Liberalism as a precondition

In class today, we discussed that faith based diplomacy assumes that as long as the two groups are like-minded or accepting of the role of religion in society then the diplomatic process with run smoothly. We also said in class that if two parties don't disagree then no kind of diplomacy is going to solve the problem. In his book, Thomas discussed that many nations today do not have the liberal multipluralist perspective that western foreign policy is guided by, and that it is important to understand this in order to have more effective diplomacy, aid, and even democracy promotion. Just like faith based diplomacy does not take legitimate disagreement into account, Scott does not take into account the fact that it is hard to have the understanding to participate in faith based diplomacy or take a religion friendly perspective with a different nation without this point of view. In cultures that do not separate religion from community life and government, it will be harder to relate to other nations with different religious beliefs. It still takes the understanding and tolerance of different beliefs of pluralism to engage in faith based diplomacy.