The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (Hardcover)

by Madeleine Albright (Author)
Key Phrases: United States, Middle East, President Bush (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Secretary of State under President Clinton and a devout Catholic (with recently discovered Jewish roots), Albright (Madam Secretary) is especially qualified to tackle the thorny subject of the role of faith in international relations. In a remarkably accessible, even breezy style, she looks at these issues in light of recent history both abroad and at home, from the religious fundamentalism that led to the ouster of the shah of Iran to the invasion of Iraq and American hope that a political culture can emerge there that integrates democracy and Islam. But Albright also looks critically at President Bush, an evangelical Christian who invokes God in the name of fighting "evil." In this ambitious, thoughtful, and wide-ranging treatment, Albright deftly balances the pragmatic need to confront religious-based unrest and the idealistic need to temper one's own personal beliefs in the public realm. While fully acknowledging the threat al- Qaeda poses, Albright rejects the notion that a "clash of civilizations" is in progress and wisely calls for care and nuance in how America approaches international confrontations that are tinged with religion. (May 2)
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From The Washington Post
In his introduction to Madeleine Albright's surprising new book on religion and foreign policy, Bill Clinton writes that his former secretary of state chose her subject "against the advice of friends." Those friends are left unnamed, but they surely include colleagues who helped Albright craft U.S. foreign policy in the Clinton years -- and maybe even President Clinton himself. The cause of their trepidation must have related to the most important -- and bravest -- point that Albright makes here: that on her watch, U.S. foreign policy made every effort to ignore religion.

To a new generation of foreign policy thinkers who must now deal with jihadist terrorism, it seems absurd that America's leaders self-consciously pretended that religion was not an important world force. But according to Albright -- and it is hard to see why she would overstate the case -- the Clinton team insisted privately, not just publicly, that the Balkan crises, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, yes, al-Qaeda's August 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa were "not about religion."

Given that the participants in all these events said that their conflicts were precisely about religion, it is worth wondering how our best and brightest could have remained so obstinately in denial. The cause, according to Albright, was the legacy of foreign policy "realism" -- the view that nations' actions could be predicted by assuming that they would rationally pursue their own interests. This theory, which is "almost exclusively secular," taught diplomats to ignore religious rhetoric and zeal and to look instead for familiar, interest-based motives. Albright, with the help of her longtime speechwriter Bill Woodward, argues that the realist approach must be amended by inserting an awareness of the increasingly significant role that religion plays in the making of individual and national decisions, not just abroad but here in the United States as well. The result is a book that makes an important contribution to the question of how our foreign policy should adjust to the rise of religion worldwide.

Albright's reckoning with her own policy legacy amounts to a particularly candid first draft of history. She's right that foreign policy realism did, in a certain sense, downplay the religious interests of nations, but she does not acknowledge the main reason that realism let her down in confronting the principal diplomatic crises of the 1990s. Put simply, realism is a theory about the behavior of states. Yet the most important foreign policy challenges of the Clinton years came not from states but from nonstate actors such as Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and the militias in failed or failing states such as Somalia. Even Yasser Arafat, whose intransigence at the summer 2000 Israeli-Palestinian summit at Camp David cost Albright and Clinton a permanent place in diplomatic history, was not the head of a proper state.

This matters a lot. Leaders without states have very different incentives than do presidents and kings. Although dictators and democrats do not always behave the same way, any government -- admirable or nasty -- needs to deliver basic security and services in order to maintain its authority. That is why the behavior of presidents (for life or otherwise) can often be predicted by asking what actions would best serve the interests of the state in question.

The same is not true of guerrillas, freedom fighters or terrorists, who may be chasing dreams of world-transformation. Without a body of citizens for whose well-being they are in some way responsible, nonstate leaders are free to act according to ideals that may well clash with practical reality -- and some of those ideals will be religious ones. Albright is therefore right to call for enhancing religious expertise in the State Department, but we also need to pay much more attention to the ways that U.S. foreign policy engages not just governments but groups and movements made up of ordinary people who are moved by the full range of human beliefs and emotions.

Of course, religion's role in foreign policy does not stop at the water's edge. In our own democracy, citizens' religious commitments often play a major role in shaping their preferences about how the United States should engage the world. It would be hard to explain, for example, America's close relationship to Israel without at least some reference to the strong connection to the Holy Land felt by many Christians and Jews.

When it comes to the effect of religion on U.S. policies, Albright takes a somewhat complicated stand. She is eager to make common cause with evangelicals who care deeply about humanitarian issues in order to create an international genocide-prevention force under U.N. auspices. (How many evangelicals would agree to this plan is left unexamined.) She studiously avoids criticizing the Bush administration's foreign policy as religiously inspired, though she quotes others who accuse the White House of being "theologically presumptuous" and "dangerously messianic." And she accepts that "religion must be taken into account" by leaders who, like the rest of us, are inevitably influenced by their faith when they choose a course of action.

At the same time, Albright espouses a skeptical theology according to which we should tolerate other people's religious views because they might turn out to be right, after all. As a proof text for this approach, she quotes Clinton himself: "It is OK to say you believe your religion is true, even truer than other faiths, but not that you are in possession in this life of a hundred percent of the truth." This cautious doctrine is appealing -- even characteristically American. But it is by no means shared by all people of faith, many of whom believe the Bible or the Koran contains the whole truth. In a democracy, the votes of the true believers weigh just as heavily as the votes of the skeptics. To welcome religion into the making of our foreign policy is to acknowledge that certainties, not just well-meant aspirations, are going to play their part.

The painful truth about democracy is that the policies we make will generally be the product of compromise, not reasoned judgment. Realism sought to solve this problem by teaching diplomats to ignore ideals and focus on long-term interests. Today, our moral compass tells us that realism without values is not enough. But once we open the door to values, we cannot be sure that our policies will be coherent enough to succeed.

Reviewed by Noah Feldman
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060892579
• ISBN-13: 978-0060892579
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #119,239 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pragmatism, May 9, 2006

By	Penny Dreadful (Under Your Skin) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I found this to be an admirable book, although not quite a five-star one.

Albright's contention that religion is an unavoidable factor in world affairs is doubtlessly the correct stance for a realistic individual to take. She grasps the concept that we are in a world where the truths of even the very recent past are suddenly anachronistic. She also knows all too well that things are not going to change back anytime soon and might indeed grow very much worse unless all that can be done is done to maximize American efficiency in strategy-making.

In this book, Albright levels criticism where she sees it due (and she does not lay all of it at the doorstep of the George W. Bush administration) and suggests that instead of portraying global religious-based conflicts in terms of good v. evil, right v. wrong, American leadership might do a better job of seeking to comprehend the epistemological motivations of those outside of US hegemony. Albright, Secretary of State thru much of the 1990's suggests that policy-makers should do a better job of considering the underlying foundations of theological hostilities, uncover what actions might alleviate the stresses that presently exacerbate conflicts, and most of all discover what exists within the religions in question that might be used to improve the problems that face human society.

Albright also takes on---as President Jimmy Carter and others have in recent books---the undeniably powerful presence of the so-called religious right here in the United States. She challenges the notion that it is only the Republican Party which holds the authority to trumpet its spirituality, and also sticks her neck out in foreshadowing the harm an American-based theocracy might cause---and has caused---both to Americans and citizens of the greater world.

Albright is an intelligent woman who has a capacity to think on a globally-encompassing scale, which is an increasingly rare ability in this twenty-first century. She sets out to "escape party lines" and speak with the pragmatism of neutrality buoyed by conscience, and in so doing, she elevates herself beyond the limitations of those who are merely politicians, and becomes that variety of entity tragically rare today: a statesperson.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look into the role of religion in world affairs, July 17, 2006

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Madeleine Albright brings a wide-angle lens to her discussion of the place of religion in world affairs. Born into a Catholic family, she later became an Episcopalian, only to discover late in life that her family lineage was Jewish. Further, as Secretary of State she spent much time and energy dealing with highly flammable issues in the Muslim world.

This book is a kind of sequel and amplification to her 2003 memoir MADAME SECRETARY. Albright is very good at filling in the historical context of such matters as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the complex divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Turkey's slow but sure evolution toward democracy and the bewildering tribal politics that seems to stifle progressive impulses in Africa.

What she adds from her own perspective is the religious angle, and much of what she says amounts to obvious truths that no sensible person could disagree with: No nation should claim to be in sole and complete possession of God's will or the ultimate religious truth; diplomats should make themselves familiar with the language and religion of countries they are dealing with; diplomacy should never be a mere mask for religious proselytizing; the U.S. should remain strictly neutral toward the sectarian religious strife in Iraq.

She also ponders such questions as what exactly constitutes a "just" war (in her formulation, the Iraq war fails the test) and whether morality or simple self-interest is the better reason for resorting to force.

Beware, she tells us, of "faith-based strife." Her warnings about this echo to some extent what Eric Hoffer wrote over half a century ago in THE TRUE BELIEVER, his wise book about the danger of any and all brands of fanaticism.

It will be no surprise that Albright is harshly critical of George W. Bush. The decision to invade Iraq and its messy aftermath, she fears, may rank "among the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history." She faults Bush also for his triumphalist rhetoric and disregard of any advice that runs counter to his own ideas.

She is concerned that the Arab-Israeli peace process may be "truly dead" and that the escalating battles between Shiite and Sunni Muslims might actually result in a nuclear arms race between them. She makes a persuasive case for admitting Turkey to the European Union and sees a likelihood that Iran may become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Instead of facing off against Muslim nations, she says the U.S. should seek to understand them better and take advantage of the many things we have in common with them. She sees some hope in the Alexandria Declaration of 2002, which affirmed that peace cannot be achieved without "reconciliations between religions and cultures." She sums herself up as "an optimist who worries a lot."

This book was written with Bill Woodward, who also collaborated on MADAME SECRETARY. It comes across as earnest, thoughtful and well-intentioned. Inevitably there is a partisan slant to Albright's own views, but she draws on her own government service to back them up. She has been around, talked to all sorts of people whose views matter and thought deeply about what they told her.

As to how religion can help sort out all these dilemmas, she characteristically has no firm answer. As I read, I kept remembering what my good Catholic mother often said: "You know, organized religion has an awful lot to answer for."

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn ([e-mail])

109 of 146 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balance is the best policy, May 3, 2006

By	Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The former UN Ambassador and Secretary of State sees a place for personal faith among public officials. She believes personal faith has helped herself and many other people make very difficult decisions which impacted the world.

However, she doesn't use that personal faith as a public battering ram to attack 'others' and their perspectives. Having grown up under state oppression, she knows first-hand what totalitarian states where everybody must worship one way...etc really are like. Albright did not and still does not attempt to turn her own faith into a partisan and one-dimensional caricature for political benefit.

Her public faith is a civil belief in the state to advocate for the less fortunate. She understands democracy doesn't work when only talked about in the abstract. It has to be practiced.

Contrasting with the current administration, she sees the world as complex and multifaceted--there are no clear-cut good and evil sides in a religious conflict. Current American policy prolongs the bloodshed by not adopting a more nuanced analysis.