The Bush Administration and America's international religious freedom policy.

• Author: Farr, Thomas F.

In February 2002, President George W. Bush appeared at Beijing's Tsinghua University and delivered a speech that was broadcast across China. (1) A substantial portion of the President's remarks focused on the religious nature of the American people, as well as the importance of religious freedom for the United States and for China. (2) In the United States, religious liberty advocates were greatly encouraged. The President had made it clear to the Chinese government, one of the world's worst violators of religious freedom, that his country stood resolutely for the protection of that right.

Before and during the early years of the Bush Administration, there were reasons for cautious optimism about the cause of international religious liberty. Beginning in 1998, U.S. law mandated that a goal of American diplomacy be the advancement of religious freedom around the world. (3) The International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act of 1998 created an office in the State Department, headed by a very senior diplomatic official--an ambassador at large--to lead the new foreign policy initiative. (4) The IRF Act also created an independent commission to assess the Department's performance. (5) President Bush clearly cared deeply about this issue. On several occasions during his tenure, he met with religious dissidents and the victims of religious persecution, sometimes in the face of criticism. (6)

Moreover, after September 11, 2001, the Administration began developing a policy called a "forward strategy of freedom." (7) The policy sought support for democratic reformers in the greater Middle East to undermine the pathologies feeding Islamist terrorism. (8) Both common sense and American history suggested that religious liberty would play a role in the new freedom agenda: Any highly religious society must be grounded in religious freedom for democracy to endure. For those who had led the legislative campaign for the IRF Act, it seemed that the stars might finally be coming into alignment: they had a President devoted to religious liberty, a powerful new official in the State Department dedicated to carrying out a statutory mandate, and a national security strategy designed to encourage the institutions and habits of freedom.

This Essay will explore how IRF policy fared under the George W. Bush Administration. In attempting to gauge success and failure, and strength and weakness, this Essay will focus on three issues: the extent to which U.S. diplomacy actually reduced religious persecution, how well it advanced the institutions and habits of religious freedom, and what basis it provided the Obama Administration to make further progress. In each of these areas, the record is, unsurprisingly, mixed. Our overall judgment is that the Administration focused a critically important spotlight on governments that persecute and managed to free some number of religious prisoners. In at least three countries--Sudan, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia--significant structural steps were taken. Notwithstanding these successes, however, the Bush Administration did not make significant progress toward either reducing persecution or advancing religious freedom. Surprisingly, it appears that IRF policy, isolated within the State Department, had virtually no role in democracy promotion, public diplomacy, or counterterrorism strategy.

1. THE INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACT

   When George W. Bush was sworn in as the forty-third President on January 20, 2001, the machinery necessary to promote religious liberty already existed as an element of U.S. foreign policy. Just two years earlier, in October 1998, Congress had unanimously passed the IRF Act, and President William J. Clinton had immediately signed it into law. But the political harmony surrounding the law's passage and signing was deceptive. The questions of whether and how to promote religious freedom abroad had been extremely contentious during the previous two-year debate, both within the Clinton Administration and on Capitol Hill. (9)

   The reasons why supporters believed a law was necessary were clear. In their view, the scourge of international religious persecution had taken a back seat in the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration. The genocidal war in Sudan, directed against Christian and animist Africans in the south and the Nuba Mountains, had been largely ignored by the press and the U.S. government, especially the State Department. (10) Other serious problems of religious persecution that occurred in China, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, and elsewhere also received scant attention. (11)

   By the mid-1990s, the relative indifference of American policy and media elites had sparked a movement by Christian and human rights activists to make the issue of religious persecution part of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In the fall of 1997, Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) introduced the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act, (12) cosponsored by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Wolf-Specter, as it was called, mandated automatic sanctions against governments responsible for religious persecution. (13) Secretary of State Madeleine Albright opposed the sanctions and other provisions, but she also argued against the very concept of such a bill as creating a "hierarchy among human rights." (14) Within the State Department, considerable skepticism existed about a law perceived as emanating from the Christian right.

   Ultimately, the IRF Act replaced Wolf-Specter. Sponsored by Senators Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the IRF Act rejected the automatic sanctions upon which Wolf-Specter had been based and placed a greater emphasis on quiet diplomacy. It focused on the public designation of severe violators and the threat of economic sanctions against them as its central policy tools. (15) These provisions reflected political compromises that, when combined with other circumstances, induced the Clinton Administration to sign the bill. (16) But principle-based objections to the IRF Act remained.

   The IRF Act required U.S. foreign policy to promote religious liberty. It established an Office of International Religious Freedom in the State Department, headed by an ambassador at large. (17) In a typically American attempt to create checks and balances, the IRF Act also established an independent, bipartisan "watchdog" Commission on International Religious Freedom to issue separate policy recommendations and public critiques of the State Department's performance. (18) The Act also urged, but did not require, the establishment of a religious freedom advisor on the National Security Council. (19)

   Although the State Department had issued human rights "country reports" for many years, those reports often deemphasized religious liberty. (20) Accordingly, the IRF Act required an annual report to describe the status of religious freedom in some 200 countries. (21) Just as important, the Act required that those reports state what actions the United States was taking to address problems in those countries where violations were occuring. (22) The annual IRF Report has provided the statute's most consequential challenge to the secular culture of American diplomacy. The reporting requirement requires foreign service officers (FSOs) to engage religious actors, ideas, and communities in their respective countries. Although these officers are typically the most junior in American embassies and consulates, the annual report has ensured that the younger generation of diplomats is exposed to religious factors in a way that most of their elders were not.

   During the first decade of IRF Act implementation, from 1998 to 2008, certain patterns of diplomatic action emerged. The Act encouraged a broad array of direct and indirect initiatives, including the use of foreign aid and grants to non governmental organizations, to advance religious freedom. Most of the Act's language on this subject, however, was nonbinding. For example, the IRF Act provides that "in the provision of foreign assistance, the United States should make a priority of promoting and developing legal protections and cultural respect for religious freedom." (23) Title V of the IRF Act amended existing statutes on foreign aid, international broadcasting, international exchanges, and Foreign Service awards to incorporate the advancement of religious freedom as a goal, but not as a mandate. (24) On the other hand, the IRF Act required public designation of the worst violators. (25) Each year, the State Department identifies all violations of religious freedom in its Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. (26) The State Department subsequently publishes a list of the "countries of particular concern" (CPCs). (27) The first IRF Ambassador, Robert Seiple, called CPCs the "poster child of religious persecution," (28) and he was right. CPCs are governments guilty of perpetrating or acquiescing in "particularly severe violations of religious freedom," such as torture, rape, abduction, clandestine detention, and "other flagrant denial[s] of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons." (29)

   In determining which nations to designate as CPCs, the Secretary of State takes into account a variety of evidence, including the Department's own reports, the recommendations of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and data from outside sources. (30) After publication of the CPC list, the Secretary must choose an action from a menu of options, ranging from very serious economic sanctions to a waiver of any action at all, for each identified CPC. (31) A waiver can be exercised in three circumstances: when the violations have ceased, when the exercise of the waiver would "further the purposes" of the IRF Act, or when the "important national interest of the United States requires the exercise of such waiver authority." (32)

   Over the years, the annual CPC list usually contained six to ten countries...