Shortly after taking office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised to put human rights at the center of foreign policy. “The United States is committed to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated, and those who commit human rights abuses are held accountable,” he said.

Someone should have told climate envoy John Kerry. For Kerry, getting President Xi Jinping’s signature on a piece of paper is mutually exclusive with countering the genocide that Xi wages against China’s Uyghur population. Kerry’s posture is crass and immoral but, unfortunately, also the tip of the iceberg. The scale of repression the Uyghurs endure may pale in comparison to a genocide developing in Nigeria that the State Department appears determined to ignore.