The Squandering of Moral Capital

After its debut in 1978, the State Department’s annual human rights report was a major event in international politics. Foreign countries were not used to any adverse mention; it was undiplomatic. They complained bitterly at being cited and lobbied frantically to have negative references deleted. Today, all that has changed. To paraphrase Rhett Butler: Frankly, no one gives a damn. The 1997 version appeared last month to barely suppressed international yawns. China, which used to react furiously by blasting back its own critique of the U.S. human rights record, simply shrugged.

What has happened? First, the process has fallen victim to domestic politicking. Instead of being a crisp statement of basic American values, it has ballooned to find fault in 194 countries. Preparation of the report has become show time for the myriad pressure groups that populate the American policy landscape. They compete with one another to insert excruciatingly detailed paragraphs reflecting their own special interests. Worried about spousal abuse in Argentina? Inadequate independence among magistrates in Pakistan? Discriminatory land tenure in Fiji? It’s all in the 1997 report.

Lacking adequate investigatory resources, the State Department makes little attempt to check the allegations. It simply lists them all. Friend and foe are all there. Libya appears alongside Britain. The result is a mind-numbing hodgepodge of assertions, some major, many minor, some substantiated, others little more than anecdote or gossip.

Of greater concern is that the administration itself does not take its own report seriously. Consider the example of Turkey. Of all the (broadly defined) European countries, Turkey draws by far the largest entry. A specific charge was that the present Turkish government had come to power as the result of illegitimate military pressure. Has this affected U.S. policy? Hardly. Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, the beneficiary of that complained-about military intervention, was welcomed fulsomely to the White House and later received three refurbished ex-Navy frigates. Elsewhere in the world report, Indonesia came in for stern rebuke over East Timor, yet is now the focus of a massive U.S. financial rescue.

That foreign nations should contemptuously dismiss the U.S. advocacy of human rights as just another facet of a cynical Washington ritual constitutes a highly unfortunate squandering of U.S. moral capital. Good riddance, hardheaded realists will retort. Human rights, they say, are kid stuff; the real determinants of foreign policy are national interest backed up by overwhelming force.

At a time when the U.S. is making a case for uno mas against Saddam Hussein, this power politics line will be severely tested. If force is used against Iraq and, as seems inevitable, substantial numbers of civilian casualties result, the armchair generals who are advocating a no-holds-barred campaign will find themselves on the defensive. The United States’ moral standing will come under attack. When this happens--perhaps against the backdrop of ugly anti-American demonstrations in friendly capitals like Cairo and Rome--a bald assertion that the rules don’t necessarily apply to the world’s strongest state will not be well received. After years of American lecturing on good behavior, the international community will demand a convincing justification for these civilian deaths. Many decent Americans will themselves ask the same.

This should come as no surprise. Unadorned national interest is rarely the key element in the United States’ international choices. Values are just as important. The American commitment to defend Taiwan against China, for example, makes no sense in terms of cold logic. Why defend a small island nation with no natural resources against a continental power offering a potentially huge profit for the American economy? The answer is simple. Believing that democracy is morally better than communism, Americans instinctively prefer principle over money. The expansion of NATO and the partnership with Israel are other examples.

This is why the administration needs to keep the nation’s moral standing in good repair. Its present grab-bag approach muddies the message. Instead of earning foreigners’ respect, it causes them to accuse the U.S. of picking and choosing between hypocritical double standards.

In his recent visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul showed the way. The Vatican has never issued an annual human rights report, yet the pope’s moral authority in Havana was as unmistakable in 1998 as when 20 years ago he exposed the illegitimacy of the East European dictators.

Congress and the administration should follow the pope’s lead. The annual report approach has reached the end of its useful life. Scrap it and in its place fashion a simple message reflecting two or three basic American values. The time to start is now, before the bombs fall on Baghdad.