Might Makes Right—Again
Why treating Russia and Ukraine as equals repeats the Danube’s tragic history and ignores the Bible’s warning.
Over the weekend, President Trump defended his deal-making approach to Ukraine and Russia by saying things like, “Russia is a very big power”; “They’ve made many advances.” His suggestion was that both sides must make concessions, as though the aggressor and the invaded stand on equal ground.
But this is not peacemaking. It is appeasement. It is the enthronement of brute force over truth. It is the ancient lie of “might makes right.”
The Danube Basin’s Culture of “Might Makes Right”
History along the Danube offers vivid reminders that Eastern Europeans normalize brute force.
Empires codifying conquest: The Habsburgs in Hungary and the Ottomans in the Balkans justified rule not by consent but by the endurance of their armies. Treaties like Karlowitz (1699) and Trianon (1920) did not create justice; they merely ratified the battlefield.
Shifting alliances as survival: Romania in World War II joined Hitler to regain land, then turned to the Allies once German might collapsed. Right and wrong were defined by whose tanks were nearer.
Proverbs that naturalize power: Across the region, folk wisdom bluntly acknowledges domination. In Romanian: Peștele cel mare îl mănâncă pe cel mic (“The big fish eats the small one”). In Bulgarian: Голямата риба яде малката (“The big fish eats the small”). Such sayings do not lament injustice—they accept it as the way of the world.
Literature haunted by conquest: Hungarian poet and warrior Miklós Zrínyi, writing of resistance to the Turks, captured the tragic reality that survival depended on arms. Later Central European writers like Kundera would call this the “tragedy of small nations”—justice often drowned in the Danube flood of power.
The result is a cultural memory shaped less by rule of law than by the law of the jungle. To this day, the reflex persists: that to be great is to be big, and to be right is simply to be victorious.
The Old Sickness
Let’s face it, “might makes right” is idolatry. Habakkuk described it bluntly: the guilty make “their own might their god” (Hab. 1:11). Scripture calls this a perversion of justice: acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent (Prov. 17:15), calling evil good and good evil (Isa. 5:20).
Those who peddle this poison corrode justice itself. They blur the line between oppressor and victim, and in so doing they teach whole societies that conscience is expendable whenever it is inconvenient.
And those who enable them—who, in the name of expediency, treat the aggressor and the victim as equal partners—are complicit. To say “both sides must give” is to deny that one side has already taken everything by violence.
Judeo-Christian Clarity
Those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition, of all people, should be acutely aware of this. The God of Abraham and the prophets condemns the lie of might-makes-right. To confuse power with righteousness is to return to Pharaoh, to Babylon, to Rome—regimes that mistook conquest for legitimacy. The Bible is not silent: God defends the widow, the orphan, the stranger—not the war criminal with armies at his back.
The Overlooked Factor: Culture
It is tempting to analyze “might makes right” only in terms of geopolitics or armies. But beneath those movements lies culture. We often overlook or even deny this, though many would claim much of our own nation’s partisanship is rooted in culture. And in Eastern Europe, culture has long carried the lesson that survival depends on strength. The Danube proverbs about big fish devouring the small are not just folk sayings—they are cultural training in what to expect from the world.
The same temptation lies in America today. We imagine ourselves above such thinking, yet a culture that prizes domination in politics, business, and even religion is not immune from the yeast of “might makes right.” When culture normalizes it, politics soon entrenches it.
The True Measure of Nations
The measure of nations is not size or force, but whether they side with the guilty or the innocent.
And here is the irony: those who shout loudest about “making America great again” reveal a sense of greatness that runs directly against Scripture.
They confuse greatness with bigness, power with legitimacy. In doing so, they betray both democracy and the God who despises false measures.
The Staggering Irony
What makes this moment unbearable is the full-throated support of so-called Christian nationalists for a leader who excuses the aggressor and belittles the victim. Those who wave the Bible in one hand and the flag in the other seem not to notice—or worse, not to care—that Scripture is explicit: God detests acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent (Prov. 17:15).
The irony is staggering. Those who claim to “defend Christian values” cheer the very perversion the prophets condemned. They equate greatness with bigness, might with right—while the God they profess to serve measures nations not by size, but by whether they side with the guilty or the innocent.
Afterthought: An Indictment in (95) Theses
This reflection is more than commentary; it is an indictment. It belongs to a larger series. Active Measures will be developing a Luther-inspired list of modern grievances—a kind of digital Wittenberg Door. Each post will take up one “thesis.” Together they will call out the old sicknesses that deform our public life and point toward a new dispensation where truth and conscience have the last word.
And that word will not be the easy word of our age—whether it is power, profit, grievance, or validation—but the hard word of truth.