The belly dancing of the neo-cons

A warning to the “liberal” human rights movement

The Obama administration is taking a reasonable path in allowing reality to shape its world vision. It is a risky path however because it provides the neo-conservatives with the golden opportunity to again hijack the banner of “idealism” and to bring to their fold a confused and disappointed part of the liberal human rights movement.
The revived neo-cons will systematically bash the new administration if they can describe it as “waltzing with dictators” or “schmoozing with appeasers”. They have already slammed Hillary Clinton’s unfortunate remarks in Beijing on “not letting human rights interfere with the global economic crisis or climate change”. They have pilloried the administration for daring to suggest the name of Charles Freeman, described as a “pro-Saudi pro-Chinese anti-Israeli figure”, to chair the National Intelligence Council. They have condemned the administration’s overtures to “rogue states”, from Cuba to Iran, and raised eyebrows when they have heard leading members of the Obama team mentioning a “possible shift on Burma policy”.
While raising the flag of ethics in foreign relations the neo-cons have observed with glee that leading members of the “liberal” human rights movement have adopted similarly critical views. “Hillary Clinton’s statement on China is shameful”, said Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch while Amnesty International urged Ms Clinton to “publicly declare that human rights are central to U.S.-China relations”.

Ethical protesters?
Are the neo-cons close to leading the dance of ethical protesters? The trick worked almost to perfection during the months preceding the Iraq invasion in 2003. Neo-conservative pundits were able to sway eminent thinkers of the human rights hawks’ faction, from Canadian philosopher Michael Ignatieff to “contrarian” columnist Christopher Hitchens. They convinced them of the virtues of muscular regime change: what is the purpose of the human rights movement if not to try to provoke changes in authoritarian regimes or, better, changes of regime ? Disguised as a call for moral clarity the delicious venom of confusion percolated in minds of the best and the brightest.
“Of course”, these liberal hawks argue, George Bush “fumbled on torture and the Geneva conventions”. But when it came to promoting democracy in the Arab-Muslim world his neo-conservatives advisers “had the right rhetoric”, i.e. the rhetoric of rights. “Of course”, these neo-cons had been wrong on many counts and at times expressed bad judgment, but “at the end of the day they were right on the fundamentals of freedom and democracy”. Or so they appeared or pretended to be.
There is undoubtedly some part of the road that liberal human rights defenders and neo-conservative freedom advocates can travel together. On Cuba, China, Belarus, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Burma they mostly share the same vision on the nature of these regimes, if not the same solutions.
Therefore the legitimate wish to contain and roll back any drift towards “realism”, if that term means colluding with unsavoury regimes, might offer a political rationale to restoring better relations with the neo-conservatives as it was the case in the 70s and 80s when liberal human rights activists and neo-conservatives campaigned side by side to liberate refuzeniks in Moscow or dissidents in Prague.

Double standards
However, there is a point on the journey where the roads have to diverge. The human rights movement cannot accept the neo-cons’ one-eyed approach to the world. Those with a good memory or a sense of history will remember that during the Reagan administration most of the neo-cons sided with brutal right wing dictatorships in Central America and followed a policy of appeasement with the military regimes in the Southern Cone. Most neo-conservatives tend to practise “double standards” in foreign policy, repeating late Jeane Kirkpatrick’s thesis on the quintessential difference that should be made between pro-US dictators and anti-US tyrants. Most have a soft spot for “Israel right or wrong” and most have not questioned president Bush’s “opting out” of major international human rights obligations. The name of Guantanamo only reminds them of the need to slam Fidel or Raul Castro.

Engagement
Realism, however, should not be seen as the antagonist of the human rights ideal. A principled form of realism does not have to be a synonym of being “soft” on anti-American autocrats. It does not have either to repeat the errors and the horrors of the Kissinger years when Realpolitik was used as a bare-knuckled justification for the crushing of Latin American democrats or the sidelining of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.
In fact, the progress of human rights does not depend only on rhetorical bravado and ethical purity. It stems also from a cold-blooded appraisal of the state of the world and from a complex understanding of the stages and dynamics of democratic development.
This road, of course, is full of treacherous traps and slippery patches but it might work better than hubris and Manichean postures. Cuba is an exemplary case. In the last 50 years the U.S. government has maintained a (partial) embargo against the island hoping that this crude instrument of power would lead to the overthrow of the Castro regime. It has not worked out.
Engagement does not mean compromising the support for freedom and democracy. It is just another way of acknowledging reality and therefore of shaping policies that might be more effective in promoting democratic reform and political change.
As watchdog organizations human rights groups should play their role and strongly object to the downplaying of human rights irrespective of the partisan politics prevailing in the White House. But their success depends more on their capacity to engage with the Obama administration than on siding, as a junior partner, with the fellow travellers of the former Bush (and Reagan) administrations.