It is certainly true that restrictions on religious freedoms create internal conflict. It is however much more tenuous to argue this translates onto the international stage in such a way that countries need to tailor their foreign policy to respond to it.  If we go through the list of countries mentioned as states of concern in 1999 how many of their conflicts are the result of religious intolerance? Disagreements with China are over trade and general human rights and the same with Burma. With North Korea the conflict is a civil war that is a remnant of the cold war not a religious divide within Korea. The US did not invade Iraq because the Shiite or Christians were being persecuted but because of WMD officially or other reasons such as oil and democracy. In Iran similarly nuclear weapons are at the heat of the conflict and religious intolerance only enters into worries that these weapons may be used to destroy Israel. In Sudan the state was as brutal to Muslims in Darfur [1] as the Christians in the South and it was the former conflict that generated most attention from the west. In the Kosovo conflict there was certainly a religious element as that was part of the reason for Serbia attacking the Kosovars but it was more general human rights concerns that prompted NATO intervention – if Serbia had only been denying the right to practice Islam there would have been no intervention.  This leaves the Taliban and Saudi Arabia with the conflict as a result of 9/11 where religious intolerance can be said to be the primary cause. Should general policy hinge on religious tolerance based upon one conflict?  [1] See our debate on Darfur: Berman, Daniel, ‘This House believes that the US should have done more for Darfur’, Debatabase, 2011