Trump administration has riled head of Catholic church over use of theology to justify conflict in Iran
The contrast in experience between the two men disagreeing over war and theology was striking.
On the one side was Pope Leo XIV, the first North American to head the Catholic church and the first cleric from the Augustinian order, who this week visited the modern Algerian city where Saint Augustine once lived. For Leo, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine’s ideas, it was the culmination of a lifelong intellectual interest.
On the other, the US vice-president, JD Vance, a very recent adult convert to Catholicism with no academic background in the history of the church’s thinking.
I don’t see anyone in the EU cheering for polish/ukrainian nukes or the same for Japan/SKorea, etc. MAD is not obvious in a multipolar world and alliances can shift quickly. E.g. China does not trust theocrats.
If Ukraine had kept their nukes, the war would have never happened to begin with… When countries give up nukes or nuke programs, they get invaded. Simple as that.
It’s not that simple, but generally I agree that Ukraine needs nukes. But you can’t have every country and their grandma rushing to nukes simply to ensure their sovereignty. You need blocks and sharing umbrellas at best, otherwise there are too many points of failure in a network of deterrence that it is inevitable that one careless or mistaken shot triggers full armageddon in 30 minutes.
PS: I’d suggest one nuke permit per civ/continent/trade block eg USA+partners, EU++, russia+whatever, China+partners, India, Pakistan++, African Union, Latin America, Indonesia?, Iran++?, Arab Countries?, Australia…starting to get messy now… The only problem left to solve here is the borders of the blocks and how countries decide to move from one block to the other eg Ukraine, Brexit, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, etc.