Human Rights in American Foreign Policy. Joe Renouard
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even easily expressed in Anglo-Saxon terms.”72 Such sentiments betrayed a basic ignorance of Brazilian society, and even reflected common Western conceptions of the developing world. But from Washington’s perspective, the bewildering, cyclical political extremes of South America—conflict and instability followed by authoritarianism and order—made it easy to dismiss the dictatorship as a necessary evil.
The junta’s leaders were more than willing to exploit this perspective by insisting that Americans did not understand Brazil’s problems. As a military official told the U.S. Army attaché, “Writers who refer to the democratic anxieties and aspirations of eighty million Brazilians are dreaming if they believe that most of our population even suspects what democracy in the U.S. sense is.”73 Such justifications fit a common pattern among authoritarian regimes. Aware that their practices would offend sensibilities in Washington, they pled that they had acted in the interest of stability and to quell leftist insurgents. They were not simply acting to retain power, they argued, but were protecting their people from terrorist violence and revolutionary agitation. Finally, if national security and anticommunism were not strong enough justifications for North American liberals, the junta asserted that they were offering Brazilian solutions to Brazilian problems—and emphasizing that Americans could not easily grasp their cultural traditions and methods.
The official U.S. reaction to IA-5 was cautious. The Johnson administration first decided to steer a middle course by making a public statement of concern and announcing that the program of aid to Brazil was “under review.” The embassy maintained normal contacts and privately expressed regret at the curbing of civil liberties. But with Congress and the public now more closely scrutinizing allies’ activities and Washington’s commitments, President Johnson had to be more forthright. His administration thus signaled U.S. disapproval by withholding some weapons, $50 million in aid funds, and $125 million in loans. As in Greece, the possibility of more significant measures would have to wait until Johnson’s exit from office, but the broader significance was that the events in Brazil fueled pessimism in Washington that Latin America was evolving politically. The U.S. embassy noted that the government had “moved to a virtual out-and-out military dictatorship” and that “labor, church, students, journalists, intellectuals, and most politicians are shaken and temporarily cowed.” Given such poor prospects, embassy specialists argued, the United States would be best served by a passive approach. Genuine political development could be achieved only “as an extremely long-range result of other fundamental social and cultural improvements,” wrote one embassy official. “We must recognize that our influence on internal political events is marginal at best.”74
Nixon, Kissinger, and the Perils of Realpolitik
It would be impossible to understand the emergence of human rights in American foreign relations without understanding the policies of President Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and his closest adviser, Henry Kissinger. The two men are remembered for several international accomplishments, including détente with the Soviets, rapprochement with China, and extrication of the United States from Vietnam. Their human rights record, though, is not held in such high regard. Nixon famously eschewed moralism, choosing instead a more traditional realpolitik quest for peace, stability, and an international balance of power. Yet Nixon and Kissinger played a central, though unintended, role in the era’s human rights politics. First, their pursuit of better relations with the Soviet Union facilitated American influence in the internal affairs of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War thaw encouraged congressional and NGO interest in human rights causes, and it increased the potential for action against communist, anticommunist, and nonaligned states. Second, Nixon and Kissinger’s obstinacy in the face of the growing movement only galvanized their political opponents to work harder. Kissinger, in particular, was a foil for both liberal human rights activists and conservative anticommunists. A third Nixon influence was his attempt to bring white, working-class “ethnics” into the Republican fold. Owing to the period’s shifting voting patterns, these ethnics became a valuable commodity in presidential and congressional elections. Politicians were willing to give extraordinary attention to ethnics’ interests, including human rights in their ancestral homelands.
Despite his administration’s disdain for what he considered moralistic interference in presidential diplomacy, Nixon did show some signs of flexibility. He saw a place for humanitarianism in foreign affairs, but only if these issues did not conflict with his central foreign policy goals. He supported ratification of the Genocide Convention, backed relief efforts in war-torn Biafra and Burundi, and supported the idea of a U.N. human rights commissioner and a State Department humanitarian bureau. But a nominal response to natural and manmade disasters was not the same as having an active human rights policy. Nixon wanted to leave these matters to the United Nations, the State Department, and humanitarian agencies while the White House and NSC handled important bilateral issues among powerful nations.
Nixon’s foreign policy was more pragmatic than ideological. He adhered to a traditional “balance of power” model and argued that the United States should work closely with the Soviet Union and regional powers like Japan, Britain, and China. He paid little attention to much of the rest of the world, except in response to crises. “There are certain countries that matter in the world and certain countries that don’t matter in the world,” he told his chief of staff in 1972. “After you’ve dealt in two summit meetings, one in Peking and the other in Moscow … it is really terribly difficult to deal with even a country as important as Mexico.”75 From President Johnson’s failings, Nixon learned to divert the public’s attention from the Vietnam War. True, he maintained the American commitment to South Vietnam, especially in 1969–1970, and he later approached the Soviets and the Chinese for help in ending the war. But he did not let Vietnam dominate his presidency as it had dominated that of his predecessor.
Nixon also rejected Wilsonian idealism. As he told a reporter shortly before the 1968 election, Americans needed to recognize that “the American-style democracy that we find works so well for us may not always work well for others.” This criticism of liberal internationalism was inspired in large measure by the moralistic rhetoric that accompanied the defense of South Vietnam. To Nixon, the United States was in no position to interfere in other nations’ domestic affairs. “That doesn’t mean that I am opting for military dictatorships,” he noted. “[But] for the United States to attempt to say that, well, this nation or that nation doesn’t have the kind of a government that we think is what we would want for it,… that is more than we can take on our plate.” America could perhaps use its influence on behalf of certain freedoms, “but I don’t think we can impose it.”76 As president, he summarized these ideas in blunt terms to one of his ambassadors: “We hope that governments will evolve toward constitutional procedures but … we deal with governments as they are.”77 This is not to say that Nixon was without optimism. He was, after all, a middle-class Californian who retained at least some of the idealism typical of his generation of political leaders. Yet he maintained a healthy distance from the moral perspective in international affairs. Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko later said of Nixon’s diplomacy, “He always presented himself as a pragmatist … a man who preferred to keep discussions on a purely practical level.”78
Nixon laid out his administration’s international policies in a series of four massive foreign policy reports to Congress between 1970 and 1973. The first report’s opening sentence captured its essence: “The postwar period in international relations has ended.” The Vietnam War was winding down; European and Asian economies were challenging the United States; and Moscow and Beijing were engaged in a bitter struggle for leadership of the communist world. Although the United States needed to live up to its commitments, argued Nixon, America’s friends would have to shoulder more of the burden. The United States “cannot and will not conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world.”79 Although some observers equated this “Nixon doctrine” with isolationist retrenchment, Nixon emphasized that America’s military would remain formidable. Human rights concerns were entirely absent from the foreign policy reports, with the exception of a brief mention of U.N. priorities in the fourth report (May 1973).
Henry Kissinger was at the center of the foreign policy