American Dream Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy
Vogelgesang, Sandy
B 0 0 K R E V I E W S Even though Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter held sharply differing views on the question, human rights was largely ignored as a political issue during the presidential...
...IN ot that Vogelgesang is an apologist for the Soviets...
...no less a figure than former Secretary of State Vance has endorsed "the right to the fulfillment of such vital needs as food, shelter, health care, and education" as the ultimate goals of American human rights policy...
...This is not to say that the Carter record is without its share of successes...
...Sakharov and the declaration of support for Charter 77 among the most important...
...The problem is that American pressure has produced notable improvements only in countries favorably disposed (or at least not hostile) to the United States, and, for the most part, these can hardly be called brutal tyrannies...
...There are many reasons why the United States should promote the economic advancement of underdeveloped countries and, in some instances, a fairer distribution of resources within these countries...
...A typical example is her assertion that in post-Selassie Ethiopia, "violent methods have often been used to redress the previous imbalance in economic and social rights," when in fact, it is the murder of political rivals and ethnic minorities, and not land reform, that Colonel Mengistu and his henchmen have been about...
...Too many people involved in the human rights struggle have been sustained by comfortable assumptions about the world in which the exercise of power does not figure at all...
...by the time of the recent Polish events, he was chastising the AFL-CIO for providing assistance to the new independent unions and apologizing to Soviet officials for the conduct of American unions...
...But when it became obvious that human rights posed a roadblock to improved relations, he began a quiet disengagement from earlier commitments...
...And on this question, Vogelgesang displays a great deal of confusion, stemming largely from her tortured attempts to portray Third World demands as compatible with American values and interests...
...Slogans, cant, and sentimentality have made it easy to avoid addressing the exact source of the problem...
...It was Arch Puddington is Executive Director of the League for Industrial Democracy andEditor of New America...
...There is a direct, organic relationship between Communism and the threats to fundamental human rights...
...As the candidate of a party strongly influenced by people who believe antiCommunism to be outmoded and even indecent, it was no small accomplishment to dispel the notion that he would be insufficiently firm in dealings with the Russians...
...This book would have been less muddled had Vogelgesang simply delivered a straightforward defense of the New Left's ideas on human rights...
...This posed no special dilemma for the Carter administration, which tended to regard human rights questions as separate and distinct from other aspects of American AMERICAN DREAM GLOBAL NIGHTMARE: THE DILEMMA OF U.S...
...But to act on the assumption that these goals, particularly as advocated by Third World elites, are compatible and even coextensive with human rights, will only undermine human rights in the name of strengthening them...
...Ford's refusal to grant an audience to Solzhenitsyn, the furor over the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine, the incredible gaffe about Polish self-determination -these and other manifestations of the administration's overscrupulous adherence to the "code of detente" made it easy for Carter to differentiate his foreign policy approach from Ford's without'losing his credentials as a supporter of de'tente...
...Thus for Carter the human rights issue served a dual purpose: It was a useful and entirely appropriate weapon to wield against Ford's policies and it was a tool for building personal support in a party in which followers of Henry Jackson and George McGovern live in uneasy coexistence...
...HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY Sandy Vogelgesang / Norton / $13.95 Arch Puddington, foreign policy and was particularly determined not to equate concern for human rights with anti-Communism...
...In her view, a human rights policy which focuses on "crimes against the security of the person'' and on civil and political rights as traditionally defined in the West lacks global credibility, since it ignores the economic and social rights which Third World countries are said to value most highly...
...Instead, her effort to synthesize Western and Third World conceptions has produced a bewildering array of arguments built on misconceptions, evasion, and fudging...
...The human rights violations of Ecuador and the Dominican Republic-where we succeeded in persuading military leaders to permit democratically elected governments to assume office-pale in comparison to the mass killings and wholesale repressions carried out by avowed enemies like Cambodia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Vietnam...
...But other signals sent out by the new administration conflicted with Carter's apparent determination to adhere to -his campaign pledges: The responsibility for formulating human rights policy was handed over to men and women with antiwar backgrounds, strong Third World orientations, or both...
...Surprisingly, once in office, Carter seemed to follow through on his promise to make the spread of human rights the foundation of his foreign policy: Communist regimes were made the target of several visible gestures-the exchange of letters with Dr...
...For those elites, and for their New Left cheerleaders, economic development and redistribution are part and parcel of the New International Economic Order, a scheme which has nothing whatsoever to do with human rights, and which would only further entrench Third World elites domestically...
...But she believes, here again reflecting the accepted wisdom of many other young Carter administration officials, that it is the North-South relation that is paramount in the struggle for human rights, and hence must be isolated at all costs from the American-Soviet rivalry...
...Thus, when it became clear that these policies were not designed to deal with (and to a certain degree diverted our attention from) new and frightening geopolitical realities, public support for human rights began to disintegrate...
...Even though the past four years have seen some of the most shocking cases of calculated butchery ever witnessed by mankind, not to mention mass expulsions of ethnic minorities and a relentless and carefully orchestrated assault on Western democratic values, human rights now appears a less compelling idea than when Jimmy Carter took office...
...The evidence, in fact, clearly suggests that countries which observe civil and political rights do a better job economically and socially...
...Contributing to this skepticism were Carter's illusions about the Soviet Union...
...Like other members of the new foreign affairs elite (Vogelgesang serves as a policy planner in the State Department), she is properly critical of the social controls imposed by the Soviet government and its persecution of dissidents...
...Ironically enough, it was the Ford administration's seeming blindness to repression in the Soviet bloc, rather than U.S...
...Sandy Vogelgesang also believes that the Carter human rights policy has fallen short of its potential, but for reasons radically different from those sketched out here...
...In fact, the prevention of any further spread of the Soviet Union's monstrous power will be the most effective guarantee of human rights in the Third World...
...On the other hand, one can hardly find an authoritarian regime which does not cite economic development as an excuse for its repression, whether the goal be "building the revolution" or creating "an economic miracle...
...B 0 0 K R E V I E W S Even though Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter held sharply differing views on the question, human rights was largely ignored as a political issue during the presidential campaign...
...This was in marked contrast to 1976, when candidate Carter accused Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger of having abandoned moral principle in the conduct of foreign affairs...
...She is not alone in this conviction...
...One need not be a dedicated Cold Warrior to understand the simple-mindedness of this proposition...
...This will require, among other things, a recognition that there are times when a firm military posture is an essential weapon for human rights...
...Such views are symptomatic of the weaknesses which hampered the Carter human rights policy...
...I realize that to suggest a link between military capability and human rights is, in some circles, to speak the unspeakable...
...that these powers (or their surrogates) are responsible for training and funding the terrorist movements which pose so great a menace to Western democracy...
...From these auspicious beginnings matters have declined to the point where many politicians would just as soon see the whole issue disappear...
...Typically enough, Vogelgesang identifies human rights with disarmament and "reordering priorities...
...Initially, Carter assumed that he could denounce Soviet repression and also pursue trade, disarmament, and other aspects of detente...
...One wonders what delicate phraseology the author would have employed to explain Stalin's efforts to resolve Russia's agricultural problems in the 1930s...
...policy toward Chile or South Africa, which was exploited most effectively by the Democrat...
...Human rightsism" was to replace anti-Communism as the moral basis of American global conduct, and so it was perfectly all right to criticize the Soviet Union for its persecution of dissidents or to make an issue of Vietnam's expulsion of the boat people, at the same time that care was taken to avoid drawing any connection between acts of repression and the political system of the countries committing them...
...Such assumptions can only pose a threat to human rights...
...also discovered that an increasingly assertive Congress had ideas of its own on human rights: It attached human rights criteria to a number of trade and international assistance bills, and mandated the publication of an annual report card assessing the state of human rights in countries receiving American aid...
...Straightforward hurhanitarianism is all that is required to recognize that those committing the most flagrant crimes against individual human beings share a common ideology and an allegiance to the great totalitarian powers...
...and that the people living under these systems repeatedly display their hatred of them by trying to leave-by boat, through jungles, in automobile trunks -or by trying to bring the system down...
Vol. 14 • February 1981 • No. 2
