Walter Russell Mead makes an easily disproved claim:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants to make religious freedom the centerpiece of American human-rights policy.

It is more accurate to say that this is what Pompeo wants us to think he is doing, but like everything else Pompeo says it is deceptive. As usual, Mead swallows the official line without question. To the extent that Pompeo talks about religious freedom, he almost always uses this as a bludgeon against hostile and pariah governments. When it comes to allied and client governments, Pompeo suddenly has very little to say.

If religious freedom were the centerpiece of U.S. human rights policy, the Secretary of State would not have spent the last year and a half bending over backwards for the human rights abusers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others. Contrary to the credulous spin that Pompeo has been putting out for months, Egypt’s current government is not interested in protecting the rights of minorities. Sisi presents one face to gullible Western governments by pretending to protect Coptic Christians and other minorities, but in practice his government does little or nothing to shield them from attacks and engages in its own persecution as well. Coptic human rights activists are targeted for detention and abuse just like any other activists:

The notion championed by some on the U.S. right that the Sisi regime is a sincere and effective defender of the rights of Egyptian Christians is baseless. https://t.co/BGvcsFd4aC

— Michael Hanna (@mwhanna1) December 11, 2019

The Saudi government is obviously even more hostile to religious freedom, whether it concerns Christians, Shi’ites, or other minorities. Religious freedom does not exist in Saudi Arabia, but that does not stop Pompeo from making excuses for the Saudi government whenever it faces external criticism. There is almost no official in the world more committed to excusing the abuses and crimes of the Saudi government than Mike Pompeo. So spare me the snow job about how Pompeo is making religious freedom a human rights priority in U.S. foreign policy. To believe that requires ignoring and burying mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Religious freedom is more of a useful talking point for Pompeo than a meaningful commitment. He considers it extremely important as long as it is politically convenient. Mead writes this without realizing how it undermines the rest of his column:

Once a substantial percentage of the Arab Palestinian population, Christians are rapidly disappearing from the Palestinian territories. Egypt still retains a large Christian population, but Copts face pervasive discrimination and, especially in rural areas, violence.

That is true. If Mead’s description of Pompeo and the Trump administration were accurate, one would expect that they are doing something to oppose this, but we know that they are not. When client governments commit human right abuses, they are given a pass. That did not start with Trump and Pompeo, but they have taken the cynical use of human rights rhetoric to a new level.