Progressives may lionize Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his support of LGBT diplomacy, and conservative critics may deride Blinken’s naivete in the face of rogue regimes and terrorists. Then there is gender equity: More women lost their freedom under Blinken than any other secretary. While throwing Afghan women under the bus was a one-time decision, Blinken’s betrayal of Christians was both gratuitous and repeated. At best, cynicism blinkered Blinken. At worst, outright hostility toward Christianity did.
Just over three years ago, during his first visit to Africa as secretary, Blinken met with Nigeria’s then-President Muhammadu Buhari and proceeded to remove Nigeria from the religious freedom watch list. Within Nigeria, Buhari came to prominence in the late 1960s as an active and enthusiastic participant in the Biafra genocide, the slaughter of 100,000 Christians and ethnic Igbo and the forced starvation of perhaps 4 million more. When Blinken exculpated Buhari for renewed anti-Christian violence on his watch, Nigeria’s anti-Christian pogroms increased.
This sense of desperation led many Igbo Christians to give up on Nigeria itself. Biafrans in exile voted overwhelmingly earlier this year to separate from Nigeria. As prime-minister-in-exile Simon Ekpa prepared for a convention this coming week to declare Biafran independence, the Nigerian government served a warrant equating free speech and criticism of Nigeria’s religious oppression with terror. Blinken’s silence has been deafening, while his praise for the United States and Nigeria’s “shared values of democracy [and] diversity” simply mocks those imprisoned or killed for their faith.
Alas, Nigeria has become the rule rather than the exception. While the State Department has criticized Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, Blinken issued waivers to prevent Pakistan from suffering legislatively mandated sanctions for its abuse of Christians and other religious minorities.
While blame for the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 1,700-year-old indigenous Christian community rests with Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev, Blinken’s weakness provided Azerbaijan a green light. The State Department refused to act in any meaningful way when Azerbaijan launched an illegal blockade.
On Sept. 14, 2023, acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “The United States will not countenance any action or effort — short-term or long-term — to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Days later, when Azerbaijani forces expelled Christians, Blinken did nothing. Diplomats now say he has rewarded Kim for her outright lies to the Senate by approving her promotion to be the ambassador to the Philippines. Blinken has also been silent as Azerbaijan has dynamited churches and defaced millennium-old monasteries.
Religious freedom is the canary in the coal mine. Russia’s war on Ukraine is as much a religious war as an ethnic or territorial one. By such metrics, Israel deserves nothing but praise: Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population grows, yet Blinken has approached Israel with cynicism and opprobrium while funding Palestinian leaders whose rule has decimated Christianity in the West Bank and Gaza.
When Blinken entered office, some of his first actions were to empower terrorists and religious bigots. He lifted sanctions on the Houthis and pumped money into the Palestinian Authority.
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), whose confirmation as secretary of state is almost assured, should do the opposite. Christians are under siege from Nigeria to Nagorno-Karabakh and the Palestinian territories to Pakistan. Diplomacy need not mean twisting reality or putting lipstick on a pig. Instead, he should recognize that moral clarity has meaning and the most effective policies are those based on reality.
Americans may separate church and state, but the rest of the world does not. Policymakers cannot pretend religion does not exist or that bigots and supremacists do not deliberately target Christian minorities. If Rubio ends waivers for religious freedom violators, speaks unapologetically about the plight of besieged Christians, and wears his own religion proudly, he may find that not only Christians will benefit but religious minorities everywhere will find freedom.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.