The role of religion in the new Cold War between democracy and authoritarianism. An excerpt from an upcoming article in Oxford University’s St. Antony’s International Review.

The recent political shifts on a global scale have led many observers to conclude that we are on the verge of a new Cold War. But it is not clear what the opposing sides are, nor how they are constituted. Some observers point to the rising tension between the United States and China as a new point of contestation. It is a conflict, to be sure, but it is essentially a bipolar one. To be a new Cold War one would expect it to have a global reach, and present opposing ideological basis for organizing public life.

            What is emerging at this point in the third decade of the 21^st century as an opposition on a global scale is the conflict between democracy and autocracy. Like the old Cold War, the states on either side do not always agree with one another. The Soviet Union and China were uneasy partners in the Communist bloc. But they leaned on each other for support in times when they had to face their ideological opponents—democratic capitalism in the case of the Communist partners. In an eerie way, global politics seems to be lining up in a similar kind of mass dichotomy between two uneasy though warring camps.

            The rise of authoritarian nationalism in recent years has been remarkable. The increasing control of Xi in China, the ascension of Putin as a Russian dictator, the emergence of Erdogan and al-Sisi as the strong men of Turkey and Egypt; the rigid regimes of South Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia; the dominance of Modi in India; and the authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration in the United States provide a counterweight to what was once a near-global acceptance of democracy. Though hounded by autocratic right wing parties, the democratic spirit still thrives in Europe, elsewhere in the Americas, and in much of Africa and Southeast Asia. The two sides are by no means united except in their persistence in the differing tracks on which they have traveled. And the confrontation is nearly global.

            The stance of Trump in disdaining traditional European democracies in favor of the autocracies of Russia, Hungary, Turkey and even North Korea is an example of these new alliances. When Russia reached out to Iran and North Korea for assistance in its invasion of Ukraine, it demonstrated the new alliances.

            What is particularly interesting to me, as someone who has observed the global connections between religion and politics over my now long career, is the role of religion in this new Cold War. Many of the new autocracies are openly built on religious nationalism. This is a development that has been several decades in the making, and it is striking to see it emerge as a dominant force in the present confrontation. In Russia, Putin leans on the Russian Orthodox church and its Patriarch Kirill for support. The regime of Saudi Arabia has built its power on the religious network of Wahhabi Islam, just as Iran’s theocracy is based on Shi’a institutions. In India, Modi wears his Hindu identity strongly, and his political party is based on an old Hindu nationalist movement that dates back to the beginning of India’s Independence movement. The support of Evangelical Protestant Christians in the United States has given Trump his strongest base. Religion is part of the emerging autocracies of the new Cold War.

            At one time I thought that it might be one side of a cold war, the conflict between religious and secular nationalism. Thirty years ago I published a book with the title, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State.[i]At the time it seemed a startling proposition that religion could play a role in a new kind of anti-secular authoritarian politics. Religion was, however, a significant part of the power politics of the Middle East, and religious nationalism was emerging as the rival to secular democracy in other parts of the world as well.

Fifteen years later the book was completely rewritten and reissued with the title Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. The reason for the change in title was that the revised book covered a wide range of non-state movements, some of them transnational such as al Qaeda. The role of religion in these oppositional politics was a potent force, but it was scattered among a broad range of movements. At the time, it seemed less like a global confrontation in the way that a Cold War would suggest, and more like a global rebellion.

            Today’s situation provides yet another context for thinking about the role of religion in global conflict. My original title, “the new Cold War,” again appears to be prescient. It is not, however, the way that I originally thought, or as I later revised my thinking. It is not that religious nationalism itself is one side of the confrontation or that it foments rebellions, but that it plays a significant role in buttressing the power and providing the mobilizing force of dictatorial regimes in the emerging global conflict of the present: the new Cold War between autocracy and democracy. 

            Hence, thirty years after I first published The New Cold War? the theme has returned. Religion provides the potency to shore up right-wing power, anti-immigrant hate and economic isolationism, and for that reason it is part of the equation in the current dichotomy between democracy and authoritarianism. For strongman regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, India, and now the United States, religion is often a way to connect the masses to a powerful state.

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[i] Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Four ways in which recent shifts in US policies affect the whole world

            After a hundred days of the most chaotic, bizarre and cruel administration in the history of the American Presidency, it is understandable that most people in the US would focus on the harm done to this country. The massive random firings of essential government workers, elimination of government agencies, a reign of fear accompanying savage immigration raids, flaunting of both courts and Congress, and economic disaster induced by tariffs are breathtaking.

            But the global implications are equally severe, and perhaps worse. Unlike many of the domestic policies enacted by executive order that can easily be reversed if an opposition party is allowed to stand for elections and win, the global damages may be longer lasting. And in some cases be irreversible. These are the worst:

Isolationism

            Tariffs will hit the US consumer as a sales tax on most of the things one might buy in Walmart, Target, or even the local supermarket. But it can also have an isolating effect. It is this administration’s US attempt to withdraw from the transnational manufacturing and marketing system that is the hallmark of the age of globalization. Ridiculously low prices for everything from t-shirts to toaster-ovens are the result.

            A few tariffs can be useful. Virtually every President has adopted some to protect fledgling US industries. President Joe Biden’s attempt to revive the computer chip industry in the US is an example of a case where tariffs might play a strategic role.

            But when nothing is being produced in the US and there is no government assistance in the massive task of rebuilding a manufacturing infrastructure in the US, tariffs simply isolate the US from the global world and cripple the domestic economy.

            It is not just economic isolationism, however. Trump distrusts NATO and the alliances that kept the world stable and safe. He wants to withdraw from the huge support that the US has given for Ukraine’s attempts to hold on to their democracy. This is their problem, he seems to say, and we don’t need to go around the world looking for trouble. He seems unaware that this trouble will eventually come back to hurt all of us.

Stinginess

            One of Trump’s first acts was to dismantle the Agency for International Development (AID). This was the government’s premier instrument for assisting countries around world and promoting democratic institutions. It administered the delivery of surplus US food—primarily wheat, soy, and milk powder – to people in need in desperate situations.

            I was directly involved in distributing AID foodstuffs in a famine in India years ago when I first lived in the country. Working with CARE and a local Gandhian movement we were able to provide food to eight million people a day, one of the largest hot food programs in history. It was credited for saving the lives of thousands if not millions affected by years of drought.

            This was food that otherwise would be wasted. The US produces more food that it can consume within the United States, so to stabilize prices the government buys up surplus grain and powdered milk. Rather than just pouring it down the sewer, it packages it and ships it to distraught food-insufficient regions of the world. My famine in India was an example.

            Today there are boatloads of desperately needed food from AID stalled and headed back to harbor since the sudden termination of the food program. In Sudan, where a major famine is endangering millions and US aid was the major lifeline to survival, killing the food delivery will be a tragedy of enormous proportions.

            AID programs relating to food, health services, environmental security, and democratic education are not just charity. They are the major ways that the US interacts with the world on a human person-to-person level and builds a network of alliances and potential support. It is a further act of extreme and selfish isolationism to say that we do not need this, nor do we care what happens to other people.

            China is waiting to move into development assistance in the absence of the US, especially in regions it finds useful for minerals and other raw resources. When America discovers it is deprived of these resources it may find that its stinginess may end up costing a lot.

Authoritarianism

            Trump’s isolationism has turned old allies into enemies. Paradoxically it has also turned old enemies into friends. The eerie camaraderie with Vladimir Putin is a wretched example. When tariffs were announced that would affect most of the world, including islands in the Pacific where only penguins reside, Russia was exempted. When Trump attempted to work out a deal to end the war in Ukraine, he went first to Russia then came to Ukraine with the Russian talking points, including the absurd suggestion that Ukraine had started the war.

            It’s not just Putin. Trump’s Christmas list of dictatorial pals include Viktor Orban of Hungary, Abdel Fateh al-Sisi of Egypt, Kim Jong Un of South Korea, and Racep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. He admires China’s Xi Jinping, even when he declares China to be his foe. Clearly he would like to be more like them and not like what he regards as the weak and soft democratically elected leaders. 

            This has global implications. Since the time of the European Enlightenment the assumption was that the world was steadily becoming more democratic. The occasional deviation from this norm was considered a temporary and specific set of setbacks that would eventually be rectified. Many observers of international politics hope that this will still be the case. But for the US to shift its weight behind the autocratic trends of China, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, and to a lesser extent India and Israel is a sobering indication of a direction of global politics that those who believed in the inevitability of democracy thought scarcely possible even a few years ago.

Rebuking democracy

            This leads us to the fourth and perhaps most profound aspect of the current US approach to global politics: the dimming of the lamp of liberty.  To millions of people who live in repressive regimes around the world from Russia to El Salvador, America has stood as a beacon of democracy and freedom. Some have fled their cruel homelands seeking refuge in the arms of liberty, as the inscription on the Statue of Liberty promises. Others have struggled on, defying the odds of a chaotic and tyrannical state, with the image of American democracy as the light that gives them hope. The educational material of the U.S. Agency for International Development has reinforced that image with programs supporting democracy.

            The current administration’s immigration policy resists the idea of the US as a refuge. But more than that, its undemocratic domestic policies shatter the image of the US as a beacon of freedom. For those of us who used to be proud to travel abroad and identify ourselves as Americans we now hesitate. I sometimes say I’m from California or Hawai’i, hoping people will think that these entities are not in the US, which in some ways they’re not.

            But we can’t escape the fact that those of us who are American are tied to the destiny charted by the changes in the country’s direction. It may be the case that currently those of us who live in the U.S. may not care about the significance of these changes in America’s image and impact around the world. After all, we have to wrestle with the new limitations on freedom and the rising prices of toaster-ovens. But sooner or later we will have to deal with the larger reality that the US image and impact in the world has shrunk to miniscule proportions. This diminishes us all, and we may never fully recover.

Pope Francis did not radically reform the church the way that Pope John Paul did several decades ago. But in his own way he was just as revolutionary.

He stayed within the structural and doctrinal limits of his tradition, not upsetting any institutional applecarts. But he did surprise some, delight many, and disturb quite a few traditionalists by being… well, nice.

Every religious tradition has a hard side and a soft one. The hard side is about rules and doctrines. Think of the catechism of the Roman Catholic church, the Sharia laws of Islam, the Rahit Nama of the Sikh tradition. These can be simply good guidelines for righteous living, a nice set of standards in the background of daily life. Or they can come forward and dominate attitudes. They can be rigorously enforced, sometimes severely so.

There is also a soft side, a kindler, gentler side to religion. This is the admonition to “love your neighbor as yourself,” to “welcome the stranger for you once were a stranger as well.” It is the call for mercy and justice and inclusion that Bishop Budde spoke about in preaching to President Trump in the National Cathedral during his inauguration. This is the side of faith that Pope Francis exhibited in spades.

His kindness was especially apparent in his approach to other religious traditions, to refugees and prisoners, to marginalized people and the LGBTQ community. They were all God’s children, in the Pope’s view. And for that he had the Biblical teachings as his authority.

He traveled the world and was greeted by throngs that included not just his Roman Catholic followers, but also people of various faiths or no faith at all. They wanted to see and be in the presence of this great human spirit.

It is true that he met with US Vice President J. D. Vance the day before he died. But he had remarks prepared that were delivered to Vance on that occasion, excoriating the Trump administration for their approach to cruelly capturing refugees and forcing them back to their lethal homelands, or sending them to a foreign prison with no ability to challenge the conviction and no hope of returning.

Three days before he died, the Pope was in prison. Not as a prisoner, of course, but to perform a remarkable act of humility and service.  

There is a practice of Popes during Holy Week, the week before Easter, to wash other people’s feet, just as Jesus had. It is a sign of humility and service that says more in its simple actions than words could ever say. Often the Popes would wash the feet of Nuns and Priests and other faithful Catholics.

Not Pope Francis. He also washed feet during Holy Week, and in his last hours he went to a prison to wash the feet of the inmates, regardless of what crime had sent them there.

He also went to refugee camps on the same mission. He washed the feet of African and Middle Eastern refugees, many of them Muslims who probably wondered who this strange white-robed elderly White man was, and why he was bending down to wash and kiss their feet.

But the world knew. He was a Pope not just for the baptized few, but for all humanity. We are all better for his example.

I received one of the first grants given by the United States Institute of Peace shortly after it was established in 1984. After a violent uprising of Sikh activists emerged in India’s Punjab state, a region in which I had lived for several years, I embarked on what would become a forty-year study of the rise of religious violence, nationalism, and terrorism around the world.

            My project began with USIP support. Since the institute was brand-new it had only a suite of administrative offices rented in a downtown Washington DC office building. There was no place to house the recipients of its grants, which suited me just fine. Most of my research was held abroad anyway, initially in the Punjab, then elsewhere in South Asia and the Middle East.

            The Institute of Peace was a long time in coming. It was a dream of Hawaii’s Senator Spark Matsunaga. He thought that since the US had funded the largest department of defense of any country in the world, it could invest a tiny fraction of that in a department of peace. The institute would be the first step in this goal.

             The institute was basically a research center in conflict resolution. It was organized around areas of the world in which conflicts were brewing, which alas included pretty much all of the world. The research projects focused on the reasons for the conflicts, and the paths to resolving them. My project on religious violence in India and elsewhere fit perfectly in their format.

            From the beginning the institute was designed to be separate from the government, to give it the independence to do research and help to negotiate peace settlements unfettered by political whims. The institute is officially an NGO (a non-government organization), not a government agency, and its charter precludes any of its staff or grantees to be employed by the government.

            The funding, however, is entirely from the US government. The reason was that the founders did not want money to skew their projects, so no outside contributions were allowed. Presumably the US Congress would provide what it needed — $55 million a year in recent years – and step aside and let the USIP do its thing. Because of the funding connection, however, the US President appoints the members of the overseeing board, confirmed by the Senate.

            The institute had to go back to Congress to get permission to go beyond its rules and seek outside money – not for projects, but for a building to house the administrative offices and the researchers. Congress approved, the cash was raised, and in 2011 a striking new building was constructed on land provided by the US Navy. An architectural gem, it is located in Foggy Bottom next to the State Department and across the street from the Vietnam Memorial and Lincoln Memorial on the Capitol Mall. It is not a government building, since it is owned by the independent NGO of USIP.  

            Most of the projects funded by USIP are case specific. They included study groups focusing on critical issues in such regions as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, South Sudan, and elsewhere. The USIS has supported negotiation teams and advised government agencies on appropriate policy, including Congressional committees and the intelligence community. In 2007 a USIP team helped to broker the peace deal in Iraq that led to the withdrawal of US forces.  In short, their projects are well worth the $55 million, a drop in the budget compared to defense funding.

            Even so, the USIP was on Trump’s chopping block. As one worthy agency in the US government was crippled, one after another, Elon Musk’s dreaded DOGE finally found its way to USIP. Trump promptly fired the staff and the board, and the DOGE goons arrived to take over the building.

            They were met at the door by USIP personnel who protested that this was a non-government agency and the building was owned by an NGO. The DOGE squad had no business being there. The DOGE commandos stepped back and then returned with a police escort. The police demanded entrance, and the front door was opened as the DOGE squad raced inside, changing the locks and demanding that everyone leave the building.

            The staff of USIP immediately fired off a legal challenge, protesting that it was an independent NGO, and the building was not owned by the government. Members of the board, however, were under Presidential appointment. Trump was thus able to assert his legal right to strip the place bare, leaving only the minimum allowed by law, namely the board and its new president, a MAGA sycophant. Nothing else.

Now you have a beautiful but empty Peace building. It is perhaps a perfect symbol of this administration’s attitude towards conflict resolution.

The ideas behind the institute, however, are needed now more than ever before. Like the supposedly vanquished foes in many of history’s wars, the US Institute for Peace may one day rise again.

If you’re in the business of talking with terrorists and trying to figure out their motivations, sooner or later someone from US intel will come knocking at your door. Not that I have anything secret to tell them. Anything juicy and interesting I’ve already put in my books, and anyone can read them.

            But I have been invited to Washington to lead seminars on how to understand the world views of people in outfits like al Qaeda and ISIS. And I’ve been asked to comment on various topics as a matter of scholarly opinion.

While I don’t support any of the nefarious activities attributed to the intelligence agencies, I do think that government policy is best served with the best information possible. So I would join some of these events with the hope that my small insights would give a different perspective on the more simplistic assessment of security threats.  

None of these were classified discussions. I have not then, or ever, received clearance to know or discuss classified information.

            But even so, the very fact that these were meetings with intelligence agency personnel meant an extraordinary amount of security. Often just getting into the room would be a challenge. Computers, of course, were not allowed. Nor were thumb drives, so I couldn’t show powerpoint. Cell phones were confiscated at the door (but returned at the end of the session). The name tags of most of the participants gave only their first names; the full names were not disclosed.

            When for a year or so I served on a panel of scholars asked to provide insight on various global issues as they came up, we had to follow strict security procedures. During this period I went to Moscow State University for a meeting of our global studies consortium. But the intel people forbid me from taking my cell phone along, since even when it was not on, apparently it sent tracking signals. Maybe there was some other way it could be scanned while it was in my pocket, God only knows.

            But this was just me. An ordinary run-of-the mill academic.

            When I read about nineteen high level administrative principals (well, eighteen plus a journalist by mistake) on a group chat discussing an ongoing military operation on a commercial app, I was blown away.

“What the…?” was my first response. One of the principals was even in Russia at the time, presumably chatting away – on their personal cell phones? In an insecure location? This was not clear. But I was told that even me, a lowly non-clearance academic, would be monitored in my hotel room in Moscow so watch out, buddy. I wasn’t even supposed to take my laptop with me.

            My only answer to my “What the…?” question is that US security right now is in the hands of amateurs. They either don’t know or don’t care how proper procedures are supposed to work. Our allies, I’m sure, have given up on sharing any confidential information with the US, and our potential enemies are ecstatic.

            The rest of us, however, should be worried.

To appear in a book project “Now…and Then”

I’m kind of a religion groupie—I haven’t found a religious service or structure that I haven’t liked. But I’ve noticed that whether I’m in a Christian church, a Muslim mosque, a Jewish synagogue, a Sikh Gurdwara, or a Buddhist or Hindu temple, there’s a sea of grey heads (well beards, in the case of Sikhs in their turbans). Religion, it seems, is for old people.

When I was younger, that was not the case. It was a family affair when I was a kid, back in the day when families actually did things together, and weren’t all individually staring at their smart phones. In college in the late 50s it was popular to go on church dates, and the lines for the three morning services would wind around the block. At the time, I wanted to be a pastor myself. It seemed as if it would be the best job in the world.

Then came the sixties and revolution was in the air. Like many of my peers, I dropped out of religion for the longest time, and turned to studying it rather than preaching it. I wasn’t against religion as a personal practice, it just didn’t seem all that important.

Now in retirement, I’m back in church. I’m there with all the other grey-hairs singing the old hymns and reading the familiar gospels. There is comfort there, I suppose, in getting in touch with one’s youth. And there is community. Old age can be lonely and religion provides fellowship. For some it may provide the assurance of an afterlife, though frankly I think that most people never really think about their own deaths, even at an advanced age. It’s like the Big Quake in California, you know it’s coming at some time, but not today, so life just goes on.

Perhaps what religious institutions offer most is a sense of depth, a ground of being. We grey-hairs are at the point of life where we pause and reflect, and wonder what the meaning of it is. Religion doesn’t tell us, but it assures us that there is a meaning, and it’s worth trying to find it.

The younger generation has largely abandoned their childhood faiths, and I wonder if they will find the same founts of meaning when they get to my old age. Many if not most abhor organized religion of any kind. Yet, I have hope. A Pew survey reveals that the largest and fastest growing segment of youths in the United States, when asked their religious preference, say “none.” They are not Christian, Muslim, or even Atheist or Agnostic. They are none. And when you ask them about their religiosity, they say they are spiritual, not religious.

To look for spiritual depth and accept a moral obligation that binds all of us on the planet is one of the things that we white-hairs find attractive about religion in our old age. It is nice to think that a younger generation, even if they do not find the same resources in institutional religion that we do, are looking for the same thing.

It was many years ago when I first went to India. I had completed my initial graduate programs and contemplating Phd studies when I received an offer of a two-year study and service grant.

I had never been outside the country before, and it was incredible. But I soon discovered that there was a lot that I could do besides my research project in the Punjab. A famine was raging in the Eastern state of Bihar. I was asked if I could help the CARE agency distribute food.

“Sure,” I said. “Count me in.”

I went to Patna, Bihar’s main city. My job with CARE was to control and monitor the arrival of sacks of food supplied by the US AID program. It was mostly powdered milk and bulgar wheat that could be mixed together with water to create a kind of porridge. This was surplus food in the US, for which the government was paying subsidies. It was either giving it away or wasting it. We needed it, desperately.

We had arranged with the education department to have the sacks delivered to schools throughout the famine-afflicted areas. Schools provided a great delivery system for a couple of reasons. The main one is that it was the only governmental structure that reached every village regardless of how remote it was. It provided someone to administer the food, namely the teacher or schoolmaster. And the primary recipients would be kids.

In a famine, one of the most wretched effects of malnutrition is on growing kids. If they are deprived of sufficient nourishment at an early age, even if their bodies survive, their brains might be affected. Famine could create a generation of mentally deficient people. Pregnant and nursing mothers were high on the list of those who would be served first. We were feeding eight million a day, one of the largest hot-meal programs ever. The need was urgent.

When I surveyed the village distribution centers, I discovered there was another organization that was feeding people with the same sacks of US AID powdered milk and wheat. They had a different approach, however. Instead of just handing out the food, which sometimes could create a chaotic mob scene, they organized food-for-work projects. They also utilized the school system, but the schoolmaster, along with Indian volunteers, would round up able-bodied men to work. They were employed to dig tube wells to get water, build dams as catchments for future rain, and construct roads and schools. They were paid in food for their families.

This is smart, I said to myself. Who are these guys?

They were Gandhians, it turned out. The Gandhian Sarvodaya movement, “Service to All,” was prominent in this part of India. In Patna, the leading Gandhian activist, Jayprakash Narayan, set up an office, recruited volunteers, and administered this expanding innovative program.

I left CARE and joined JP Narayan. I was the only foreigner in his Patna ashram, and fortunately I had learned enough Hindi to fit in. Most of my Indian colleagues spoke English as well as Hindi so they nicely helped translate when I got stuck. JP became a mentor and father figure to me, and I came to appreciate why he is regarded as one of India’s great leaders. I became one of his Gandhian followers.

My job was to help coordinate the student volunteers from Indian universities. I also reached out to the US Peace Corps program that was active in Bihar at the time, and arranged for their volunteers to join our group in mixed teams of American and Indian students to monitor the food-for-work projects in the villages.

It was exhausting. But it was also rewarding on so many levels. Even when I was bone tired at the end of the day I would think of how many people we had fed, and how many lives we may have saved.

Sure, CARE, and JP Narayan and his Gandhians, and all the other rescue agencies deserve a lot of the credit for helping to save people in the famine. But we could not have done it without the thousands of sacks of powdered milk and wheat from US AID. They were literally life-savers.

Today as I write this, the Trump White House has terminated this aid around the world. Immediately I thought of what would have happened in Bihar if they had done that in the midst of our relief work. If our supply of food was suddenly turned off, people could die. And then I realized that right now across the world in similar desperate situations suddenly the stream of life-giving aid was ended.

It was a cruel and thoughtless act. Did Trump and his minions have any sense of the tragic effects of their bizarre and capricious decision? And will we just sit back and let this suffering happen without some reaction? I look for answers.

Now that there is a cease fire in Gaza, what happens next?

The US has been adamant about a two-state solution. But the hardliners in Netanyahu’s cabinet have been equally dead set against it. Some have talked about outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.

It is unlikely that any long-term resolution will happen immediately. What could happen in the transition is a brilliant idea for peace: an Israel-Palestine Confederation.

The idea is something like the European Union. Israel and Palestine continue to have their own governments as they do now. But an additional administrative layer of elected representatives oversees matters that concern the whole of the region: like healthcare, education, infrastructure, and intercultural understanding.

This is where the Israel-Palestine Confederation comes in. I recently invited the founder and current leader of the project, Josef Avesar, to Claremont McKenna College where I’m a visiting professor in the fall term. In this lecture I introduce Avesar, and he tells how the idea came about, and what he hopes will come of it.

It’s an idea worth considering. Since the Hamas invasion and the Israeli incursion into Gaza, this idea along with others has taken on a new urgency. Recent ads in the New York Times and Washington Post have brought new interest in the project.

Weekly simulations of an Israel-Palestine Confederation parliament have been conducted on zoom. Figures such as Noam Chomsky and an array of Palestinian and Israeli political leaders have taken part and endorsed the idea. It deserves our consideration.

https://ipconfederation.org/

Often great trees in the forest fall together, and great men leave us at roughly the same time. In the same week that the US lost Jimmy Carter, India lost its great leader, Manmohan Singh, one of the longest serving Prime Ministers of India. Elsewhere I have written about once meeting Jimmy Carter. But by luck I also had the chance to chat for a time with Manmohan Singh.

I had the honor of being seated next to him at a dinner. It was during a function held in Delhi by the Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan, an educational institution for Sikh and Punjab studies. Manmohan Singh was serving as President of the organization, one of the several assignments he accepted after his retirement as Prime Minister of India. A good friend of mine, Mohinder Singh, was director of the institute, and persuaded me to speak at a conference he organized in which Manmohan Singh was presiding.

It was after my talk that we gathered together for dinner in the garden of the institute’s grounds. It was one of those lovely Indian evenings when the heat of the day had dissipated in the pleasant breezes of an early evening.

I had many questions I wanted to ask the famous economist and former Prime Minister. After all, he was the architect behind India’s economic liberalization, which has led to the remarkable development the country has experienced in recent years. But like my conversation with former President Jimmy Carter, he first wanted to know about me. Why was I interested in the Punjab?

I told him that I had taught in the economics department at Panjab University in Chandigarh after completing my first set of graduate studies in religion and international affairs in New York. I lived in India for a total of three years or so, and fell in love with the Punjab.

His ears perked up. Manmohan Singh was not a very demonstrative kind of person, and ordinarily he wore a stoic, inquisitive expression that seemed seldom to change. In this case, however, he seemed to come to life.

“Economics, in Panjab University?” he said. What year, he wanted to know. I told him it was in the mid-1960s.

“I was there at the same time, in the same department,” he said, genuinely surprised.

“When Dr. Rangnekar was chair?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he said with what I took to be his version of enthusiasm. “S.B. Rangnekar was a great economist, and my mentor.”

“Mine as well,” I said, though I meant this in a personal sense, not an academic one. I was not an economist, after all, and was a bit out of my element in that discipline. I had come to the university on a study and service scholarship that paid very little. An arrangement had been made for me to stay initially in the bachelor faculty apartments, which gave me room and basic board, as long as I continued to maintain some relationship to the university. But what could I do?

One of the bachelor faculty members was an economist and he encouraged me to see the head of the department, Dr Rangnekar. I protested that I didn’t know anything about economics. “No matter,” my colleague said, “Rangnekar is a great fellow and if anyone can help you, he can.”

So I meekly went to see the important Dr Rangnekar, and he immediately set me at ease. He was a large, avuncular man who had a wonderful smile and a no-nonsense attitude to dealing with any problem put before him. He wanted to know what I could teach.

I told him about my innocence of economics, but I knew about international issues from graduate school and philosophy from college. “Political philosophy?” He inquired. Yes, I said, telling him I had taken a course in the history of political thought.

“Perfect,” Rangnekar said, exuding enthusiasm, “you’ll begin next week.”

“Begin what? I asked, genuinely puzzled. He explained that he had just created an honors school for undergraduates interested in enrolling in the graduate programs in economics at the University. He was chagrined at the low level of knowledge that burdened entering students in his graduate programs. He thought the problem could be solved in part by offering a year of special training in varied subjects, not just economics, to prepare students for graduate work. I would teach a course on political theory.

I indeed started teaching the next week, making up the course as the term went on. I went through the usual list of Western thinkers, beginning with Plato’s republic and then Machiavelli and Hobbes and Locke, and ending with Marx. I didn’t stop there, however, going on to cover what I thought were the most important Indian political thinkers, beginning with Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and culminating with Gandhi’s ideas about non-state socialism.

Rangnekar made my experience at Punjab University truly engaging. I discovered that it had the same effect on Manmohan Singh. He had done graduate work in economics at Panjab University shortly after India’s independence and the partition of the Punjab. At Rangnekar’s encouragement, he then went on to Cambridge for another MA. Later he would return to England for a PhD at Oxford, but in the interim, after Cambridge he returned to Panjab University, now in the new city of Chandigarh. There his old professor, Rangnekar, persuaded him to join the faculty for a couple of years. This was about the same time that I was there helping Rangnekar start an honors program for pre-graduate students.

Alas I don’t remember meeting Manmohan Singh at the time. Though if he was as taciturn and shy as he was later in life, I could easily have overlooked him. He had a depth that took some effort to discover.

At dinner, after a bit of quiet as we continued eating, I turned to him and ventured a comment. “If Rangnekar was your mentor, I can understand how you could rise to a position of great leadership unfettered by pride and bravado, with only the cheerful desire to help your fellow human beings. Rangnekar would have approved.”

Manmohan Singh paused for a moment, then looked at me and smiled. He didn’t say anything, but the smile spoke volumes.

I had a brief meeting with Jimmy Carter when I was a visiting professor at Emory University. A colleague who knew the Carter Center staff arranged the visit, and thought that the former president would be interested in my work on global terrorism.

The Center was in several acres of woods and gardens not too far from the Emory campus. It was a cluster of buildings, nestled in the foliage — a less pretentious setting than, say, the Reagan library in Simi Valley, which I had also visited. The Carter center was full of activities and events. It was much more than just a museum for a former presidency.

There was a lecture hall and conference rooms. Seminars and workshops were held regularly. There were also offices for projects, like peacemaking, the effects of global warming, and eradicating tropical diseases.

There was also, of course, a hallway of presidential photographs and the obligatory recreation of the oval office. My impression was that Carter did not in fact, work in that recreated oval office, since it seemed inordinately spotless and clinically neat.

My impression was correct. Carter’s actual office was in a different building. It was a nice spacious room with floor to ceiling windows looking out on the gardens and the Georgia woods. A version of the White House’s Resolute Desk stood in front of a wall of books. The desk was crafted by a local woodsman to look like the original.

Carter had been meeting somewhere else on the grounds, and came in a bit late, greeting me warmly. I had a list of questions I wanted to ask, many about the decisions to try to liberate the hostages in Iran when he was president. But before I could say anything, he began to ask me questions.

He wanted to know something about my background. I explained that my PhD was in political science but before that I had completed a degree in theology. He nodded, approving of the combination of interests in politics and religion.

Then he wanted to know how I got involved in studying terrorism. Apparently someone had briefed him that this was my area of expertise. I told him that I had lived in India for several years, in the area where the Sikh separatist movement erupted in the 80s, and I wanted to understand how religious commitment could lead to violence.

He said he had wondered the same thing. I wanted to ask him more about what he meant, but immediately he turned to the situation in the Middle East. Did I know anything about Hamas, he asked.

I told him I had interviewed the founder of the movement, Sheikh Yassin, and many of the other leaders. Carter wanted to know what my impression of them was.

Certainly committed, I said. They were unyielding on their view of the situation. They felt that their homeland had been invaded and their culture was imperiled. They saw what we think of as terrorism as defensive acts.

Yes, he agreed. He said he had met with some of them himself when he was in Israel. I wanted to ask him more about that, but he interrupted and asked me what I had learned from them.

I told him that many of them said that they wanted to live in peace with Jews and jointly share the region. They had nothing against Jewish people, they said. Their problem was with what they regarded as an oppressive government.

I said that I didn’t know whether they really believed this or they were just trying to impress me. But they said it in such a way to make me think that they were more open than we were led to believe. It seemed that negotiation was possible

The suicide attacks are horrible, I said. But I told Carter that I had the impression that even some of the leaders were conflicted about whether this violence was morally justified or even whether it was good political strategy. My sense was that the Hamas activists were not of a single mind, I said.

Carter nodded thoughtfully, and said that he had the same impression when he talked with members of Hamas. When he met with Khaleed Mashaal, the Hamas politburo chief, in Doha, Carter was told by Mashaal that he would welcome a Saudi hosted summit to negotiate a two-state solution.

I was eager to hear more about that. But then an aide came in and told the former president that his next engagement was due, actually overtime, and he had to go.

Carter said it was nice to meet me, and went off to his next appointment. As he was leaving I said I enjoyed meeting with him, and thanked him for all of the good work he had done as president and afterwards.

When I sat in the empty office for a moment after he left, I realized that I had not had the opportunity to forward a single one of the questions I wanted to ask him. Instead, he mostly wanted to listen to me.

For a moment I pondered whether this was a mark of greatness. I wondered whether it was not so much the elegant words we say, but how well we listen. Carter was a good listener. And a great man.