🕷️ Crawler Inspector

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Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 26 (from laksa064)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa026.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical, ml_categories_json AS ml_categories_json, ml_types_json AS ml_types_json, ml_intent_types_json AS ml_intent_types_json, meta_language AS meta_language, attrs_author AS attrs_author, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(attrs_publish_time), 0) AS attrs_publish_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(attrs_original_publish_time), 0) AS attrs_original_publish_time, ifNull(attrs_is_republished, 0) AS attrs_is_republished, ifNull(attrs_nr_words, 0) AS attrs_nr_words, ifNull(attrs_boilerpipe_nr_words, 0) AS attrs_boilerpipe_nr_words, ifNull(body_ext_links_number, 0) AS body_ext_links_number, ifNull(body_int_links_number, 0) AS body_int_links_number, ifNull(meta_nofollow, 0) AS meta_nofollow, ifNull(meta_noarchive, 0) AS meta_noarchive, ifNull(props_was_rendered, 0) AS props_was_rendered, ifNull(src_redirect, \'\') AS src_redirect, ifNull(download_time_msec, 0) AS download_time_msec, ifNull(download_ttfb_msec, 0) AS download_ttfb_msec, ifNull(download_size, 0) AS download_size FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/","crawl_time":1776233401,"first_indexed_time":1773132681,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,albertmohler!\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/ s443","src_root_hash":"15731983553888329626","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Tuesday, March 10, 2026 - AlbertMohler.com","meta_descriptions":["Cultural commentary from a Biblical perspective","Cultural commentary from a Biblical perspective"],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"It’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026. \nI’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.\nPart I\nInternational Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It?\nIs President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is.\nNow, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law.\nHowever, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis.\nHe goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law.\nHe goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be\nfait accompli\n,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.”\nAnd then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty.\nLet me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.”\nPart II\nWhat About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say?\nWell, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them.\nAnd you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law.\nBut as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented. \nAn article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro.\nNone of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action. \nLater in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here.\nOf course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability?\nAnd of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state.\nSo if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem.\nRussia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers.\nAnd that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism.  By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005.  Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means. \nI want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God. \nLooking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else.\nIf there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe. \nOf course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations.\nThe problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful. \nPart III\nHow Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law\nI just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself.\nBut it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.”\nOkay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed.\nAnd so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is.\nPart IV\nIs This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But  James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character\nBut now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.”\nOkay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array.\nThe interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives.\nBut you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it?\nAnd he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what?\nHe’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide.\nThere’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test.\nIf you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter.\nObviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold. \nThanks for listening to The Briefing. \nFor more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to\nx.com\/albertmohler\n. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to\nsbts.edu\n. For information on Boyce College, just go to\nboycecollege.com\n. \nI’ll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.\nR. Albert Mohler, Jr.\nI am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the\ncontact form\n. Follow regular updates on Twitter at\n@albertmohler\n.\nSubscribe\nvia email for daily Briefings and more (unsubscribe\n    at any time).","attrs_markdown":"- [About](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/about\/)\n- [Contact](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/contact\/)\n\n[![AlbertMohler.com](https:\/\/cf.albertmohler.com\/uploads\/2024\/02\/logo-2024_new.svg)](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/%20https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/)\n\n- [Donate](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/donate\/)\n- [Subscribe](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/subscribe\/)\n\n- [Articles](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/articles\/)\n- [The Briefing](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/the-briefing\/)\n- [Thinking in Public](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/thinking-in-public\/)\n- [Speaking & Teaching](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/speaking-teaching\/)\n- [Ask Anything](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/ask-anything\/)\n- [Exposition](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/exposition\/)\n- [Books](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/books\/)\n\n[![AlbertMohler.com](https:\/\/cf.albertmohler.com\/uploads\/2024\/02\/logo-2024_new.svg)](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/)\n\n- [Articles](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/articles\/)\n- [The Briefing](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/the-briefing\/)\n- [Thinking in Public](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/thinking-in-public\/)\n- [Speaking & Teaching](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/speaking-teaching\/)\n- [Ask Anything](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/ask-anything\/)\n- [Exposition](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/exposition\/)\n- [Books](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/books\/)\n\n[![AlbertMohler.com](https:\/\/cf.albertmohler.com\/uploads\/2024\/02\/logo-2024_new.svg)](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/%20https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/)\n\n- [Articles](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/articles\/)\n- [The Briefing](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/the-briefing\/)\n- [Thinking in Public](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/thinking-in-public\/)\n- [Speaking & Teaching](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/speaking-teaching\/)\n- [Ask Anything](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/ask-anything\/)\n- [Exposition](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/exposition\/)\n- [Books](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/books\/)\n\n- [About](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/about\/)\n- [Contact](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/contact\/)\n\n- [Donate](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/donate\/)\n- [Subscribe](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/subscribe\/)\n\n[Home](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/) \/ [The Briefing](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/the-briefing\/) \/ Tuesday, March 10, 2026\n\n# Tuesday, March 10, 2026\n[Download MP3](https:\/\/p.podderapp.com\/9103131664\/https:\/\/pod.albertmohler.com\/Podcast\/20260310_thebriefing.mp3)\n\n###### Documentation and Additional Reading\n[PART I](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part1)\n\nFinancial Times (Robert Shrimsley)\n\n[In defence of hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers](https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/8117e57f-c560-4a52-ab99-252e6db466d8)\n\nUSA Today (Aysha Bagchi)\n\n['Might makes right'? Why experts have fears for rule of law](https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2026\/03\/05\/war-powers-trump-iran-us\/88941002007\/)\n\n[PART III](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part3)\n\nThe New York Times (Amanda Taub)\n\n[How Good Intentions Helped Pave Trump’s Road to Iran](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/07\/world\/middleeast\/trump-iran-human-rights-international-law.html)\n\n[PART IV](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part4)\n\nThe New York Times (David French)\n\n[James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/08\/opinion\/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html)\n\n[PART IInternational Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It?]()\n\n[PART IIWhat About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say?]()\n\n[PART IIIHow Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law]()\n\n[PART IVIs This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character]()\n\nIt’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026.\n\nI’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.\n\n### [Part I]()\n***\n## International Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It?\nIs President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is.\n\nNow, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law.\n\nHowever, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis.\n\nHe goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law.\n\nHe goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be *fait accompli*,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.”\n\nAnd then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty.\n\nLet me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.”\n\n### [Part II]()\n***\n## What About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say?\nWell, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them.\n\nAnd you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law.\n\nBut as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented.\n\nAn article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro.\n\nNone of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action.\n\nLater in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here.\n\nOf course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability?\n\nAnd of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state.\n\nSo if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem.\n\nRussia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers.\n\nAnd that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism. By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005. Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means.\n\nI want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God.\n\nLooking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else.\n\nIf there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe.\n\nOf course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations.\n\nThe problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful.\n\n### [Part III]()\n***\n## How Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law\nI just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself.\n\nBut it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.”\n\nOkay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed.\n\nAnd so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is.\n\n### [Part IV]()\n***\n## Is This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character\nBut now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.”\n\nOkay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array.\n\nThe interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives.\n\nBut you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it?\n\nAnd he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what?\n\nHe’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide.\n\nThere’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test.\n\nIf you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter.\n\nObviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold.\n\nThanks for listening to The Briefing.\n\nFor more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to [x.com\/albertmohler](http:\/\/x.com\/albertmohler). For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to [sbts.edu](http:\/\/sbts.edu\/). For information on Boyce College, just go to [boycecollege.com](http:\/\/boycecollege.com\/).\n\nI’ll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.\n\n###### Documentation and Additional Reading\n[PART I](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part1)\n\nFinancial Times (Robert Shrimsley)\n\n[In defence of hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers](https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/8117e57f-c560-4a52-ab99-252e6db466d8)\n\nUSA Today (Aysha Bagchi)\n\n['Might makes right'? Why experts have fears for rule of law](https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2026\/03\/05\/war-powers-trump-iran-us\/88941002007\/)\n\n[PART III](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part3)\n\nThe New York Times (Amanda Taub)\n\n[How Good Intentions Helped Pave Trump’s Road to Iran](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/07\/world\/middleeast\/trump-iran-human-rights-international-law.html)\n\n[PART IV](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/2026\/03\/10\/briefing-3-10-26\/#part4)\n\nThe New York Times (David French)\n\n[James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/08\/opinion\/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html)\n\n***\n![](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/wp-content\/themes\/AlbertMohler-2024\/assets\/images\/sign.png)\n***\nR. Albert Mohler, Jr.\n\nI am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the [contact form](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/contact\/). 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All rights reserved.","attrs_readable_markdown":"It’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026.\n\nI’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.\n\n### [Part I]()\n***\n## International Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It?\nIs President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is.\n\nNow, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law.\n\nHowever, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis.\n\nHe goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law.\n\nHe goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be *fait accompli*,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.”\n\nAnd then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty.\n\nLet me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.”\n\n### [Part II]()\n***\n## What About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say?\nWell, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them.\n\nAnd you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law.\n\nBut as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented.\n\nAn article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro.\n\nNone of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action.\n\nLater in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here.\n\nOf course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability?\n\nAnd of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state.\n\nSo if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem.\n\nRussia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers.\n\nAnd that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism. By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005. Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means.\n\nI want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God.\n\nLooking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else.\n\nIf there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe.\n\nOf course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations.\n\nThe problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful.\n\n### [Part III]()\n***\n## How Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law\nI just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself.\n\nBut it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.”\n\nOkay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed.\n\nAnd so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is.\n\n### [Part IV]()\n***\n## Is This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character\nBut now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.”\n\nOkay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array.\n\nThe interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives.\n\nBut you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it?\n\nAnd he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what?\n\nHe’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide.\n\nThere’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test.\n\nIf you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter.\n\nObviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold.\n\nThanks for listening to The Briefing.\n\nFor more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to [x.com\/albertmohler](http:\/\/x.com\/albertmohler). For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to [sbts.edu](http:\/\/sbts.edu\/). For information on Boyce College, just go to [boycecollege.com](http:\/\/boycecollege.com\/).\n\nI’ll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.\n\n***\n![](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/wp-content\/themes\/AlbertMohler-2024\/assets\/images\/sign.png)\n***\nR. Albert Mohler, Jr.\n\nI am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the [contact form](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/contact\/). Follow regular updates on Twitter at [@albertmohler](https:\/\/twitter.com\/albertmohler).\n\n[Subscribe](https:\/\/albertmohler.com\/subscribe\/) via email for daily Briefings and more (unsubscribe at any time).","meta_canonical":null,"ml_categories_json":"{\"\/People_and_Society\":794,\"\/Law_and_Government\":636,\"\/Law_and_Government\/Legal\":618,\"\/People_and_Society\/Religion_and_Belief\":539,\"\/Law_and_Government\/Legal\/Constitutional_Law_and_Civil_Rights\":375}","ml_types_json":"{\"\/Article\":875,\"\/Article\/Opinion_Piece\":495}","ml_intent_types_json":"{\"Informational\":999}","meta_language":"en","attrs_author":"R. 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It’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026. I’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Part I International Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It? Is President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is. Now, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law. However, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis. He goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law. He goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be fait accompli ,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.” And then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty. Let me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.” Part II What About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say? Well, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them. And you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law. But as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented. An article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro. None of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action. Later in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here. Of course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability? And of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state. So if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem. Russia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers. And that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism. By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005. Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means. I want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Looking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else. If there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe. Of course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations. The problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful. Part III How Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law I just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself. But it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.” Okay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed. And so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is. Part IV Is This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character But now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.” Okay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array. The interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives. But you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it? And he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what? He’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide. There’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test. If you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter. Obviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.com/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. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the contact form . Follow regular updates on Twitter at @albertmohler . Subscribe via email for daily Briefings and more (unsubscribe at any time).

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- [About](https://albertmohler.com/about/) - [Contact](https://albertmohler.com/contact/) [![AlbertMohler.com](https://cf.albertmohler.com/uploads/2024/02/logo-2024_new.svg)](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/%20https://albertmohler.com/) - [Donate](https://albertmohler.com/donate/) - [Subscribe](https://albertmohler.com/subscribe/) - [Articles](https://albertmohler.com/articles/) - [The Briefing](https://albertmohler.com/the-briefing/) - [Thinking in Public](https://albertmohler.com/thinking-in-public/) - [Speaking & Teaching](https://albertmohler.com/speaking-teaching/) - [Ask Anything](https://albertmohler.com/ask-anything/) - [Exposition](https://albertmohler.com/exposition/) - [Books](https://albertmohler.com/books/) [![AlbertMohler.com](https://cf.albertmohler.com/uploads/2024/02/logo-2024_new.svg)](https://albertmohler.com/) - [Articles](https://albertmohler.com/articles/) - [The Briefing](https://albertmohler.com/the-briefing/) - [Thinking in Public](https://albertmohler.com/thinking-in-public/) - [Speaking & Teaching](https://albertmohler.com/speaking-teaching/) - [Ask Anything](https://albertmohler.com/ask-anything/) - [Exposition](https://albertmohler.com/exposition/) - [Books](https://albertmohler.com/books/) [![AlbertMohler.com](https://cf.albertmohler.com/uploads/2024/02/logo-2024_new.svg)](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/%20https://albertmohler.com/) - [Articles](https://albertmohler.com/articles/) - [The Briefing](https://albertmohler.com/the-briefing/) - [Thinking in Public](https://albertmohler.com/thinking-in-public/) - [Speaking & Teaching](https://albertmohler.com/speaking-teaching/) - [Ask Anything](https://albertmohler.com/ask-anything/) - [Exposition](https://albertmohler.com/exposition/) - [Books](https://albertmohler.com/books/) - [About](https://albertmohler.com/about/) - [Contact](https://albertmohler.com/contact/) - [Donate](https://albertmohler.com/donate/) - [Subscribe](https://albertmohler.com/subscribe/) [Home](https://albertmohler.com/) / [The Briefing](https://albertmohler.com/the-briefing/) / Tuesday, March 10, 2026 # Tuesday, March 10, 2026 [Download MP3](https://p.podderapp.com/9103131664/https://pod.albertmohler.com/Podcast/20260310_thebriefing.mp3) ###### Documentation and Additional Reading [PART I](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part1) Financial Times (Robert Shrimsley) [In defence of hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers](https://www.ft.com/content/8117e57f-c560-4a52-ab99-252e6db466d8) USA Today (Aysha Bagchi) ['Might makes right'? Why experts have fears for rule of law](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/05/war-powers-trump-iran-us/88941002007/) [PART III](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part3) The New York Times (Amanda Taub) [How Good Intentions Helped Pave Trump’s Road to Iran](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/world/middleeast/trump-iran-human-rights-international-law.html) [PART IV](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part4) The New York Times (David French) [James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/opinion/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html) [PART IInternational Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It?]() [PART IIWhat About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say?]() [PART IIIHow Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law]() [PART IVIs This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character]() It’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026. I’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. ### [Part I]() *** ## International Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It? Is President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is. Now, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law. However, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis. He goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law. He goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be *fait accompli*,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.” And then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty. Let me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.” ### [Part II]() *** ## What About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say? Well, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them. And you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law. But as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented. An article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro. None of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action. Later in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here. Of course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability? And of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state. So if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem. Russia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers. And that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism. By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005. Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means. I want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Looking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else. If there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe. Of course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations. The problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful. ### [Part III]() *** ## How Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law I just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself. But it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.” Okay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed. And so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is. ### [Part IV]() *** ## Is This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character But now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.” Okay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array. The interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives. But you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it? And he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what? He’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide. There’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test. If you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter. Obviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to [x.com/albertmohler](http://x.com/albertmohler). For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to [sbts.edu](http://sbts.edu/). For information on Boyce College, just go to [boycecollege.com](http://boycecollege.com/). I’ll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. ###### Documentation and Additional Reading [PART I](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part1) Financial Times (Robert Shrimsley) [In defence of hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers](https://www.ft.com/content/8117e57f-c560-4a52-ab99-252e6db466d8) USA Today (Aysha Bagchi) ['Might makes right'? Why experts have fears for rule of law](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/05/war-powers-trump-iran-us/88941002007/) [PART III](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part3) The New York Times (Amanda Taub) [How Good Intentions Helped Pave Trump’s Road to Iran](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/world/middleeast/trump-iran-human-rights-international-law.html) [PART IV](https://albertmohler.com/2026/03/10/briefing-3-10-26/#part4) The New York Times (David French) [James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/opinion/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html) *** ![](https://albertmohler.com/wp-content/themes/AlbertMohler-2024/assets/images/sign.png) *** R. Albert Mohler, Jr. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the [contact form](https://albertmohler.com/contact/). Follow regular updates on Twitter at [@albertmohler](https://twitter.com/albertmohler). 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It’s Tuesday, March 10, 2026. I’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. ### [Part I]() *** ## International Law, What Is It? Many Lay Claim to International Law, But Who is Defining It? Is President Donald Trump violating international law in terms of the military action against Iran? Is this a violation of the law of the nations? Is the president’s action illegal in terms of international law? Well, we’re looking at some really huge questions here. We’re going to really take a close look at what’s at stake, but I want to point, first of all, to the fact that a lot of people are talking about international law without ever telling us what it is. Now, if you’re talking about law in the United States, well, you’ve got different jurisdictions. There’s local law, there’s going to be state law, there’s going to be federal law, but you can pretty much figure out what the law is. Now, there are all kinds of complications, all kinds of situations, all kinds of judgments to be made, but it is a thing. It is a body of law. In the old days before the digital age, it was printed in massive volumes. There it is, black and white in print. And the authority for those laws are very, very clear. The authority of the federal government, the government of the United States of America, the authority of the 50 states or the authority vested in local government. All of those in their own sphere, all of them have laws and they are real. They’re real things. You can find them in a book. Nowadays, you can go online and find them. There’s some problems with the complexities and all the rest, but that’s a conversation for a different day. The point is you can walk into a law library in the United States and look at the law. However, if you’re going to talk about international law, well, there you’re talking about something very different. There’s no room to enter. There is no library to consult. There is no common body of what is known as international law. And that’s a huge problem. Now, I want to point to the problem by looking at one particular column that just appeared in the Financial Times. It’s by Robert Shrimsley and it’s entitled “In Defense of Handwringing about the Law.” So of course, very interesting. This is the World Affairs column of the Financial Times. One of the most influential newspapers in the world, certainly among the governing class. And he is concerned with the fact that there’s not enough concern about the legal issues that are at stake here and he sees this as an international crisis. He goes on and says, “Trump’s second term has hastened the return of a global order dictated solely by the interests of the military powers. The entire concept of sovereign nations voluntarily submitting to supernational rules is rejected by MAGA Republicans and their international analogs.” Okay, hold on just a minute. That’s a direct quote from the article. He says here that the entire concept of sovereign states voluntarily submitting to supernational rules. Well, okay, if that’s supposed to be the status before Donald Trump’s second term, well, where are those laws? Where do I look for that law library? Where do I go to find out what those laws are? In this entire article, international law is cited without ever defining what it is or where you can find it. This writer, by the way, says that part of this is the deadlock at the United Nations. This writer, by the way, he definitely wants to contend for the existence of international law and he clearly is arguing that what the United States and Israel have just done in Iran is a violation of that international law. He goes on to say that, “The demise of international law might not be *fait accompli*,” but he says, “If it is, then why doesn’t Donald Trump just seize Greenland?” Okay, so he goes on to say, “Many international laws were fashioned by those who witnessed the concentration camps and gulags. Their nation surrendered some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. Not in the naive belief that it would end all evil, but from the hope that it would restrain it. War leaders standing trial in the Hague or facing curtailed travel to avoid that fate demonstrate the potential consequences of atrocities.” Okay, that’s really important. So here you have this columnist at the financial times, obviously very bright, very much among those who talk in these terms about international law. I’m not questioning that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s just not clear that his reader has any idea what he’s talking about, except he does kind of betray that where he says that, “Many of these international laws were fashioned by those who had witnessed such things.” And then he goes on to say that, the idea here is that nations would surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals. And did that happen? Well, it did in a sense. And so you can look at some of the international agreements and some of the statements, especially those promulgated by the United Nations, and indeed it’s true, oftentimes on the other side of some kind of real atrocity and war. Something like Serbia or Croatia, some of these things that have happened and of course all over the world such things have happened. And it is often we could concede with, you might say, the best of interests, the best of ambitions that groups like the United Nations come up with these treaties and these acts. The problem is they’re not binding upon anyone. And the interesting thing is when you have nations, you’re giving up a little sovereignty. Let me just point out something and I’m going to look at this in the timeframe of history. He says here the international law exists in the agreement or the system in which some nations, “Surrender some sovereignty to bolster the protection of individuals, et cetera.” ### [Part II]() *** ## What About War in Iran—Does it Violate International Law? Who Gets to Say? Well, the problem is that if you are a sovereign state, let’s just follow the logic here. If you are a nation state and you’re a sovereign nation and you give up some of your sovereignty, in most situations it’s given up with no actual expectation that such sovereignty will be violated. It’s also to say that it is clear from history, looking at the history, including of Russia, just say the invasion of Ukraine and the subversion of Western nations, it is clear that signatories to those supposed binding international agreements don’t feel bound by them. And you have a situation, and this is just a matter of realism in terms of the world picture right now, you have many of the nations who have signed onto this being victimized by other nations who have signed onto this. Mr. Shrimsley later in the article says, “Of course there is much in international law that can be reasonably lamented.” He says, “Its supporters can succumb to a rose-tinted view that ignores how imperfectly it worked before. Too many avoid its reach. Major powers too often break the rules when it suits them. Might will never be removed from the equation.” Well, that’s realism. So again, I think that’s a very honest statement. And so it comes down to asking again where do I go and find that law? And so Mr. Shrimsley clearly is invoking here treaties, acts and other legal documents and legal agreements that nations have entered voluntarily. But when you look to the United Nations in so many ways, you have a common nexus here where many people who talk about international law want to point to international organizations as ways of protecting and administering and enforcing international law. But as this article concedes, that’s only so good as nations agree to this. It’s only so good as major powers play by the same rules, but the major powers don’t play by the same rules. And by the way, that is bipartisan in the United States. It’s extremely well documented. An article on the front page of yesterday’s USA Today is entitled “Why Experts Fear for the Rule of Law and How the US has Attacked Iran.” Later in the article, you have a bipartisan analysis here, or you might say an analysis of bipartisan violation, of what’s being cited as international law. Listen to this. “President Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers. President Barack Obama participated in a bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 to support the ouster of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Trump sent American troops into Venezuela in early January to seize its leader, Nicholas Maduro. None of those military interventions were expressly authorized by Congress. Okay, so this turns out not to be so much about international law, but about the separation of powers in the United States, but you could look at those same incidents and recognize that in many cases there was non-existent or ambiguous or retrospective international action. Later in this article, USA Today declares, “International treaties that have been ratified by the US Senate also carry the force of law within the United States. That includes the United Nations Charter, which was ratified by the Senate in an 89 to two vote 1945. The charter generally authorizes the UN Security Council to determine what to do, including using military force in response to a threat to peace, but also allows a country to unilaterally use military force and defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Some legal scholars have interpreted that provision to allow for military action if there is an imminent threat of an armed attack,” which by the way is the language that President Trump has invoked here. Of course other presidents have cited basically the same. Some of the developments that are often referred to in terms of international law on these matters have to do with the lessons of history, but as you look at the UN charter and you look at many of the treaties and other kinds of agreements internationally, at least to some extent in scope, one of the things you find is that, well, looking at the experience of the 20th century, it was clear that what was adopted in the UN charter in 1945 and was the expectation of that time didn’t last through the end of that century. So for example, let me give you two concrete examples that really do, let’s just say, test the limits of this kind of understanding. The first is when you have a rogue state building up a massive offensive capability. Do you have to wait until it attacks in order to address that aggressive ability? And of course the answer is no. Just war theory in the Christian tradition helps to explain that as well, but that’s one of those boundary cases. Clearly there are people who even at the time might say that was justified and others might say it wasn’t justified. The other issue is what about atrocities, even genocide, carried out inside a country? Do other countries have the right to intervene militarily when you have just a massacre, obviously genocide going on here? Is it lawful for states to intervene? And this is where in the course of the last several decades a principle known as R2P, which means responsibility to protect, entered into what’s often discussed as international law. And the presumption behind this is that it is lawful. It is right. It is justified to go into even a sovereign state with force if you are preventing some kind of genocide or massive affront to human rights and human dignity undertaken inside a state. So if you look at the original 1945 UN charter, there is no such authorization, but it basically was developed because circumstances demanded it. But that then it gets to some very, very interesting and frankly revealing situations when Vladimir Putin openly discussed its invasion of Ukraine, which was the beginning of the current war there in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin cited this explicitly when he said he was sending in Russian forces to prevent basically human rights offenses, even he made reference to something like genocide against Russian people there in the Eastern areas of Ukraine. And so it was almost as if the argument he was making was crafted by an attorney, in order to cite R2P, the responsibility to protect in order to claim some kind of legal justification. Now, I’ll just go so far as to say that was false on its face. I think most people all around the world, including, well, I’d say even beginning in the Kremlin, understood that that was a fig leaf of an argument, but then again, that’s the problem. Russia has not undertaken that action with any kind of approval from the United Nations Security Council because of course it wouldn’t be coming and it wouldn’t have happened. This was a blatant act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, but you’ll also notice something else. The fact that Russia did this in direct violation of what is supposedly international law, well, it has led to many nations trying to help Ukraine, often at tremendous extent. And Russia has found itself in a situation that certainly is not the quick war of victory that was promised in the beginning, but the bottom line is all of this is not really happening by international law, whatever it is. But this also takes us back to the fact that the United Nations Security Council is immobilized and has almost from the start been immobilized when the actor is one of the major powers. And that is because the major powers, and at this point that includes the United States and Russia and China, have veto power. So they’re not going to allow an act which would correct themselves. And that’s true, by the way, of all three. That’s just realism. By the way, that idea, the responsibility to protect, it was, as the New York Times note, unanimously adopted at the UN World Summit, a gathering over 170 heads of state that goes back to 2005. Again, is that international law? Maybe it is, but clearly it doesn’t mean what most people think it means. I want to look at this, however, also from the vantage point of Christian history and understand how Christians have thought through these issues. I’ve mentioned this just in bear outline before, so let me just set the stage, how Christians have thought about this. Number one, we do believe in general revelation. Paul in Romans chapter one, these things are known. They are clearly revealed, even in the things that are seen, so that they are without excuse. There’s no one on planet earth who has the excuse that he or she did not know that genocide is wrong. And so we understand that just from a position of Christian theology, we understand that there’s a morally binding law, the law of God. And this invokes, of course, also the reality of conscience, at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Looking at the Christian theological tradition, even going back to someone like Augustine, the towering figure, especially in the fourth century, Augustine clearly understood there to be something like international law, but it really did more or less come under the situation of some kind of emperor or monarch. And so it was really more about territory than anything else. If there was a major change in this, it came in the medieval period with the rise of what is known as the Holy Roman Empire. So there you’re talking about the massive European empire that really was the great political fact of much of the medieval period. And there was developing law, even international law during that period. But the thing to recognize is that there was an emperor at the top of the Holy Roman Empire. And so you had an international organization that was monarchial and coercive. That’s not to say it was easy to rule. It is to say there was a ruler. Now, I’m going to have to cross a lot of history here, but let’s just go to the 18th and 19th centuries where in the wake of the enlightenment, European powers in particular, thought that they could put together a political elite that would prevent war. And you have such things as a Congress of Vienna and the development of an understanding of what would be a cosmopolitan peace among nations there in Europe. Of course that crashed. Well, it crashed even before 1914, but it certainly crashed in terms of what became known as World War I, crashed even more tragically in World War II. And so on the other side of that you had nations that came together and, let’s face it, most of them were the victorious nations when you look at World War II and they tried to put together an international body. And as you know, by 1945 it became known as the United Nations. And it was headquartered in the United States because President Harry S. Truman was determined to not be too far from his ability for oversight. He believed from the beginning that it was likely the thing would be a great source of trouble, but it was also necessary with good intentions, necessary at the end of something as horrible as World War II, hoping that at least some wars could be prevented by means of the deliberations and relationships of the United Nations. The problem with that theory is that the United Nations is not the Holy Roman Empire, which, by the way, I’ll beat you to it. By the 19th century, the joke was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor empire, but it certainly was the Holy Roman Empire for a very long time. When you look at the age of the United Nations, there’s no secular counterpart for that. There is no global government. If there is a global government, the instinct of Christians is that it will be a very dangerous thing. As a matter of fact, it will be something that is contrary to biblical wisdom and contrary to a basic principle like subsidiarity. And instead it is more likely to be tyrannical than helpful. ### [Part III]() *** ## How Should Christians Think About International Law? The Dangers and Limitations of a Global Governing Law I just want to bring this up today in order to say Christians do understand that there is a binding moral law, binding upon all human beings and binding upon all nations, binding upon all institutions and organizations, and that’s deeply rooted in God himself and in his law and in the fact the creator has even embedded his law in the creation itself. But it’s also true that when you look at international law, unless you do have something like an empire with an emperor at the head, you really don’t have any way to say, okay, this exactly is the law of binding on all nations, nor do you have the ability to make it binding. And so that also means that what you often end up with is you have the countries that are willing to sign such agreements and willing to live by them doing so and others signing and breaking the attorneys are just outside of it altogether. Very interesting statement in an article by Amanda Taub that ran in the New York Times yesterday. Here’s the headline, “Trump Jumps Through Humanitarian Loophole.” Here it is, “International law is a funny thing. With no real means of enforcement, it’s essentially a set of reciprocal expectations. It only works if states believe others will follow the rules, too. Anything that departs from those expectations weakens the system.” Okay. So the bottom line, Christians believe that there is a law that is binding upon all. We do believe even that there is something like a law among nations, but we understand that the final judgment on such things will not come until it comes by the judgment of God. In the meantime, it is not wrong to try to do good and to restrain evil by the use of such institutions, organizations, and treaties, but by definition they have severe limitations. And even as the course of the last several decades has demonstrated, those limitations are often nearly fatal. So Christians understand that God will judge the United States for everything the United States has done, but more importantly will judge every single one of us as human beings on that great day of judgment when all things will be revealed. And so we as Christians can’t say. We should never say there’s nothing like a binding law upon all, but we can say that in a fallen world and in a complicated world in which there are so many evil actors, there is no adequate international body now that has jurisdiction or enforcement over international law, whatever it is. ### [Part IV]() *** ## Is This the Talarico Moment? David French Says So, But James Talarico’s Liberal Views Are a Reflection of His Character But now we need to come back to the United States. Very big explosive controversy among American evangelicals. A lot of frustration with David French, New York Times columnist. And of course this is not particularly new. Let’s just say that since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 there have been some very clear strains. And again, it’s almost like you’re looking at a V with American evangelicals going in one direction and David French going in another. But the point is, he has now made a very clear argument and that argument appears in an article published in the New York Times entitled “James Talarico is a Christian X-ray.” Okay, so we’ve talked about James Talarico. He is now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Senator John Cornyn and he is running as a Democrat, of course, but he’s running on the Democratic platform and, so far as I know, just about all of it, but he’s really branding himself as a young, attractive, moderate and as a Christian. And he’s often identified as a seminarian with a theological seminary, Austin Presbyterian Seminary right there in Austin, Texas. He grew up there in Austin in a PCUSA, that’s Presbyterian Church USA Church that was one of the first among those liberal churches to move in the direction of performing and recognizing same sex relationships and same sex ceremonies even. And he’s very leftist on all these things. That’s the amazing thing. He doesn’t cover that at all. And so he’s pro abortion, he’s pro LGBTQ+ just across the array. The interesting thing, the controversial thing, the thing that’s gotten a lot of attention is how David French basically argues that nonetheless, he is really asserting a new Christian identity into American politics, mentions his criticism of Christian nationalism. “He makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.” Talarico said in 2023, “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.” Well, again, it’s like international law. Define it for me. Show it to me. What in the world is Christian nationalism here? Christian nationalism he says wants to control. Okay, you know what he’s talking about here? That means something like pro life legislation, which of course the Democrats has said for years is about controlling women’s bodies. And we would have to respond and say, no, it’s about saving unborn lives. But you’ll notice here the control issue. So here’s the thing, he never defines Christian nationalism in this way, but he and David French are really sure that Christian nationalism is an awful thing, but it’s never defined. So does this mean if you believe that the public policy and laws of the United States should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and that’s based upon your Christian convictions, which you believe, by the way, are also a part of the natural law, does that make you a Christian nationalist? Well, in the view of the folks making this kind of argument, clearly it does. It means you are about control. David French says he’s not all on board when it comes to everything James Talarico believes. He says, “When I hear Talarico speak about faith, I alternate between agreement and disagreement.” He says, “He’s spot on about the dangers of Christian nationalism.” Again, what is it? And he goes on to say, “Talarico is a political and religious progressive.” He says, “I’m a political and religious conservative.” Well, that gets into some real debate real quick about what in the world conservative means here, not on issues like same-sex marriage and many other things that I think for most evangelical Christians would be bottom line foundational necessities. But David French and his argument says, “To put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.” All right, so here you have a statement in which he says he’s an openly Christian politician. I just want us to note his theology and his position on, I think, some very important moral issues that are closely identified with Christianity and with Christian voters in the United States. He is diametrically at odds with them, but you know what? He’s friendly. He’s an attractive candidate. And even though he doesn’t say things that come across as mean, I just want to say he is, I think, bearing false witness against Christians, conservative Christians. He goes on, his theological minimalism comes down to the fact he’s basically for the sermon on the mount and the words of Jesus and the good Samaritan. And David French himself writes, “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you would notice is the Bible contains relatively few political mandates. You can read it from cover to cover and not know the definitive biblical tax rate, welfare program or foreign policy.” Okay. Yes, that’s true. I think that’s pretty non-debatable among liberals and conservatives, by the way. But nonetheless, he holds up James Talarico as the example that other Christians should follow. And I think this is a major divide. There’s so much more to be said, especially about James Talarico, and I will be covering this in far more detail as this race continues to unfold. This is a massive challenge. I don’t know how the election’s going to turn out, but I can tell you this. We are looking at the fact that there are attempts now to say that right-minded Christians should vote for someone like James Talarico because he’s a nicer guy than at least one of the Republican alternatives. And of course that he’s referring there to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General who is running against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. And on the character issues there, I don’t think it’s even an open race. Ken Paxton, a very morally complicated person. But when you come to issues, and that includes something as basic, and I know people say we’re reductionistic and you come back to it, but I’ll just tell you, for 50 years this has been a significant litmus test. If you are for the killing of unborn babies in the womb and if you are for the subversion of marriage with the approval of same-sex marriage, that is really all you need to know. And by the way, what I reject is that that’s not about personal character. I do think it’s about personal character. I don’t doubt that James Talarico would make a good neighbor in terms of friendliness there in the neighborhood, but I think he would make an awful United States Senator precisely because of the convictions he holds and about which he has been very honest. And by the way, I just want to say one thing as I conclude this. There is the declaration here that those who voted for Donald Trump simply don’t care about the character issue. I just think that the policies themselves are a part of the character issue. And I don’t know of any Christian with whom I have ongoing fellowship who has ever said anything like personal morality, personal character doesn’t matter. Obviously these issues deserve a lot of ongoing attention and we’ll do that together as if it’s unfold. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to [x.com/albertmohler](http://x.com/albertmohler). For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to [sbts.edu](http://sbts.edu/). For information on Boyce College, just go to [boycecollege.com](http://boycecollege.com/). I’ll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. *** ![](https://albertmohler.com/wp-content/themes/AlbertMohler-2024/assets/images/sign.png) *** R. Albert Mohler, Jr. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me using the [contact form](https://albertmohler.com/contact/). Follow regular updates on Twitter at [@albertmohler](https://twitter.com/albertmohler). [Subscribe](https://albertmohler.com/subscribe/) via email for daily Briefings and more (unsubscribe at any time).

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