knights arrested and their assets seized by accusing the order of blasphemy, heresy, and sodomy. Its grand master, Jacques de Molay, recanted the confessions he had made under torture, but was burned at the stake in 1314. Recent studies and newly rediscovered Vatican archives have found the Templars innocent of these charges.

Over the centuries, the Templar mystique has proven irresistible; a number of groups have sought to fabricate ties to the knightly order. With the onset of the Enlightenment, gnostic sects, occultists and freemasons all rushed to enlist the long-deceased Templars into their various agendas. Popular (and blatantly false) representations of the military monks have found special resonance in today’s secular culture—The DaVinci Code is just the beginning. And we are now informed by the media that Blackwater operators used Templar-related callsigns while on duty in U.S.-occupied Iraq as part of a “crusade” against Muslims.

Prince and his Blackwater crew may have fancied themselves “crusaders,” but their actions and worldview leave them far removed from the actual Templars. The medieval military orders at their best represented the union of the monastic and warrior ideals. Chivalry was seen to attain its highest calling in the quest for holiness. The chronicler Jacques de Vitry characterized the Templars as “in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself toward His friends.” 

Sworn to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and facing the probability of death at the hands of the Muslim enemy, the Knights Templar were driven mainly by faith and the obligation to protect Christians in the Holy Land. St. Bernard of Clairvaux composed the order’s austere rules, with special consideration given to military realities. This spiritual discipline of the warrior-monks carried over onto the battlefield as well, where they were able to operate as a cohesive and effective fighting unit, a quality rather rare in the Middle Ages. The knights were called to accept martyrdom. At the disastrous battle of Hattin in 1187, 230 Templars were captured by the famed Saladin’s forces. All 230 of the brothers chose decapitation over apostasy.

What is the primary motivator for contractors in today’s conflicts? According to a friendly write-up on Blackwater in The Weekly Standard, the unofficial “Contractor’s Creed” goes something like this:

I care not for ribbons and awards for valor. I do this job for the opportunity to kill the enemies of my country, and to finally get that boat I’ve always wanted. In any combat zone, I will always locate the swimming pool, beer, and women, because I can. I will deploy on my terms, and if it ever gets too stupid, I will simply find another company that pays me more.

There is an allusion to patriotism in the creed, but profit is obviously the central concern, and it would be silly to expect otherwise from mercenaries. One would likely find comparable sentiments expressed among the Condottieri, the hell-raising hired soldiers of medieval Italy. Yet it is more than a stretch for Prince to identify with the Templars. While the order and Blackwater are both seen as militarily powerful and influential corporations, that’s where the similarities end. The mercenary and the monk are oriented toward vastly different goals.

Because of Prince’s reported pretensions of carrying on a “crusade,” it is also important to examine the cause his company serves in the Middle East. Unlike the Templars, an order of the Church, Blackwater is on contract with the U.S. government, the same power promoting “democratic capitalism” and “women’s liberation for Muslims.” Even in the face of Papal condemnation of the Iraq War, Prince, a Roman Catholic, was an aggressive player in the country’s occupation, a venture that turned handsome profits from taxpayer dollars. In 2007 alone, Blackwater made over $1 billion.        

    
If allegations are correct, Prince had a rather crude and distorted notion of medieval Christendom’s campaigns in the Levant. Court affidavits assert that the Blackwater chief acted with an aim to “eliminate” Muslims. It is necessary to note that the historical crusades were an attempt to regain Christian ground lost to Islamic invaders in the preceding centuries. The mission of the Templars in particular was to safeguard pilgrims and protect the Holy Land. Blackwater, meanwhile, functions as a high-priced instrument of Washington’s postmodern empire.

Company officials readily proclaim as much:

If you’re not willing to drink the Blackwater Kool-aid and be committed to supporting humane democracy around the world, then there’s probably a better place to go work, because that’s all we do.

Helping the State Department bring consumerism, diversity and town-hall meetings to the Islamic world has nothing to do with the crusading ideal. Neither, for that matter, does gunning down Iraqi civilians or targeting Muslims for extermination. The foreign policy Blackwater facilitates destabilizes the Middle East, to the grief of Christian and Muslim communities alike, and promotes Islamic power in Europe, the ancient heart of the West.

Prince is often called a “conservative Catholic” in the various articles and exposés written on his company’s activities. For all of his supposed traditionalism, he must have had a rather elastic interpretation of the Church’s Just War Doctrine to support a U.S. policy of preemptive war and occupation. Prince’s business decisions place him in the camp of neoconservatives such as George Weigel and Michael Novak, Catholics who embrace globalized modernity and advocate armed social engineering abroad to further its spread.

Judging from his actions, Blackwater’s founder adheres to the widely-held belief that the United States is called to redeem the world through democracy and “free markets.” This way of thought finds America to be the grand instrument of God’s will, which curiously conforms to the interests of U.S. policy and financial elites. Many self-proclaimed religious conservatives misguidedly place their faith in an only nominally “Christian” kingdom of this world rather than the Kingdom of God, and assist the triumph of profane materialism. The Blackwater scandal might just seem like a case of life imitating bad art on the level of a Dan Brown novel. But there is a more unsettling tendency at work here—the appropriation of faith and tradition for profoundly anti-traditional and anti-Christian ends. Erik Prince, envisioning his mercenary company as a successor to the Templar order, could create only a deadly counterfeit.

*Some excellent contemporary sources on the Knights Templar are The New Knighthood : A History of the Order of the Temple by Malcom Barber, The Templars by Piers Paul Read, and The Templars: The Secret History Revealed by Barbara Frale

Germany’s future lies to its Right.

Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s prince of diplomacy, once remarked, “With France we shall never have peace; with Russia never the necessity for war, unless Liberal stupidities or dynastic blunders falsify the situation.” While all is thankfully quiet on the Western front, Berlin is taking a page from the Iron Chancellor’s playbook and forging strategic links with Moscow.

Energy has proven essential between Germany and Russia, since Moscow supplies the German economy with over 40 percent of its natural gas. And to ensure that German end-users will not be affected by Russia’s various disputes with transit nations, the Kremlin is building a new pipeline. The Nord Stream project, set to run through the Baltic Sea and slated to come online in 2010-2011, would cement ties between Moscow and Berlin and bypass countries like Ukraine and Poland. The Germans, whose companies have a significant stake in the venture, prefer to sidestep East European issues entirely and maintain a secure link to Russia’s resource base.

While energy is a key dimension of the Russo-German relationship, it’s not the only one. In June Moscow’s Sberbank acquired 35 percent of the automaker Opel in a deal orchestrated at the top levels of power. Opel has been racked by financial woes brought on by the economic crisis, which were only compounded since its parent company had been the now-bankrupt GM. German Chancellor Angela Merkel considered GM responsible for the mess and was angered by Washington’s refusal to take part in the clean up. Berlin was happy to accept Russian funding for Opel, while the Russians have gained access to advanced manufacturing technologies they can put to use for domestic production.

What German diplomats call Verflechtung, or strategic interlocking, with Russia has been driven by joint interests. Partnership with Moscow has also coincided with a downturn in relations with Washington. It’s no secret that Angela Merkel and Barack Obama don’t get along well, but the matter extends beyond poor personal chemistry to divergent national priorities.

A major point of disagreement between the two capitals has been how to grapple with the world financial crisis. As the U.S. amasses trillions in debt through stimulus spending- and paves the way for hyperinflation—Obama is encouraging Western partners to follow suit. But the Germans aren’t taking the bait. Merkel and her colleagues share a collective memory of the ruin that postwar debts and fiat currency brought to the Weimar Republic. Answering Obama’s request for substantive European assistance in Afghanistan, Berlin pledged just a few hundred additional troops to its force there.  Germany’s reluctance to become further involved in the Afghan counterinsurgency speaks volumes about its lack of confidence in NATO efforts to stabilize the Hindu Kush, as well as the general direction of U.S. “global leadership”.

Since the collapse of Soviet power, it’s been all but inevitable that Germany would begin to chart a course separate from that of the United States. Berlin’s objections to the U.S. invasion of Iraq were only the first major manifestation of discord between NATO allies. The Bundeskanzlerin has effectively put the brakes on Washington’s expansion of the North Atlantic alliance into the Caucasus and Ukraine. In light of Russian resurgence heralded by the 2008 war in Georgia, the Germans consider further U.S. encroachment in the former Soviet Union an unwise and dangerous proposition.

Germany is looking after its own interests regarding Russia, and it’s much more interested in partnership than confrontation in Eastern Europe. Though German citizens retain some anxiety about Russian revisionism, they also attribute this phenomenon to U.S. interference on Moscow’s periphery.  As long as the White House continues to view NATO expansion into the former Soviet space as a long-term objective, its designs will run up against Germany’s refusal to be involved in another showdown with the Kremlin. Any likely deployments Washington plans for Poland or the Czech Republic will receive little German support. Given historical experience, Warsaw will sound the alarm over any possible entente between its two powerful neighbors. But no one has designs on Polish sovereignty; the last thing Berlin wants is to engage in a second Cold War on its eastern frontiers.  

Collaboration between Berlin and Moscow makes a good deal of sense in the face of an uncertain strategic future. In a recent interview Ernst Uhrlau, head of the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, spoke of a likely shift in the global balance of power resulting from the financial crisis.  The BND chief made clear that Germany should prepare for a world in which Chinese influence could rise significantly. He also outlined a scenario of economic collapse and chaos, giving an unsubtle hint of the possibilities that await the West in the years ahead. Berlin will be looking for relevance and security in a Europe in flux. While contemporary Germany would hardly be a suitable candidate for the old Holy Alliance, a geopolitical partnership with Russia would be a net contributor to stability on the continent.

U.S. policymakers no doubt will voice their concerns of developing Russo-German cooperation in dark undertones (for here we’d an alliance of not one but two nations that have yet to “overcome their pasts”). Much has been made of Berlin’s dependence on Russian natural gas, the newest supposed threat to the liberty of Europe. The U.S. is attempting to corner Central Asian energy and route it westward with pipeline initiatives (foremost among which is Nabucco) precisely to keep the Europeans within its policy orbit. If Washington can cut the Kremlin out of the energy equation, it would have greater freedom of action to pursue its encirclement of Russia without heeding German objections. With the U.S. now being outmaneuvered in Eurasia, rhetoric casting emergent Russo-German ties as a second Rapallo or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact will become more commonplace.

Claims that Germany and Russia are enacting yet another sinister plot to snuff out “freedom” can be easily recognized as the polemics of liberal internationalists with their own agenda. Foreign policy conducted from Berlin today is a far cry from the Third Reich’s drive to global supremacy. Germany’s influential interwar school of strategic thought, Geopolitik, attained notoriety as a “Nazi science”. This was due to its role in providing Hitler a conceptual framework for world conquest. The school’s founder, Karl Haushofer, was a mentor of party leader Rudolf Hess and enjoyed his patronage until the latter’s mysterious one-way flight to Scotland in May 1941. Haushofer advocated an alliance between Berlin and Moscow that would shut Anglo-American sea power out of Eurasia.

While there is a superficial similarity between the continental outlook of Haushofer’s Geopolitik and deepening Russo-German ties, Berlin isn’t exactly resuming the quest for Lebensraum. The push for a comprehensive regulatory treaty on global climate change constitutes the extent of aggressive moves by Germany in today’s international arena.

Building better relations with Moscow is a bold move in line with a more traditional foreign policy stance, though it remains to be seen whether Germans can take the next step and affirm their own culture. Modern Germany is mired in the same dysfunctions rooted in philosophical liberalism that plague the entire West, from mass immigration and falling birthrates to the myth of total individual autonomy. The stereotype of jackboots and mass parades has been overtaken by efficient recycling programs and the enforcement of multiculturalist orthodoxy. Yet the national will to dominate cannot be meaningfully replaced by the will to self-destruction.

From the time of the Cold War, Germans have embraced becoming dutiful citizens of the European Union, tolerant and generous hosts of waves of third-world immigrants, and whatever else the currents of later modernity demanded. The 12-year nightmare of National Socialism is never far from the German conscience, in both the life of society and the formulation of policy. It is extraordinary that Berlin pursues any strategic interests at all under the unnatural weight of such a mindset. Germany is only beginning to overcome the paralysis induced by its role in the apocalyptic 20th century.

The United States and Russia appear to be gearing up for a second round of the Cold War. Washington still hopes to extend its reach deep into Moscow’s zone of interests, and the Russians intend to resist. Most of the action will be characterized by espionage and covert operations, but the clash is more than just a grudge match over territory and pipelines. Like the previous conflict, Cold War II will be defined by ideology. But this time around, wild-eyed revolutionaries aren’t hatching plots behind the walls of the Kremlin; their offices are right inside the Beltway.

Continuing tensions between old adversaries have been accompanied by a number of spy scandals involving Georgia, NATO, and the alliance’s role in the former Soviet space. As Moscow and the West expel each other’s “diplomats” and discover deeply burrowed moles, there seems to be an intensification of the clandestine struggle that only occasionally reaches the newswires. Russia and the United States are in a contest for the fate of inner Eurasia—the Kremlin’s sphere of influence and the object of Washington’s quest for global dominance.

Since every state spies and realizes it is being spied upon, public accusations of espionage often indicate a chill in relations. Two Russian diplomats were expelled from Brussels on April 29th in response to an earlier episode of espionage against NATO. Hermann Simm, an Estonian official in charge of safeguarding that country’s classified information, turned out to be a long-time agent for the SVR, Russian foreign intelligence. Before Simm was arrested last year, he was able to inflict enormous damage on NATO by passing its secrets to Moscow. Though one can certainly sympathize with Tallinn’s desire to protect its Western identity, Estonia’s membership in the North Atlantic alliance facilitated a hemorrhage of defense data. The expansion of an anachronism has provided a wealth of secrets to Russian intelligence officers, in addition to being militarily indefensible.

In a similar case, a senior Georgian foreign ministry official was alleged on May 5th to have furnished Moscow with intelligence while serving as Tbilisi’s representative to NATO. News of the arrest broke May 5, just as alliance-run “Partnership for Peace” exercises were to commence amidst political instability and rumors of an attempted coup. What applies to Estonia goes doubly so for Georgia. Washington’s promotion of this “plucky democracy” for NATO membership has created a host of problems, from additional Russian espionage to encouragement of the wildly irresponsible behavior of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. It is difficult to see any legitimate strategic ends of involvement with a fractured and chaotic nation so far removed from vital U.S. interests.  Indeed, one can only conclude that the primary goal of American policy in the conflict-ridden Caucasus is to undermine Russian control of the region.

Moscow’s aggressive espionage operations against the West shouldn’t surprise anyone. Russian foreign policy is intelligence-driven, and tradecraft can play a rather significant part in statecraft. Elements of political culture from paranoia to the penchant for conspiracy also come into play, but these have been present for centuries. The Kremlin’s spy offensive must be seen in the context of Russian resurgence.

Although Russia made clear in the 2008 war with Georgia that it will be the power to order the former Soviet space, it is essentially reacting to U.S. encroachment. One can find Pentagon “footprints” in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, whether by the establishment of bases or institutions like NATO. The situation differs markedly from the Cold War, when Western strategic planners banked on Soviet armor crashing through the Fulda Gap as the first step in the conquest of Europe. Moscow has no such capacity today—it seeks to secure a regional sphere of influence and the energy corridors therein simply to survive. With Russia’s population projected to fall from 141 million this year to around 135 million in 2020, the Kremlin is looking to hold the line in time for the nation to regenerate. The Russians have neither the desire nor the means for extravagant foreign adventures. In the face of U.S. encirclement, Putin and his subordinates are assuming an ultimately defensive posture. 

Beyond geopolitics, the antagonism between Washington and Moscow has experienced a reversal of roles in the arena of ideology. From the 1917 October Revolution, Soviet Russia embodied the most radical force bent on transforming the world. Communism at once attracted factory workers and track layers, Western intellectuals and colonial liberationists. The commissars in the Kremlin declared the ideas of Marx and Lenin as scientific teachings delineating mankind’s path to a radiant future.

How times have changed! When Russia today opposes Kosovo independence or articulates its regional role in terms of history, culture, and ethnic solidarity, it looks downright counterrevolutionary.

Russia’s secret services also provide an example of shifts in ideology. Soviet intelligence once composed the vanguard of atheistic socialism. The Cheka and its successors knew no equal in ruthlessness or professional skill. Through the recruitment of agents in the West and various means of subversion, Moscow’s spies were charged with ensuring the eventual triumph of World Revolution. By the reasoning of dialectical materialism, any method, fair or foul, could be justified to advance the Communist cause. The Bolshevik sack of Heaven would be preceded by secret police infiltration.

Today Russia’s counterintelligence service, the FSB, maintains an Orthodox Church on the grounds of its headquarters at Lubyanka Square. It is nonetheless remarkable to see one of the Soviet Union’s top cold warriors profess Orthodox Christianity and call for the rebirth of tradition in Russian society.  Nikolai Leonov wasn’t just any KGB officer; he was Moscow’s original point man for contacts with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Castro brothers before the Cuban Revolution. He would later run the KGB’s analysis directorate and become deputy chief of foreign intelligence. In possession of accurate information on the state of affairs in the USSR, Leonov knew in the 1970s that the outlook was grim. By the time of the Soviet collapse, Marxism-Leninism had been the organizing principle in Russia for three quarters of a century and the results were in.

The wreckage of Communism left Russians in an ideological void, and the chaotic 1990s gave them little hope in market democracy or the oligarchs who looted the country at will. Demographic freefall, crumbling infrastructure and other socio-economic ills have their roots in the Soviets’ murderous imposition of modern ideology. What Lenin and his successors wrought, however, was only aggravated by initiatives at westernization. Wars in Chechnya, NATO expansion, and U.S. lectures on human rights and “backsliding” on democracy played a large part in Russia’s disillusionment with the values espoused by the contemporary West.

Many Russians, including influential men such as Leonov, returned to their faith and the centuries of tradition reflective of the truth it reveals. They also rediscovered the Church as the principal source of order in society. As the old spy asserts,

Per Russian tradition, Leonov and like-minded colleagues support a powerful state, but in light of the Soviet experience are conscious that unity cannot be imposed upon a people through administration or coercion. The harmony of a nation derives from shared culture, the source of which is the cult, man’s relation to the transcendent.

The revival of Orthodoxy and a Christian worldview in the land of the Tsars still faces formidable challenges. Corruption, hypocrisy and the abuse of authority are ever-present in Russian society, though such phenomena are hardly limited to Russia alone. Pernicious remnants of the Soviet legacy, such as abortion and the callous regard for human life it implies, create profound psychic and spiritual trauma, as well as a tortured national conscience. Modern Russians are also well acquainted with Western-style consumerism and hedonism. Yet in spite of these numerous dysfunctions, the hazy realization that men and nations form part of a divine order is becoming clearer.  

As Russia returns to the status of a conservative power, the United States has enthusiastically taken up the revolutionary mantle.

In the U.S.-Soviet competition, the Bolshevik ideology was more radical than liberalism, but only in a relative sense. Both systems affirm only material realities and lead man to spiritual desolation. With the defeat of Communism, Washington could attend to the enforcement of its own transnational vision. U.S. foreign policy has functioned as an instrument of revolution, from the “humanitarian” bombing of Serbia to attempts to reform Muslim societies and Islam itself.

Living up to its revolutionary nature, liberal internationalism shares a series of practices with its vanquished Soviet rival. Most noteworthy is a heavy reliance on covert action. Institutes such as Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy act as vehicles for regime change, just as Western labor unions and political parties were once manipulated by the Comintern.

The 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, as well as other uprisings, were not as spontaneous as portrayed. Both ideologies also have a record of using armed intervention as a means of social engineering. The invasion of a foreign state such as Afghanistan or Iraq is widely hailed as liberation, while counterinsurgency is a sure way to bring the grateful natives into the fold of progressive humanity.

U.S. foreign policy is carried out under the banner of progress, not only for rhetorical purposes, but because American leadership in “expanding the frontiers of freedom” is taken as a matter of faith. A radiant future for humanity is the promise of all modern ideology, though it varies in its forms. What is constant is a materialist reductionism that divorces man from the realm of the spirit.  In this way individuals and entire peoples are deprived of uniqueness, traditions, and their place in the Cosmos. Global democratic capitalism, administered by our enlightened elites, corrodes faith, family and culture just as surely as Soviet state socialism. Marx’s appeal to the proletariat has given way to the equally soulless and inane “Consumers of the world unite!”

A discussion of man’s place in the Universe might seem far afield from talk of a second Cold War, but it is intimately connected. Beneath the dynamics of US-Russian strategic rivalry is an underlying battle of ideas. However inadvertently, the conversions of former KGB men can remind us of our own religious tradition, obscured by modernity but not yet lost. The secular parody of universal brotherhood, dedicated to accumulation and enjoyment, only leaves us isolated from each other and the source of life itself. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asks a decadent West:

We are haunted by the specter of another Cold War, but such a standoff is not inevitable.  Russia is not a foreordained enemy, and it has no vital security interests that clash with those of the United States. In order to avoid the danger of renewed conflict, it’s time to reevaluate both the “lifestyle choices” and policies we have long celebrated.  At the present moment, the revolutionary fantasies of unlimited consumption and world empire are leading America from one disaster to the next.

In 1914, on the very eve of the Great War, G.K. Chesterton published his humorous novel The Flying Inn. The story concerned a Turkish plot to invade England, all with the connivance of Britain’s progressive elite. At the superficial level, Chesterton’s fears of the Ottoman Empire must have seemed preposterous. Turkey had long been the “sick man of Europe,” and it would emerge from the coming military cataclysm with only its core in Asia Minor and a strip of land in Europe that permitted control of the Bosporus. The great writer’s underlying aim, however, went far beyond contemporary power politics.

Chesterton sought to convey the central truth that seemingly fantastic turns of events can come about through spiritual collapse. This assertion was proved correct outside the pages of his book. As Europeans, supremely confident of their material civilization, plunged into industrial-scale suicide, hindsight shows us that physical disaster was preceded by disaster in higher realms. Philosophers, statesmen and scientists rejected their ancient Christian faith to exalt the seemingly limitless potential of man. It is therefore ironic that the very circumstances of The Flying Inn hint at correspondence with today’s geopolitics. A century later, Turkey is ascendant, and Islamic inroads into Europe are aided and abetted by the ruling classes of the West.

With this context in mind, it shouldn’t surprise us that America is intensively courting Turkey as an enhanced strategic ally. When President Barack Obama delivered a speech before the Turkish parliament on April 6th, he wasn’t simply seeking to smooth feathers ruffled from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The president included his usual appeals to “common dreams” and “coming together,” but also outlined substantive aspects of the U.S.-Turkish relationship. The White House’s vision for an alliance is expansive; it seeks to harness Ankara’s growing influence in multiple regions. Policy planners in Washington appreciate Turkey’s rising power and hope to channel it in their designs for Eurasia, the Islamic world and even Europe.

Turkey is proving attractive to U.S. policymakers for a number of reasons. The first of these is the country’s geographic centrality. As their Ottoman predecessors extended political, economic and cultural influence from the Middle East to Central Asia and from the Caucasus to the Balkans, so too can modern-day Turks. Washington needs Turkey for its strategic agenda in Eurasia. Ankara would be a major participant in U.S. efforts to undermine Russia’s sphere of influence and secure a “new Silk Road” of energy pipelines from Central Asia to Europe that bypass Moscow. The Turks would also play a key role in countering Iranian ambitions in the Middle East.

Demographics and an economic base for future power projection make Turkey a potential heir to the Ottoman Empire. Its population is increasing steadily at replacement rate, and will reach almost 90 million by 2020. While problems with the Kurdish minority persist, the country remains ethnically cohesive. The Turkish economy is robust, and Ankara has weathered the global financial downturn better than many European states. The nation is a regional manufacturing center that exports not just textiles and food products, but electronics and Toyota automobiles.  With assistance in military technology transfers from partners such as the U.S., Israel and South Korea, Turkey is seeking to achieve 50% self-sufficiency in armaments production by 2011. This fact is also significant, as it is the only Muslim state with a viable industrial sector.

Turkey’s Islamic identity is the other major reason that brought Obama to Ankara. Washington holds Turkey as a model for emulation by other Muslim countries. Turkey seems, in the eyes of policymakers, the perfect fit to complement U.S. strategy in the region: it’s a large Muslim democracy and a member of NATO. “Moderate” Turkish Islam, influenced by the mystically oriented Sufi brotherhoods, is seen as a less rigid and more even-tempered alternative to the Salafist strains that inspire many jihadist movements. Ankara is hailed by Western media for its simultaneous adherence to Islam as well as secular and pluralistic political notions. Confounded with the intractability of Muslim populations in relation to American “outreach,” the United States would dearly like for Turkey to help manage the Islamic world, and the Turks seem willing to oblige.

Ankara has already taken the lead in mediation efforts from the Levant to the Hindu Kush. The Turks have been holding intermittent peace talks between seemingly implacable foes Syria and Israel for almost a year. They also recently sponsored Afghan-Pakistani negotiations aimed at quelling the cross-border Taliban insurgency that now rages in both countries. Washington can only be pleased with these initiatives, since its convoluted social engineering agenda for the Muslim world is receiving little help from the Europeans. The Obama administration hopes to extricate itself from Iraq, only to reinvest men, money and materiel into the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, in addition to containing Iran. Turkey could ease Washington’s problems in the region, though such assistance naturally has its price.

In return for Ankara’s assistance on matters of stability in the Muslim world and pipeline geopolitics in Eurasia, Washington will promote Turkey as a major regional power. This is seen by the foreign policy establishment as a natural and responsible choice. If anyone was unsure of the centrality of the U.S.-Turkish alliance, the man nominated to be the Department of State’s Secretary of European and Eurasian affairs, Philip Gordon, is a Turkish specialist. Gordon in his statements has been careful to avoid naming the 1915 Armenian genocide as such, and has also referred to Turkey’s 35-year military occupation of northern Cyprus as a “Turkish presence” on the island.

The Turks themselves have been adept at lobbying for such outcomes in the halls of power on K Street and Capitol Hill. They have received guidance and advice from influential friends, as well. Ankara’s main lobbying organization in Washington, the American Turkish Council, was created along the lines of AIPAC. The Israelis and Turks enjoy support from some of the same patrons, including prominent neoconservatives Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. Former intelligence officer Philip Giraldi has investigated these connections as well as the activities of the Turkish, Israeli and Pakistani secret services in acquiring classified political information and nuclear weapons technologies. Influence operations and espionage aside, there has been bipartisan consensus (with the blessing of several major defense contractors and oil companies) under successive U.S. administrations for boosting Turkey’s rise.

The symbolic culmination of American support of Turkish power has been U.S. backing for Turkey’s accession into the European Union.  In his Ankara speech, Obama explained this policy in the following terms:

“Turkey is bound to Europe by more than the bridges over the Bosporus. Centuries of shared history, culture, and commerce bring you together. Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith- it is not diminished by it. And Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once more.”

The current administration is giving U.S. sponsorship of Turkish entry into the EU, also enthusiastically supported under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, a new resonance. “Diversity” has at last become a real foreign policy objective! Yet even the leaderships of France and Germany, who permit Muslim immigrants to settle in their countries by the millions, have enough sense of popular sentiment (and memory) not to push for Turkish membership. Why might Europeans instinctively reject a proposal in line with Brussels’ own multiculturalist ideology?

Turkey is bound to Europe by invasion. This is the source of Obama’s pleasant-sounding “centuries of shared history.” The Byzantine Empire, longtime guardian of Christianity in the East, was conquered in a series of campaigns by the Seljuks and Ottomans, Turkic tribes that swept in from the steppes of Central Asia. History acts as a witness. Ankara could receive EU membership tomorrow, but Turkey has never been European in any meaningful sense. As the armies of Suleiman the Magnificent battered against the walls of Vienna in 1683, the city’s defenders understood this implicitly.

Identity is often less a matter of race than of religion and cultural heritage. The Bulgarians, for example, were a Turkic people that adopted Slavic ways and accepted Christianity. Magyars, horsemen from Siberia and the terror of 10th-century Christendom, under St. Stephen founded the Kingdom of Hungary. Europe, whatever the drafters of the multivolume EU Constitution might suppose, can ultimately only be defined through the origins of a common Christian culture. The Ottomans long commanded suzerainty across the Balkans and Mediterranean as conquerors, but they were never of Europe. Turkey maintains an undeniably rich and unique culture, but its core and overall character are Islamic and Asiatic.

It is perhaps because of Turkey’s cultural character that US foreign policy elites are so insistent upon the country’s integration into the EU. Washington’s strategy in the Balkans, which is predicated on empowering Muslim Albanians and Bosnians, offers a remarkable parallel to Ottoman rule.  It would also be a prelude to empowering Turkey in Europe. Eliminating the already flimsy European frontier with Turkey would further undermine the nations of the continent, especially in terms of demography.  How many Turks would travel, unimpeded, to join their almost 3 million compatriots already residing in the cities of a Germany reproducing below replacement levels?  Fellow Turks in Europe are to remain wholly Turkish, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has emphasized. Liberal fantasies about the assimilation of incompatible cultures can be put to rest.

U.S. advocacy of Turkey’s integration into Europe is just one facet of a long-held revolutionary dream that has shaped the leaders of Western societies. This vision seeks to overturn natural order in favor of an atomizing egalitarianism that can conceive of nothing above economic expediency and the whims of the sovereign will. Every measure of its progress leads individuals and entire nations further into dissolution. Sufficient tragedy has already resulted from European governing classes’ abandonment of religious tradition and its cultural vessels, from mass politics and mechanized slaughter to crime-infested third world ghettoes that abut red light districts. There is little reason to allow Turkey into Europe if a spiritually bankrupt modern West is to someday have a chance at renewal.

America’s Turkish gambit will produce a series of unintended consequences. U.S. foreign policy is assisting the reemergence of a pivotal Muslim state with an imperial past and a growing capability for power projection.  The Turks are unlikely to do Washington’s bidding for long; even before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Ottoman sultans had controlled an empire on three continents for almost three hundred years. Debates over “moderate” Islam and “radical” Islam are entirely uninformed by historical experience and miss the point, as the dwindling grip of the secular Kemalists will be seen as an aberration. Turkey is an Islamic power with its own interests, its own civilization and its own cultural mission. NATO allies or not, Ankara’s Christian neighbors in Greece, the Balkans and the Caucasus know this fact well. Their peaceful acceptance of Turkish regional primacy will be unlikely.

Washington’s complicity in the rise of Turkish power will be on the level of the “blowback” created by U.S. support for the Shah and the Iranian Islamic Revolution. The case of Turkey, even without dramatic events in the near term, will be of greater significance. While Iran would like to lead the Muslim world, Turkey is the strongest candidate. It is, after all, Sunni, not Shia, and Ankara’s political and economic relations with the Arab states of the Middle East have a solid foundation from the Ottoman period. By virtue of strategic geography, the Turks can also pursue their foreign policy along multiple vectors. The professionalism and capabilities of today’s Turkish military, the second largest in NATO, give form to what Hilaire Belloc foresaw in 1929:

Islam was [once] our superior, especially in military art. There is no reason why its recent inferiority in mechanical construction, whether military or civilian, should continue indefinitely. Even a slight accession of material power would make the further control of Islam by an alien culture difficult. A little more and there will cease that which our time has taken for granted, the physical domination of Islam by the disintegrated Christendom we know.
Among other arms acquisitions, Turkey is planning to receive delivery of 100 advanced F-35 Joint Strike Fighters beginning in 2014. Belloc’s prediction is already coming to pass.

The United States has for the better part of a decade been engaged in poorly defined actions against jihadists guided by a universalist, liberal creed. By forging a strategic alliance with Turkey, U.S policymakers betray the same willful blindness and illusory hopes imposed by such a limited worldview. Our elites’ “democracy” advocacy and fanciful projections of Islam are leading again to disaster. Through its celebrated partnership with Turkey, Washington is helping to materially revive Islamic power from its centuries of slumber. As the Turks make their return to the arena of great states, the ages-old enmity between Islam and the West will assume dimensions previously unimagined.

The U.S. embrace of Turkey is symptomatic of our secular elites’ disdain for the roots of Western culture, and their desire to replace it with something wholly alien. Such are the wages of an empty and world-flattening humanism.  Rather than explore our natural bonds with the Orthodox Christian nations to better confront the challenges of Islam and China, Washington antagonizes and attempts to encircle a Russia still scarred from the ravages of Communist rule. Who will protect the tattered remnants of Christendom and aid in its recovery? Elected officials, bureaucrats, corporate executives and judges on both sides of the Atlantic are engaged in an unceasing campaign to destroy any traces of its vitality.

Chesterton’s Flying Inn closes on a hopeful note. With the help of some tipsy eccentrics, the people of England mount a revolt and defeat the sultan’s army of occupation. Faith, tradition and the organic integrity of culture prevail. The moralistic social engineer who hoped to inaugurate a new, enlightened era in Britain was revealed to be insane precisely because of his warped ideological program. Today’s ruling classes are long entrenched and still wield great power, but their ruinous policies are catching up with them. With grace and good will, the peoples of the West may yet arise, shake off the absurdism of our establishment, and restore sanity to the land.

Americans can sleep easier after months of jitters over the decisive issue in U.S. foreign policy. We’ve all been on edge for weeks, but it’s time to take a deep breath and relax; a bright new era has dawned. So when you tuck the kids in tonight, rest assured their future is secure. It’s official—Croatia and Albania have joined NATO.

Now that Zagreb and Tirana have integrated into the august institution that is the North Atlantic alliance, we can take stock of the benefits their membership brings. As of April 1, the U.S. enjoys the express obligation to enter into war with a party that would attack either country, as stated by Article V of the Washington Treaty. The Pentagon will also have the opportunity to allocate further millions (if not more) to ensure that Albania remains an arsenal of democracy.

Policymakers in Washington know a geopolitical bonus when they see it. But what capabilities do the Croats and Albanians bring to the perpetually expanding 28-seat table of the Euro-Atlantic community? Both nations have deployed military contingents to Afghanistan, respectively numbering around 300 and 135 troops. It would be uncharitable to denigrate these contributions; both countries are small and strapped for resources. Besides, their governments care little about the wisdom of stabilizing Afghanistan, while getting into NATO has clearly been a priority. The route from the Adriatic coast to the North Atlantic just happened to lie through Kabul.

For the Croats and Albanians, this is just step one of two; NATO membership is seen as a sure way into the European Union. The process is by now a predictable mechanism. The two Balkan nations are treading a path that countries from Estonia to Bulgaria have already taken into the EU. It is understandable that states on the wrong side of the old iron curtain would want to take part in the subsidies and economic possibilities that EU membership offers. These opportunities, however, come at a price. Brussels expects the imposition of its bureaucratic regulations and secular liberal ideology with the aim of slowly grinding ancestral faith and cultural identity into dust.

While it is easy to see why various governments in Eastern Europe would want entrée into NATO, it takes a feat of imagination to articulate a U.S. strategic rationale for their accession. Spokesmen at Foggy Bottom will wax poetic with tributes to common democratic values, “human rights,” and regional stability, speaking in the spirit that animates Western governing elites. There has long been an absence of national interest in NATO expansion; rather the process has concerned the expansion of an ideology and its pretenses to universal dominion.

The case of Albania’s accession into the North Atlantic alliance is a helpful illustration of liberal internationalism at work. The country had already been used as a logistical base in 1999 for Operation Allied Force, NATO’s “humanitarian” bombing of Serbia. That campaign resulted in the occupation of Kosovo and the Kosovar Albanians’ declaration of independence under U.S. aegis in 2008. As a poster child for the Western ruling classes’ promotion of Islam in Europe, Tirana will be used to cement Kosovo’s status and continue an anti-Serb policy in the Balkans. Albania’s NATO membership will also reinforce the nation as a platform for Turkish influence in southeastern Europe and strengthen organized crime networks across the continent.

NATO entrenchment in the Balkans, facilitated by American intervention, must be viewed in the context of Washington’s intentions in the former Soviet Union. Broad consensus among U.S. policymakers exists for the eventual spread of “Euro-Atlantic norms” to states such as Ukraine and Georgia, using the tried-and-tested playbook of “institution building,” engineered uprisings, and possible intervention. At this point, however, NATO expansion is no longer a matter of little strategic import and becomes a very dangerous affair. On the basis of claims to the universal legitimacy of its values, the U.S. is seeking to expand its alliance deep into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. No surer recipe for conflict between the Kremlin and the West could be found.

Because U.S. policy elites conceive the triumph of liberal ideology as universal and inevitable, they cannot tolerate impediments to its realization, and Russia presents a major roadblock. Competition for energy corridors and the insatiable US desire for new avenues of power projection on the Russian periphery are only aspects of a greater struggle. How can Washington fulfill its revolutionary mission of global democratic capitalism with surly retrograde tsarists, clinging to antiquated notions of sovereignty and the balance of power, standing in its way? If the U.S. cannot successfully enforce “openness” across the Eurasian landmass, then its entire system of hegemony will be called into question.

After the collapse of Soviet power, NATO ceased to be an organization with finite objectives and transformed into the coercive instrument of a global enterprise that recognizes no higher logic than itself. Expansion, in the words of its public relations manager, has been elevated to “a principle which allies hold dear.” NATO has become the postmodern alliance—theoretically unlimited in scope and denying the essences of faith, culture, and nation to pave the way for the primacy of finance and the morally autonomous consumer. It is fitting that this latest round of enlargement was certified on the first of April, if only to commemorate the foolishness that reigns in Washington and Brussels.