It's Thursday, March 20, 2014. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Not since World War II has one European nation taken territory by force from another. But it has now happened. It happened this week, and it happened on the Crimean Peninsula. And the man behind it is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin's ruthless grab for the Crimean Peninsula and his decision to annex it now to Russia is an unprecedented act in terms of modern European history. It is completely rewriting our understanding of the way the world works in terms of relations between the United States and Russia, Europe and Russia. It is putting Russia in the position of being what can only be described as an outlaw nation. And Vladimir Putin understands that and he has announced that. In a speech he gave in the Grand Hall at the Kremlin on Tuesday, the Russian president declared war basically on Western values, and he declared his worldview in unmistakable terms. In the course of his speech, he said, quote, Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia and the hearts and minds of people. He made very clear in his emotional address that he sees the world through eyes of Russian resentment and Russian nationalism. One of the things we need to remember is that history is so close to us in this account. What we're looking at here is something that would have made sense in the 19th century. Certainly it would have made sense in the 20th century, but it would have made sense in the 13th century or the 12th century. We're looking here at the kind of behavior that was characteristic of Russian czars, the autocrats that ruled Russia for centuries. And of course, the official title of the Russian Tsar was not the Tsar of Russia, but the Tsar of all the Russias, all the different people, with those peoples defined by ethnicity and language. And it is that worldview that is driving Vladimir Putin. He is claiming the authority to claim territory wherever there is Russian influence and a preponderance of Russian-speaking peoples, even if the Russian language is their second language, as he made very clear in the case of Crimea. And of course he's doing what he said he would not do. Just a matter of two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin said he would not try to annex the Crimean Peninsula, but now it's a fait accompli, with nothing left but the rubber stamp from the Russian parliament. In his speech given on Tuesday in the Grand Hall of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin declared that it was time for a return to Russian martial glory. He spoke of Sevastopol, the port, and he spoke of the Crimean Peninsula as a whole and said that they were holy territories for Russia because they were lands of historic Russian military valor. He spoke of the tremendous resentment that Russia has against the rest of the world. He wasn't least intellectually honest in one respect. He referred to the fact that Russia lost or gave away the Crimean Peninsula as a part of the breakup of the Soviet Union. But after that, it was an unvarnished attack upon the West. He blamed the West, and in particular, the United States, as what he identified as the world's only superpower, as being behind the unfair treatment of Russia, encircling Russia with NATO forces, making Russia a subservient nation where, in his understanding of Russia's destiny, it is to be a world leader, and of course, the great leader of the more autocratic regimes of the East. In his speech, the Russian president went back to the czarist history of Russia, and he claimed the martial glory of times past, saying that Russia will stand up for the millions of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in wherever they were found as, quote, the historic Russian lands, end quote, even though many of those, of course, are now outside the lands of the nation of Russia. He said, quote, Of course, as his actions have now made clear, add military means to that list. why did the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday only two weeks ago after Mr. Putin said Moscow had no plans to annex Crimea on Tuesday he did just that even if he stops at Crimea they write Mr. Putin's annexation of the Black Sea Peninsula would be the first such move in Europe since the end of World War two up ending long-held assumptions about security on the continent and potentially condemning Russia to a period of prolonged isolation end quote as the New York Times declared if it's not a new Cold War a distinctive chill is in the air But it is a new Cold War. It's not the same as the old Cold War, that Cold War of the 20th century, because the United States and Russia are not locked in a battle for areas of territory all around the world, as was the case in the old Cold War in the United States versus the Soviet Union. On the other hand, this is completely rewriting the way America looks at the world, and Europe is in the middle of this. And, as Peter Baker of the Times reports, a month ago, most Americans could not have found Crimea on a map, but its lightning-quick takeover by Moscow has abruptly redrawn the geopolitical atlas and may have decisively ended a 25-year period of often tumultuous but also constructive relations between the United States and Russia." This gets to a very important generational difference in the United States. If you are a baby boomer or older than a baby boomer, you think of the Russia of today as an extension of the Soviet Union of the past. You look at Russia with a sense of relief, or at least we have until this week, that Russia is not the Soviet Union. that the communist totalitarian government of the former Soviet Union is gone, and with it, when its world ambitions, and of course its gulags, and its immoral repression of its peoples, and the slaughter of millions of people in the name of communism. And so, if you're a baby boomer or older, you think of the Cold War as that great fact of the 20th century that, as a great gift, we've now overcome in the 21st. If you're younger than a baby boomer, then this all sounds very strange. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cold War can understand exactly what's going on here. This is a return to a previous pattern. It's a grave disappointment, but at least we recognize what is going on. Younger people in both Europe and the United States are scratching their heads wondering what in the world is going on here, and does it actually matter? By the way, when the New York Times writer says that even a week ago most Americans couldn't place the Crimean Peninsula on a map, I think I'll go out on a limb and say I think most Americans couldn't right now. Because for most Americans, foreign policy is at such a remove, is at such a distance, that most Americans aren't worried about it. Most millennials give foreign policy very little attention, and even if it's dominating the headlines with a story like this, they have a hard time understanding why it really matters. Well, it matters for this very reason. We can think that foreign policy doesn't matter so long as it doesn't matter. But when it does matter, it matters acutely. And if you're looking at a deterioration between the relations of Russia and the United States, and Russia and Europe, you're looking at a re-entry into a position of the world in which every day could bring a new horror, a new crisis, a new situation that could unsettle our markets, that could lead many people into political oblivion, and could put the entire world upside down in terms of exactly what's been going on in the Crimean Peninsula. Because this has sent a signal to every other neighboring land to Russia that you could be next. If most Americans don't have to think about that every day, we have to recognize that if you're living on Russia's border, you're now thinking about it not just every day, but virtually every minute, wondering if you're next. This is a return in many ways to that awful familiar pattern of the 20th century, where it was Adolf Hitler with his expansionist ambitions, and then it was the Soviet Union with its aggressive ambitions, and now we have Vladimir Putin clothing himself in the martial glory of czarist Russia, declaring his resentments against the West and declaring that Russia will return to its martial glory. That's not good news for the world. It's not even good news for Russia. But it is right now good news politically for Vladimir Putin. Because the other thing that Americans need to recognize is this. If what Vladimir Putin has done in the Crimean Peninsula is playing horribly all around the world, even in a place like China that has historically sided with Russia in international relations, it's playing very well in Russia. Because not only is Vladimir Putin playing the resentment card, but the Russians want to play that as well. And like every Russian leader going back to the czars in a time of a horrible famine or any other national crisis, it was always someone else's fault. There was always an external agitator at fault. There was always another nation taking advantage of Russia. We know the language and the grammar of those arguments, and now they're back again. This is profoundly bad news. And if nothing else, it underlines in an unmistakable way Genesis 3, as an absolutely necessary lens for our understanding not only of history, but of the present. And before leaving this subject altogether, I want to give you a new vocabulary word, revanchism. It goes back to the French word for revenge, and it is the word in foreign policy that refers to the revengeful act of taking back territory and claiming it was rightly yours all along. That was a horrifying word that the world learned in the 20th century and now we're using it again because it is the only word that fits what Vladimir Putin is doing. Revanchism. Geographical revenge. Meanwhile, back in the United States, President Barack Obama is finding his life now upended as well because foreign policy is now demanding his attention rather than other issues. And of course, the president is going to bear a great deal of criticism for his handling of the situation. And much of the criticism is absolutely germane. The president has not sent sufficiently strong signals either to Vladimir Putin or to anyone else in the world about what exactly the United States will exact as a price for this kind of misbehavior. And that's why, even as Syria was botched and badly handled by the administration, so Ukraine now has been as well. But before we throw President Obama on the ash heap of history on this issue, we need to remind ourselves that virtually any American president would actually be in much the same situation now because the American people are not going to support going to war over Ukraine. And that's true whether the president is George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt or now Barack Obama. What President Obama has to deal with is the fact that no one on the world stage seems to fear him. And as it turns out, in a Genesis 3 world, in a fallen world where power often has to be checked with power, if you are not feared by those who must and should fear you, then this kind of behavior takes place and there's very little recourse on the other side. But President Obama got something profoundly right this week, and he did so on behalf of the entire nation. He did so at the White House when 24 men were honored with the Congressional Medal of Honor, and 21 of them were honored posthumously. Only three were alive, all three of them veterans of the Vietnam War. Why were 24 men given the Medal of Honor in one ceremony? It's because it came at the culmination of a 12-year review in which the military was looking at the fact that several deserving recipients of the nation's highest military honor had not been given that award because they were black, Hispanic, or Jewish. That is a black mark on our nation's history, and it is one that President Obama helped to make right on Tuesday of this week when all 24 Army veterans were awarded the Medal of Honor. As the president said, quote, this ceremony reminds us of one of the enduring qualities that makes America great, that makes us exceptional. No nation is perfect. He went on to say that there were those who had been overlooked. As they were overlooked, there were horrifying reasons for why they were. But then he said, but here in America, we confront our imperfections and face a sometimes painful past, including the truth that some of these soldiers fought and died for a country that did not always see them as equals." There are some amazing stories here, as you would expect. Every one of these men who received the Medal of Honor did so because of extraordinary acts of valor and self-sacrifice in service to our country. There were those who died even as they were letting others escape the enemy. There were those who held positions when everyone else was dead or gone. There were those who went to extremities beyond what we can imagine, showing their valor and their dedication to this country. Three of those men were alive, and as I said, all three of them were present, and all three of them had fought in the Vietnam War. It tells you something about the passage of time, that these go all the way back to World War II, and all the way forward to the Vietnam War, and it took 12 years of review to get this right. In presenting these medals of honor, the president said, quote, so we've, each generation, we've kept on striving to live up to our ideals of freedom and equality and to recognize the dignity and patriotism of every person, no matter who they are, what they look like, or how they pray, end quote. As Jada Smith of the New York Times comments, the effort to right the historical wrong began long before Mr. Obama came to office as the nation's first black president, but it has been a priority for him. He personally awarded the medals. Another word of commendation to the president on this account. These kinds of ceremonies can go very long, but President Obama rightly insisted that every one of these certificates be read in full. It took over an hour and a half, but considering the price these veterans paid for our country, it was an hour and a half that was a down payment on a debt long overdue. Meanwhile, also from the American military yesterday, a morality tale of a very different sort. As David Zucchino reports for the Los Angeles Times, Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair broke down in tears Wednesday at his sentencing hearing, asking the judge to allow him to retire at a reduced rank instead of dismissing him from the Army, which would deprive him of military benefits and, quote, punish, end quote, his family for his adulterous affair with a captain. The general said, quote, I have squandered a fortune of life's blessings, blessings of family work and friendship. I put myself and the army in this position with my selfish, self-destructive and hurtful acts, end quote. All this came after far more serious charges were dropped against the general, a one star brigadier general in the army, because of what were found to be improprieties in the handling of evidence. But what the general pled guilty to is a rather horrifying list of sexual misconduct. As the Los Angeles Times rightly reports, quote, a week earlier, Sinclair pleaded guilty to adultery, impeding an investigation by deleting sexually explicit emails to and from a civilian woman, possessing pornography in a war zone, conducting inappropriate relationships with two other female officers, and improperly asking a female lieutenant for a date, end quote. He is a 27-year veteran of five combat tours. He could face up to 25 and a half years in prison. However, a plea agreement means that there will be a cap on punishment. The actual sentence is likely to be far lower, and he's asked, of course, for no prison time at all. If convicted on the original charges of sexual assault, sodomy, and making death threats, he would have faced life in prison and registration as a sex offender. From a Christian worldview perspective, the most interesting aspect of the story is the argument made by the general of why his sentence should be reduced in order that the army not punish his family for his misdeeds. Of course, the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, reminds us that our sin and its consequences are never settled merely on ourselves. There is always an effect on others. After all, even in the law in the Old Testament, there is the repeated assertion that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons and daughters and to even the seventh generation. Sin has concentric circles of effect. It isn't something that can be benignly and easily removed. Its effects simply are too devastating for that. In this case, this general has a wife, Rebecca Sinclair, and two sons, ages 10 and 12. The judge allowed a statement from the wife, that is Rebecca Sinclair, to be read in court. She said in part, quote, my boys and I are the only truly innocent victims to these offenses, end quote. Sin always has consequences beyond our wildest imagination. And I have no doubt that this general is now in the position of wishing he had never even thought of doing the things that he did. His life, his controversies, as well as his military record are now before the watching world, and everyone knows what he is admitted to have done in terms of this plea agreement. And everyone knows that but for a mishandling of the evidence, he would have faced a far higher bar of judgment. There's a sense in which every single legal proceeding, because of the moral importance of every legal proceeding, is a morality tale in itself. few, perhaps, are quite so revealing as this one. Because rarely do you have the kind of candor stated so clearly as you see in this case, and rarely is it seen so visibly before the watching world. But here it is, and it would be scandalous for all of us to miss the point. Finally, an article that reminds us also that sin never delivers what it promises. Alan Johnson reporting for the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio writes this, quote, early next month, the Ohio lottery will transfer money to the state's K through 12 education fund, bringing the total to $20 billion since the first lottery dollars began flowing in 1975. Now 40 years old, the Ohio Lottery Commission has kept its original commitment to Ohioans to funnel all profits to education, end quote. So if that's all the story that you read, you would read that over 40 years, $20 billion has been given to the school systems in Ohio that the school systems otherwise wouldn't have, and it didn't have to come through taxation, it came through the lottery. And if you saw those two paragraphs and that's all you saw, it would look like this was simply a huge windfall for the schools. But as I said, that's only true if you read only the first two paragraphs. Here's the third paragraph. Quote, our profit is transferred to the education fund, period. That was said by Dennis Berg, a 22-year-old lottery employee, its executive director since 2011. Quote, we make a commitment to the budget based on what we believe is an appropriate number that can be produced, end quote. Here's the next paragraph, quote, but although education gets all the lottery money, it clearly has not received a $20 billion net benefit from the lottery because of a shell game played by Ohio governors and legislators. What's that shell game? Well, of course, all the money from the lottery, exactly as I said, goes to the schools. But what the state did was to cut the money that came from the state budget going to the schools. So it wasn't a $20 billion addition to the education of young people in Ohio. It was indeed something far less, dramatically less, scandalously less. And if you just read the first two paragraphs, and if you just heard the lottery telling its own story, you would have a completely misleading understanding of what was going on. It would sound like $20 billion was being added to the money that the schools otherwise would have. But that's not the way it works. No, the state started pulling back its money as the lottery was putting money in. William Phyllis, the head of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, he's also a former school superintendent, he said, quote, the lottery is kind of in the state psyche now. The most common question I've had over the years is what happened to the lottery fund? I've heard that a thousand times over the years. The average person somehow thought the lottery was going to bail the schools out. Essentially, it just added some money to the general revenue, end quote. Well, by the way, it wasn't just doing that. The story also says the lottery has paid retailer commissions totaling $3.8 billion and it's kept $3 billion for its own administration. Not $3 million, $3 billion for administering the lottery. My favorite sentence in this article is this, quote, in other words, while the lottery was blowing up the balloon, state officials were letting out the air somewhere else, end quote. There's evidence of a sinful world as well. When you're given a promise that something like the lottery is going to solve the financial problems, the idea that selling marijuana and getting tax income from it is going to somehow bring in money and it's going to solve the financial woes, well, just consider the story. And I love the illustration. While someone's blowing up the balloon in one place, someone's going to be letting out the air on the other side. Perhaps the main lesson from all of this comes down to a truth. It's a sin to think that sin will pay your bills. It never does. Thanks for listening to the briefing. Remember, Ask Anything Weekend Edition, just call with your question and your voice to 877-505-2058. That's 877-505-2058. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com forward slash albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.