After Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ended the Cold War, almost every U.S. administration entered office with grand diplomatic ambition. Bill Clinton wanted to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Barack Obama sought a reset with Russia, normalization with Cuba, and outstretched his hand to Iran. Donald Trump courted both the Taliban and Kim Jong Un. President Joe Biden has again gone all in on Iran.
Its desire to shape legacy often leads the White House to twist intelligence. Contrary to popular wisdom, administrations politicize intelligence less to validate war and more to justify peace despite evidence of an adversary’s insincerity. But if the White House and State Department will not honestly assess their outreach to rogue regimes and terrorist groups, then how can academics and analysts determine if diplomacy has really worked or if claims of progress and moderation are a political mirage?
Religious freedom is one metric.
When dictatorships come in from the cold, they do not fear faith. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin allowed not only the Russian Orthodox Church to thrive, but also Russians of all religions to worship in their own churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples. As Vladimir Putin has turned back the clock, religious freedom has been a major casualty. Not only irredentism but also religious repression motivates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Likewise, no matter how much Iranian President Mohammad Khatami talked about “Dialogue of Civilization” or Hassan Rouhani promised to end Iran’s isolation, regime targeting of Christians, Jews, and Baha’is belied the notion that the regime had fundamentally changed. The notions of Taliban moderation to which diplomats clung during the peace talks and withdrawal also fall apart when analysts consider religious freedom. Likewise, while many politicians, diplomats, think tankers, and journalists tout Azerbaijan’s moderation, declining religious freedom in the former Soviet state tells another story.
Kangaroo courts represent another metric. Few outside the most hardened apologists would suggest Stalin’s show trials or the forced confessions of China’s Cultural Revolution to be fair judicial processes. Yet, in more recent decades, White House and State Department naivete have outpaced authentic reform. While Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gushed about changes underway in Iran during the height of Khatami’s “Dialogue of Civilizations,” for example, I visited Iran. The regime had just suppressed a series of free speech student protests. Almost every night, Iranian state television broadcasts forced confessions of the students to various high crimes.
Turkey presents another case in point. As the White House pushed through the sale of advanced F-16 fighter jets, its partisans liked either to depict Erdogan as capable of moderation or to argue that Turkey would revert to a more moderate style upon Erdogan’s exit. A look into Turkey’s prisons — where the cream of the professional and intellectual class now reside — would show such wishful thinking to be naive, though.
Azerbaijan provides a ridiculous example. On July 29, 2023, Azerbaijani security forces arrested 68-year-old Vagif Khachatryan at an illegal checkpoint as he traveled to Armenia for heart surgery. Charged with crimes allegedly committed in Nagorno-Karabakh 30 years previous, he told the court that he was sorry but he was not in the region when the alleged crimes were committed. The court-appointed translator rendered that, “he was sorry he committed the crimes.” He now serves a 15-year sentence while his heart deteriorates. Such actions reflect not a reformed government, but a Stalinist one.
Today, while the White House and State Department normalize Hamas and parrot its data, Palestinian courts sentence Palestinians to death in predetermined show trials for seeking normalization or cooperation with Israel, or selling land to Jews. Diplomats might push for expedited statehood, but such trials show the nature of that state.
Still, as the first and perhaps only Biden term winds down, his team’s spin will depict his diplomatic legacy as successful. That is the nature of politics, but if U.S. diplomacy were truly successful, it would not need to elide lack of religious freedom or overlook its partners’ and adversaries’ kangaroo courts.
