Most casual students of U.S. history and foreign policy consider the beginning of the Carter Administration (1977) as the point at which concern for human rights became a factor in American foreign policy decision-making. Often overlooked is the fact that the U.S. led efforts to draft the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and even though concern for human rights didn’t figure into U.S. foreign policy before the 1940s, many individuals, organizations, and even some in the U.S. Congress have shown concern for human rights almost from the founding of the republic. It is, however, correct to assume that human rights didn’t play a significant role in foreign policy until the Carter years.
Despite our professions of concern for human rights—even during the 1940s as we played a key role in the establishment of the UN and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—our own record on this issue has been checkered. One has only to look at the contrast between the words ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and the institution of slavery and the denial of rights to women.
Even after 1940, our record on human rights has been spotty. In the 1950s, fearing that commitment to international human rights treaties would threaten the south’s Jim Crow laws, the U.S. began withdrawing from most of them. Pressure from a population that was becoming more and more sensitized to the plight of people at home and around the world, and the effects of the Civil Rights movement, forced some re-engagement.
The election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, and his decision to have human rights play a central role in foreign policy decision-making, committed the executive branch for the first time. But, even that commitment was ‘conditioned.’ Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, for instance, said that we would speak out on human rights violations, ‘when it was constructive to do so.’
Since Carter, however, our record on human rights has again been somewhat spotty. We have, on occasion, focused more on abuses of human rights in Communist countries while ignoring them in countries allied with us or, as in the case of China after Tiananmen, with whom we’re forging an important strategic relationship. Some of our actions, especially since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, have been at best questionable, and at worst, violations of the very norms we insist that other countries follow.
And we’ve still failed to ratify several international human rights accords, such as The Treaty on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; Discrimination against Women; Rights of the Child; and The International Criminal Court, just to name a few.
These issues notwithstanding, human rights concerns have played, and continue to play, an important role in our relations with other countries. Within the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department of State is the lead agency in dealing with international human rights concerns. State is responsible for reporting on human rights worldwide, which is used in preparing the annual Human Rights Report for congress.
In our international relations, there are a number of ways we, as a country, deal with human rights issues, ranging from exerting bilateral pressure to imposing economic sanctions. Our efforts to encourage other countries to improve their human rights performance are more successful when we acknowledge our own problems in this area and show the actions and institutions that exist in this country to correct them.
Considering the aforementioned, one might wonder why we should make concern for human rights a factor in foreign decision-making at all. The answer is simple: because it’s the right thing to do. Flawed though we may be, our ability to admit our flaws, and sometimes even take action to remedy them, stands as a beacon to the rest of the world. If we retreat from our position of being for the basic rights and dignity of all humans all over the world, the signal that sends is chilling. It says to the world’s dictators and despots that no one of consequence is watching. It says to those countries struggling to improve, that such actions are a waste of time. And, it says to the people of the world who still look to the U.S. as an inspiration, despite its flaws, that there is no hope.
Looking at the performance of the current administration, since Donald Trump took office in January 2017, one has to wonder what role human rights will play in foreign policy over the next three-plus years. While political predictions are always an iffy proposition, especially with such an unpredictable personality, actions and statements coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue during the first seven months of the administration would tend to indicate that human rights, like diplomacy writ large, will not be a central factor in foreign affairs. Nor will core American values, or at least the values those of my generation grew up with, be at the forefront of our policy.
The administration’s actions on domestic issues, such as the violence in Charlottesville, VA or the treatment of immigrants brought to this country as infants, and to international events, such as the war of insults with North Korea over its nuclear program, all tend to indicate a preference for hard-power responses to problems, rather than quiet diplomacy.
How the rest of the world will react to this can, at this point, only be guessed. Some will take advantage of it, while others will realize that for the next four years at least, U.S. leadership will be lacking. One can only hope that they will realize that, this too shall pass.
