Annotation of
Obama’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly (September, 2009).
Does Obama believes in human rights? By Bret Stephens. The Wall Street Journal. October 19, 2009.
~ The Editors
Next month will be the first anniversary of President Barack Obama in the White House. The United States President was elected largely for his promise of change. His message inspired many people around the world, who believed that Obama’s leadership would bring the kind of change that they were hoping for. There was an international expectation for a new logic of international engagement in which human rights would play an important role. In his recent acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway, President Obama emphasized once again his commitment for a more humane world: “We are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.”
This Roundtable evaluates President Obama’s human rights policy and asks whether his actions in this field are moving toward the direction of justice or not. In other words, is there any change in human rights policy that “we can believe in”? This month centerpieces—Obama’s first speech at the United Nations and Bret Stephens critique on current human rights policies—serve as a general background for the panelists to initiate a discussion on the progress and challenges ahead for the Obama administration.
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obama underscored the necessity to start a new era of global cooperation based on a multilateral approach, respect for international law, and renewed commitment to join human rights regimes through the UN Human Rights Council. He mentioned some of the actions taken by his administration to reestablish a human rights policy. “[o]n my first day in office, I prohibited -- without exception or equivocation -- the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.”
Obama’s speech at the UN has moved a long way from his predecessor, George W. Bush, helping the United States to recover its legitimacy at the international level. However, as our panelists have pointed out, if the United States wants to lead by example on human rights issues, it is not enough to be better than the former president. Rather, the United States needs to build on concrete actions to effectively serve the “common interests of human beings.” However, as the recent visit of Barack Obama to China illustrates, the delicate balance between human rights interests and other foreign policy goals is not an easy task; they more often than not tend to be in conflict with each other.
How can President Obama meet human rights challenges? Our contributors provide a number of recommendations to the current American administration; we would like to highlight two:
First, credibility. A government can not promote democracy abroad if it is not respecting democracy at home. Respecting civil and political rights on counterterrorism activities is seen as a priority on this area. The United States will not be able to urge other governments to observe human rights without leading with the example.
Second, match rhetoric with reality. Claiming an international commitment to human rights without deeds undermines Obama’s leadership at the international level. “But without such action, Obama’s words will just leave us feeling empty since faith without works is dead.” Actions matters as President Obama himself acknowledge in his Nobel Prize speech.
These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
December 2009: Obama’s Human Rights Policy
Hope over Experience?
by Cath Collins, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile
“The option for genuine multilateralism, for leading the way in accepting the binding nature of international law and refusing to invoke the veto option whenever national interests are trimmed, is always there. But the US has consistently refused to take it. This is where Obama could make a difference(…)"
Writing about US human rights policy from the outside is always a disconcerting experience. All bets are off, and all assumptions are turned on their head. Assumptions from the South looking North are that, rhetoric aside, US interests rarely if ever feature human rights protection and promotion in first place. What’s more, they have very frequently featured the opposite: dirty tricks, torture and rendition were sadly familiar to students of Latin American history long before Guantanamo. The Clinton years went some way towards reining in the more blatant contradictions of the 1980s, but they also set in train the easy and often misused equation between US style democracy and rights that paved the way for “preventive” regime change under Bush. US invocations of freedom have always, in other words, been selective even within its shores and often seem quite irreconcilable with the reality of its actions beyond them.
Read in this key, the objections raised by Bret Stephens to Obama’s lukewarm, or selective, human rights performance in office come under the heading of non-surprises. US economic interests have taken first place? Rhetoric has not been matched by reality? It’s more difficult to govern than to make promises? None of this is unexpected, unless perhaps you were one of the many who projected onto Obama the long-postponed realization of the (North) American Dream. The illusions were not restricted to US shores: the Nobel Prize committee shared the precipitate enthusiasm.
Most of what Obama has and has not done is quite explicable if you stick to what politicians really do—and are supposed to do. As he himself points out in his speech to the UN, his job is not to save humanity from itself but to represent US interests on the world stage. So when Stephens castigates the policy of “engagement” with Burma, he may well be right to do so. But his reasoning—that the military junta will only try to turn all US overtures to their own advantage—is somewhat flawed. All states, everywhere, seek to maximize their advantage on the world stage. The job of international regimes is to tame or redefine national interest(s), showing how the sum of individual choices is not always mutual advantage.
If US aims really stretched beyond individual messianism to pursuit of the common interest—as defined by all—the US would not seek to bend others to its ever-changing will. The option for genuine multilateralism, for leading the way in accepting the binding nature of international law and refusing to invoke the veto option whenever national interests are trimmed, is always there. But the US has consistently refused to take it. This is where Obama could make a difference, but it’s unlikely that even Democrats, let alone Republicans, will let him. The US wants, first and foremost, to keep control and be seen to be keeping control. The “Free Tibet” and “Save Darfur” bumper stickers in one sense only perpetuate the myth that Tibet is ours to free, Darfur ours to save.
The Chinese know better: they will sit out US self-belief in the solid conviction that the next century is theirs. Roosevelt’s post-war conclusion that the US had learned to be “citizens of the world” seems precipitate when viewed from here. Few if any in the US would agree that China should call the shots on the world stage. But what is so different? The US has done so for as long as it was able. The “winner takes all” logic that served the US so well when it was winning will work to its disadvantage once in decline. If the strongest, wealthiest, most vigorous state is free to shape the world in its own image, moral content is irrelevant. If no state is free to do that, then we need to see the emerging outlines of the common moral framework, and a demonstration from the current “front runners” that they really believe it is for all.
Cath Collins has been associate lecturer in politics at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile since October 2007. She was previously Latin America Research Fellow at Chatham House London (The Royal Institute of International Affairs), before which she lectured in the politics of human rights in Latin America at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. She has lived and worked as a youth and community organizer in Chile, Brazil, Bolivia and the UK.
Change We Can Believe In?
by Katherine Hite, Vassar College
"But it’s very hard not to be dismayed by some of the continuities from the Bush to the Obama administration (…). When it comes to US-Latin America relations, such decisions include: professing support for progressive immigration reform while expanding regressive anti-immigration measures; claiming a commitment to human rights and democratic engagement while facilitating increased military control over domestic affairs in the region; and voicing a desire for a multilateral approach to Latin American affairs while patently undermining such an approach."
We were warned to temper our high hopes for a bold new Obama era of human rights. After all, President Obama would have “a lot on his plate”: a serious economic crisis, high unemployment, over forty million people without health insurance, “two wars,” global volatility. But it’s very hard not to be dismayed by some of the continuities from the Bush to the Obama administration, as well as by some Janus-faced policy decisions with damning human rights implications. When it comes to US-Latin America relations, such decisions include: professing support for progressive immigration reform while expanding regressive anti-immigration measures; claiming a commitment to human rights and democratic engagement while facilitating increased military control over domestic affairs in the region; and voicing a desire for a multilateral approach to Latin American affairs while patently undermining such an approach.
So many of us were euphoric about Obama’s victory. After several years of a presidency that not only broke international human rights law but seemed proud to do so, it certainly felt like we had nowhere to go but up. And indeed, within his first days in office, Obama announced the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention center within a year; he ordered the CIA to close secret long-term detention facilities; and he re-criminalized the CIA’s use of extreme torture techniques. As Obama’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly reflects, the President’s discourse emphasizes global commonality, a new and respectful engagement, and both tacit and explicit recognition of US complicity with conflict and violence. In his speech, Obama announced that the US has joined the Human Rights Council. The fact that the US was not on the Council until now speaks volumes to the pathetic lows the US had reached.
Echoing this spirit of taking responsibility for the violence, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and President Obama himself all recognized during their visits to Mexico several months ago that US-originated gun-running, coupled with the ongoing high US demand for drugs, bring deadly consequences for Mexico. Yet the administration has continued the Bush administration approach of concentrating on drug supply and dedicating the vast majority of US-Mexico aid to the Mexican military, while a very small percentage targets judicial aid and other civilian protections efforts. The Merida Initiative to Combat Illicit Narcotics and Reduce Organized Crime exemplifies this approach. While the US congress threatened to withhold allocating a percentage of the Merida funding due to human rights concerns regarding the Mexican military, the Obama administration successfully allayed such concerns, claiming sufficient human rights progress was being made. This is in spite of the fact that while at least two thousand complaints of human rights violations have been brought against the military in the past three years, only one Mexican soldier has been convicted of human rights violations.
On the immigration and US-Mexico border front, there is similar cause for concern. As someone who is clearly quite familiar with racial profiling, Obama was expected to eliminate the controversial 287(g) program, which has allowed local law enforcement agencies the power to act as federal immigration agents. The most notorious abuser of this authority is Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has targeted hundreds of Latinos and immigrants for arrest without suspicion of crime. The subject of several ACLU lawsuits representing victims of racial profiling, Arpaio is now being investigated by the Justice Department and has theoretically been reigned in.
But Arpaio has become a right-wing populist folk hero and a leading GOP contender in the Arizona governor’s race. Obama administration officials, particularly former Arizona governor-turned-Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, have both expanded local police powers connected to profiling and publically refused to denounce Arpaio. This belies a claimed commitment to humane immigration reform. Such spin and double talk have made Obama all the more vulnerable to extreme anti-immigration leaders like Arpaio.
The Administration’s stated commitment to human rights and a new multilateralism were severely undermined by the October 2009 military base agreement between the US and Colombia. This ten-year agreement allows increased access by the US military to seven of Colombia’s military bases. The Obama administration chose to privilege a policy toward Colombia that emphasizes military aid and mercenary action over human rights and civilian governance. A commitment to a human rights agenda would have included protections for human rights defenders, judges, grassroots indigenous, Afro-Colombian rights movements, and others. Colombia faces a human rights crisis in which the country is second only to Sudan in terms of the numbers of internally displaced persons, and the situation for the rural poor is grave.
The US-Colombia base agreement angered much of the region, which took Obama at his word regarding favoring regional over bilateral security agreements. It has also signaled a carry-over from the Bush administration to cede greater foreign policy decision-making to the Defense Department at the expense of the State Department.
We can only hope that with the very recent appointment of Arturo Valenzuela as Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, this balance of power within the US executive will begin to shift. Yet in his first visible role regarding the region, Valenzuela has defended an Obama administration position that recognizes the outcome of the November 30th elections in Honduras. This essentially legitimizes the military coup d’etat of June 28th that unseated democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya. What began as a US response condemning the coup and advocating a multi-lateral approach to resolving the situation became a lukewarm acceptance of the de facto regime, a position that has disappointed the vast majority of our allies in the region. In a country where historically the US has been the major power broker, it is virtually impossible to read the current US position toward Honduras as anything other than a sacrifice of democratic principles and the country’s poor majority to favor the Honduran ruling class and their US political and corporate allies. Unfortunately, this resonates with collective memories of US-Latin America relations that are all too long and deep.
Katherine Hite is a professor of political science and director of the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She is the author of When the Romance Ended: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1998 (Columbia University Press, 2000), co-editor (with Paola Cesarini) of Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe (Notre Dame, 2004), and most recently has authored several articles on the politics of memory, commemoration, and human rights in Latin America and Spain.
Webpage: http://politicalscience.vassar.edu/bio_hite.html
From Inspiring Hope to Taking Action: Obama and Human Rights
by Stephen James, La Trobe University
"While President George H. Bush spoke of a new world order, and his ‘misunderestimated’ son mangled the English language at countless press conferences, with Barack Obama the USA now has a talented orator as a president. There is a new word order. But does the new and skilful rhetoric match the reality when it comes to human rights?"
While President George H. Bush spoke of a new world order, and his “misunderestimated” son mangled the English language at countless press conferences, with Barack Obama the USA now has a talented orator as a president. There is a new word order. But does the new and skilful rhetoric match the reality when it comes to human rights?
The human rights record of the Bush administration has rightly been described by Human Rights Watch (Kenneth Roth, “Taking Back the Initiative from the Human Rights Spoilers” in Human Rights Watch World Report 2009) as “disastrous.” In contrast, Obama’s inaugural speech to the UN General Assembly contained some encouraging signs for human rights and human security: the acceptance of interdependence and multilateralism (at least for some matters); the emphasis on health, food and water security; and the attention to the rights of women and children. It is a refreshing change from the Republican obsession with freedom of speech, democratization and religious freedoms in China (important though these are). But there were some blind spots as well. To say that divisions between North and South “make no sense in an interconnected world” gives scant comfort to the billions suffering extreme deprivation. Moreover, “balanced and sustained” economic growth does not ensure equitable growth, distribution and human development, as evidenced by a number of UNDP reports and the work of Caroline Thomas. While the efforts to combat diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and polio are crucial, many people die from readily preventable diarrheal conditions. Likewise, regarding food security, how do we explain that there is an abundance of food in the world but people starve because they cannot afford access to it? If the USA and other developed nations were to open their markets to products from the South, and to reduce subsidies, this would at least make the “free” trade system a little fairer, but it would not deal with the significant ways that international financial institutions and neo-liberalism can retard the wheels of progress concerning human dignity and security.
As Roth (above) has noted, if the USA wants to lead on human rights it can best do so by example. The better it behaves at home and abroad, the more vigorous and less shamefaced it can be in criticizing the human rights records of other nation-states and in building constructive coalitions in favor of the people harmed by violations. Here is how, according to Human Rights Watch, the USA can improve its human rights record:
sign and ratify relevant treaties, such as those on economic and social rights, landmines, cluster bombs, women, children and the International Criminal Court;
hold human rights violators accountable;
avoid complicity with, or indifference to, the human rights violations of other countries, even strategic allies (including Pakistan, Ethiopia, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya and China);
observe the rule of law, constitutionalism and civil and political rights in its
counterterrorism activities;
improve social and economic rights and reduce racial inequalities at home; and
avoid double standards and exceptionalism with regard to human rights
Were the USA to embark on this course, it might confidently join with others “to serve the common interests of human beings.” But without such action, Obama’s words will just leave us feeling empty since faith without works is dead.
Dr. Stephen James is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University where he edits the international journal Global Change, Peace & Security (Routledge). He holds Arts and Law degrees from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, where he was a Princeton Wilson Fellow and Lecturer. He is the author of Universal Human Rights: Origins andDevelopment (New York: LFB Scholarly, 2007) and has taught law, politics, history and philosophy at various universities in Australia. He is presently working on a book exploring aspects of the right to an adequate standard of living. Website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/dialogue/staff.html
The Statesman’s Dilemma: Peace or Justice? Or Neither?
by Henry Krisch, University of Connecticut
"What advice then to give President Obama regarding this difficult balance? I would suggest three modest steps: first, do what you can where you can and disregard universal consistency; second, link your criticism of human rights violations with the traditions and efforts of the people in a given country who are themselves fighting for change; finally, to the greatest extent possible, link our relations with this country with progress on human rights."
Just as I sat down to comment on President Obama and human rights, I glanced today’s (November 19, 2009) The New York Times and found several opinion essays—careful in fact, thoughtful in tone, reasonable in argument—critical of Obama’s approach during his recent visit to China toward Chinese human rights violations (mainly concerning Tibet but including also imprisoned lawyers, internet censorship, and persecution of Falun Gong.) The essayists considered various tactics for exerting American pressure on China regarding human rights. Common to all of them was a tone of rueful admiration for the political and diplomatic skill with which China fended off human rights criticism; indeed, such measures have been more or less successfully applied to a range of countries. For one example, this year Chinese pressure had some success regarding the composition of the program (which had China as its focus) of Germany’s annual Frankfurt Book Fair.
Seen from this perspective, the President’s tactics in China were foreshadowed by his speech at the United Nations. Human rights were clearly not at the center of Obama’s agenda there, although perhaps the UN General Assembly is not the best place to enunciate such concerns. He did point to early actions by his administration, such as the ban on torture and the pledged early closing of the prison at Guantanamo, and generally stood up for human rights principles. But strikingly, his major reference to actions promoting human rights instrumentalized them as needed for achieving the four main goals he had set forth earlier in the speech. He listed four main tasks confronting the world community: reduce then ban nuclear weapons; general peacekeeping, including the fight against al-Qaeda; the challenge of climate change; economic problems. Clearly, this is not a president for whom human rights advocacy is a very high priority. Why is this so? You will not find a meaningful answer to this question in the sneering and superficial attack by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal. After listing what he sees as cowardly responses to human rights violations in China, Iran, Sudan, and Burma (Myanmar), he declares, “It…takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that ‘interferes’ with America’s purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them.”
Well, yes, these are unpopular regimes. Our government has denounced them and in some cases called them names for many years, but with what result? In President George W. Bush’s first term, his then-Secretary of State, Colin Powell, branded Sudanese actions in Darfur as genocide. A decade later, has the genocide stopped? If Stephens is calling for more symbolic acts, then he might tell us why he expects them to be more successful now than in the past. If not, what actions does he (and do other, less hostile critics) propose? Who will call for American or NATO armed intervention in the countries listed above?
The central issue here is the one that underlies so many policy conundrums when it comes to implementing human rights in a complicated world of many interests, competing needs, and limitations of power: the choice between what may be called peace or justice. By “peace” I refer to restoring regimes of law after oppressive rule, abating both domestic, social, and ethnic, as well as international conflict, and enlisting a wide range of communities in such matters as dealing with global warming. By “justice” I mean calling violators of human rights to account, setting a standard to which states (and non-state actors) should adhere, realizing social, economic and political rights through concerted action, by outside powers where the local population is powerless. Consider again the four priorities Obama listed at the UN. Which of them is unimportant? In which cases can we make progress without the cooperation of regimes that are human rights violators? How difficult it can be to translate the balance between these goals into specific actions was demonstrated in summer 2009 by the inconclusive UN debate regarding the “responsibility to protect.” Who shall decide where and when protection is needed? Who shall provide the power to make protection real? Who will bear the cost in lives and goods to enforce protection in the face of resistance? What advice then to give President Obama regarding this difficult balance? I would suggest three modest steps: First, do what you can where you can and disregard universal consistency; second, link your criticism of human rights violations with the traditions and efforts of the people in a given country who are themselves fighting for change; finally, to the greatest extent possible, link our relations with this country with progress on human rights.
Professor Henry Krisch (Political Science emeritus, University of Connecticut) taught political science at the University of Connecticut and Columbia University for almost forty years. He has specialized in Soviet and German, especially East German, politics, and more recently in international human rights issues. At the University of Connecticut, Krisch was Director of the Center for Soviet and East European Studies, co-chaired the academic program committee for the Dodd Year (1995-96) on "Fifty Years After Nuremberg: Human Rights and the Rule of Law." Since 1999, he has been a member of the Gladstein Human Rights Committee. His publications include German Politics under Soviet Occupation (1974), The German Democratic Republic: Search for Identity (1985), Politics and Culture in the GDR (1989), Politics in Germany [co-authored] (2009), and “George Soros,” in The Encyclopedia of Human Rights (2009).
Monday, November 3, 2008
Editor's Introduction - November 2008
An Annotation
Amid the competitive and somewhat heated rhetoric on the economy, race, taxes, and healthcare, noticeably down-played from the campaign for the White House has been an in-depth discussion of American foreign policy. With two ongoing and unpopular wars, and a faltering economic position in global markets, the new administration must rapidly address these, and other, demanding foreign policy concerns. In “Foreign Policy Myths Debunked,” the editors of The Nation attempt to outline the foreign policy myths that have adversely impacted American national security, economic growth, and most importantly, international standing.
“As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse…If left unchallenged, these myths and fallacies could influence the outcome of the election and shape policy in the next administration.”
Given the pressing foreign policy challenges facing the new administration, and the different opinions and perspectives that Senators McCain and Obama would bring to the Oval Office, what can we expect to see from each? This month’s Roundtable asks how human rights factor into the election, and, more specifically, the positions of each candidate. Does the enforcement of human rights play a role in this election’s foreign policy? In the context of genocide in Darfur, and continued ethnic conflict in the Middle East, will human rights norms become the forefront of American foreign policy? If the new administration follows the path set forth by the Bush administration, particularly in the use of human rights rhetoric to justify aggression and intervention, the realities of grave human rights violations and abuses occurring throughout the world will no longer demand immediate, comprehensive action.
“The challenge for the next administration, then, is not how to restore American leadership but how to share these responsibilities in an increasingly multipolar world, and thus free up the energy and resources needed to rebuild American society.”
Come inauguration on January 20, 2009, Senator McCain or Senator Obama will be forced to examine the past, present, and future of American foreign policy. Moreover, their decisive action or inaction will impact, not only Americans at home, but also the entire world. The centerpiece this month asks the key question: Will myths and lies continue to be the foundation for American foreign policy, as they have been for the past eight years under the Bush administration? Indeed, the American people and the international community are watching and waiting to witness the next phase of American foreign policy.
These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.
America as an Ordinary Nation
by William F. Felice, Eckerd College
For decades, scholars of international relations have called attention to the limits of American power. For example, in 1976 Cornel University Press published America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future, edited by Richard Rosecrance. As the title indicates, Rosecrance’s book analyzed the impact of the economic, military, and foreign policy setbacks of the 1970s on U.S. power. Suddenly the U.S. seemed less the powerful, “indispensible” leader and more the vulnerable, “ordinary” country unable to control external forces lashing the society’s economy and foreign policy. These insights led many scholars to call for a reassessment of basic “common sense” assumptions about U.S. economic, military and political power. In 2003, Columbia University Press published Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. In this work, Todd picks up where Rosecrance left off and documents the many ways in which the world is learning that it can get along without American leadership. In fact, America today is burdened with enormous trade deficits, a declining dollar, and the unanticipated bankruptcies of leading firms and banks. Furthermore, the U.S. has become a dependent state, subsisting on foreign money. All of this, as Todd carefully demonstrates, has appreciably undermined the political and economic influence of the U.S. in international relations today. Other scholars, including Paul Kennedy, have added to this growing body of scholarship and posited similar concerns about the intense confines to American power. It can, in fact, be reasonably argued that the U.S. has become simply one liberal democracy among many with unique and growing economic, environmental, and social vulnerabilities. An effective U.S. foreign policy would recognize these limitations to U.S. power and understand the need for vibrant multilateral cooperation and diplomacy to address the most pressing security issues today, from global terrorism to global warming to the global recession.
Yet, the Bush administration never acknowledged how this new world of complex interdependence created such great power vulnerability and dramatically limited the utility of America’s hard power resources, in particular its military power. The current administration never understood how this pressing and dangerous new agenda of world politics demanded a multilateral approach, and that such a cooperative framework would enhance, not diminish, U.S. power. Instead, the neoconservative foreign policy team surrounding Cheney and Rumsfeld pursued a radical, more muscular foreign policy agenda based on American exceptionalism and unilateralism and a desire to make the world more like us. Instead of recognizing the critical role of international law and international organization in a world of common threats, the administration marginalized the United Nations and a rule-based world system, and sought to fight terrorism and promote democracy around the world according to its own determination of right and wrong. In the name of fighting terrorism, the administration abandoned the rule of law. The most basic norms necessary to create international cooperation and multilateralism were jettisoned, including equality, transparency, fair procedures, individual culpability, clear rules, checks and balances, and respect for basic human rights. In 2007, David Cole and Jules Lobel in Less Safe, Less Free documented how the Bush administration had systematically violated each of these basic legal commitments and instead imposed double standards, secret trials, guilt by association, obscured clear rules, asserted unchecked unilateral power, and sullied universal prohibitions on torture, disappearance, and the like. The tragic irony is that all of this has made the U.S. not only less free, but less safe and much more vulnerable to attack.
Sherle Schwenninger is thus absolutely correct when she writes in The Nation: “Neither campaign has grasped the central lesson of the Bush era: the world does not need strong U.S. leadership as much as it needs constructive U.S. participation as a great power.” American security and world peace depends upon the U.S. denouncing the neoconservative policies of exceptionalism and double standards, and committing our country to equality, justice, fairness, and the rule of law. In the end, an effective foreign policy and U.S. national security rest on a fundamental respect for human rights.
In his campaign for the presidency, George W. Bush stated: “If we are an arrogant nation, [other countries] will view us that way, but if we’re a humble nation, they’ll respect us.” Tragically, the Bush foreign policy was arrogant to the core and we now suffer the consequences. The next administration will hopefully reject this failed arrogant path and pursue the “humble” road with the realization that “humility” can be shown through a basic and even-handed commitment to human rights norms and standards. When we become a nation that practices what it preaches about human rights, we will be a state that others will want to join with to collectively address terrorism, ecological dangers, and economic malaise. Unfortunately, neither campaign has argued vigorously for this type of multilateral, common security approach to U.S. foreign policy. But, once in power, the new president could use the “bully pulpit” of the office to challenge the current malignant quagmire of U.S. exceptionalism and articulate a vibrant road forward based on respect, multilateralism, and human rights.
Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can
"Fifty years of human rights achievements that had been originally crafted by Eleanor Roosevelt became undermined in one fell swoop with the establishment of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. And it is to the unintended consequences of American foreign policy that I would like a McCain or Obama administration to pay close attention."
From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the “American” Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States. Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The logic of the doctrine would later be buttressed by other presidential decrees and doctrines, most notably the Roosevelt corollary, which extended U.S. “police power” over the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean; the Truman Doctrine, which sought to contain the Soviet Union through the establishment of allies and a ring of missiles in Europe; the Reagan Doctrine, which sought to “roll back” communism through the use of “proxy wars” in Latin America (the soft underbelly of the United States), Africa (most notably Angola), the Middle East and Central Asia (e.g. Afghanistan); and the Bush Doctrine, which justifies pre-emptive use of force against any threat that is deemed to be “imminent” (see the 2002 National Security Strategy).
Like Barack Obama, I was a freshman in the 1980s at the University of Pennsylvania, which also had its anti-apartheid and anti-Reagan Doctrine protests. While the Vietnam “syndrome” limited the willingness of the United States to engage directly in conflicts around the world and the Iran-Contra affair taught us about the abuses of executive authority (as the Nixon years did when I was a child), we implored our university to divest from South Africa to punish an unacceptable regime that had endured for an unacceptable period of time. My studies also led to a deeper understanding of the nature and extent of widespread human rights abuse committed by the military authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Many of these regimes enjoyed staunch support from the Reagan administration, which drew its foreign policy inspiration from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s misconceived notion that right wing authoritarian regimes were somehow more susceptible to democratization than left wing authoritarian regimes. The paradigmatic case was Pinochet’s Chile, where the full extent of U.S. involvement and complicity in what took place there between 1973 and 1989 has finally been authoritatively documented in Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File (see also my 2004 review essay on this book published in HRHW).
Beyond the more famous cases from Latin America, the Reagan Doctrine also led the U.S. to commit covert funds, weapons, and materiel to Afghanistan through Pakistan to support the Muhajadeen’s battle against Soviet occupation, where the consequences have included the disenchantment with the United States, recruitment into Al Qaeda terror networks, and at least until the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, a training base for Osama Bin Laden. Again, like in the case of Chile, the links between U.S. policy and the most perverse of unintended consequences has been authoritatively documented in Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars.
And it is to the unintended consequences of American foreign policy that I would like a McCain or Obama administration to pay close attention. McCain’s hero is Teddy Roosevelt, but the “big stick” of American unilateralism, carried out with alacrity during the Bush years has led to huge loss of life around the world and significant discredit of the American ideal among many of its trusted friends and allies. Fifty years of human rights achievements that had been originally crafted by Eleanor Roosevelt became undermined in one fell swoop with the establishment of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. The general disdain for hard-fought international human rights standards in the name of fighting terror that developed within the upper echelons of the Bush administration was raised to high relief by the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib. Mr. McCain’s personal experiences with the excesses of “reasons of state” in Vietnam must surely make him wary of the pursuit of national objectives at any cost and his measured approach to committing U.S. troops abroad (perhaps with the exception of the war in Iraq) suggests that an administration under his leadership will be less bellicose than its predecessor. But his gaffes with respect to Iran suggest that voters ought to think hard about what kind of image and what kind of foreign policy America will have with McCain and Palin in the White House.Obama takes his inspiration from John F. Kennedy (or at least his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and not the Bay of Pigs) and seeks a more consultative base for his foreign policy rather than the big stick of the “neo-Rooselveltian,” as Newsweek describes McCain. But JFK also had his fair share of unintended consequences, not least of which the Alliance for Progress, a foreign aid and technical assistance package extended to Latin America in the 1960s trained the military personnel and laid the foundations for the authoritarian period that soon followed. Obama’s Asian experiences have sensitized him in some degree to the plight of poor Muslims and poor people more generally and suggested one strand for U.S. foreign policy address the long term structural problems associated with maldistribution of wealth within the world. His choice of running mate suggests that he will have a firm knowledge of the travails of the Reagan and Bush Doctrines. Moreover, as a lawyer and community activist in Chicago, Obama should be well-versed in the power and meaning of human rights. But I do hope that the pressures of being the President and the many contradictions that come with holding that office will not distract him from a commitment to our most basic of human values.
Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, and a League of Democracies
by James Pattison, University of West England
"The subsequent impact of the basing of U.S. foreign policy on the protection of human rights worldwide on these egregious lies is well-known, from Guantanamo Bay to the courting of tyrannies as partners in the War on Terror."
The United States’ election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:
The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place; The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power; Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security.
These myths were the centerpiece of the Bush re-election campaign that realized, as the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel argued two hundred years ago, that the best way to quell domestic criticism is to wage war and exacerbate fear from external attack. The subsequent impact of the basing of U.S. foreign policy on the protection of human rights worldwide on these egregious lies is well-known, from Guantanamo Bay to the courting of tyrannies as partners in the War on Terror (such as Islom Karimov, president of Uzbekistan). More diffuse effects included the weakening of the U.S.’s ability to act as “norm-carrier” for human rights and related ideas, such as humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. That is, the power of the U.S. to influence the Global South on such matters waned as skepticism of its War on Terror increased. Perhaps most notably, these policies stymied the possibility of more robust action to the crisis in Darfur, as American military resources and attention were focused elsewhere and the Global South became less willing to listen to a unilateralist, chauvinistic U.S.
While ramifications of the myths of the 2004 election for human rights were as clear at the time as they are now, I’m less convinced that the ten points listed by the editors of the Nation should be viewed as “myths,” “lies,” or “gross distortions.” Take, for instance, “Myth 2”—that the “surge has worked.” Although the editors may rightly point to the other factors involved in the reduction in violence and question the success of the surge, a reasonable case can be made that the surge has been a significant factor in the improvement of the situation in Iraq. Or, take “Myth 10,” that the “world needs American leadership.” A similarly reasonable case can be made for the need for strong U.S. leadership, particularly on human rights and environmental issues, where American leadership on such issues has been lacking. Of course, leadership on such issues may necessitate constructive engagement rather than unilateral obstinacy.
My point, then, is that most of the ten “myths” identified by the editors of the Nation are nowhere near the egregious lies of the Bush Administration. They are instead more like points of what John Rawls calls “reasonable disagreement” about the current international climate. To be sure, I’m sympathetic to many of the claims by the editors. But casting alternative arguments as “myths” is unhelpful in two ways. First, it denies the acceptability of debate about these issues, denying other positions as “lies,” when debate is surely what is required. Second, it over-exaggerates the extent to which the current election is based on myths. Unlike 2004, this election has a more serious, somber tone (despite some notable exceptions). Part of this is perhaps down to McCain’s seeming reluctance to go along with the Neocon’s dirty tricks, which he himself was subject to in 2000.
My focus thus far has been on the problem with the framing of reasonable, ulterior viewpoints as “myths.” But I have also said that I agree with the broad thrust of the editors’ arguments. There is one point, however, where I think they are wrong. This is their rejection of the idea of a League of Democracies. This idea has a long and rich history, and was most famously defended by Immanuel Kant in his proposal for Perpetual Peace. Kant’s suggestion is for a loose confederation of liberal democracies that would spread over the world as the pacifying effects of democratization are realized. To a certain extent, we already have a League of Democracies—NATO. One option would be the extension of NATO to include other democracies beyond Europe and North America. But perhaps a better option, and more in line with the Kantian ideal, would be to look to such a body not to provide military leadership, but to work as a political and economic forum to improve the promotion of human rights worldwide. It would essentially be a talking shop that deals in international legitimacy, working alongside the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council would still be tasked with dealing with matters of international peace and security. Indeed, the re-emergence of Russia and the growing power of China make an alternative to the Security Council on such matters unlikely. The League would instead meet every so often to debate key international issues, just as the non-aligned movement and the G8 currently do. This weaker institution would avoid many of the practical problems highlighted by the editors. And still, very occasionally, it may be able to pass resolutions endorsing humanitarian intervention outside the auspices of Security Council, helping to legitimize action such as NATO’s intervention in Kosovo 1999.
The editors of the Nation propose the expansion of the Security Council to include emerging powers such as India and Brazil. This would obviously increase the likelihood of stalemate in the Council. In fact, it would further exacerbate the need for alternatives sources of legitimacy, such as a League of Democracies, to ensure an effective response to serious humanitarian crises. Such a solution would, of course, face some practical hurdles, but we should not foreclose its possibility by viewing it as “mythical,” especially when it could have an important role in improving compliance worldwide with human rights norms.
Human Rights and the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
by Brent Steele, University of Kansas
"While it may not be the case that the 'world needs' U.S. leadership, certain areas may not resist it. This is especially the case if either of these men—Obama or McCain—can quickly regain the trust of the world community through a set of policies which approach global problems with honest assessments and earnest commitments."
There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates’ foreign policy views using old frameworks of “hawk” and “dove.” Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain’s neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization—culminating in what he terms a “League of Democracies.” To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, McCain has at heart “milleu” goals for the world. The U.S.’s prominent position as a great power can not only secure American national interests in anarchy, it can change that notion of anarchy altogether – a world constituted by liberal democracies is one which will be radically more peaceful than one where rogue states reside.
Obama, despite all of the grandiose rhetoric, and despite having liberal internationalist advisors such as Anthony Lake and Ivo Daalder, has emphasized and even championed realist principles of prudence, self-limitation, restraint and caution, which explicates his stated admiration for a variety of realist icons such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson, (see Larissa MacFarquhar’s profile of him from May of 2007 in this regard). This also elucidates why he has been supported, either tacitly or explicitly, by realist Republicans such as Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and Colin Powell. It is the realist emphases on diplomacy, “soft power” and the U.S. national interest, which pulse Obama’s position on dialogue with adversaries such as Iran, rather than some cosmopolitan notion that he is trying to get us all to “get along.”
How will these policies impact human rights in the world? For starters, both men will move away from the current administration’s embrace of coercive interrogation techniques in combating terrorism. Arguably, there has been no darker turn in U.S. foreign policy than this, and it looks very likely the use of such techniques will end. Admittedly, there are differences on this issue between the two—such as McCain’s support for, versus Obama’s opposition to the 2006 Military Commissions Act which, among other provisions, will make it more difficult for either man as president to prosecute government officials for criminal misconduct in regards to interrogation. But overall either Obama or McCain would be, and have been as senators, more forceful in their condemnation of such techniques. And as constructivist scholars of International Relations would point out, both men have justified this condemnation with powerful references to U.S. identity: Obama repeatedly asserts his opposition to torture with the words “That is not who we are,” and McCain has mentioned on several occasions that regardless of who the enemies are (even terrorists), “We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they may be.” For those who care about human rights, on this issue there is hope for optimism.
When it comes to other practices which implicate human rights, make no mistake that if Obama is elected, his Iraq withdrawal plan will inevitably entail some instability in Iraq such as a return of sectarian fighting between the Shia and Sunnis in Baghdad and surrounding areas. McCain’s stated goal to keep troops in Iraq would most likely in the short-term serve to continue the fragile peace between contentious factions there (I say “most likely” since it’s not entirely clear that the increased U.S. presence there via the “surge” is solely responsible for this fragile stability), but in the long term it may constrain the U.S.’s ability to deploy forces to stem humanitarian crises elsewhere in the world.
On the issue of genocide, those who see Obama as an “idealist” advocate of humanitarian interventions throughout the world are, I believe, going to be sorely disappointed if he is elected. Admittedly, he has had advisors such as Anthony Lake and Samantha Power who have articulately argued that genocide is an important U.S. national security threat. But the principles of realism that Obama supports—caution and prudence, for example—are not conducive to interventionist policies. Realist-influenced administrations, such as that of George H.W. Bush (a president for whose foreign policies Obama has on more than one occasion expressed admiration), have been extremely reticent to deploy force for humanitarian purposes, although they did, in rare occasions (such as Somalia). But if Obama were to support action in Darfur, for example, it would likely be done with the knowledge that U.S. material resources are finite, and accordingly U.S. actions to assist the humanitarian efforts there would need to be cheap and limited, as he intuited in his second debate with Senator McCain in early October, Obama’s approach would more likely emphasize long-term tactics designed to alleviate global poverty and the raising of individual’s living standards—purposes which would presumably reduce the need for interventions in the first place.
Senator McCain’s neoconservative leanings would lead one to tentatively conclude that he would be more supportive of intervention than Obama. But as Matthew Bai found out in an interview he conducted with the Senator, McCain has a very nuanced view of intervention that reflects a more sophisticated understanding of the situations where U.S. soldiers could stop humanitarian disaster, versus others (such as Zimbabwe) where they may exacerbate more than mediate humanitarian crises.
Finally, I must take a bit of issue with the 10th “debunked” myth in The Nation article. The article asserts that “much of the rest of the world is more skeptical, if not outright resistant, to Washington’s global leadership than at any time since the end of World War II.” This may be true, but in my brief interactions outside of this country in the past couple of years, I am amazed at how captivated some citizens of “the world” are with this U.S. presidential election. Many view it as an historic opportunity for the U.S. to re-enter the world community, and whether the individuals in these countries informed me of their preference (Obama, McCain, or, at the time of my travels, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton), they were all intensely interested in this election. While it may not be the case that the “world needs” U.S. leadership, certain areas may not resist it. This is especially the case if either of these men—Obama or McCain—can quickly regain the trust of the world community through a set of policies which approach global problems with honest assessments and earnest commitments. I am fairly optimistic that even if much of the world remains skeptical regarding U.S. leadership after what has transpired over the last eight years, Barack Obama and John McCain each possess the capacity to restore some semblance of the moral authority that the U.S. possessed in many pockets of the world community not so long ago.
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