Fall / Winter 1997
American Purpose
Issue 2, Volume 11

Publication Date: December 1, 1997
Posted: Monday, December 12, 1997

This issue includes 'Nazi Gold and Chinese Christians'; 'Religious Persecution and U.S. Foreign Policy'; 'America, Again'; 'The Relevance of American Power'; 'The Christian Lobby'; 'Religious Persecution and U.S. National Interests'; and 'The Question of China'.


In This Issue :

Nazi Gold and Chinese Christians
The past year has seen an extensive debate over "Nazi Gold." Most narrowly defined, the subject is how Switzerland handled gold turned over to it during the Second World War. The accusation is that, while professing neutrality, Switzerland in fact did not hesitate to aid the Nazi war effort by helping convert the money and valuables confiscated from victims of the Nazi war machine into its very fuel. Gold from the teeth of concentration-camp victims became monetary gold, which became ball bearings, oil, and bullets. Moreover, Switzerland stands accused of seizing deposits made by Holocaust victims whenever this became possible, and rebuffing all claims by the victims'—the depositors'—survivors.  [More]

Religious Persecution and U.S. Foreign Policy
On November 16 of this year, thousands of American churches participated in what was called a National Day of Prayer on behalf of persecuted Christians. While the focus was on persecution in China, there are other cases as well: the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and indeed many of the nations in the Islamic world do not permit free exercise of religion by Christians. The moral question here is an easy one. This kind of religious persecution is indefensible, though of course far more offensive when it means torture or prison than when it means limiting upward mobility in government jobs.  [More]

America, Again
The first thing that must be said about rescuing Christians from persecution is that, like many of the greatest moral crusades of this century, its success will depend on American influence.  [More]

The Relevance of American Power
Not surprisingly, how much success such campaigns have depends largely on whether the United States itself is seen as a society in decline or as a model for the world, and on whether we are willing to use the power and influence we have. The limited results of our human-rights efforts in the late 1970s, a period of Soviet advances and U.S. withdrawal, and the far greater results in the 1980s, a period of growing American prestige and power, are evidence of this. This is a conclusion that many human-rights advocates on the Left resisted and still resist, for they have most often seen human rights as an argument against the deployment of U.S. power. According to their Cold War legend, we were always going to use our power to sustain right-wing dictators, and so the less of it the better. This was a silly (but also dangerous) argument during the Cold War, and it has lost even its rhetorical force today in a world where dictators are less likely to wear a general's uniform. Still, an understanding of the real relationship between U.S. power and the cause of human rights eludes many academic specialists and human-rights movement activists.  [More]

The Christian Lobby
In recent decades, many groups of Americans have successfully attempted to influence U.S. foreign policy. American Jews have struggled to win sympathy for Israel as well as to aid Soviet Jewry, Cuban Americans have fought for a tough policy toward Fidel Castro, and Greek Americans have pushed for a tougher line against Turkish actions in Cyprus, to take the three best-known examples. Will Christians now follow these examples, urging greater action to protect their brethren overseas?  [More]

Religious Persecution and U.S. National Interests
If the practical problems are overcome and if American Christians prove ready, willing, and able to insist that their government act to protect Christians overseas from religious persecution, will our foreign policy be strengthened or warped by their demands?  [More]

The Question of China
All these questions are central to the debate over policy toward China. The logic of Huntington's argument is that Christian intervention will warp sensible and effective policy toward China by elevating human-rights issues, and especially religious-freedom issues, too high on the American agenda. It is a reasonable argument, but, in China today as in the Soviet Union in past decades, it is wrong to suggest that human-rights goals are at odds with our national-security goals. We should have learned from our victory in the Cold War that the assertion of American ideals is essential to the advancement of our security interests. The reason is simple, as Robert Kagan has pointed out: as was true in the Soviet case, China's political system is a strategic problem for the United States.  [More]