Issue #1, Summer 2006

Foggy Bottom Faith

Bridging the religious divide at home with a faith-based foreign policy abroad.

The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs By Madeleine Albright • HarperCollins • 2006 • 352 pages • $25.95

Until recently, of all the subjects diplomats needed to master, religion ranked near the bottom of the list. If you were headed for any important foreign policy position, at home or abroad, you had to familiarize yourself with international relations theory, global economics, military strategy, weapons technology, geography, and foreign languages. You did not spend much time contemplating the nature of the divinity or the ramifications of original sin.

Madeleine Albright achieved her prominence as a diplomat under conditions such as these. She herself comes from an unusual religious background: Jewish by family history, she was raised Catholic after moving to this country at age 11, but never made religion a major focus of her adult life. After she became a Georgetown professor and began to cultivate ties to prominent Democratic politicians, she spent relatively little time learning the intricacies of faith. “Diplomats in my era,” she writes in her new book, The Mighty and the Almighty, “were taught not to invite trouble, and no subject seemed more inherently treacherous than religion.” If she had wanted to learn more on the subject, moreover, not many institutions capable of teaching her existed. And not only was the diplomatic establishment indifferent to religion in general, it was, at almost every level, especially unprepared to tackle the increasingly important nexus of Islamic politics and U.S. foreign policy interests. Although relationships with the Muslim world would dominate so much of Albright’s stint as Secretary of State, no Muslims served in a senior position at the State Department when she took office in 1996 and few at Foggy Bottom had even thought of ways the United States could communicate its concerns to Muslim-majority countries.

Now all that has changed; every serious policymaker recognizes the centrality of religion to numerous global conflicts, and the makers of U.S. foreign policy understand that the subject deserves their attention. It is a sign of these new realities that Albright, obviously a quick learner, has published her reflections on the role that religion should play in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Whether we are talking about long-simmering disputes between nations–and regions within nations–of different religions (e.g. Israel and the Palestinian Authority, India and Pakistan, Nigeria); the increasingly irreconcilable differences between Iraqis who share the same language, country, and religion but differ, and differ violently, over who is the proper successor to the Prophet; how to best protect Americans against another terrorist attack from Muslim fundamentalists; the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa; birth-control and family planning issues; or Turkey’s membership in Europe, some knowledge of religion is essential for the wise conduct of U.S. foreign policy. However, how the United States should approach religion abroad, and to what extent religion should influence its ideals and policy, has yet to be worked out. While some of Albright’s suggestions for how this might be achieved are questionable, her assessment of both the need and the opportunity for a new liberal-conservative consensus on foreign policy–one that marries liberal concerns for international social justice with a conservative appreciation for the importance of religion in global politics–is both vital and, surprisingly, imminently possible.

It would seem self-evident that religious people are likely to have an instinctive understanding of how other religious people view the world. Yet foreign policy rarely works in such predictable ways. Indeed, because they lacked an appropriate framework, two of the most serious misunderstandings of religion’s role in fueling global conflicts were made by America’s two most religious recent presidents.

Jimmy Carter, Albright writes, was capable of using his personal faith to achieve diplomatic ends. “The peace agreement between Egypt and Israel would never have come about if not for Carter’s ability to understand and appeal to the deep religious convictions of President [Anwar] Sadat and Prime Minister [Menachem] Begin,” she argues. It helped Carter considerably that neither of the two men he invited to Camp David shared his Baptist heritage; because Carter was neither Muslim nor Jewish, the leaders of Egypt and Israel did not feel that their faith commitments would be threatened by his. (These days, as any Episcopalian can testify, believers more frequently disagree with those closest to their own faith tradition than they do with those from a different one.) What mattered was that, because he shared a basic belief in God, they felt they could trust him.

Issue #1, Summer 2006
 
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RELIGIOUS ENLIGHTENMENT:

A. W.'s piece focusing of M. Albright's recent observation that a religious enlightenment with regard to a more liberal nationalistic flavor would bode well to enhance America's position in a post-Bush world. Let us all have the faith and trust in humanity that all religions, dispite their diversity, will recognize the futility blindly following those leaders with extreme philosophies.

Jun 23, 2006, 8:08 PM
David Stinson:

An interesting topic, since I actually feel quite strongly about it. There is nothing wrong with holding one's faith personally, but using it as a tool of governance is a whole different issue. It's my belief that the Democratic party should devote their foreign policy to promoting democracy through the seperation of religion from the state, no matter which religion or which part of the world.



This isn't to say that theocracy can never coexist with democracy - for example, Israel is a stable democratic state. But countries where people believe in rationalism are safer, so we can leave the theocratic ones for the Republicans. We can basically get a wager going, and in a decade or two we'll see where 'our' countries and 'their' countries turn out. My money says that the more rational ones will be ahead.



I don't need to remind anyone that foriegn policy is usually seen as the Democrats' weakest issue, and this is a way to ideologically counter neoconservatism. Neoconservatism basically doesn't understand the relationship between religion and anti-democratic forces, and this is an area where I think we can step in to help.

Aug 15, 2006, 8:18 PM
Sharat Shastri:

Quite a sensible and sensitive read...Not shying away from the R-word and vying for World peace. To the extent that the policy promotes the use religion to achieve peaceful ends, we can dwell a safer world to live in. I was just wondering if Nye's 'attractive softpower' is what this review speaks loudly about.

Dec 1, 2006, 10:22 PM

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