U.S. foreign policy needs to get religion

By Thomas Wrigh
Executive Director of Studies, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

The national security apparatus of the U.S. government pays more attention to religion than it used to, largely through the harsh learning process of trial and error. The revival of Islamist political movements in Iran and elsewhere led the CIA to set up an office of political Islam in the mid-1980s; this office grew as the threat of violent religious extremism gathered during the 1990s. The Defense Department rewrote the Army's counterinsurgency manual to take special account of cultural factors, including religion, as the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan wandered toward the precipice in the mid- 2000s. And the Obama Administration, in the White House and the State Department, has built some capacity to engage Muslim communities in order to bridge the gap of civilizations that widened since 9/11.

These initiatives are welcome, but all, to some extent or another, were borne out of separate setbacks or failures--the Iranian revolution of 1979, al-Qaeda's war against the United States, and the counterproductive application of conventional war strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States must move beyond trial and error to build the capacity and framework required to systematically understand and cope with the role that religion plays, for good and for ill, in world affairs today. This is the purpose of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Task Force Report, "Engaging Religious Communities: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy," which was released Tuesday.

The challenge now is twofold. First, the U.S. government will need to enlist departments, agencies, and partners not normally thought as a part of the national security infrastructure to effectively engage the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the world who define themselves in large part by their religious beliefs. The Intelligence Community, the State Department, and the Defense Department will all have roles to play but so too will the departments of Education and Energy, and private institutions and foundations. Second, the U.S. government will need to build the expertise necessary to recognize and appreciate the salience of religion in the key national security challenges facing the country.

Some of this challenge is long term, but a crucial component is immediate and urgent. The United States and its NATO allies are involved in an important and difficult effort to engage and win the support of religious communities in Afghanistan. As Gen. McChrystal has recognized, this counterinsurgency war is as much abut civilian engagement as it is about firefights and military operations. The Afghanistan war is the first major test of President Obama's Cairo vision--can the United States develop the skill set and capacity to effectively interact with religious communities on a series of practical issues, including the provision of sanitation, guaranteeing basic security needs, and education, while demonstrating the cultural and religious sensitivity that avoids counterproductive and self-defeating actions?

Thomas Wright is the Executive Director of Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Follow him on twitter @thomaswright08

By Thomas Wright |  February 23, 2010; 12:00 PM ET Save & Share:                 
Previous: Tiger Woods, the Buddhist: Creator of his own suffering | Next: Converting the foreign policy elite

The comments to this entry are closed.