Yesterday, the NY Times ran an excellent article examining how NATO's truly crusading spirit threatens to intensify the schism between Western and Eastern Orthodox Christendom, to potentially grave political effect. I have posted this article in its entirety below:
A New Collision of West and East
By Serge Schmemann
For Americans who never gave much if any thought to Kosovo until the terrible stories and images began to emerge of Albanians in flight from an evil man called Slobodan Milosevic, it might have come as something of a rude shock last week that other countries, like Russia or Greece, seemed to actually see the United States and NATO as the bad guys for bombing Yugoslavia.
Milosevic and his ever-shrinking Yugoslavia, after all, were already responsible for infamous ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. And, President Clinton explained, the United States had a moral obligation to block them before the nastiness in Kosovo spilled over and threatened Yugoslavia's neighbors, Europe itself and even America's national interest.
Yet Russians were venting bitter fury at the United States as Greek Orthodox leaders around the world condemned the bombing. Russia demonstratively sent a spy ship into the Adriatic. The ruling Synod of the Orthodox Church in Greece issued a statement expressing "pain at the military attacks against a heroic and glorious Christian people, such as the Serbs."And very early on, Greece was arguing within NATO councils for a quick end to the bombing.
The reactions raise the question of whether there is in fact an Orthodox world in the East that differs fundamentally from the West in its values and principles, that perceives the NATO attacks not as a morally justified crusade against a clear and present evil, but as a hypocritical Western assault against an Eastern Orthodox nation.
In a poignant statement that circulated by e-mail among Orthodox churches in America, Father Sava of the Serbian Orthodox Church -- a church whose patriarch and bishops have consistently and courageously opposed Milosevic -- bitterly derided the Western logic for the bombing:
"The ironic statements that the goal of this operation is to prevent suffering of civilians are absolutely hypocritical and tragic,"the message said. "President Clinton speaks sweet words to the Serbian people while the bombers mercilessly destroy schools, kindergartens and fill the hearts of children with hatred against the peoples which they believed were their friends and supporters of true peace and democracy."
Such protests seem to support the thesis made popular by Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard in his book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," (Simon & Schuster, 1996) that the world is not moving inevitably toward Western values, as the West's victory in the Cold War seemed to promise, but, on the contrary, that it is moving toward a clash of cultures in which the Western model is confronted by increasingly assertive civilizations of the East -- Islamic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Orthodox Christian.
Kosovo certainly has all the elements of a case in point: Here is a democratic West, its humanitarian instincts repelled by the barbarous inhumanity of the Orthodox Serbs, going to war on behalf of largely Muslim Albanians, all to a chorus of denunciations from the Orthodox world. The substance of the conflict may not be clear to Americans, who persist in believing that the rest of the world is "like us," or at least should want to be, Huntington said in an interview.
"But in Europe and elsewhere people certainly recognize the idea of dividing lines," he said. "West Europeans know what West Europe is; people in Orthodox countries know that however much they want to be in the European Union, they are in a different world.
"Certainly one of the fascinating things is the changing pattern of alliances. Russia and Greece are very close now. There is a substantial Russian presence on the Greek part of Cyprus, Russia provided missiles to the Cypriot government, and Greece actively supported Serbia in the Bosnian wars."
Other scholars agree that there is something to the notion of viewing the Balkans as a fault line between Western and Eastern civilizations. But as in all efforts to impose comprehensive templates on specific conflicts, there are also problems. For one thing, the Serb-Albanian conflict is more territorial and tribal than cultural or religious. Xenophobic passions have been fanned to murderous levels by dictators in the East, the West and everywhere else, whether under Hitler or Hutu warlords. Russia's reactions reflect not only support for southern Slavic Orthodox brothers -- who were seen as adversaries in the Soviet era -- but also resentment at no longer being treated as a superpower. Greek support reflects not only a shared confession but a shared history of domination by the Turks.
"It's attractive to see this as a lab for Huntington's thesis," said Jaroslav Pelikan, professor emeritus of history at Yale. "If you put Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic into the mix in Croatia, Bosnia and now this, it does seem to fit. But it gets confused."
Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of the journal Foreign Affairs, where Huntington laid out his thesis in an article in 1993, agreed. "I myself am always skeptical of such explanations," he said. "I find states somewhat less sentimental about these things."
Yet it is hard to dispute that on the Eastern side, at least, the anger at NATO's bombing is at least in part a reflection of a deeper sense of difference and exclusion. The eastern borders of NATO, Pelikan noted, are unmistakably similar to the division of the Roman Empire under Diocletian in the 3rd century or the separation of the Orthodox and Catholic churches.
The recent expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic -- all Catholic or Protestant countries -- while excluding the Orthodox states of Bulgaria and Romania affirmed a sense that the West was promoting its own into its exclusive club. The Poles, for example, have always insisted that their Catholicism is their true membership card in the West, even if they are ethnic cousins of the Russians.
And while Greece is in NATO and the European Union, it has always felt itself a junior member of the Western club, included for geographical, not cultural, reasons. The Greeks know that they were Byzantium, and that Orthodoxy's spiritual leader is a Greek with the title of Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin once noted that a trip from Russia to Greece is not really going abroad.
That history has served to inculcate in the Orthodox a sense of uniqueness and otherness. The very word "orthodoxy" reflects a sense that they are the bearers of the true faith against the dissolute dilutions of Western Christianity and the apostasy of Islam. Often in that history, the West has been seen as a greater threat than the Islamic East. After the rampages of the Crusaders, who went to fight Islam and incidentally sacked Constantinople, the wisdom spread among Eastern Christians that "better the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope." Russia's medieval hero, Prince Alexander Nevsky, entered national lore because he battled the Teutonic Knights, even though he made peace with the Mongols. Moscow's proclamation of itself as the "Third Rome," and then as the convener of the "First International," reflected its perception of itself as not only the capital of an empire, but of a civilization, and it is as such that it still lays claim to a voice in world affairs.
Even when the West is not seen as a conscious enemy, it is seen to be blind or patronizing. When elements of nationalism appear in the Russian Orthodox Church, clerics complain, it is seen to flow from the very nature of a religion denied the intellectual advantages of the Enlightenment or Reformation; when the same elements surface among Irish Catholics or American Christian fundamentalists, they are treated as exceptions to Western culture.
These feelings run strong in the current conflict over Kosovo. Though the large majority of Orthodox, including the Serbs, are undoubtedly horrified at the ethnic purge under way against the Albanians in Kosovo, there is also a powerful resentment against NATO for what is seen as hypocrisy and condescension. Again and again, the argument is heard that the West is not even aware of Albanian actions against Serbian Kosovars in the recent past, or that NATO did nothing to help the Kurds in Turkey, or the Tutsis in Rwanda. There is fury that in its simplistic faith in the efficacy of bombing, the West is only consolidating Milosevic's power and demonizing the entire Serbian nation.
"What irritates the Greeks is the unfairness of it, the disproportionality, that the other point of view is not heard," said the Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New York.
"There is a sense that the Orthodox are quickly stereotyped and quickly demonized," said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America.
What is alarming, he added, was that the demonstrators in Moscow, Athens or Belgrade include not only ultra-nationalists, but apparently average young people. Even among the most pro-Western Russians and Serbs, he said, there is a growing resentment over Washington's approach.
"It worries me that this could be the beginning of a process that will lead to a new polarization," he said. "Once again, between East and West."
And while Greece is in NATO and the European Union, it has always felt itself a junior member of the Western club, included for geographical, not cultural, reasons. The Greeks know that they were Byzantium, and that Orthodoxy's spiritual leader is a Greek with the title of Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin once noted that a trip from Russia to Greece is not really going abroad.
That history has served to inculcate in the Orthodox a sense of uniqueness and otherness. The very word "orthodoxy" reflects a sense that they are the bearers of the true faith against the dissolute dilutions of Western Christianity and the apostasy of Islam. Often in that history, the West has been seen as a greater threat than the Islamic East. After the rampages of the Crusaders, who went to fight Islam and incidentally sacked Constantinople, the wisdom spread among Eastern Christians that "better the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope." Russia's medieval hero, Prince Alexander Nevsky, entered national lore because he battled the Teutonic Knights, even though he made peace with the Mongols. Moscow's proclamation of itself as the "Third Rome," and then as the convener of the "First International," reflected its perception of itself as not only the capital of an empire, but of a civilization, and it is as such that it still lays claim to a voice in world affairs.
Even when the West is not seen as a conscious enemy, it is seen to be blind or patronizing. When elements of nationalism appear in the Russian Orthodox Church, clerics complain, it is seen to flow from the very nature of a religion denied the intellectual advantages of the Enlightenment or Reformation; when the same elements surface among Irish Catholics or American Christian fundamentalists, they are treated as exceptions to Western culture.
These feelings run strong in the current conflict over Kosovo. Though the large majority of Orthodox, including the Serbs, are undoubtedly horrified at the ethnic purge under way against the Albanians in Kosovo, there is also a powerful resentment against NATO for what is seen as hypocrisy and condescension. Again and again, the argument is heard that the West is not even aware of Albanian actions against Serbian Kosovars in the recent past, or that NATO did nothing to help the Kurds in Turkey, or the Tutsis in Rwanda. There is fury that in its simplistic faith in the efficacy of bombing, the West is only consolidating Milosevic's power and demonizing the entire Serbian nation.
"What irritates the Greeks is the unfairness of it, the disproportionality, that the other point of view is not heard," said the Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New York.
"There is a sense that the Orthodox are quickly stereotyped and quickly demonized," said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America.
What is alarming, he added, was that the demonstrators in Moscow, Athens or Belgrade include not only ultra-nationalists, but apparently average young people. Even among the most pro-Western Russians and Serbs, he said, there is a growing resentment over Washington's approach.
"It worries me that this could be the beginning of a process that will lead to a new polarization," he said. "Once again, between East and West."
[end of article]
Carl Remick