WITH the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, on Nov. 24, the last Sunday of the Catholic liturgical year, let's ponder what happens when humanity tries to be supreme ruler replacing God.One word: hell.From ancient and colonial empires to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia's predecessor state that spread communism worldwide from 1917 to 1991, seekers of global dominance have followed the fate of Ozymandias in the 1818 poem of Percy Bysshe Shelley:'And on the pedestal, these words appear: 'I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.'Or as the Prophet Daniel declared (Dn 2:44): 'In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never by destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.'Still, empire builder after empire builder till today aspires for endless supremacy, spawning the scourge rightly described by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the American Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in the Western Hemisphere, who declared: 'War is hell.'The superpower temptationAmerica is the latest global power lured by the impossible but tempting vision of endless world dominance despite the crushing conflicts of empire building. The goal of lasting hegemony is plain in United States President Joe Biden's National Security Strategy, which declares as its top global priority 'Out-Competing China and Constraining Russia.'With Washington and London's recent nod for Ukraine to fire their missiles at Russia, prompting Moscow to warn of possible nuclear retaliation against the US and the United Kingdom, this quest for global power again brings the threat of devastating conflict eight decades after World War II.The US once shunned conflicts outside the Americas, apart from conquering the Philippines early last century and reluctantly fighting in the First and Second World Wars. But since becoming a global power around 1950 as the British Empire declined, America has mounted some 200 military actions abroad, half of them after the USSR collapsed 33 years ago and Washington remained the sole superpower.In Asia, Americans fought in seven major conflicts: the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902, the Second World War from 1941 to 1945, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1975, the two Gulf Wars from 1990 to 1991 and in 2003, and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021.On Russia's Feb. 2022 invasion, critics, including American academics Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, have blamed the West because US leaders since then-president Bill Clinton in 1992 disregarded pledges to Moscow by top officials of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) not to expand NATO after Germany's 1990 reunification and even to invite Russia in (https://tinyurl.com/5ad2u95c).Fulfilling that promise would have greatly advanced peace in Europe and the world. But America was seduced by the goal of cementing its global dominance and spreading its liberal ideology by enlarging NATO.Thus, successive presidents from Clinton to Barack Obama and Biden pushed to expand the alliance closer and closer to Russia, despite objections even from Western diplomats and foreign policy and security chiefs, including George Kennan, architect of the Cold War strategy to contain Soviet communism.That led to the Ukraine wars of 2014 and 2022 till now, as incisively recounted by Mearsheimer. NATO 'got away with two tranches' of expansion in 1999 and 2004, said the West Point- and Cornell-educated University of Chicago politics professor. 'But in 2008, the trouble started' when the alliance eyed Ukraine and Georgia.Russian President Vladimir Putin, continued Mearsheimer, 'made it unequivocally clear [bringing Ukraine into NATO] would lead to the destruction of Ukraine.' At the organization's 2008 summit, the professor added, France and Germany 'unequivocally opposed' Ukraine's entry. Putin would see it as 'a declaration of war,' warned Germany's then-chancellor Angela Merkel.'Neocon' hegemonism'This decision to expand NATO into Ukraine was irresponsible in the extreme because of the consequences for the Ukrainian people ... for Ukraine as a functioning society — it's being destroyed,' Mearsheimer told Australia's former deputy prime minister John Anderson. 'This could have been avoided had we not tried to expand NATO into Ukraine' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emD1cN2xEz4).Indeed, over a month before war erupted, Sachs urged the Biden administration to seriously consider Russia's call for Ukraine neutrality, but he was ignored. And when Moscow and Kyiv agreed in March 2022 to end Russia's weeks-old invasion if Ukraine stayed neutral, American and British leaders pressed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to scrap the deal and keep fighting with NATO arms to 'weaken Russia,' as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said then.Thus, more than half a million people died, many millions of Ukrainians have fled, Ukraine's cities and infrastructure are devastated, vast territory is lost — and Russia is stronger militarily and economically with the most powerful army in Europe since World War II. Plus, NATO has drawn down arms stockpiles, prompting the US Indo-Pacific Command to warn that it sorely lacks precision munitions.Now, so-called neoconservatives in the US government and military, unrelenting in seeking American supremacy and arms buildup, prodded Biden to let Ukraine strike Russia with US missiles, which the UK also did. Moscow has now put its nuclear forces on the highest alert and fired a medium-range ballistic missile into Ukraine to warn Washington.As this column cautioned in January, neocons may be provoking an armed confrontation to get Americans pushing for military escalation abroad — the very opposite of Trump's agenda to end conflicts and minimize overseas interventions.May our Lord, having elevated a peace-seeking US president-elect, now guide world leaders to rebuff war-making hegemons and militarists — symbolized by the First and Second Horsemen in the Book of Revelation (Rev 6:1–4) — and return to the path of peace under his everlasting kingship. Amen.
