The scorpions of East and West

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) was deemed by The Guardian a “towering achievement,” receiving high praise for its stellar cast, elaborate storytelling, and tense filmmaking. The film documents the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atom bomb. In a chilling conclusion, viewers come to terms with the possibility of a real-life “world on fire” because of this one scientific discovery. 

The Russian-Ukrainian War has brought up this fear again. Russia and America are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, fearing each other’s every move, and having no higher authority to restrain them. As quoted by Oppenheimer in the film, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are like “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”

A year and a half has passed since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, approximately 9,000 civilians have died, including 500 children, and Ukraine’s military casualties (injured or killed) have almost surpassed the population of St. Catherines, Ontario (approx. 124,500-131,000). Additionally, with Putin’s unrelenting attack on the Ukrainian people and Dmitryi Medvedev’s threat of nuclear escalation, it can be difficult to have hope for the future. 

To the archives

For my senior thesis this past summer, I explored the political theory of a prominent British scholar named Martin Wight who was born just before the first World War. Out of all Wight’s publications, the one piece that stands out to me is his 1948 article “The Church, Russia and the West,” an incredibly dense reflection on the Cold War between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. 

Truthfully, when I first read Wight’s article, I found it to be incomprehensible, dry, and overly cynical. But, after I gave his arguments a closer look, I found a timeless, unique, and highly relevant source for us Christians wanting to make sense of Russia’s current conflict with Ukraine and, more broadly, Western civilization. In particular, Wight offers Christians a meaningful lesson about the role of hope in the midst of continual conflict and the prospect of nuclear warfare.

Continuation of an ancient conflict

In Wight’s view, the Cold War has a history that goes back over a thousand years: It is the continuation, in another form, of the ancient conflict between Byzantine and Latin Christianity, with Russia as the inheritor and organizer of the Byzantine East, America as the inheritor and organizer of the Catholic and Protestant West’. What was once a rivalry between two different religious systems is now a rivalry between two global superpowers.

If you ask Jim Payton, former professor of Eastern European studies at Redeemer University, he would probably agree with Wight on that point. In his article for Christian Courier this past year titled a war with 800-year-old roots, Payton shows that historically, Russian leaders have been attempting to return to the former glory of Kiyvan Rus, a dominant empire whose territory included modern-day Ukraine. Putin’s 2022 invasion is the most recent example of these attempts. 

Russia also has a lingering suspicion of Western Europe. Six years ago, when NATO officially acknowledged Ukraine’s desire to join this military alliance, Putin saw this as detrimental to Russia’s interests. Russia was not going to allow their little brother (Ukraine) to be absorbed by the West. Putin has made that clear in his presidential speech this past February. 

For the last 30 years, “Ukraine has turned toward Europe,” writes Payton, “and [Russia] is anything but pleased.” Wight and Payton may be emphasizing different themes in this East-West rivalry. But, given Putin’s increasing fear of the West and Russia’s never-ending journey to reclaim power, the Ukraine War seems to be another chapter in the ancient conflict between Russia and the West. 

Similar to Oppenheimer’s scorpion analogy, Wight compares Russia and the U.S. to two leviathans: their “law is self-preservation,” and their “appetite is for power.” On this basis, Wight implies that cooperation between Russia and the U.S. is unlikely and a nuclear war is a real possibility. This begs the question, is there any reason to have hope when these two superpowers have been stuck in a centuries-old stalemate?

Disaster and hope 

I recently spoke with Liudumyla Shtanko, a refugee from Bucha, Ukraine and the principal of the Ukrainian Institute for Arts and Sciences. Soon after the 2022 invasion, her campus was ruined by the Russian military and her city became one of the worst sites of torture in Ukraine. But, by the grace of God, she fled to Germany, along with some of the school’s faculty and students. 

I asked Liudumyla how she was able to maintain hope during such terrifying times. While it has been difficult, Liudumyla often recounts God’s miraculous hand at work after the invasion: “On February 24, we had no transport, but everyone was evacuated. On March 4, shells hit the campus, but the buildings were not destroyed. On March 10, we were able to evacuate all refugees from the campus when Bucha was occupied. . .” Liudumyla’s story attests to God’s active efforts to save his people, especially in the darkest of times. It reminds me of a quote by the Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “faith sees best in the dark.” 

A similar theme runs through Wight’s ironic description of the virtue of hope: “There is a way of foretelling the inevitability of disaster which is theologically responsible and informed with – not optimism, but with hope.” Faith can be strengthened in the dark in the same way that hope can be found amid disaster. The way to be “theologically responsible” in times of chaos is to keep hope vested in God’s promise of salvation and remember his plan to redeem the earth from strife. After all, in Matthew 24, Christ said that when nations rise against nations, it is a signpost of his return. 

Wight quotes the theologian C.H. Dodd, who writes, “every historical crisis is . . . a rehearsal for the real thing.” Maybe a better way to see it is to treat every historical crisis as an opportunity to rehearse the real thing. That way, you could say Liudumyla’s story of leading the refugees out of a warzone is a practice run for the finale of God’s grand redemptive project at the end of history. 

Since I have spent a great deal of my time reading Wight’s essays for my undergraduate thesis, I cannot help but ask: If Martin Wight were still alive today, how would he respond to the Ukraine War? I believe he would first reveal the historical context to show the repetition of East-West conflict and then offer a reason to maintain hope despite this perpetual stalemate between Russia and the West: “[e]ven if it is not God’s purpose to intervene, it does not invalidate hope, because the object of hope is not particular things God may allow in history, but God himself.”