Nail polish, they would. At the very least the sentiments at the heart of imperial todomesticity has shaped wars in destruction. I would warn at times these sentiments have also kept americans from recognizing certain damage that american attacks have done to foreign women and children, even if their bodies have been spared. Afghan i afghani women and children have lost many things held dear. Bombs have destroyed their lands. Too many family members have died violently. Their country has been thrown in a period of turmoil. In times of war, american domesticity causes us to focus and shifts our gaz ae away from the tragedies of war. Americans can avoid reckoning with the violence women and children experience when the men, the communities and the landscapes they love are deemed legitimate targets for death and destruction. Thank you. [applause] my thanks to darren and matt for putting on this conference and for inviting me. I think matt actually deserves the prize for the person who has come furthest, given hes in germany this year. Normally i would win that prize, special until conferences in the United States, but i think i have to gi that prize to matt. Thank you for putting on this conference, and thanks to jeff and his staff for putting on so far whats a wonderful event and thanks for your hospitalality and your hard work in putting all this together. My topic today is the religious influence on Foreign Policy especially religions role in providing a sense of purpose, a soul if you will for american Foreign Policy. So its no surprise that two of the major subthemes im going to be touching on here are religious pluralism and religious freedom. And it struck me listening to the papers so far that those two themes, religious plurals and religious freedoms, keep popping up again and again on thats my water, right . Okay, good. Thanks. Keep popping up again and again not just in my paper but in a lot of the other papers. As a matter of fact, as kathleen said, i did change my title. Where now im discussing Americas Mission not just faith in toebobamas Foreign Policy but Americas Mission in the world and how thats changing in the age of obama. What i argue essentially in the paper is that today were at a key crossroads where a powerful source of ideas values and idealogy that is religion in american Foreign Policy is changing. Obviously in making that argument im making myself a hostage to fortune. In the book kathleen mentioned that i wrote on religion and u. S. Foreign policy to the present, i discussed very briefly george bush and barack obama, and i didnt want to say very much about them because i didnt want to make this work of history about them. But now things i said about barack obama are hopelessly out of date but im going to try again and more or less argue with myself. Traditionally there have been two very basic sources of the religious influence. And theyre basic but theyre still, in my field, my main field of diplomatic history the u. S. And the world, theyre quite controversial. The first source of the religious influence on american Foreign Policy is top down. It should be fairly obvious just in saying top down. Its the personal faith of president s secretaries of state, secretaries of defense and others and how they bring that personal faith to bear on their Foreign Policy. As im saying that im sure a lot of you are instantly sort of doing a laundry list of demonstrably very famously religious president s and secretaries of state, people like William Mckinley woodrow wilson, Harry Truman Ronald Reagan and others. But this topdown influence could also be rooted in political calculation. Here i would use Richard Nixon as an example of someone who invoked religion quite a bit, not someone like eyesisenhower or truman or george bush, and we can tell that because they didnt match up to his political statements. Thats the first to topdown influence. The second is a bottom up. Obviously its the opposite of a top down influence. Its the bottom up influence of people who i call ordinary americans who bring tremendous amount of pressure to bear on Foreign Policy. Even when politicians and policymakers have wanted to ignore religion, they found it difficult to do so because of this relentless pressure from below from a wide variety of religious groups and religious actors, groups that are comprised of very highly motivated people who dont wield power or hold Political Office but who are emphasizing the importance of values in hi guys, come on in. Find a seat somewhere. There are lots of unsurprisingly, there are lots of seats towards the front. I wont bite. And i also wont single you out again. I promise. And the goals of these, you know, ordinary americans, people who actually didnt wield political power were often but not always tied to religious freedom, too, the religious freedom of their coreligiousists abroad. And what ive done a lot of work on is the fate of eastern jews, russia and the soviets, a fate that runs from the early 1880s to 1890s. This is a pattern i can use in diplomatic circles where historians want a very clear emperically clear basis of religious Foreign Policy, and i can use this to promote the jews in Eastern Europe and russia and the soviet union. They did bring about a change in Foreign Policy despite what policymakers themselves wanted or did not want. So i would argue that the religious influence in american Foreign Policy has always been there, but its strength and pervasiveness is mostly a 20th century phenomenon. It preexisted the 20th century but as a Consistent Force in the world, its really something that dates from 1988 to 1989. I would say its not a coincidence that religion became prominent when the United States became a global power, but for the most part, was rarely itself under threat of attack so needed a powerful moral justification or a powerful sense of moral purpose in the world for this new level of global engagement. And in this sense, its William Mckinley who is the founding father of the religious influence. Im sure a lot of you know this very famous story about how he was undecided what to do with philippines in late 1988, and he got down on his knees and prayed to god for forgiveness in the white house and god told him to annex, i. E. , colonize the philippines. I would rank george bush to one of the most diplomatic in history, harry truman, eisenhower and those religious suspects who i recognized earlier in my talk. The apogy of this influence, it seems to me came very recently in the presence of george w. E. Bush. In the age of bush this was obviously true in a topdown sense, from the white house, not just the president himself, but figures like Condoleezza Rice and steven hadley. All through the bush administration, religion was maybe not dominant but certainly very prevalent. This was true even in a place like the pentagon in which there werent a lot of demonstrably religious officials presiding people like don rumsfeld who are not the most spiritual men but a lot of pentagon briefings began realistically during the bush presidency with powerpoint slides that would start with scripture or a biblical verse or some sort of usuallilyy christian but overtly religious invocation. This was also true in a bottom up sense epitomized in bush politics which pushed for bush optimism. Bushs Foreign Policy through and through maybe wasnt guided or driven by religion im not saying the United States had a certain Foreign Policy in pursuit of particular religious goals, but religion in a very obvious way suffused the bush administrations Foreign Policy. This bottomup influence didnt start with bush he didnt create it, he didnt invent it even though he did encourage it. Its something that has been consistent throughout the 20th century but surged again in the 1990s with the most obvious example being this bottomup pressure that led congress to pass the religious freedom act in 1998 very much over the protest of the Clinton Administration state department that said religion will just interfere with the work that we need to do, with the diplomatic work we need to do in the world. So after a century of more or less continuous influence and engagement with american Foreign Policy is the religious influence changing in the age of obama . When i said at the beginning of my talk now that im basically going to be arguing with myself, at the end of my book that was published in 2012, i finished writing it toward the end of 2010, i argued that no, this isnt changing and barack obama fits very neatly and very squarely in the tradition of religion in forming and shaping american Foreign Policy. And now im not so sure, and thats really what id like to use the last part of my talk to discuss. In a topdown sense, there are people in this room who know a lot more about obamas religion than i do but i think we would all agree that obama himself is a man of faith to a large extent, but its more ambivalent, its more intellectual, its more complex and its more searching. I wouldnt say hes a man of certainty in any sense although im sure he does have certain certainties, but hes an intellectual curious individual, and i think that applies to his religion as much as anything else. To me he seems more akin to someone like jimmy carter than george bush or bill clinton, for that matter, or Hillary Clinton. In his first term particularly in his first two years most obviously in the chiro speech in june of 2009, which i think most Foreign Policy experts would agree was the most Important Initiative that obama had in Foreign Policy terms for his entire presidency, so going up to the present. In the chiro speech he outlined a faithbased version of Democratic Peace theory. Normally Democratic Peace theory says the more democracies there are, the more chance there is for peace because democracies are inherently peaceful and dont go to war with one another. That last part is i think, more or less right. Im not so sure about the first part, that democracies are inherently more peaceful given whats happened in the last dozen years or so. And it struck me, listening to allisons paper, of the sort of echos of fdr in the new deal that there were certain echoes of fdr in obamas chiro speech. His 1990 speech of cairo was ostensibly of george bushs speech which is the foundation of democracy which in turn is the foundation of international peace, or what he called international goodwill. Obama said religion was the foundation for Democratic Peace, because in religious societies such as the United States or those in the middle east, tolerance and pluralism were necessary for democracy, and in return to peace both domestic and international. There are other instances of religion in obamas Foreign Policy. Again, mostly from his first two years. The other most famous example which i dont have time to go into is his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in oslo, which a lot of commentators nicknamed the Good Neighbor policy because of his intellectual debt and i would say his spiritual debt. But as time went on, the religious presence in american Foreign Policy began to fade and eventually, i would say, all but disappear. And the ambivalence of the oslo speech is indicative of obamas overall ambivalence, certainly when it came to application of certain principals in american Foreign Policy. Its in the oslo speech its nicknamed the Good Neighbor policy because this is where he uses christian realism as a way to justify the waging of the war on terror. This is where he says Martin Luther king and ghandi wouldnt have an answer to hitler or bin laden, and sometimes we have to wage war in order to pursue a higher sorry a greater justice. Now, however, religions role in u. S. Foreign policy is basically limited to islam, the familiar mantra. Islam is a symbol of peace not terror. This is something obama has repeated in various guises a few times since he became president and very recently, but its in the wake of 9 11. After Hillary Clintons departure, she gave a lot of encouragement to the notion of International Freedom and how the state department would pursue International Freedom sorry, religious freedom internationally. After Hillary Clinton left, its hard to think of another highlevel National Security official in the Obama Administration who has deployed religion. The bottomup aspect of religion in u. S. Foreign policy is also changing. Its changing in ways that other people who have already presented and are going to present are discussing and analyzing in ways much more much deeper and more profoundly than i am but some of the obvious ways in which this bottomup pressure are changing are thanks to things like demographic change the rise of secularism and the nuns and greater religious diversity. However, after listening to kevins paper, im more certain about that diversity, but i was furiously fixing my notes about what kevin was saying about the myth of contemporary american religious diversity. But i would say its the appearance or the acceptance of this diversity that is certainly changing how religion is used in a political sense and obviously applies to Foreign Policy. Not only does this remove a great deal of pressure from below, it increasingly makes it unprofitable for politicians to use religion before domestic audiences to build consensus for their policies. Thats how most president s have used religion in american Foreign Policy. Religion is not too controversial, too divisive to be of political use of platitudes of tolerance. This is also the case internationally where American Power is ebbing relative to that of other nation states that arent christian or judeochristian or islam or religious in any meaningful sense. If all this is changing, and if the change is structural and enduring rather than related to obama in particular and thus temporary, i would argue it will significantly change the terms of americas idealogical engagement with the rest of the world. Thanks. [applause] so we have some time for questions, but before that, i would like to have another round of applause for all these very intriguing panels. There are people with microphones, i believe, so raise your hand if you have a question. Right there. Its going to change to what . Let me follow up with a more specific question. I take it what youre saying is the use there we go of explicit symbols and texts from religion is being diminished in the second half of the Obama Administration. Whats it replaced by . Is it pure pragmatism . What comes in its place, and can we not always see those things as religious in a way . Thats a great question. Whats it going to change . I dont know. Im an historian. Im not very good at predicting whats going to happen in the future. I proved that. I proved my incompetence in forecasting again. Im probably going to prove it again with the chapter in this book. I dont mean to be glib. I really dont know. The last part of your question i think, is what i would answer that its going to be replaced not with pure pragmatism, because i dont think thats possible in a democracy. You cant have Foreign Policy without justifying it. Even in perfect democracies you have to be able to explain it and justify it. I think what might happen in the american context is that this overtly christian judeochristian or religious, whatever we want to call it influence is going to be replaced by a broader sort of moralism that, as you hinted at the end of your questions, has obvious religious roots but may not be couched in overtly religious terms. I can think of the Foreign Policy of the country that i live in now, Great Britain which is as realistic now as americas Foreign Policy, and in some cases certainly libya in 2010, at first syria last year is more moralistic than that of the United States. But not in religious terms at all. Until a sort of obvious key word sense, but in a deeper meaning it very well might but i would say in the United States that moralism would continue to have some kind of religious impetus or religious shape even if its not explicitly couched as religion or christian or whatever. Im kind of tying myself in knots now so i think ill end there. Also for kevin. I mean andrew, sorry. He probably has a better answer than i do. Im wondering, among 20th century president s can you think of someone for whom religion couldnt be translated almost 100 into moreality who had some additional or transcend transcendent notion beyond morality and then i wo