The aggressive evangelical foreign policy on Kim
■"Bush Names Special Envoy For Rights in North Korea: An appointment sought by religious conservatives," by Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, 20 August 2005, p. A7.
The so-called religious right pushed hard to get the Bush White House to name one of their own as the president's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, a post mandated by law in 2004.
That this appointment is announced in the dead of Bush's five-week summer vacation is interpreted as the White House seeking to dampen any perception of a new hard-line stance on Kim just as the 6-nation talks are restarted.
Of course, the appointee, Jay Lefkowitz, won't be an "envoy" in any real sense of the word. If your envoy can actually meet with the intended target of your diplomacy over human rights, then frankly, you don't need a special envoy, because that country must be opening up to the outside world and thus reducing that internal source of friction in its relationships with outside powers. My point being, if you have to appoint a special envoy, then the country in question must be so Gap-like in its behavior that it's disconnectedness from the outside world is profound-hence no useful role as envoy.
Instead, the position is a symbolic one, and yet symbols matter greatly. What the post really says is that the evangelicals care about North Korea and don't plan on letting the matter slip into obscurity any time soon. Indeed, they want to ratchet it upward dramatically, in large part because of the religious intolerance their coreligionists endure there.
People like to speak of religion as typically being a great source of division in the world, but as globalization spreads and more religions globalize (not just radical Islam), then the connecting effect will far outweigh the disconnecting frictions that result.