Posted on by L&R Forum

Legal Spirits 070: Religion & Realism: The New US Role in Armenia

Map: The Conversation

In Episode 70 of Legal Spirits, Center Director Mark Movsesian speaks with Dan Harre, Deputy Director of Save Armenia, about a significant—and controversial—draft agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Brokered last month at the White House, the terms reflect a major realignment in the region: Armenia relinquishes any claim to Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan backs off earlier demands for extraterritorial control, and the United States gains a 99-year lease on a key new transit route.

The episode explores how U.S. foreign policy, Christian advocacy, and strategic infrastructure intersect in the South Caucasus. Dan offers a perspective from within the U.S. advocacy world—one shaped by a broader movement to defend Christian communities in places like Iraq and Syria. The episode also considers how groups like Save Armenia navigate diplomatic tensions between Armenia and Israel, and how this moment relates to past decisions about American involvement in Armenian affairs, including the post-WWI mandate the U.S. ultimately declined.

What role did American Christian organizations play in this deal? What’s in it for the United States? And is this a turning point in Armenia’s future? Listen in!

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A Draft Agreement in the Caucasus—and U.S. Engagement

Earlier this month, Armenia and Azerbaijan initialed a draft peace agreement at the White House. The agreement, brokered by the Trump administration, has not yet been signed or ratified, but its key terms are now public—and deeply controversial.

Under the deal, Armenia formally renounces its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh and grants the United States a 99-year lease on a new transit corridor through its southern border, part of what the administration is calling the TRIPP initiative. In return, Azerbaijan pledges to recognize Armenia’s current borders and allow reciprocal, unimpeded transit.

For Armenia, the concessions are painful—particularly after the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh’s Armenian population in 2023. But the deal may offer short-term stability and give Armenia time to rebuild. Christian advocacy groups in the U.S., long concerned about religious prisoners and displaced Christian communities in the region, played a notable role in urging American involvement. President Trump’s public reference to “Christian” detainees was no accident.

In a new piece for First Things, I explore what this draft agreement means for the region, why the U.S. chose to intervene now, and whether the engagement we’re seeing today signals a deeper and more lasting American commitment—or simply a pause before the next crisis.

You can read the full essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Book on Protestant Missionaries in China

In researching a chapter for a book on international relations last fall, I read a great deal about the efforts of Protestant missionaries–mostly American, but also European–in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. The missionaries had a large impact among local Christians, especially Armenians, founding schools and cultural institutions and generally preaching Western values. They had rather less impact on the foreign policies of their home countries, a matter I address in the chapter. For those who are interested, a draft version of the chapter is here.

Protestant missionaries weren’t active only in Ottoman Turkey, of course. They probably had a greater presence in China. In fact, some scholars argue that the missionaries were a major factor in U.S. policy towards China. That probably overstates things. Foreign policy tends to respond to national interests rather than religious and moral appeals. But the missionaries’ presence did provide a reason–an excuse?–for Western intervention. A new book from Notre Dame Press explores the activities of British Protestant missionaries in 19th century China. The book is Protestant Missionaries in China, by Jonathan Seitz (Taiwan Graduate School of Theology). Here’s the publisher’s description:

With a focus on Robert Morrison, Protestant Missionaries in China evaluates the role of nineteenth-century British missionaries in the early development of the cross-cultural relationship between China and the English-speaking world.

As one of the first generation of British Protestant missionaries, Robert Morrison went to China in 1807 with the goal of evangelizing the country. His mission pushed him into deeper engagement with Chinese language and culture, and the exchange flowed both ways as Morrison—a working-class man whose firsthand experiences made him an “accidental expert”—brought depictions of China back to eager British audiences. Author Jonathan A. Seitz proposes that, despite the limitations imposed by the orientalism impulse of the era, Morrison and his fellow missionaries were instrumental in creating a new map of cross-cultural engagement that would evolve, ultimately, into modern sinology.

Engaging and well researched, Protestant Missionaries in China explores the impact of Morrison and his contemporaries on early sinology, mission work, and Chinese Christianity during the three decades before the start of the Opium Wars.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Ford, “Cold War Monks”

936d03f5ad913e3d7389d0a439001a1dWhen one thinks about the historical role of the religion in American foreign policy in Asia, the first religion that comes to mind is Christianity. The need to protect Evangelical missionaries dictated much American foreign policy in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example. A new book from Yale University Press, Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia, by scholar Eugene Ford, suggests another example. During the Cold War, the book maintains, the US Government enlisted Buddhism as a vehicle for opposing the spread of Communism. Here’s the description from the Yale website:

The groundbreaking account of U.S. clandestine efforts to use Southeast Asian Buddhism to advance Washington’s anticommunist goals during the Cold War

How did the U.S. government make use of a “Buddhist policy” in Southeast Asia during the Cold War despite the American principle that the state should not meddle with religion? To answer this question, Eugene Ford delved deep into an unprecedented range of U.S. and Thai sources and conducted numerous oral history interviews with key informants. Ford uncovers a riveting story filled with U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and scholars seeking to understand and build relationships within the Buddhist monasteries of Southeast Asia.

This fascinating narrative provides a new look at how the Buddhist leaderships of Thailand and its neighbors became enmeshed in Cold War politics and in the U.S. government’s clandestine efforts to use a predominant religion of Southeast Asia as an instrument of national stability to counter communist revolution.

Posted on by Jason Mansmann

Lecture: “An (Un)Orthodox View: Religions and Politics in Russia Today” (Apr. 19)

On April 19, the King’s College McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, the King’s Public Policy and Research Institute, and the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council are co-sponsoring a lecture titled “An (Un)Orthodox View: Religions and Politics in Russia Today” given by Catherine Cosman (retired senior policy analyst for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) at the William G. McGowan School of Business. A brief description of the event follows:

King's CollegeCatherine Cosman, recently retired senior policy analyst for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, will discuss religious liberty in Russian and its impact on foreign policy at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 19, in the Burke Auditorium at King’s College.

The free public lecture, titled “An (Un)Orthodox View: Religions and Politics in Russia Today,” is co-sponsored by the KING’S McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, the King’s Public Policy and Research Institute, and the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council.

After 70 years of official Soviet atheism, Russia is now home to a great variety of religions. While the Russian Constitution says that the country is a secular state, the religion law preface claims four religions as “traditional”: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. The Russian government, particularly the Kremlin, relies almost solely on the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (MPROC) as its official religious bulwark. Cosman’s talk will examine some of the reasons for the Kremlin’s focus on the Moscow Patriarchate and how this focus both affects other religious communities and plays out in Russian international politics.

Cosman joined the staff of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2003. Her areas of responsibility include the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Organization on Security and Cooperation (OSCE). She previously served on the staff of the U.S. Helsinki Commission as senior analyst on Soviet dissent.

She also worked with emerging independent labor unions for the Free Trade Union Institute, especially in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In Estonia, she was the Senior Expert of the OSCE Mission, focusing on the integration of the Russian minority. She managed the Central Asian and Caucasus grants program at the National Endowment for Democracy and edited “Media Matters” and “(Un)Civil Societies.”

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in history from Grinnell College, Cosman earned a master’s degree and an ABD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Brown University. She also studied at the Free University of Berlin and the All-Union Institute of Cinematography in Moscow.

The Burke Auditorium is located in the William G. McGowan School of Business on North River Street. Parking will be available in on-campus lots. For more information, please contact Dr. Bernard Prusak, director, McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, at (570) 208-5900, ext. 5689.

More information on the lecture can be found here.

Posted on by Jason Mansmann

McDougall, “The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy”

In November, Yale University Press will release The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest by Walter A. McDougall (University of Pennsylvania). The publisher’s description follows:

The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy.jpgA fierce critique of civil religion as the taproot of America’s bid for global hegemony

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that “God is on our side” has inspired U.S. foreign policy ever since 1776. The first comprehensive study of the role played by civil religion in U.S. foreign relations over the entire course of the country’s history, McDougall’s book explores the deeply infused religious rhetoric that has sustained and driven an otherwise secular republic through peace, war, and global interventions for more than two hundred years. From the Founding Fathers and the crusade for independence to the Monroe Doctrine, through World Wars I and II and the decades-long Cold War campaign against “godless Communism,” this coruscating polemic reveals the unacknowledged but freely exercised dogmas of civil religion that bind together a “God blessed” America, sustaining the nation in its pursuit of an ever elusive global destiny.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Mahler, “Politics and Government in Israel”

 

This month, Rowman & Littlefield releases “Politics and Government in Israel: The Maturation of a Modern State,” by Gregory S. Mahler (Earlham College).  The publisher’s description follows:

This balanced and comprehensive text explores Israeli government and politics from both institutional and behavioral perspectives. After briefly discussing 1442265353Israel’s history and the early development of the state, Gregory Mahler then examines the social, religious, economic, cultural, and military contexts within which Israeli politics takes place. He makes special note of Israel’s geopolitical situation of sharing borders with, and being proximate to, several hostile Arab nations. The book explains the operation of political institutions and behavior in Israeli domestic politics, including the constitutional system and ideology, parliamentary government, the prime minister and the Knesset, political parties and interest groups, the electoral process and voting behavior, and the machinery of government. Mahler also considers Israel’s foreign policy setting and apparatus, the Palestinians and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the particularly sensitive questions of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement movement, and the Middle East peace process overall. This clear and concise text provides an invaluable starting point for all readers needing a cogent introduction to Israel today.

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Barnett, “The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews”

This month, Princeton University Press releases “The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews” by Michael N. Barnett (George Washington University). The publisher’s description follows:

How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? The Star and the Stripes is an original, provocative interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. Michael Barnett argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people’s survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice.

The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism—including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, Barnett charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, Barnett contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews.

Rooted in the understanding of how history shapes a political community’s sense of the world, The Star and the Stripes is a bold reading of the past, present, and possible future foreign policies of American Jews.

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Kornberg, “The Pope’s Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War”

In May, the University of Toronto Press released “The Pope’s Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War” by Jacques Kornberg (University of Toronto). The publisher’s description follows:

Pope Pius XII presided over the Catholic Church during one of the most challenging moments in its history. Elected in early 1939, Pius XII spoke out against war and destruction, but his refusal to condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for mass atrocities and genocide remains controversial almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War.

Scholars have blamed Pius’s inaction on anti-communism, antisemitism, a special emotional bond with Germany, or a preference for fascist authoritarianism. Delving deep into Catholic theology and ecclesiology, Jacques Kornberg argues instead that what drove Pius XII was the belief that his highest priority must be to preserve the authority of the Church and the access to salvation that it provided.

In The Pope’s Dilemma, Kornberg uses the examples of Pius XII’s immediate predecessors Benedict XV and the Armenian genocide and Pius XI and Fascist Italy, as well as case studies of Pius XII’s wartime policies towards five Catholic countries (Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), to demonstrate the consistency with which Pius XII and the Vatican avoided confronting the perpetrators of atrocities and strove to keep Catholics within the Church. By this measure, Pius XII did not betray, but fulfilled his papal role.

A meticulous and careful analysis of the career of the twentieth century’s most controversial pope, The Pope’s Dilemma is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church’s wartime legacy.

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Ganor, “Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic World”

In May, Columbia University Press will release “Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic World” by Boaz Ganor (Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya). The publisher’s description follows:

Global Alert describes the motivations that lead to modern Islamist terrorism and the different stages in the execution of a terrorist attack. Challenging the certainty that liberal democratic values offer an antidote to radicalism, the book exposes the exploitation of democratic institutions by terrorists to further their goals and confronts the difficulty democracies face in fighting terrorism, especially when international humanitarian law does not account for nonstate actors in armed conflict.  Global Alert especially focuses on the “hybrid terrorist organization” model, which calls for a new international doctrine to neutralize its threat.