A slow day at work has given me opportunity to engage in an interesting discussion about the problem of evil. For this Fatima blog, it's a relevant question in light of the history of communism in the last century and today's upheavals in the Muslim Middle East.
As a start, the testimony of Scripture - from Joseph's ordeal to Israel's Babylonian exile to none other than the Cross of Calvary itself - is very clear-cut: Yes, evil is deliberately permitted by God to carry out his own purposes.
Next, while God wishes the good to resist evil, he often uses evil to purify the good even further - often showing them in the process that they're not really that 'good' anyway, because in the end only he himself is good.
Consider the Bible's principal example of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers in the Genesis account. As Joseph himself later admitted to his brothers: "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." In other words, the great Israelite patriarch goes even further than to say that good eventually came out of evil - he actually relabels the evil that befell him as a good (!?).
We can surmise from the basic facts of his story as to why this was so. Joseph was, after all, an incredibly arrogant kid before his brothers turned violently on him - despite the fact that he was objectively the most deserving of Jacob's sons, or more accurately because of that very fact. Most likely, in the early weeks and months of his captivity (which were undoubtedly the hardest), he had plenty of time to contemplate the depths of his sin of pride against his brethren in tactlessly sharing with them his dreams of future dominion over them. "I just had it coming to me," he would have realized.
Thus, years later, without a shred of doubt that it was the terrible ordeal of exile and enslavement that gave him the supreme virtue of humility - and that all his gifts and blessings since then were merely fruits of that same humility - Joseph could say quite plainly, whether to himself or to anyone, "The evil which was done to me was actually the best thing that could ever have happened to me."
History itself bears witness through countless similar examples of how so much greater good comes out of evil that, in the end, one might wonder if all of it is actually a mirror of Joseph's experience of purification through humiliation - ultimately, of the Messiah's own glorification through the supreme subjugation of the Cross.
Now, does this mean we're to just raise up our hands and surrender to evil, thereby enabling it under the assumption that it's actually a good thing eventually? I hope not! But when we're backed into a corner by other free human beings who in the exercise of their freewill - which often expresses itself through apathy as opposed to action - turn the world into an inhospitable place for our values and beliefs, perhaps it won't hurt to ask ourselves, "If we don't win, might it just be possible that defeat is necessary for greater victory down the road?"
Now if this doesn't scandalize you, I suggest you see a psychiatrist. If you think I'm certifiably crazy, that's a good and normal thing.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Remembering Lithuania's freedom struggle - and what it means today
The plucky little Baltic nation of Lithuania celebrated the 25th anniversary of its freedom - which triggered the dissolution of the Soviet Union throughout the year 1991 - at a time when it is once more on the front lines of confrontation between autocratic East and democratic West.
Along with Poland - to which it has been joined previously - and western Ukraine, Catholic Lithuania has traditionally been the "east of the West" in light of its Western religious heritage at the crossroads of the East-West, Catholic-Orthodox ecclesial schism. In this sense, it has always been a more reliable buffer against Russian influence into central and western Europe - today's free and liberal EU "core" - than its Baltic neighbors to the north, Latvia and Estonia, and in fact even more so than much larger Western stalwart Finland, all of which share Lithuania's history of periods of domination by Russia.
So it was no surprise that after Catholic Poland, inspired by its native Pope St. John Paul II, led the wave of east European communist bloc revolutions of 1989, Catholic Lithuania would be the first of the dominoes to fall within the Soviet Union itself shortly thereafter. The 1989 upheavals compelled the Soviet Union to adopt a new federated structure for its component socialist republics, quickly allowing for a new nationality and ethnicity-based power system within all 15 of them that brought such reformers as Russia's Boris Yeltsin to the forefront of day-to-day governance of their new federal republics. In practical terms, this amounted to a dismemberment of the Soviet Union: in the individual republics, but especially the most anti-communist ones such as the Baltics, the traditional trans-republic Soviet state apparatus found itself increasingly bypassed and marginalized, and in Lithuania's case it reached a point where it could no longer even function because of popular obstruction, which could only be suppressed violently.
The standoff on January 13, 1991, at the Vilnius TV tower turned out to be the crack in the Soviet edifice that, in a matter of months, would prove fatal. The Soviet military crackdown claimed 14 lives and injured hundreds, but was a death knell for communist legitimacy in the Lithuanian federal socialist republic, which dissolved its union with Moscow. Only seven months later, largely because of fears that the Lithuanian example would soon be imitated by other republics, Kremlin hardliners overthrew Gorbachev in a coup, setting the stage for their complete defeat by reformists of the Russian federal republic led by Yeltsin. Ironically, by acting to keep other small federal republics like Georgia from pulling a Lithuania, these hardliners turned the dominant central republic - Russia itself - against the Soviet Union, too.
And that bring us back to today's Russia-West crisis over Ukraine. As a young Lithuanian father has just been quoted at the memorial:
Today, however, while Russia's neighbors have vivid memories of oppression by Moscow (and even St. Petersburg earlier) that have been passed down to the rising generation, it is the rising generation of Russians themselves who have no memory of actually having oppressed foreigners beyond the post-Soviet borders. They are now fed a constant barrage of nationalist fervor by an increasingly populist government which plays up the story - at least somewhat based in reality - of a hostile United States bent on military domination through NATO expansion ever closer to Russia proper.
So if you're Pole or Lithuanian or western (Catholic) Ukrainian today, the onus is largely on you. Your salvation lies not in securing Western and especially American military support - to include perhaps even a nuclear deterrent on your territory - because that plays right into the Kremlin's arguments that foreigners are plotting to humiliate Russian pride. No, peace in 2016 depends on the same thing that peace in 1991 depended on: winning the hearts and minds of the Russian people. And that has to make some allowance for their conservative militaristic tradition and fear of chaos without a strong autocratic ruler.
Russia's best friends in eastern Europe, in fact, are the very Ukrainian neo-fascists and Polish and Lithuanian extreme right-wing politicians with which it is a sworn foe. With their Kremlin-like contempt for liberal cultural and social values and a progressive open society, they threaten to turn the crisis on free Europe's frontiers into one between small thugs and a much bigger thug. That's exactly what Russian expansionists - of which Putin is by no means the most extreme - want.
Along with Poland - to which it has been joined previously - and western Ukraine, Catholic Lithuania has traditionally been the "east of the West" in light of its Western religious heritage at the crossroads of the East-West, Catholic-Orthodox ecclesial schism. In this sense, it has always been a more reliable buffer against Russian influence into central and western Europe - today's free and liberal EU "core" - than its Baltic neighbors to the north, Latvia and Estonia, and in fact even more so than much larger Western stalwart Finland, all of which share Lithuania's history of periods of domination by Russia.
So it was no surprise that after Catholic Poland, inspired by its native Pope St. John Paul II, led the wave of east European communist bloc revolutions of 1989, Catholic Lithuania would be the first of the dominoes to fall within the Soviet Union itself shortly thereafter. The 1989 upheavals compelled the Soviet Union to adopt a new federated structure for its component socialist republics, quickly allowing for a new nationality and ethnicity-based power system within all 15 of them that brought such reformers as Russia's Boris Yeltsin to the forefront of day-to-day governance of their new federal republics. In practical terms, this amounted to a dismemberment of the Soviet Union: in the individual republics, but especially the most anti-communist ones such as the Baltics, the traditional trans-republic Soviet state apparatus found itself increasingly bypassed and marginalized, and in Lithuania's case it reached a point where it could no longer even function because of popular obstruction, which could only be suppressed violently.
The standoff on January 13, 1991, at the Vilnius TV tower turned out to be the crack in the Soviet edifice that, in a matter of months, would prove fatal. The Soviet military crackdown claimed 14 lives and injured hundreds, but was a death knell for communist legitimacy in the Lithuanian federal socialist republic, which dissolved its union with Moscow. Only seven months later, largely because of fears that the Lithuanian example would soon be imitated by other republics, Kremlin hardliners overthrew Gorbachev in a coup, setting the stage for their complete defeat by reformists of the Russian federal republic led by Yeltsin. Ironically, by acting to keep other small federal republics like Georgia from pulling a Lithuania, these hardliners turned the dominant central republic - Russia itself - against the Soviet Union, too.
And that bring us back to today's Russia-West crisis over Ukraine. As a young Lithuanian father has just been quoted at the memorial:
"I was just a kid back them, but remember my parents were scared," he said. "It was people, not some army, who defended their country and right to be free..."Therein lies the key to peace - both yesterday, today, and in the future. The events of 1989-1991 were a victory of people power, because in the end even the Russian people stood up against a system whose oppression of neighboring peoples, including long-despised Poles and Lithuanians, they could consent to no longer.
Today, however, while Russia's neighbors have vivid memories of oppression by Moscow (and even St. Petersburg earlier) that have been passed down to the rising generation, it is the rising generation of Russians themselves who have no memory of actually having oppressed foreigners beyond the post-Soviet borders. They are now fed a constant barrage of nationalist fervor by an increasingly populist government which plays up the story - at least somewhat based in reality - of a hostile United States bent on military domination through NATO expansion ever closer to Russia proper.
So if you're Pole or Lithuanian or western (Catholic) Ukrainian today, the onus is largely on you. Your salvation lies not in securing Western and especially American military support - to include perhaps even a nuclear deterrent on your territory - because that plays right into the Kremlin's arguments that foreigners are plotting to humiliate Russian pride. No, peace in 2016 depends on the same thing that peace in 1991 depended on: winning the hearts and minds of the Russian people. And that has to make some allowance for their conservative militaristic tradition and fear of chaos without a strong autocratic ruler.
Russia's best friends in eastern Europe, in fact, are the very Ukrainian neo-fascists and Polish and Lithuanian extreme right-wing politicians with which it is a sworn foe. With their Kremlin-like contempt for liberal cultural and social values and a progressive open society, they threaten to turn the crisis on free Europe's frontiers into one between small thugs and a much bigger thug. That's exactly what Russian expansionists - of which Putin is by no means the most extreme - want.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Fatima and the meaning of eschatological prophecy as a whole
When he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2000 the future Pope Benedict XVI, as head of the Church's authoritative Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote the Vatican's official commentary on the "secret of Fatima" whose third part had finally been disclosed after five-sixths of an entire century.
Arguably the key remark of the account of the most famous prophetic vision of the modern era is the following, near its conclusion:
After all, this is the essence of the Gospel itself: God did not need us in order to create us, but He most definitely needs us in order to save us. In the end, we must choose to give God the sovereignty over our destiny that leads to our salvation; conversely, none of us can go to Hell unless we really choose to go there.
Such is our attitude of faith in assessing not merely the secret of Fatima, but all eschatological prophecy and revelation, whether in modern times or going as far back as such Apocalyptic texts of sacred Scripture like those of Daniel, Ezekiel, and St. John.
To state it again, since it cannot be stressed enough: the whole purpose of end-time prophecy is to present the free human soul with the consequences of human decisions, so as to guide that soul to choose the path lighted by faith.
Arguably the key remark of the account of the most famous prophetic vision of the modern era is the following, near its conclusion:
The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction.If a believer takes nothing else away from Fatima, it should be this simple affirmation that his or her free will choices have the power to direct human history according to the will and plan of God. And without this founding principle, even the most zealous devotion to this Marian revelation will have missed the whole point.
After all, this is the essence of the Gospel itself: God did not need us in order to create us, but He most definitely needs us in order to save us. In the end, we must choose to give God the sovereignty over our destiny that leads to our salvation; conversely, none of us can go to Hell unless we really choose to go there.
Such is our attitude of faith in assessing not merely the secret of Fatima, but all eschatological prophecy and revelation, whether in modern times or going as far back as such Apocalyptic texts of sacred Scripture like those of Daniel, Ezekiel, and St. John.
To state it again, since it cannot be stressed enough: the whole purpose of end-time prophecy is to present the free human soul with the consequences of human decisions, so as to guide that soul to choose the path lighted by faith.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Fatima in light of today's turmoil
The Blessed Virgin Mary - venerated by Catholic and Orthodox Christians and even by some Muslims - has been Heaven's chosen vessel in modern times to guide the human race with the light of faith in the darkness of a world of deep, irreconcilable conflicts and hatreds.
On July 13, 1917, Mary made a famous prophecy in an apparition to three child visionaries in Fatima, Portugal, that many Catholics believe to hold the key to understanding the history of the 20th century. Specifically, she referred to the rise of communism in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, which would ultimately trigger a cataclysmic conflict greater than the then-raging First World War (1914-1918) - that is, the Second World War (1939-1945) - and also unleash a terrible persecution of the Christian faith worldwide at the hands of a violent brand of atheism; she gave assurance, however, that in the end this evil would be defeated, that Russia would return to faith, and that a period of peace will be granted to humanity.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later were widely seen by Catholic devotees of Our Lady of Fatima as the fulfillment of her 1917 prophecy, especially in the optimistic early years of the post-Cold War era; now, however, with the world apparently descending into a new era of conflict, the dissenting voices which have never been completely silent have grown louder.
However, even the small minority of practicing Catholics who have ever cared about the Fatima message and prophecy have been unable to piece together the historic and current facts of our world to gain a sufficient understanding of where we really stand in light of the Virgin's stupendous promise of a peaceful world a century ago. There is some realization that recent events concerning Vladimir Putin's Russia - his aggression against Ukraine and intervention in Syria - are highly significant, but no clear conception of just what exactly this is.
Russia, for its part, has never officially accepted the Catholic Fatima revelation: not surprisingly, the Russian Orthodox Church has never welcomed Our Lady of Fatima's word in the early 20th century that of all countries in the world, Russia specifically had to be recalled from apostasy and back to the Christian faith. Even so, it is proud of its role in ending the atheist totalitarian Soviet empire: a revived Orthodox identity was the fundamental reason why Russia first refused to crack down on the empire's eastern European subjects in 1989, before leading the Soviet republics themselves to dissolve the USSR in 1991. And in 2004, Putin's Russia welcomed the return of its holiest Orthodox icon, that of Our Lady of Kazan, from a long and tortuous exile in the West in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution.
But today in 2016, the message and prophecy of Fatima have taken on a new relevance and urgency with the dramatically unfolding events in the Middle East.
Fatima itself is the name of none other than the beloved daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. She married Ali, the Prophet's cousin and the first professor of the creed he preached, with whom she bore the line of the twelve imams of Shia Islam. She was at the very heart of the succession struggle for leadership of Islam - "Caliph" - upon her father's death, which pitted her husband Ali's faction, "Shi'atu 'Ali" or "Shia", against Mohammed's other early followers who were not so immediately related by blood but more numerous and powerful as members of the broader community which adhered to the "Sunnah", or practices, prescribed by the Prophet, and hence "Sunni".
This history ultimately lies at the root of the sectarian unrest that has engulfed the Middle East, with the breakup of the formerly unitary states of Iraq and Syria, the rise of ISIS, and a virtual proxy war between a Sunni bloc led by Saudi Arabia and the Shia coalition headed by Iran. The epicenter of this proxy war is Syria: the dictatorship there is run by an offshoot of Shi'ism, the Alawite sect, which Iran along with its sectarian sub-state surrogates throughout the region, notably the powerful Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah, has propped up in the nearly five-year-old civil war against various rebel groups, including Sunni jihad groups, heavily backed by Saudi Arabia in league with the other oil-rich Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf and also the other great Sunni regional power, Turkey.
In 2014, this wider Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict dramatically escalated with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a virulently extreme brand of Sunni fundamentalism whose violence proved too great even for its erstwhile ally against the Syrian government, Al Qaeda; from a large operating base in the desert hinterland of eastern Syria, ISIS quickly spread to the vast, disaffected Sunni areas of neighboring Iraq, which since the 2003 American overthrow of Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein have never been content under the new Shia-dominated national government. While ISIS officially seeks to displace the established Sunni states in the region and has been in open warfare with the less extreme Sunni opposition groups against the Syrian regime as well as the regime itself (including even Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front), it poses a greater long-term threat to Iran and the Shia bloc, which have accused Saudi, Turkey, and the Gulf states of surreptitiously aiding and abetting it.
In the fall of 2015, a dramatic new dimension of the conflict emerged with the intervention of Russia in Syria on behalf of the Shia-Alawite regime and its Iranian-led allies with an airstrike campaign. In no small part because ISIS is heavily manned by Russian-speaking, ethnically Turkic Sunni Muslims from Russia's southern and Caucasian mountain regions - which have been restive ever since the Soviet breakup - Moscow saw it imperative to strengthen the Syrian state, which by then had become increasingly vulnerable to both ISIS and the anti-ISIS Sunni rebels. Not only would the fall of Syria rob Russia of its only naval outpost on the Mediterranean, but it would likely create a haven for Russian jihadists from which to launch and direct an insurgency in their homeland - against Moscow.
Thus, an "Axis of Fatima" has emerged: Russia, the nation specifically tied to the Fatima prophecy of last century, and the world of Shia Islam - which reveres Fatima the daughter of Mohammed in much the way that Catholics and Orthodox Christians venerate Mary - are now aligned together in a regional conflict in the Middle East with strong eschatological undertones. Indeed, Iraq and Syria are not only the cradles of civilization; Syria is intimately tied to the history of the chosen people of neighboring Israel, it is where Christ's followers were first called "Christians", and has always been a crucial crossroads of Islamic civilization. All three great monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have a tremendous interest in the unfolding events in the Middle East as it has undeniable implications for the prophetic end-time destiny of their creeds.
Adding more complexity to the situation is that Russia has just been engaged in a strategic confrontation with the West over bordering Ukraine. From early 2014 to early 2015, Russia-West relations reached their lowest point since the Cold War over Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and support for a separatist insurgency in the east of that country - actions regarded as naked aggression by the European Union and United States but as legitimate national security interests by Russia. Although the Minsk peace accord to stabilize the eastern Ukrainian front has generally been observed for nearly a year, Ukraine and Russia have all but severed traditionally intimate economic ties - a divorce whose fallout, if not contained, could greatly undermine the Russia-West understanding so necessary for global security.
As of January 2016, hopes for peace rest heavily on a kind of grand bargain between the two great camps vying for strategic influence in the Middle East: on the one hand, the United States, NATO, and the Sunni Muslim regional powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies; on the other, the "Axis of Fatima" of Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iran's Shia Muslim regional allies and proxies, especially in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
Should this peace be attained - even if it can only come through further purification by war and bloodshed - it will truly be the peace of Fatima.
On July 13, 1917, Mary made a famous prophecy in an apparition to three child visionaries in Fatima, Portugal, that many Catholics believe to hold the key to understanding the history of the 20th century. Specifically, she referred to the rise of communism in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, which would ultimately trigger a cataclysmic conflict greater than the then-raging First World War (1914-1918) - that is, the Second World War (1939-1945) - and also unleash a terrible persecution of the Christian faith worldwide at the hands of a violent brand of atheism; she gave assurance, however, that in the end this evil would be defeated, that Russia would return to faith, and that a period of peace will be granted to humanity.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later were widely seen by Catholic devotees of Our Lady of Fatima as the fulfillment of her 1917 prophecy, especially in the optimistic early years of the post-Cold War era; now, however, with the world apparently descending into a new era of conflict, the dissenting voices which have never been completely silent have grown louder.
However, even the small minority of practicing Catholics who have ever cared about the Fatima message and prophecy have been unable to piece together the historic and current facts of our world to gain a sufficient understanding of where we really stand in light of the Virgin's stupendous promise of a peaceful world a century ago. There is some realization that recent events concerning Vladimir Putin's Russia - his aggression against Ukraine and intervention in Syria - are highly significant, but no clear conception of just what exactly this is.
Russia, for its part, has never officially accepted the Catholic Fatima revelation: not surprisingly, the Russian Orthodox Church has never welcomed Our Lady of Fatima's word in the early 20th century that of all countries in the world, Russia specifically had to be recalled from apostasy and back to the Christian faith. Even so, it is proud of its role in ending the atheist totalitarian Soviet empire: a revived Orthodox identity was the fundamental reason why Russia first refused to crack down on the empire's eastern European subjects in 1989, before leading the Soviet republics themselves to dissolve the USSR in 1991. And in 2004, Putin's Russia welcomed the return of its holiest Orthodox icon, that of Our Lady of Kazan, from a long and tortuous exile in the West in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution.
But today in 2016, the message and prophecy of Fatima have taken on a new relevance and urgency with the dramatically unfolding events in the Middle East.
Fatima itself is the name of none other than the beloved daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. She married Ali, the Prophet's cousin and the first professor of the creed he preached, with whom she bore the line of the twelve imams of Shia Islam. She was at the very heart of the succession struggle for leadership of Islam - "Caliph" - upon her father's death, which pitted her husband Ali's faction, "Shi'atu 'Ali" or "Shia", against Mohammed's other early followers who were not so immediately related by blood but more numerous and powerful as members of the broader community which adhered to the "Sunnah", or practices, prescribed by the Prophet, and hence "Sunni".
This history ultimately lies at the root of the sectarian unrest that has engulfed the Middle East, with the breakup of the formerly unitary states of Iraq and Syria, the rise of ISIS, and a virtual proxy war between a Sunni bloc led by Saudi Arabia and the Shia coalition headed by Iran. The epicenter of this proxy war is Syria: the dictatorship there is run by an offshoot of Shi'ism, the Alawite sect, which Iran along with its sectarian sub-state surrogates throughout the region, notably the powerful Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah, has propped up in the nearly five-year-old civil war against various rebel groups, including Sunni jihad groups, heavily backed by Saudi Arabia in league with the other oil-rich Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf and also the other great Sunni regional power, Turkey.
In 2014, this wider Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict dramatically escalated with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a virulently extreme brand of Sunni fundamentalism whose violence proved too great even for its erstwhile ally against the Syrian government, Al Qaeda; from a large operating base in the desert hinterland of eastern Syria, ISIS quickly spread to the vast, disaffected Sunni areas of neighboring Iraq, which since the 2003 American overthrow of Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein have never been content under the new Shia-dominated national government. While ISIS officially seeks to displace the established Sunni states in the region and has been in open warfare with the less extreme Sunni opposition groups against the Syrian regime as well as the regime itself (including even Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front), it poses a greater long-term threat to Iran and the Shia bloc, which have accused Saudi, Turkey, and the Gulf states of surreptitiously aiding and abetting it.
In the fall of 2015, a dramatic new dimension of the conflict emerged with the intervention of Russia in Syria on behalf of the Shia-Alawite regime and its Iranian-led allies with an airstrike campaign. In no small part because ISIS is heavily manned by Russian-speaking, ethnically Turkic Sunni Muslims from Russia's southern and Caucasian mountain regions - which have been restive ever since the Soviet breakup - Moscow saw it imperative to strengthen the Syrian state, which by then had become increasingly vulnerable to both ISIS and the anti-ISIS Sunni rebels. Not only would the fall of Syria rob Russia of its only naval outpost on the Mediterranean, but it would likely create a haven for Russian jihadists from which to launch and direct an insurgency in their homeland - against Moscow.
Thus, an "Axis of Fatima" has emerged: Russia, the nation specifically tied to the Fatima prophecy of last century, and the world of Shia Islam - which reveres Fatima the daughter of Mohammed in much the way that Catholics and Orthodox Christians venerate Mary - are now aligned together in a regional conflict in the Middle East with strong eschatological undertones. Indeed, Iraq and Syria are not only the cradles of civilization; Syria is intimately tied to the history of the chosen people of neighboring Israel, it is where Christ's followers were first called "Christians", and has always been a crucial crossroads of Islamic civilization. All three great monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have a tremendous interest in the unfolding events in the Middle East as it has undeniable implications for the prophetic end-time destiny of their creeds.
Adding more complexity to the situation is that Russia has just been engaged in a strategic confrontation with the West over bordering Ukraine. From early 2014 to early 2015, Russia-West relations reached their lowest point since the Cold War over Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and support for a separatist insurgency in the east of that country - actions regarded as naked aggression by the European Union and United States but as legitimate national security interests by Russia. Although the Minsk peace accord to stabilize the eastern Ukrainian front has generally been observed for nearly a year, Ukraine and Russia have all but severed traditionally intimate economic ties - a divorce whose fallout, if not contained, could greatly undermine the Russia-West understanding so necessary for global security.
As of January 2016, hopes for peace rest heavily on a kind of grand bargain between the two great camps vying for strategic influence in the Middle East: on the one hand, the United States, NATO, and the Sunni Muslim regional powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies; on the other, the "Axis of Fatima" of Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iran's Shia Muslim regional allies and proxies, especially in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
Should this peace be attained - even if it can only come through further purification by war and bloodshed - it will truly be the peace of Fatima.
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