Just Politics

Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of Great Powers

C. William Walldorf, Jr.

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780801446337
• eBook ISBN: 9780801459634
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Many foreign policy analysts assume that elite policymakers in liberal democracies consistently ignore humanitarian norms when these norms interfere with commercial and strategic interests. Today's endorsement by Western governments of repressive regimes in countries from Kazakhstan to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of fighting terror only reinforces this opinion. In Just Politics, C. William Walldorf Jr. challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that human rights concerns have often led democratic great powers to sever vital strategic partnerships even when it has not been in their interest to do so.Walldorf sets out his case in detailed studies of British alliance relationships with the Ottoman Empire and Portugal in the nineteenth century and of U.S. partnerships with numerous countries—ranging from South Africa, Turkey, Greece and El Salvador to Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina—during the Cold War. He finds that illiberal behavior by partner states, varying degrees of pressure by nonstate actors, and legislative activism account for the decisions by democracies to terminate strategic partnerships for human rights reasons.To demonstrate the central influence of humanitarian considerations and domestic politics in the most vital of strategic moments of great-power foreign policy, Walldorf argues that Western governments can and must integrate human rights into their foreign policies. Failure to take humanitarian concerns into account, he contends, will only damage their long-term strategic objectives.

[1]

Humanitarianism and

Commitment Termination

Democratic states sometimes terminate commitments to strategic partners. Why does this occur? In my effort to answer this question, I specifically draw on three approaches to international politics: realism, institutionalism, and humanitarian norms—this being a hybrid liberal-constructivist framework. Each approach presents unique explanations of commitment termination. The first two—realism and institutionalism—reflect the conventional wisdom discussed in the prior chapter. I also discuss the methodology of the project and the logic of using case studies from the specific core British and U.S. security commitments at hand.

HUMANITARIAN NORMS

A humanitarian norms explanation of commitment termination combines elements of both constructivist and liberal thought. As such, it brings liberal norms into the picture and explores the ways that institutions serve as conveyors of those norms. In the context of strategic commitments, I anticipate that legislatures will force executives to terminate pledges when partners act illiberally and activist groups apply pressure for policy change. In the absence of patterned illiberalism by partners or certain levels of activist pressure, commitments are likely to be preserved.

A couple of qualifications are important. First, this book focuses on political, as opposed to economic and social, rights. The reason for this is that most of the humanitarian movements addressing the foreign policy of great powers have revolved around issues like life, liberty, and human dignity.1 Second, the argument rests on a single assumption. Namely, once legislatures adopt anti-commitment interests, the executive will terminate pledges. In reality, policymaking is not always as straightforward as this assumption implies. Executives sometimes defy legislative objectives, even those encoded in law. The Reagan administration’s decision to provide covert aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua despite congressional restrictions is one memorable example. Politics matters as to when executives respect legislative preferences. For space reasons, I do not explore the political cost-benefit calculations of these executive decisions. It should be noted, though, that in most instances, when legislatures act, they tend to get their way eventually. Once Reagan’s actions became public, for example, aid to the Contras abruptly ended, an outcome that would not have transpired without legislative pressure.

Liberal Thought and Humanitarianism

Understanding legislative humanitarian action begins with an exploration of the basic identities of democratic states. Liberalism is the central legitimating worldview, or core identity, of modern democratic states. I define liberalism as a system of thought rooted in the autonomy and equality of the individual. Liberal scholars explore how these ideas serve as the foundation for humanitarian concern and action internationally. On this score, liberal societies reify the “equal worth and dignity of each and every person [regardless of] social utility” and respect the basic political right to “equal concern and respect.”2 Choice of the life one leads becomes a critical factor. “Equal and autonomous rights-bearing individuals are entitled to make fundamental choices about what constitutes the good life (for them), with whom they associate, and how,” notes Jack Donnelly.3 Liberty to define the good life is not license, however, to pursue one’s wishes regardless of others. The autonomy of one can not be used to hinder the autonomy and equality of another. Noncoercion and tolerance therefore emerge as valuable to any liberal conception of society. Individuals stand free to define the good as they please as long as it does not encroach upon the capacity of another individual to do the same.

The state plays an important role as a servant toward this end. Government receives “its power from the governed with whom…[it] signed a contract.”4 The purpose of the state becomes consistent with what society values, namely, autonomy and equality. John Locke captured the place and responsibility of the liberal state: “[State] power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of society. It is a power that has no other end but preservation, and, therefore, can never have a right to destroy, enslave or designedly to impoverish its subjects.”5 For Locke and other liberals, the state role includes the active element, as well, of limiting excesses by one individual within society against another.6 Under these conditions, liberals expect the greatest potential for human flourishing. No doubt some contemporary liberals take issue with this strictly contractarian bent, claiming that it misses the responsibility of the state to promote economic and social equality as well.7 As it is farther removed from the task at hand, I do not wish to wade into that argument here. Instead, it is adequate to note that liberals of all stripes understand and expect a state imbued with liberal ideas to defend and advocate for individual autonomy and equality: “The function of government is the protection of natural rights.”8

The liberal identity does not stop with a recasting of the domestic relationship between a state and its citizenry. An international dimension exists as well. Liberalism holds equality and freedom as universal rights. Liberal ideas create a lens through which liberal states view and judge the plight of humans beyond their own borders. “The principles of common morality plainly imply a more positive concern for the welfare of people outside one’s own community,” contends one liberal scholar, “For the general positive obligations to others included within common morality are not limited to people with whom we are bound in community by contract.”9 Not surprisingly, liberal democratic states have been at the center of many of the major humanitarian movements across history, from the codification of human rights in international law to the abolition of slavery in the United States and the movement against South African apartheid. The centrality of the individual produces a natural affinity for global humanitarianism in liberal states, especially relative to illiberal regimes.10

This statement is not without controversy. Important contextual issues related to what actors are considered human across time and the balance between strategic and humanitarian interests in liberal states need to be addressed here. The definitions of those believed to be “human” and therefore worthy of defense internationally has varied substantially between liberal states across history. In this book, for instance, nineteenth-century Britain vigorously defended Ottoman Christians while ignoring other oppressed minorities in the Ottoman Empire. This picture contrasts sharply with leading democracies since the middle of the twentieth century. While witnessing historically contingent movements revolving around specific states or groups (for instance, the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s), U.S. foreign policy has reflected a trend common for most liberal states today in its defense of universal rights applicable to all, regardless of race, religion, or geographical location. How is human defined by liberal states, and how do these definitions change over time?

Constructivists are helpful on this point. The definition of human is historically contingent, deriving from social interactions and extant ideas. Who is human, thus, emerges from variations within liberal identities across history. “We tend to help those we perceive as similar to ourselves,” notes Martha Finnemore.11 For Britain in the nineteenth century, the definition of human was rather narrow, having mostly to do with Christianity and civilizational biases about the superiority of European culture and society. As Finnemore observes, the people of Africa “appeared utterly strange and therefore not ‘human’” to Europeans.12 Likewise, when it came to the Ottoman Empire, British humanitarian action was aroused exclusively when Christians suffered at the hands of the Turks, who were viewed in Britain as less civilized than their Christian subjects.13 Christians fit the prevailing definition of human while other suffering non-Christian groups were ignored. Identity explains the more expansive definition of the human common across international politics since the late nineteenth century as well. Liberal beliefs about “natural” rights expanded dramatically across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as was reflected in a series of egalitarian movements, including the abolition movement. Human-ness, thus, eventually became a category not limited to Christians and Europeans but included all individuals as a matter of birthright.14 Many see the United States, with its unique revolutionary history rooted from its very inception in individual rights, as an important actor in this changing definition of who is human.15

There are a variety of pathways and factors that help us understand how normative definitions of humanity, including those assessed in this book, emerge and change over time. Moral agents or entrepreneurs are often a critical starting point. “Norms do not appear out of thin air,” note Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. “They are actively built by agents.”16 From William Wilberforce on ending slavery to the International Red Cross on banning landmines, identifiable agents have been at the center of new and changing humanitarian values. Agents are the starting point; they envision and initiate the movement toward change. Their methods are many, focusing generally around persuasion, the framing of new ideas, and personalization techniques intended to generate empathy from unsympathetic audiences.17

Reflecting a prevalent theme in this book, agents do not operate in a vacuum, however. Success often depends on factors beyond their control. Most importantly, extant norms and ideas within society present both opportunities and hindrances to activist appeals. If persuasion and the framing of new norms are to be successful, appeals must resonate, or fit well, with existing values. Many authors find this part of the process critical in explaining the expansion of human rights to black Africans in the related movements of abolition and decolonization. By creating cognitive dissonance, activist appeals succeeded because they drew sharp contrasts between these western practices and the core values of liberalism, namely equality, self-determination, and democracy.18 Likewise, activists sometimes need to wait until extant social norms change before their efforts resonate. Anti-apartheid activists in the United States repeatedly failed to draw attention to racism in South Africa until the mid-1970s. The civil rights movement in the United States provided a critical normative change that later served as the basis for the anti-apartheid movement.19

Related to extant norms, another structural feature to which constructivists draw attention as a condition for normative change is external events or shocks. This is especially important to my argument. Generally, a series of shocking events creates societal trauma over existing policy or state practices.20 This trauma, in turn, confirms or reinforces activist appeals, creating space for activists to change norms. Several highly publicized incidences of brutality in overseas colonies created popular disapprobation toward the practice of colonialism as a whole in Britain, France, and Portugal during the nineteenth century.21 Likewise, highly publicized brutality against unarmed civilians by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War created a foundation for the human rights movement of the 1970s in the United States. And, decolonization in southern Africa in the mid-1970s drew greater attention to South African apartheid, fueling anticipation that change was possible.22 The long-term trauma from a series of shocking events is often important to norm change.

One final set of factors often facilitates the dispersion of new humanitarian ideas. While great powers are unlikely to have new norms forced upon them by other states, elements of what might be called international peer pressure can affect decisions to adopt new values. When a large number of states adopt a norm, it is possible that they will coalesce into a tipping point that leads to a norm cascade, where others in the system race to adopt it.23 While initially instrumental, states that adopt norms this way often become habituated to them over time. In addition to common cultural and religious factors, Britain became interested in the plight of Ottoman Christians early in the nineteenth century out of an effort, in part, to ensure that Russia and France did not use the issue for strategic gain.24 Combined with other factors already noted, the strategic rationale for defending Ottoman Christians soon took on a life of its own in Britain. This type of habituation can also occur when leaders justify strategic goals in ideological language. The beliefs can come back later to matter in ways that they did not intend. Looking at the cases discussed in this book, there is some evidence of this in the ways that the norm of the “freedom fighter” became prominent in U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s. In sum, identities, agents, and structures help us understand both the narrow definitions of human-ness in the past and how those definitions have expanded over time.

A second issue involves the tension between humanitarian and security impulses. This topic is vital for my argument. Most liberals agree that liberal states possess unique concerns for humanitarianism internationally. But they also recognize that international politics involves tackling perceived strategic challenges. A robust debate exists over which should take precedent, the humane or the strategic.25 Along with cosmopolitan concerns for fellow humans, classical liberals did discuss the effect of the strategic challenges inherent to foreign policy on the extensiveness of moral behavior internationally. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stood by the universality of natural law, used the categories of “just” and “unjust” wars, and wrote of the “natural repugnance to see any sensitive being perish or suffer, principally our fellow man.”26 At the same time, Rousseau recognized the countervailing pressures to morality in the international domain: “the bodies politic, thus remaining in the state of nature…soon experienced the inconvenien...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Humanitarianism and Commitment Termination
• 2. Suffering Christians in British-Ottoman Relations
• 3. Torture and Summary Execution in U.S.–Latin American Relations
• 4. Apartheid in U.S.–South African Relations
• 5. Human Rights and Vital Security
• 6. The Implications of Enforced Humanitarian Norms
• Notes