The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 Chairs for New Hires I am a born pessimist; I admit that right up front. I read in the May FSJ about all of the new positions that have been requested in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget and that are to be contained in future budgets. I hope Congress comes up with the money, because there is no question the State Department is understaffed for the requirements that have been assigned to it over the past five years or so. What I wonder about is where in the world will all of these new people sit? Never during my 32 years in the Foreign Service did I work in a mis- sion that had empty offices just wait- ing for someone to occupy them. And rest assured that other agencies will want to increase their staffing, too. With the security requirement of putting all employees under one roof, it seems to me that there will be severe overcrowding in many, if not all, of our missions. After all, acquiring new of- fice space in existing buildings isn’t as easy as hiring new people. The Office of Overseas Buildings Operations will certainly have its work cut out for it. And then, what about sufficient administrative staff? Their workload will increase long before they receive additional resources to cope with it. But then again, we all know that the political, economic and public affairs sections are far more important than admin staff, right? Ah, retirement is good! Kenneth R. Yeager FSO, retired Grosshansdorf, Germany World of Faith Author Responds I have but one major quarrel with David T. Jones’ April review of my book, World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty Is Vital to American National Secu- rity . Jones thinks I’m “close to an ab- solutist” on religious freedom, a defi- cit which leads me to downplay other critical foreign policy problems. It is an odd indictment. My book argues that religious freedom is vital to stable democracy and the elimina- tion of religious extremism, especially in highly religious societies; that this reality has been ignored by the Amer- ican foreign policy establishment; and that our national security has suffered as a result. Virtually every foreign policy prob- lem of the 21st century, including all those mentioned by Mr. Jones, is in- fluenced (for better or worse) by reli- gious ideas and actors. Properly under- stood, religious freedom provides a framework within which to address those problem. At its base, religious freedommeans the right of every person to believe or not, and to enter or exit religious com- munities. It also guarantees the rights of religious communities — for exam- ple, to employ legal remedies against violent proselytizing or to engage in public policy debates. A successful democracy nourishes public religious expression, while it also establishes broad limits that apply to all who enter the political realm, whether believers or secularists. Muslims, Or- thodox Christians, Hindus and others are more likely to accept those limits if they do not banish religiously formed judgments to the private domain. Democracies based on this kind of religious freedom are less likely to in- cubate the kind of religious violence and terrorism we have seen emerge from theocratic and secular autocracies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt, or unstable democracies such as Pak- istan, Afghanistan and Russia. Even in highly regimented societies such as China, movement toward religious freedom (even if it is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future) is in the interests of both citizens and the state. Unfortunately, for the past decade L ETTERS