(II) Period II: “Human Rights Diplomacy” was incorporated into the US political strategy

US Congress began to take human rights as an important topic in the multilateral foreign policy in the mid-1970s, linking human rights with security assistance, economic assistance, and the US’ votes in international financial institutions. After Jimmy Carter was elected US president in 1977, he formally put forth the slogan of “human rights diplomacy” and called human rights the “cornerstone” and “soul” of America’s foreign policy. In his book, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights, American historian and foreign relations scholar James Peck said Washington was eager to find a new ideological weapon in the Cold War and human rights just came in handy. In Peck’s opinion, the more a country emphasizes something, the more it wants to hide it. The US committed appalling atrocities in Vietnam, from destroying crops and forests and forced relocation of the people to the bombing of civilians and execution of the Phoenix Program. It supported the military tyranny in Chile, Guatemala, the Philippines, and Angola, and the CIA carried out secret infiltration in European and Asian countries. The more these outrageous facts were exposed and criticized, the harder American politicians clamored about their human rights concepts to whitewash the US national image.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s human rights policy was based on American “exceptionalism” and the Cold War policy. The proponents of exceptionalism claimed that the US grasped the truth of human rights during the Enlightenment and implemented it in the early stage of the American Revolution. Therefore, the US should be looked up to as a model for its obligations for civil rights and political rights, and it needed no international human rights standards. The Reagan administration criticized the Carter administration for being “naive” on human rights issues and tried to bring them back to the Cold-War track. At the UN, the Reagan administration openly accused communist countries of violating human rights while taking sides with its allies such as Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala. Explicitly using human rights as a tool to compete with the Soviet Union and its allies, it demanded that the UN give priority to the discussion of the communist regime’s violation of human rights, especially the human rights issues in Cuba while turning a blind eye to the human rights issues in many other countries. The US was also persistently passive about the UN’s Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

(III) Period III: the US rammed its view on human rights down the throats of other countries

After the end of the Cold War, the US grew an inexplicable sense of superiority about its political system and an institutional arrogance and prejudice against countries that implemented a different political system, believing that only the American system was reasonable and universal. President Bush once again put human rights at the center of America’s foreign policy. When giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 29, 1996, President Clinton said, “I want to build a bridge to the 21st century that makes sure we are still the nation with the world’s strongest defense, that our foreign policy still advances the values of our American community in the community of nations.” With such institutional arrogance, the US has been blatantly enforcing a global democracy movement, whereby it launches rigorous public opinion attacks and suppression of any non-Western political system and labels relevant countries as “undemocratic,” “autocratic,” and even “rogue states.”

After the September 11 attacks and the US deployment of military forces to Afghanistan and its invasion of Iraq, the US made itself the primary violator of other countries’ human rights. In the name of counterterrorism, the US Department of Justice denied the international law on human rights. Torture, assassination, and other actions that severely violated human rights emerged one after another, which were widely criticized in the international community. The US National Security Agency, on the ground of national security, set in motion a campaign targeting foreign intelligence, under which it tapped and collected the personal information of foreign political figures and American citizens and violated their privacy, causing widespread outcries.

II. The deep-rooted reason for and manifestations of US politicization of human rights

The historical trajectory of America’s attitude towards human rights indicates that it has always viewed human rights as a tool for political struggle, both when it snubbed and rejected the subject in the early stage and when it wielded the baton of human rights around later. Its attitude hinges on to what extent human rights can serve its political strategy.

(I) Deep-rooted reason for US politicization of human rights

The deep-rooted reason for US politicization of human rights is the fundamental conflict between international human rights standards and America’s own human rights situation and its global strategy. For one thing, the US is infested with serious human rights issues, including racial discrimination, gun abuse, violent enforcement of the law, and social polarization. For another, America’s allies in the international community are also serious violators of human rights by the standards pronounced by the US. Furthermore, the US, to maintain its global hegemony, has constantly waged aggressive wars, interfered in other states’ internal affairs, and violated their sovereignty, all of which go counter to the principles of human rights. It’s as clear as day that the US cannot put human rights it clamors about into practice, much less stay aligned with international human rights standards. When the whole international community is making united efforts to make human rights the common moral standard in global governance, the US, to enhance its “soft power,” has no choice but to follow the general trend, using it as a banner to cover up and dress up its rap sheet of human rights violations. However, the fundamental conflict between these international standards and America’s global strategy stays, and the US would inevitably use the principles of human rights in a highly politicized way.