Opinion: The Obama administration clarifies approach to human rights

Candles placed by members of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a Kashmiri separatist group, form the words "Human Rights" in front of pictures of alleged human rights victims during a torchlight procession to mark World Human Rights Day in Srinagar December 10, 2009. (Fayaz Kabli/Reuters)

WASHINGTON — In a pair of speeches that bookended the largely neglected International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton set forth a sophisticated, nuanced and, most importantly, pragmatic message on democracy and human rights.

In a nutshell, the policy is to “remain true to core American principles of human freedom and dignity, restore U.S. credibility on human rights, demand that rules be followed, but above all, stay flexible in how to apply these values to realities on the ground.”

As a former Clinton administration policy adviser on democracy and human rights, I can certainly appreciate the fine line policymakers need to walk in this domain of foreign policy. As we saw during the years of the last Bush administration, a brash approach to democracy promotion can backfire, particularly when our government’s own record on protecting human rights falls so blatantly short of the standards to which we hold others. And as we saw in the first several months of the Obama administration, a timid or ambiguous approach can embolden autocrats to dig their heels in further; it also has encouraged critics to attack the White House for abandoning human rights dissidents and for engaging in shameful exercises of self-flagellation, allegedly weakening our moral standing around the world.

The president’s lofty yet hardheaded rhetoric at the Nobel Peace award ceremony in Oslo combined with Clinton’s workmanlike speech at Georgetown University to honor Human Rights Week together have righted the balance between these two approaches while preserving all options for maximum flexibility. They may just have threaded the needle between, on the one hand, reassuring democracy and human rights advocates on both sides of the aisle that these issues will remain a top priority for U.S. foreign policy, and on the other, protecting the pro-engagement and “principled pragmatism” plank.

As pragmatic politicians who know that it usually takes compromises to get things done in Washington, Obama and Clinton want to preserve their ability to maneuver through human rights minefields on the world stage without being held hostage to inflated rhetoric that could expose them to charges of hypocrisy. At the same time, they have laid down an important marker that they will treat these issues not as isolated causes but as part of an integrated, interdependent whole. There are no Manichean lines in the Obama/Clinton world, no false choices. “The assumption that we must either pursue human rights or our ‘national interests’ is wrong,” Hillary Clinton explained to an audience of Georgetown University students on Dec. 14. “We do not want to be in an either/or position: Are we going to pursue nonproliferation with Iran or are we going to support the demonstrators inside Iran? We’re going to do both to the best of our ability to get a result that will further the cause we are seeking to support.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/091218/obama-clinton-human-rights