Only force can compel Putin to engage in dialogue

Rome. “Russian attacks are deliberately targeting civilian sites and, although Ukrainian air defences manage to shoot down some of the missiles and drones, others get through. Innocent people are being killed and families are losing their homes as a result of this campaign, which is intentionally designed to cause civilian casualties. This is not war. It is terrorism.” These words were written by George Weigel in a brief commentary in First Things. Weigel is a biographer of John Paul II and a leading figure among the neoconservatives, who were particularly critical of Karol Wojtyla’s pacifist ‘turn’ during the 2003 conflict against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Weigel’s remarks form part of a broader discussion on the hot topic of the moment: dialogue. 

Weigel summarises events from 2022 to the present day, noting that “Kyiv should not be forced to endure all this”. He begins by drawing a comparison with the Japanese during the Second World War, for whom surrender was a disgrace and who therefore had to fight to the death, if necessary. “Russian barbarism in Ukraine is even worse,” writes Weigel, “because it is allegedly justified by invoking Christian faith and truth.” The war is being waged in the name of God, as is evident from the grim homily delivered at the start of the conflict by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who justified the aggression ordered by Vladimir Putin as a ‘religiously justified’ holy war between Christian Russia and the satanic West, to which Ukraine aspired to join.” A – as Weigel observes – “sacrilegious campaign aimed at blessing what cannot be justified has continued ever since and has been condemned by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the ‘first among equals’ in the leadership of the Orthodox Churches”. And this brings us to the central point. Given the situation, it is legitimate to raise “urgent questions about the limits of dialogue in certain historical circumstances”. This is, in a way, the gist of what Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher (the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States) during their meeting two days ago in Kyiv: dialogue is wonderful and indispensable, but how can it take place when the other side refuses to come to the negotiating table and bombs every Ukrainian city day and night? Weigel recalls Winston Churchill, “who in 1940 was prepared to resort even to the use of mustard gas to halt a possible German invasion of Britain”, but who, as a general principle, maintained that it was “better to talk face to face than to wage war”. This is why the Pope’s constant calls for dialogue are certainly not in vain; he consistently reminds us that war always represents a defeat for humanity. These are not empty or mere platitudes: “We are rational beings, endowed with the gift of reason, which should enable us to resolve our conflicts without resorting to mass violence”. For this reason, writes the American intellectual, “the failure of rational debate to resolve conflicts is always a cause for regret”. That said, he points out, we must also regret other things, such as “surrendering to tyranny”. The real genocide currently taking place, he emphasises, is that in Ukraine, where an attempt is being made to wipe out a nation and its culture. The world (or a large part of it) is acquiescent, failing to provide support ‘by every possible means’ to those who, ‘risking their lives every day, are resisting the tyrants and murderers who deliberately target civilians in an attempt to break the will to resist of an entire country’. For this reason too, in short, limiting oneself to dialogue fails to do justice to the complexity of the problem. Indeed, “a proportionate and targeted use of armed force can create the conditions to make possible the kind of dialogue capable of leading to a peace founded on security, freedom and justice”. There are, in fact, situations “in which genuine dialogue and real negotiations become possible only when the aggressor (or those who keep them in power) realises not only that their attempts at conquest are doomed to failure, but also that the continuation of the aggression entails unsustainable costs”. It is then that the conditions may arise – though this is neither a certainty nor a dogma – for reason “to finally play its part in resolving the conflict”. And this, according to George Weigel, is the situation in Ukraine today.