The tainted historical legacy and unending contradictions of U.S. policy have long discouraged Americans from debating human rights issues abroad and proved downright debilitating for U.S. diplomats. Even after we moved past our ugly treatment of blacks and Native Americans, our conduct in the developing world, including a warm embrace of so-called "friendly tyrants," has undermined attempts to promote responsible governance.
That is why Sen. John McCain's speech on Monday,
delivered at SAIS on the 20th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, was so powerful. McCain is a relatively conservative Republican and a war hero.
He is hardly a jingoist or blindly patriotic, however, so I listened closely when he said he believes the U.S. should promote abroad the democratic and human rights values at "the core of our national creed," ideas we have long preached and too often failed to embody. The U.S., McCain said, retains a "moral power" to satisfy the "universal appeal of human rights."
Coming from most politicians, McCain's words might sound stale or even ironic. But
McCain also frontally addressed the difficulty of advancing this cause. George W. Bush's co-opting of the language of democracy and human rights (not to mention his treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay) has made them "dirty words" for many Americans, McCain suggested. Meanwhile, a realization of American "fallibility" has persuaded many at home and abroad that the U.S. lacks the credibility to fight for this cause. Moreover, McCain said, human rights will "never be our only priority." "The United States," he said, "is not an NGO."
Still, for moral and realpolitik motives alike, the U.S. should not abandon its effort to promote human rights and democracy, McCain said. It is "false," he argued, that we cannot maintain alliances with countries whose human rights records we criticize; and it is illogical to ignore the way governments treat their citizens because
leaders who abuse their own people are more likely to disturb international peace. "The character of states cannot be separated from their conduct," he said.
Both good points, though I wonder if McCain, had he been elected president in 2008, would have felt as free not to "muzzle" his criticism of Russia and stalwart U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who he included on his list of the "darker corners of our world" alongside the more traditional villains, Iran, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Sudan. I'm also skeptical that he would have spoken as forcefully about his vision of a world where the odious dictators that tyrannize these lands would not only be reformed, but removed. Speaking of pro-democracy protesters in Iran and elsewhere, he said bluntly (and provocatively, given our recent history with regime change operations) that the U.S. should not "condemn them to suffer forever," or accept to "coexist eternally" with rogue regimes. "We deal with states like these because we have to, not because we like to," he said.
But McCain is not president, and so he spoke candidly and movingly. I had approached his address skeptically, having accepted the school of thought described in a New Republic story, "
Bushed," published a year ago by Rutgers Prof. David Greenberg. Writing to Prof. Greenberg at the time, a month before President Obama's election, I said,
"I've long believed that one of the saddest results of the Iraq war disaster was the death of idealism among American liberals and the loss of any appetite for even the most benign types of U.S. foreign engagement, let alone the brand of aggressive humanitarian intervention that helped protect Kosovo's Albanians and may very well have had the potential to save millions of Rwandans and Sudanese."
"A new Jimmy Carter would have trouble even pronouncing the word 'democracy' without prompting boos and laughter from what should be natural allies in the American liberal community."
McCain is considerably more optimistic and a good deal less cynical. Perhaps I should be, too. Advancing the "cause of human rights and dignity," he said at SAIS, puts us "on the right side of history." At the same time, abusive governments are "rotting inside," with "only have fear and force to sustain them."
