The Human Rights Imperative in U.S. Foreign Policy
by Max M. Kampelman

United States Institute of Peace   October 16, 2001, Washington, DC,  Rayburn House Office Building 

Thucydides, in his History of the Pelopennesian War, defined and praised the concept of democracy “because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many…(its) laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement …. (it is) obedient…to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed…”  Democracy and human rights have early political antecedents.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the dedicated champion of American democracy, in his book Democracy in America concerns himself with his belief that in foreign relations “democracy appears to be decidedly inferior to” authoritarian government (his illustration is the Russia of his day).  The authority in an authoritarian society need only declare the policy and it becomes the established policy.  We who live in a democracy know that a declared policy by any President is subject to careful review and criticism by the opposing political party, by the press, by 535 members of Congress, by experts, by interest groups of all sorts, by non-governmental organizations.  What comes out of the mixture does not always resemble the essence of that which was initially put into the tube.

I do not know whether Franklin Roosevelt read de Toqueville at Harvard, but he obviously was fully aware of the problem when he appointed two Republicans to his war time cabinet — Henry Stimson as Secretary of War and Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy.  Harry Truman instinctively appreciated this problem when he appointed Senator Vandenberg to be a part of his foreign policy team.

They understood — and we understand today — that for a democracy to pursue a successful foreign policy, 51% support is inadequate.  A consensus — not unanimity — is required.  This brings us, during these days of pain and opportunity, to our own foreign policy and the issue of democracy and human rights, its essential component.

There is ample reason to believe that an attack against the United States will produce overwhelming domestic support for a foreign policy committed to defend, repel and punish those responsible for the attack.  We are witnessing that today.

But is that the only formula for arriving at the necessary foreign policy consensus in our society?  What about a foreign policy designed to assist those who are victims of or are threatened by brutalitarian regimes?  Can intervention by us receive consensus support?  Should it?  If our enjoyment of human rights is not endangered, can a foreign policy designed to protect or extend democracy and human rights to others achieve a national consensus?  What if that humanitarian intervention requires a military component?  Can a foreign policy with no humanitarian idealistic objective achieve that necessary consensus?

G. K. Chesterton wrote that America is a country with the soul of a church.  Woodrow Wilson declared that:  “all shall know that America puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”  In his inaugural address John F. Kennedy proclaimed: “Let every nation know… that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friends, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”  Do these proclamations guide us?

Putting aside the debate among scholars about the realistic implications of the Wilson and Kennedy statements, it is significant that the Preamble to the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and subsequently two U.N. Covenants on Human Rights — all reflect a formal international commitment broadening the credo asserting the supremacy of human rights as a reason for being. 

New York City Mayor Guiliani, to loud applause from the United Nations General Assembly, proclaimed:  “. . . this organization exists to reaffirm faith and fundamental human rights, and the dignity and worth of the human person . . . you are either with civilization or with terrorists.  One side is democracy, the rule of law and respect for human life.  On the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions and mass murder ….  We know this is not a clash of civilizations, it is a conflict between murderers and humanity.” 

The formal commitment is there.  Is it realistic and practical?  Is the humanitarian ingredient an integral part of international law today?  Clearly, the objective is consistent with what Gunnar Myrdal defined as the “ought” of our human values.  For many, organized religion, whether it be Jewish, Christian or Islam, defines that “ought,” since they all derive their roots from Abraham, who, according to the Bible, made his profound contribution to civilization by proclaiming that there was only one God.  If there is only one God then we are all of us His children, and thus brothers and sisters to one another.  In this doctrine of human brotherhood, we have the spiritual basis, the “ought,” for our evolving civilization, the moral roots of political democracy and human dignity.  The notion that human beings are the children of God and that they thus have the potential for developing that which is God-like within them is clearly anathema to any system which does not respect the dignity of the human being.

It is, therefore, encouraging to learn from Freedom House, the authoritative reporter on the subject, that in this decade a larger part of the world’s population is living in relative freedom than ever before in world history.  It follows that those forces and people now profiting from arbitrary power and its fruits see that development as a direct threat to their power and privileges.  But that, I believe, is an incomplete and inadequate explanation of what we are regrettably witnessing.  We must take into account the realities and consequences of modern technology, now called globalization, for a fuller understanding of current problems, because these developments are also most threatening to many. 

The communications age has opened up the world for all to see.  The less fortunate are now aware that they can live in societies, including their own, which respect their dignity as human beings.  From radio and television they know that such societies, which provide advantages of better health, improved sanitation, adequate food and water, and economic opportunity, are only hours away.  They will want, in time, that dignity and opportunity for themselves and their children.

This change toward modernity produces resistance from those threatened by that change who are saying:  “Stop the world.  We want to get off this new world we are being dragged into.  It is hostile to our beliefs and is accompanied by immorality and godlessness – we will resist the changes.  They undermine our faith.  We will hold on with every means at our disposal to the familiar, the tribal, the traditional.”

One of the most important theological roots of Osama bin Laden’s faith structure is Sayyid Qutb (Sayeed Kuhtab), who spent a year living in the United States and concluded in a widely circulated work: “No one is more distant than the Americans from spirituality and piety.”  He used the Kinsey Report and a church dance he witnessed to conclude that promiscuity and sin were dominant in our country.  He rejected democracy as incompatible with Islam.  He also went on to declare the current rulers of the Muslim world to be “infidels” and, therefore, deserving of being overthrown.  Bin Laden’s 1996 book, Declaration of War Against America, was based upon those premises.

It has been suggested by some who would like to find a simple explanation and solution for the current threat to our safety that our support of Israel is a “root cause” or a “cause” of our present problems.  The evidence is clearly to the contrary.  Israel is certainly an enemy of the terrorists, but obviously so is America.  We are both democracies and symbols of the modernity such democracies embody.  Judaism is an enemy, but so is Christianity and the memory of the Crusades an enemy.  There are 56 Islamic nations in the world, including 20 that surround Israel, all 20 of whom are autocratic, most of whom are corrupt, and some of whom receive billions of dollars of aid from us.  It is appropriate, therefore, that we in the United States should want to ally ourselves with the single Jewish state in the world, a country which shares our democratic values.

We are under attack, but we will prevail by continuing to commit ourselves to our values and to our responsibilities.  We are on the side of history.  The future, however, will not, be easy or simple for those Muslim states with closed political systems, where the only available outlet for criticism of government policies and corruption is today Islamic fundamentalism.  Only a move to democracy, I am convinced , can save them.  The dominant voices that now reach the followers of Islam are those of extremism and violence.  It is necessary for those of us who are the potential victims of that violence to direct the persuasive voices of religious human dignity, opportunity, and moderation in their direction to drown out the voices of fanaticism.

I have no doubt that the promises and realities of modern technology for better living cannot be hidden and their availability cannot long be denied.  Terrorism must not be underestimated, but our strength is formidable as well and must be utilized with greater fervor and determination.  The steady growth of democracy, beginning with the dramatic entry of Japan and Germany and Spain into the ranks of democratic nations, is evidence of that strength.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the introduction of democracy into that multicultured and complicated society is further evidence of that strength.  In a recent poll, roughly two out of three Russians say that they support the idea of democracy, with only 20% responding negatively.  60% of them say democracy is the appropriate way to govern their country, almost three times those who differ.  A plurality of Russians endorse democracy as the best form of government compared to other systems.  More than 85% of those polled said freedom of conscience, expression and the press was important to them.  It is interesting to note that 68% of those who say they voted for Putin said they favored democracy.

We have also seen that in a recent election, a clear majority of Iranians proclaimed that they wanted to be governed by an elected leader, and not by a clique of clericals, no matter how holy they may be.  Indonesia, which houses the largest Muslim population in the world, has been able to maintain its democracy in spite of the serious problems caused by its far flung geography and the fierce nationalism that stimulates.

The change that has characterized our moment in history is immense.  The changes are so fast, so dramatic, so basic that we can barely see their details let alone their scope and consequences.  They are beyond calculation, probably greater in our one lifetime than have taken place in all of mankind's previous history, with newer, greater developments on the horizon that will probably make the awesome developments of our time dwarf by comparison.  What we have seen and experienced is only the beginning.  As an indication of the change yet to be seen, more than 100,000 scientific journals annually publish the flood of new knowledge that comes out of the world's laboratories.  There is much more ahead.  We barely understand the human brain and its energy; and the endless horizons of space and the mysteries found in the great depths of our seas are still virtually unknown to us.  Our science today is indeed a drop, our ignorance remains an ocean.

During my early childhood, strange as it may appear to the younger among us, there were no vitamin tablets, no antibiotics, no television, no dial telephones, no refrigerators, no FM radio, no synthetic fibers, no dishwashers, no electric blankets, no airmail, no transatlantic airlines, no instant coffee, no Xerox, no air-conditioning, no frozen foods, no contact lenses, no birth control pills, no ball-point pens, no transistors.  The list can go on — all in one lifetime.

In our lifetime, medical knowledge available to physicians has increased perhaps much more than ten-fold.  The average life span, certainly in the West, keeps steadily increasing.  Advanced computers, new materials, new biotechnological processes are altering every phase of our lives, our deaths, even our reproduction. 

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention.  I suggest the corollary is also true:  Invention is the mother of necessity.  Technology and communication are necessitating basic changes in our lives and the way we govern ourselves.  Information has become more accessible in all parts of our globe, putting authoritarian governments at a serious disadvantage.  The world is very much smaller.  There is no escaping the fact that the sound of a whisper or a whimper in one part of the world can immediately be heard in all parts of the world — and consequences follow.

Keeping up with scientific and technological opportunities requires openness to information, new ideas, and the freedom that enables ingenuity to germinate and flourish.  A closed, tightly controlled society cannot compete in a world experiencing an information explosion that knows no national boundaries.  Armed national boundaries can keep out vaccines, but they cannot keep out germs, or ideas, or broadcasts.  Peoples now trapped in the quagmire of ancient ethnic, religious, and national grievances and enmities may well soon come to recognize that they are thereby dooming themselves, their children, and their grandchildren to become orphans of history, lost in the caves of the past.  There is room for ethnic, national, religious, racial and tribal pride, but if that drive for self-identification is to produce respect and self-realization for the individual and the group, that drive must be peaceful and in harmony with the aspirations of others in our evolving interrelated world community.

As national boundaries are buffeted by change, the nations of the world become ever more interdependent.  We are clearly in a time when no society can isolate itself or its people from new ideas and new information anymore than one can escape the winds whose currents affect us all.  Canada cannot protect itself from acid rain without the cooperation of the U.S.  The Government of Bangladesh cannot prevent its tragic floods without active cooperation from Nepal and India.  To cure a polluted Mediterranean requires the active cooperation of the about twenty countries that border that mass of water.

There are challenges we can and must work together to meet.  Demands for water are hitting the limits of our supply, and, as Kofi Annan has warned us, a “fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of wars and conflict in the future.”  Unlike oil and many other strategic resources, fresh water has no substitute for most of its uses and while the water supply remains static, the world population continues to grow.  It is estimated that in about 15 years, 40% of the projected world population are expected to live in countries with an inadequate water supply to meet their needs.  Asia has about 60% of the world’s population, but only about a third of the world’s fresh water supply.  Some 261 of the world’s rivers are shared in two or more countries; the Nile basin is shared by 10 countries.  Our challenge is to see to it that this potential for conflict fosters instead cooperation and stability.

This suggests, among many other implications, the need to reappraise our traditional definitions of sovereignty.  The requirements of our evolving technology are increasingly turning national boundaries into patterns of lace through which flow ideas, money, people, crime, terrorism, missiles — all of which know no national boundaries.  Science has no national identity.  Technology has no homeland.  Information requires no passport.  One essential geopolitical consequence of this new reality is that there can be no true security for any one country in isolation.  We must learn to accept in each of our countries a mutual responsibility for the peoples in other countries.

The argument is made that we cannot be the policeman of the world.  Nonetheless, I respectfully suggest that no community — and our nation is an integral part of an economic, technological, scientific, and political world community — can survive, let alone flourish, without a police force.  We have an obligation to be part of such a force, with diplomacy our first responsibility and with the readiness to use our military as a reluctantly available and practical additional resort.

We who believe that democracy works best for us must increasingly come to understand that it will work best for us only to the extent that it works well for others.  We Americans, who today have the greatest power and influence, bear the greatest responsibilities.  We are, therefore, obliged to carry the flag of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.  We must remember that the struggle for human dignity is a continuing one, if we are ever to achieve a world not dominated by violence.  Are we wise enough to know how to assists the historic developments now underway?  Do we have the insight, discipline, unity, and will to fulfill our responsibilities?  That is our challenge today!

The United States is the largest and oldest continuing democracy in the world.  It is the political expression of our national faith.  Our task is to achieve the firm sense of purpose, readiness, steadfastness, and strength that is indispensable for our nation’s effective and timely foreign-policy decision-making.  Our political community must – as it is doing today ­– resist the temptation of partisan politics and institutional rivalry as we develop the consensus adequate to meet the challenge.  Our values and our character traits have helped us build the most dynamic and open society in recorded history, a source of inspiration to most of the world.  We must come to appreciate what that dream means to the world and the burden that puts on us to advance the cause of democracy and human dignity for those who do not enjoy that blessing.  We are today at war and troubled by it, as we should be.  I suggest, however, we should also be aware that we can transform that trouble into an opportunity.  We must see to it that the central aim of our government’s foreign policy should be to make the 21^st century the Century for Democracy and Liberty.  The spread of democracy is the unfinished business of humanity.

Our forum today is under the auspices of the United State Institute of Peace, a most appropriate sponsor of this meeting on democracy and human rights.  Our forum today takes place within the walls of the United States Congress, a most appropriate place to reflect the spirit of our democratic commitment to human rights.  Peace, prosperity, respect for human rights are indivisible.  Professor John Norton Moore, at the University of Virginia Law School, who is scheduled to speak to us later today, is soon to publish a persuasive study demonstrating that democracies do not engage in war against one another.  This clearly leads to the conclusion that humanity’s goal of peace can be achieved through the continued growth of democracy.  It is in our national interest and the national interests of other democracies for us to call for and work towards an expansion of human rights and political democracy to those roughly 48 countries whose citizens do not yet enjoy the dignity of living in a democracy, and to those countries where the goal of democracy has only been partially realized.  That objective must be on our national agenda.

None of this is to believe that our country and our allies, friends, and other democracies have always or consistently lived up to our responsibilities or commitments.  We did not do well in the 1990’s, a period characterized by uncertainty, ambivalence, and occasional indifference.  We did not adequately respond to the tragedies in Rwanda, Sudan, Burundi, Congo, Angola, Colombia, Afghanistan, Chechnya.  The result was at least 100,000 violent deaths and more than a million refugees.

We ended the 21^st century bruised but strong, determined and optimistic.  Our values are an integral part of our power.  Our spirit is consistent with the deep spiritual aspirations of the human race — respect for our fellow humans which brings with it freedom, dignity, unity, energy and creativity.