Anno Domini

On the second Sunday of Advent our homilist commented that even his seminary adopted revisionist usage to designate years as CE or BCE, meaning “common era” or “before common era.” He wasn’t complaining, just making an observation. So as to avoid offending those who don’t want to acknowledge Christian origins, some universities go so far as to reject term papers that use the traditional AD or BC. That last strikes me as odd. Nobody seems to object to naming certain days and months after pagan gods, much more common in everyday language. The homily got me thinking. Does it matter?

To some of us it does, especially around Christmas. After all it is the rest of the world that has adopted our standard, not the other way around. We’ve used this system for over a thousand years so people would know what year we were talking about and place events in chronological context. Others are welcome to use it for communications purposes but call it something else if they like. I just don’t feel obliged to follow along. I am confused about one thing though. Why do you suppose we use Latin for AD but English for BC? What do the French use for Before Christ? But I digress.

We came to the Anno Domini system fairly late. It was developed by the 6th century (AD) monk Dionysius Exiguus who was trying to calculate the proper date for celebrating Easter (I can relate to his confusion. It’s one of those lunar things.) It didn’t become a standard until Charlemagne adopted it for his empire nearly three hundred years later. Before that we used a hodgepodge of confused references to the reigns of kings, consuls and emperors, often more than one in the same document. Modern scholars concede Dionysius got the date wrong but nobody is sure what the correct date is, mostly because of differing interpretations of the gospels. Did incarnation occur at conception or nativity? Do you believe Luke or Mathew? Was the star Haley’s Comet or a planetary conjunction? Dionysius prevails for lack of a more certain reckoning, and for the difficulty involved in changing accepted use.

We do need a universal yardstick. Japanese number years from the accession of the current Emperor, Muslims Muhammad’s flight from Mecca, Thais the founding of Bangkok, Jews an era believed to mark creation, and Hindus 3102 BC. Others have their own starting points. By convention we all settle on the Gregorian calendar except for astronomers who modify it because the lack of a year 0 messes up their calculations, and maybe North Koreans who use the birth of Kim Il-Sung. That’s ok too. Nobody understands astronomers or North Koreans anyway and, as I said, if others want to call a rose by another name it’s their prerogative. But why should they take something that is mine? Why shouldn’t anyone who wishes be allowed to refer to the Year of Our Lord? That’s what it is, even if we do have the date wrong.

Tis the season when we get our annual dose of the Grinch. Now it’s a Rabbi threatening to sue over Christmas decorations at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, a skittish airport board taking them down, and cooler heads prevailing after a national outcry. Before that it was the White House “holiday tree.” I’m surprised nobody has complained about the word holiday. Come to think of it, somebody probably has. Well, I don’t mean to offend anybody but I’m settling in to celebrate Christ’s 2006th birthday. Or is it His 2005th? This zero year business makes my head spin.

Cuius Regio, Eius Religio

Whose Rule, His Religion

At the time it was the most important provision in the Peace of Westphalia. It meant the religion of the ruler would be the official state religion and other states would not interfere. It brought an end to the Thirty Years War in 1648 and the concept extended to internal affairs in general. The treaties (there were two because Protestants and Catholics refused to meet with each other) enshrined principles of sovereignty and legal equality among nations that have guided conduct of foreign affairs ever since. Academics use the adjective Westphalian to describe the modern international system.

The system is rapidly eroding. In one forum after another nations are ceding perquisites of sovereignty to international courts and supranational agencies. Europe did it in forming the European Union and there is a lengthy waiting list to join. Much of the developed world did it in establishing the World Trade Organization. There is a queue for applicants there too. Even the United States is obliged to modify commercial legislation to conform to WTO rulings. The US Supreme Court has gone so far as to scrutinize American criminal codes in light of evolving international standards. Even the weak and ineffectual United Nations claims the right to impose its will on those occasions where the five permanent members of the Security Council can agree.

We find ourselves increasingly in need of governing mechanisms that do not allow national veto. When Chinese coal fired power plants dump mercury pollution in the American Pacific Northwest, religious extremism in Pakistan spills over into Britain, deforestation in Brazil affects annual floods along the Nile, or economic policies in Mexico undermine border security in the United States, the offended party needs a means of redress beyond diplomatic appeal to the offender. When the misguided Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 raised American tariffs, other countries could do little in response but raise their own tariffs and precipitate a great global depression. The WTO is the better way. Global warming concerns everybody. We will have to deal with it and effective measures will have to be mandatory. There must be some means of enforcement.

It’s the nukes though that I suspect will drive a truly profound shift. Proliferation continues and the world community is powerless to slow it let alone stop it. Sooner or later a bomb is going to explode in a major city and force a serious re-thinking about how we intend to police ourselves, just as the horrific depopulation of Germany did all those centuries ago. Our response will most likely focus narrowly on nuclear regulation but we will establish new principles that will permanently breach the barrier of sovereignty that so many rogue governments have hidden behind for so many years.

It’s long overdue. For forty years after WWII many of the world’s excesses were kept in check by tensions between two super powers. The demise of the Soviet Union left only one and one is proving not enough. The WTO has been effective. It should be strengthened, its membership expanded, and its mandate broadened to include more goods and services. Global health and financial regulators should be made more powerful too. Most important, the world’s thugs must be brought under control. If the United Nations cannot be reformed it should be scrapped and replaced with international legislative, judicial, and executive institutions that have legitimacy and teeth. I think we will see those things and more. If they don’t happen soon we could face a crisis that will make the Thirty Years War look like a walk in the park.

Pax Americana

The United States isn’t the problem. The problem is there is no alternative to the United States. Much of the world sees us as both cause and solution to every conceivable malady. We see ourselves in that light. If North Koreans develop nuclear weapons and threaten peace in the Western Pacific, America has failed and should do something. We should engage in unilateral talks. We should enlist allies. We should blockade. We should not. It is never what the world or North Korea’s neighbors should or should not do. It’s always what America should do. We look around for someone to help shoulder the burden. There is no one. That is our fault too.

Last year The Atlantic sponsored a panel discussion on worst case events in Korea. How would the United States manage a new invasion of the north? (There was no suggestion the last invasion may have ended prematurely.) They assembled experts with an impressive array of military, intelligence, and foreign policy credentials. There were liberals and conservatives from democratic and republican administrations. There was one woman. All were Americans. The panel discussed the presidential decision making process; what advice he would get from national security advisors, what information would be available and how reliable it would be, what forces would be at his disposal and how they should be deployed, what issues he would confront in defeating and occupying North Korea. Not one panelist envisioned more than a cursory role for South Korea, China, Japan, or Russia. It would be an American show.

And so it goes. The world watches as Europe negotiates with Iran over nuclear arms and threatens to refer them to the UN, but it is an empty threat. Iran agrees to more talks, demurs, delays and makes threats of its own. No one really expects serious action unless it is from Americans, or maybe Israelis by proxy. It’s always the same. Whether it is Somalia, Sudan, Serbia, Palestine, Lebanon, Cuba, Venezuela, or Pakistan; whenever a rogue regime or petty warlord threatens the question is what will Americans do? Whatever we do will be wrong.

Americans will tire of this, just as we are tiring in Iraq. We could, if we wished, quash any and all of these disturbances; but America is not Rome. We use force with restraint. We attempt to minimize “collateral damage.” We try to obtain international consensus when no one else is willing to do more than criticize. We adopt rules of engagement that put American troops at undue risk. This cannot go on. I have a growing sense that Americans may be ready to withdraw from its role as the world’s only law enforcement agency.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s time for Europeans to wean themselves of an American security umbrella, for China to get used to the idea of an East Asia bristling with nuclear arms, for Arabs to steel themselves for the onslaught of the next Saddam Hussein, or the next Taliban, with no Great Satan on the horizon to protect them.

What I really think is that the next American president will have some truly momentous decisions to make. I suspect energy independence will be at the top of the list. So will national security and it will be focused on internal security. Over the next twenty years the world will have to come to grips with how it will govern itself. It will take a crisis of historic proportions to bring it about. America will not do it alone and Americans will not have a solution imposed on them.

Faith, Culture and Politics

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to Turkey and his use of the occasion to call for interfaith dialog prompts me to ask what good it would do. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve got to start someplace and so far we don’t seem to be making much progress. I don’t see how talking can do any harm. If it can be conducted seriously (a big if in my judgment) it would be most certainly welcome, but would it really solve anything? Are our problems with Islam essentially about faith or is something else at work that is using religion as a cover? It seems to me the issues are as much cultural and political as religious and it’s going to take more than talk.

After all, Jesus was a Jew and prayed on the cross that his executioners be forgiven. That wasn’t enough to spare Jews centuries of persecution as “Christ killers.” Some of the worst perpetrators were those who knew scripture best. That we seem to have stopped it in the modern era hasn’t been because we understand Jews any better. It’s because we understand ourselves better. We have recognized that hatred is one of our baser instincts and has no place in civilized society. We have tried to banish it. We view “hate crimes” as particularly awful. That we still have them is a fact of human nature but at least we have attempted to recognize hatred for what it is and call it by its name. We can’t say it’s got nothing to do with our faith though. Crusaders deeply believed they were about God’s work. Our religious intolerance has everything to do with our own faith and nothing to do with anybody else’s.

Muhammad’s mandate to treat “people of the book” with respect and tolerance hasn’t stopped his followers from using scripture to justify the most ungodly depredation any more than Christians, but the fault doesn’t lie in misunderstanding there either. It is internal to the haters and those who encourage them. They aren’t open to interfaith dialog. Those who are have already put hatred behind them. Political and cultural differences remain however. It seems to me that dialog can help in identifying them but they require political and cultural resolution. What are lacking in the mix are workable mechanisms for achieving that. The United Nations has never been even a part of the solution and those cultural exchanges we’ve had to date have contributed more to conflict than peaceful coexistence.

There do seem to be some bright spots on the horizon. Benedict made his most controversial remarks last September in a call to reinvigorate theology departments at major western universities. If there is to be an interfaith dialog, that’s where it will be most effective. The one authority universally respected in Islam is the scholar. Western elitists would do well to pay attention. American Muslims have been adapting themselves to citizenship in western society to a greater degree than in any other place or time, and they are doing it without compromising their faith. That sort of assimilation has not occurred in Europe but approaching Turkish membership in the EU will require changes in both Muslim and non-Muslim attitudes across the continent. That has to be a good thing and Benedict was also right to soften his opposition to Turkish inclusion. I would argue that the EU and the World Trade Organization are the two international institutions that have done the most to promote peace in the world since WWII and are models for how it can be maintained in the future.