The 21st century has not been kind to Christianity. While Europeans have voluntarily relinquished their faith, many other Christian communities remain under siege. All U.S. presidents pay lip service to faith, fewer are sincere in their own practice, and fewer still defend Christian communities abroad. President-elect Donald Trump should, however, make defense of besieged Christian communities a cornerstone of his second-term foreign policy.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power were especially spineless on this count. Not only did they fail to stop Azerbaijan’s illegal blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh in real time, but after Azerbaijan expelled the region’s indigenous, 1,700-year Christian community, they refused to assign blame. Neither Blinken nor Power are willing to recognize Azerbaijan’s responsibility for ethnic cleansing, preferring instead the phrase “depopulation.” Blinken even vetoes referring to Nagorno-Karabakh’s “depopulation” as forcible, at the point of the gun.

Embracing weasel words does not change reality, nor do softball exit interviews at the Armenian Embassy and a fireside chat with NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell alter Power’s legacy........

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