U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her speech on Monday at Georgetown University on
"The Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century," finally grabbed a shovel and started digging out
of the hole she had placed herself in on this very issue. With some
exceptions, her speech sounded familiar: Many of the passages could just as easily
have been delivered by a senior Bush administration
official.
That is because promotion of democracy and human
rights has been an issue with strong bipartisan support for decades. For many in the Obama administration, however, President Bush discredited
democracy promotion and the freedom agenda through the torture at Abu Ghraib and the detentions without trial at Guantanamo Bay, and
by forcing democracy on other countries through military means. The Obama team
wanted to strike a contrast with the Bush Administration on human rights and
democracy issues -- and in the process, created a real mess for themselves.
Clinton's problems started her first day on the
job. Given her 1995 speech in Beijing as first lady, which
highlighted the importance of human rights, and her track record while serving
in the U.S. Senate, many expected Clinton would be a strong proponent of human rights
and democracy. Instead, however, she turned into a major disappointment. At her arrival ceremony at the State Department, she said,
"There are three legs to the stool of American foreign policy: defense,
diplomacy, and development." No mention of democracy.
Clinton dug a deeper hole during her first overseas
trip to Asia in February when, on her way to China, she told reporters,
"We pretty much know what they [the Chinese government] are going to
say" on human rights issues, such as greater freedoms for Tibet. "We
have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't
interfere" with other crucial topics, such as climate change, the economy,
and North Korea.
The reaction among non-governmental groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch was swift and harsh,
and deservedly so. Clinton, alas, dug even deeper. During a visit to Egypt in
early March, she seemed to downplay the importance of human rights concerns in
that country. President Obama bears his share of the blame, too, for declining to
meet with the Dalai Lama before his trip to China in November and for not
meeting with anyone in China outside official channels (his forum in Shanghai
involved a group pre-approved and screened by the Communist Party). The president, at least, has given decent
speeches on human rights in places like Moscow, Accra, and Cairo, and then most
recently in Oslo. But Clinton has been relatively silent on the subject.
Her
recovery began in mid-October in Moscow, when she spoke out forcefully on the
deteriorating human rights situation in Russia, met with human rights and civil
society activists, and gave an interview to the independent radio station Ekho
Moskvy. Her speech on Monday at Georgetown brought her support for human rights even closer to the surface.
Despite arguing in her
speech that raising human rights concerns with Russia and China is best done
behind closed doors, Clinton proceeded to list abuses committed by the Chinese,
including the outrageous arrests of signatories of the pro-democracy manifesto Charter 2008. Regarding Russia,
she said, "we deplore the murders of journalists and activists and support the
courageous individuals who advocate at great peril for democracy." Where she
was on weaker ground was when she defended the administration's outreach to the
authoritarian regime in Burma and the decision to return to the U.N. Human Rights
Council. Had it not been for the President's extemporizing on Iran in his Oslo
speech last week in which he said of the protesters that "they have us on
their side," she would not have been able to say much on Iran.
She rightly rejected
the false choice that "we must either pursue human rights or our 'national
interests.'" Advocating on behalf of human rights is in our national interests. She did not dwell on the problems
associated with the Bush administration (a welcome change from speeches she and
President Obama have given in the past). She did emphasize developmental
rights more than the Bush administration had, stressing that people "must also
be free from the oppression of want -- want of food, want of health, want of
education, and want of equality in law and in fact."
All in all, a good speech. It's a shame it took Clinton so long to make it and that she had some created such a hole for
herself beforehand. Combined with the president's remarks in Oslo last week,
Clinton's speech allays some concerns raised by the Obama administration's
earlier actions and rhetoric. Now, observers and human rights activists need to
make sure that what we heard at Georgetown the other day was not a
"check-the-box" kind of exercise. These speeches must be followed up by real
actions -- and a great place to start would be to schedule a meeting between the
President and the Dalai Lama early in the new year.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
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