Institute of Democracy and Cooperation

Human Rights and humanitarian intervention

Publication day: 16/4/2009

Eleanor Roosevelt examines a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Human Rights in Morally Ambiguous Times

by Natalia Narochnitskaya

Ensuring human rights and basic liberties has become a priority for modern states and is currently one of the most significant international commitments considered a prerequisite for full international acceptance. The corresponding range of issues is of great importance to modern societies, and due to this reason it is inevitable that these very issues are often employed for political speculations or used to treat countries unfairly and to apply political pressure. Stereotypes and political prejudices against certain countries are formed on the informational field with the help of political technologies, whereas others are granted a nearly infallible status and adopt the stance of self-asserted mentors. Human rights, democracy, and the rights of minorities have become instruments of disintegrating disagreeable countries defying global governance and pretexts for using force against sovereign states which is prohibited by the UN Charter.

Certain major international organizations (the Council of Europe) do not limit their activities to monitoring the human rights climate but also promote their interpretations of a number of rights and liberties as universal even though different interpretations may be adopted by various civilizations based on diverse religious and philosophical foundations. Hundreds of human rights groups, some of them being well-known and others obscure but still ambitious, produce countless biased and slanted human rights reports concerning various countries. Contrary to the popular opinion, no integrated and comprehensive list of universally recognized criteria on all aspects of human rights and liberties is available. Due to this shortcoming there is an ample opportunity for discriminatory use of the human rights issues.

A more active role of the UN would be welcomed, since it is the only universal organization in this area plagued by numerous misunderstandings, claims, double standards, and distortions.

On March 15, 2006 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 60/251 on the establishment of the Human Rights Council. This document (however imperfect) is a product of an intricate compromise which is necessary for a radical progress in the UN human rights activities, for the elimination of double standards, selectivity and politization in this field of international cooperation, and for stopping the attempts to broaden the mandate in what concerns conflicts between countries. All these problems were typical for the work of the Human Rights Commission throughout the recent years.

A reorganization of the UN activities in this area and the establishment of the Council whose first session took place in Geneva on June 18-22 must result in the development of a genuine international regime of human rights protection. Practically all of the Council members represented by their Presidents, Foreign Ministers, and Ambassadors insisted on the indivisibility of all the categories and generations of human rights - civil, social and economic, and humanitarian ones - as well as on the impossibility of a global enforcement of unilateralist and unsubstantiated criteria originating from the experience and the development level of a particular civilization.

An international regime with substantiated and nondiscriminatory criteria adequate to the specific features of various civilizations, to the diversity of social and cultural contexts, and to the variety of local economic conditions must replace unilateralist mentorship and double standards. The democratic election of members from the ranks of the General Assembly and the agreement to a comprehensive monitoring of fulfilling the human rights obligations as a prerequisite for the membership are the features of the new Council as compared to the Commission.

One should keep in mind that the very concept of generally recognized international standards in the relations not only between countries but also between individuals in them materialized for the first time in the UN Charter. The recognition of these standards became a membership precondition and is incorporated in the basic principles of the international law. However, the UN Charter combines the recognition and the protection of human rights with such fundamentals of the international law as noninterference in the domestic affairs of countries and the recognition of their sovereign equality. The UN Charter provides an agreed list of basic human rights but refrains from giving them a meaningful interpretation. Obviously, this is so for a profound reason, since the interpretation of the contents of human rights depends too strongly on the axiological criteria inherent in particular civilizations.

The new UN Human Rights Council acknowledges various approaches to the interpretation of human rights as well as the incomparable social and economic conditions of their implementation in various parts of our diverse world. The establishment of regional groups of countries – West European and North American, East European (including Russia), Latin American, Asian, and African ones – is a manifestation of the above.

Interestingly, the US did not welcome the transformation of the UN human rights protection mechanism and did not attempt to get elected to the Council but opted for an observer status. The US might not be sure that it would be easy for it to control the Council where regions of the world are represented proportionally and to dictate its approaches to it. Besides the General Assembly rejected the US proposal to deny membership in the Council to countries under sanctions due to human rights abuse or terrorism.

Some mass media even alleged that the US was not confident of getting elected, since it is rapidly losing its international standing in this area from the viewpoint of the international community, to which it teaches human rights in a more and more arrogant manner while increasingly suppressing the domestic democracy and freedoms.

The role of a self-proclaimed mentor is generally dubious especially if the mentor is actually far from being perfect and its messianic tendencies serve its long-known and continuously implemented aspirations in foreign politics and geoeconomics.

Ideologizing international politics has been a trait of the US historical thinking. It was characteristic of the geopolitics of Monroeism which considered the Western hemisphere a zone of the US supremacy closed for the European countries with their interests. But what can justify the supremacy in the rest of the world?

The concept which the US proclaimed in international politics after World War II was characterized by H. Kissinger as a universal basic harmony so far concealed from mankind. [1] (Henry Kissinger. Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.). US President Woodrow Wilson declared at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 that “America had the infinite priviledge of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world”. Researchers of the American messianic ideology and its religious and philosophic sources admit that it was Wilson’s vision that combined the liberal human rights and liberties rhetoric with the Calvinist doctrine of being “the instruments of God” shared by puritans, the ideas of “the redeemer nation” and “Manifest Destiny” [2] (Bowers Claude G. Beveridge and the Progressive Era. N.Y. 1932; Tuveson E.L. Redeemer Nation. The Idea of America’s Millenial Role. Chicago, 1980.). These doctrines providing the moral sanction for expansion and for governing “savage peoples” (Senator Beveridge) have always been rooted in the Calvinist belief that God rewards those who deserve his grace already in this life, and that a manifestation of this grace and an indication of the predestination are the earthly success and wealth.

It seems that the motto “Novus Ordo Seclorum” on the US Great Seal started to get transformed form a mystical mission into a synthesis of the imperialism of the Theodore Roosevelt epoch and a W. Wilson messianic spirit. Approximately, the unsophisticated philosophy here is: “we govern you since this is actually in your own interests, and those who refuse to understand this are evil because the US implements the supreme principles of political order superior to all the other political orders, and because the new American imperialism is directed towards a supreme moral goal”.

The export of clichés and mental stereotypes, the ideological programming are the necessary conditions for successful “global governance”. The US theologized its global project and identifies their interests with universal ethic norms. A rival or an opponent of the US becomes the enemy of the universe and a devil incarnate from the standpoint of this philosophy. Like a mentor, the US attempts to dictate to other countries on their domestic routines.

Speaking of the philosophic dimension of the contemporary universalistic project, which the whole world is made to follow as a kind of a guiding star, it is becoming increasingly similar to a liberally re-encoded version of the Trotskyite idea of the worldwide revolution which is to turn the world into a non-national and secular global super-society under global governance. Whereas the vehement Bolsheviks and Trotskyites believed that the Comintern was to govern and to grant “civilization certificates”, nowadays the US assumes the role of a self-proclaimed arbiter and mentor together with a number of international organizations which, unlike the UN, are by no means universal.

Imposing its interpretation of humanitarian rights and asserting with a Trotskyite fervor the universal character of its democracy the US destroys traditional societies of other civilizations. At the same time, in its domestic practice the US actually suppresses the rights and freedoms inherent in Western societies. Thus the human rights pathos turns into a farce and into an instrument of global governance. All the aspects of the project must be analyzed carefully due to their potential threat to democracy.

The US State Department’s Report on Human Rights triggered an extremely negative reaction in many countries. Such irritants have a negative impact on the international climate. Furthermore, the mentor tone and a full neglect for the very concepts of sovereignty and noninterference in the domestic affairs of other countries, which are among the foundations of international law mentioned in the UN Charter, echoes with a disappointment in the “Western values” and “European democracy” which attracted other worlds and civilizations for centuries thus brining political dividends to the West and the US.

Essentially, the US human rights position is based on an undisguised use of double standards depending on whether a particular country accepts Washington’s strategic plans in its region. Furthermore, there are fewer attempts to even pretend to rely on verified facts and reliable information sources. Any statement of a group, no matter how insignificant, which proclaims itself a mouthpiece of the civil society in some country, can be used for allegations. Oftentimes such groups are supported from abroad and have never proven their credibility. This is very much like the methods and theory of the “revolutionary law” of the early Bolshevism in 1920-1930ies, which it borrowed, in its turn, from the medieval inquisition of the Torquemada epoch, from the witch-hunting era when any allegation made the accused prove their innocence. Certainly, this is a neglect for the presumption of innocence, which is a basic concept of law.

This entire situation is perceived negatively by the non-Western world which sees it as a profound crisis if not a total degradation of democracy, as a decline of the Western world and of the great European civilization. This concerns not just the US but all of us as well. The disappointment results in the growing anti-Americanism. Since the US claims the role of the leader and the face of the Western world, this disappointment contributes to the hostility towards the Western, initially Christian, civilization on the whole. Such politics is a major factor responsible for the increasing tensions in the relations between civilizations with their already profound transformations and uncertain future. Having made the “US democracy” the ideological thrust of its global historical strategy, the US could at least act with greater responsibility to the rest of the world, to its own citizens, and to the entire Western civilization, from whose name it wishes to talk.

No religious and philosophic or social and political system is considered as preferential in Chapter 1 of the UN Charter entitled Purposes and Principles. Not only does it not define what democracy is, but in fact it does not refer to this term altogether. On the contrary, the UN Charter begins with recognition of the sovereign equality of various subjects of international relations. This means an equal status of republics and monarchies, religious societies (Christian, Muslim, or Hinduist) and the liberal and democratic ones (societies of the Western type). All of the above are absolutely equal from the viewpoint of international law and the UN Charter and their relations are not considered as those between the superior and inferior or progressive and backward ones.

Even “tyrants” did not dare to introduce the standards of their civilizations by force. I. Kant asserted that punitive wars (bellum punitivum) between countries are inconceivable since there are no subordinations between them, nor can one side in a conflict be pronounced the wrong one, because this implies a judicial ruling. The US globalist ideology rejects the egalitarian approach and establishes “relations of superiority and inferiority” between nations thus showing contempt for the key principles of the Enlightenment. One can say that what we witness is a decline of the ever so short epoch of democracy and liberalism.

The following concept was predominantly accepted in the 1970ies and is almost completely rejected by the US school of globalism at present. S. Hoffman, a well-known US historian and political scientist wrote that an intervention with the sole purpose of influencing the domestic affairs of a subject rather than its international conduct must be considered illegal given the fundamental principle of state sovereignty [3] (Intervention in World Politics. Ed. by Hedley Bull. Oxford. 1984, pp. 10-11, 95.).

Statements by the US leaders show that the US proclaims its right to carry out humanitarian interventions to protect human rights in the countries which “violate” them. The US wishes to set its own criteria of “truth”, to be the only judge, to enforce and to punish. Declaring a country “uncivilized” from the name of the mythical international community means denying it the protection normally guaranteed by the international law. But both sides of the coin – the adoption of the role of an arbiter by a particular country and the universal auspices – are a threat to the notions of state and sovereignty. It is the end of the system of the international law, the UN Charter, and the noninterference principle, the end of the nation-state epoch. Small countries having no nuclear arsenals will exist only as long as the strong ones allow them to; treaties and agreements will become protocols of intensions. The international public law will be a discipline to study at “the Department of Useless Occupations”.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the organizations Washington seems to respect when they deal with countries other than the US, criticize the US continuously for domestic human rights abuses and deviations from the humanitarian norms in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries.

The US human rights assessments are obviously Phariseean about the ascension to democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq with their severe internal conflicts under the conditions of a foreign military presence.

For example, currently 30,000 people are detained in Iraq without investigation or trial. Half of them are detained by the coalition forces. Only 8,000 of the 15,000 people arrested by the Iraqi authority are placed in detention centers of the Iraqi Ministry of Justice, thus being incarcerated more or less legally. The US also ignores the violations of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia and Estonia, which is denied citizenship. The US prefers not to notice the problems of Russians in Ukraine where the Regional Languages Convention ratified by the Ukrainian Parliament is breached. Nor does it pay attention to the human rights situation in Georgia.
Yet Washington’s manner of dealing with Russia is something completely different. Using the official information from Russia, the data from the Russian NGOs and the international organizations cooperating with them and with the Russian authorities, the US charges Russia with infringing on human rights, “harassing” the NGOs and human rights activists, and not being sufficiently democratic. Maybe, these days Russia is not democratic enough because, in contrast to the “democratic” 1990ies, the independent and legitimate Parliaments are not suppressed with artillery? Perhaps Washington does not like that the Russian TV is no longer monopolized by pro-American gurus that used to glorify the West, but hosts the popular advocates of the sovereign democracy and independent foreign politics who were ostracized till the late 90ies.

Like any other country, Russia is not perfect from the viewpoint of human rights. But Russia has chosen the way of democratic rights and freedoms a while ago, and this is irreversible. It is impossible to deny that Russia has implemented massive improvements in its human rights and liberties legislation. During the recent years the Russian Federation Human Rights Representative - Ombudsman has earned genuine respect. The Ombudsman publishes annual reports on his activities, detailing very openly both the accomplishments and the shortcomings of the human rights activities. Many politicians renowned for their critical positions have joined the Public Chamber. All of this is done in accord with Russia’s Constitution and international obligations.

Furthermore, a more intense self-criticism and even a kind of a self-torture are much more typical for the Russian society and particularly the Russian political culture than for the West, which is no less responsible for a multitude of political sins and imperfections but hardly suffers from any sense of guilt because of them. The West has long created nearly uncontestable stereotypes of the Western history as the cradle of liberty and humanism and of the Russian history as a tradition of suppression and despotism. These stereotypes are supported by the Western media. It does not help to prove with references to historical documents that, for example, several times fewer people were killed during the entire reign of Ivan the Terrible than overnight in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; that Henry VIII tortured and beheaded a lot more of his opponents than any Russian Tsar; that only several dozens of people were executed in the “despotic” Russia during several centuries whereas up to 100,000 women were accused of witchcraft and burned in German towns by the end of the XVIII century. Europeans are proud of the works of their ruthless rulers rather than ashamed of them, but Russians would not be Russians if they would stop thinking of the imperfections of their history with pain…

Numerous and vocal human rights groups work in Russia at present. They are the ones who supply the Western media with the “data” on both real and imaginary human rights abuses and, particularly, with allegations that they are being harassed and prevented from using foreign funds freely. They publish materials in Russia and abroad and travel about the world without any hindrance, meeting officials and parliamentarians.

The human rights and humanitarian standards situation in the US itself is far from perfect and does not measure up to the criteria which the US declares a prerequisite of being “civilized” and requires others to observe unconditionally.

One recalls the skeptical view of the US democracy expressed by A. de Tocqueville whose book is for some reason often perceived nearly as an ode to America. Unfortunately, many of the ideas of this classic writer apply today just as well. He wrote about the popular conformism, aversion to dissent, etc. in the US. Having noted that generally the limits of thinking in America are fairly broad, A. de Tocqueville also wrote that “In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed forever, since he has offended the only authority that is able to open it.”

The US went so far in convincing its own public opinion of its own democracy that now even the epoch of McCarthyism seems to be forgotten. The surprisingly rapid, convulsive elimination of the most elementary democratic norms in the US after September 11, 2001 shows how vulnerable the US democracy is. One can imagine what the fate of this democracy would have been if the US, a country that encountered no internal or external threats throughout its entire history, had to deal with at least some of the perils that Russia has experienced.

Nowadays it is obvious that the deeply entrenched US tradition of official patriotism influences negatively the condition of the democratic institutions and human rights in the country, including the freedom of expression. It inhibits any serious public criticism of the entire spectrum of the US Government’s politics or even debates on it anywhere including the mass media. Possibly there is no other country in the world where the official propaganda deforms the public opinion as severely as it does in the US. At present the intensity of this propaganda is on the level comparable to the worst Cold War times.

Probably, the US remains the only developed country in the world where maximally unified historiography clichés still prevail: due to America’s steadfast adherence to the “redeemer nation” myth, other countries are prone not to trust the US and to consider it a factor of instability and general unpredictability in international affairs. The triumphs of the alleged victory in the Cold War disguise the eternal geopolitical and economic interests, the ambition to govern, and a reluctance to change ideologically and to treat other civilizations and countries with respect.

The reduction of democratic freedoms in the US and a visible distortion of the system of “checks and balances”, that the US used to be so proud of, in favor of administrative and police mechanisms no longer appear to be a temporary reaction to the September 11 events. Rather, this is a logical inner transformation, a kind of Falangism, a tendency contributing to the threat to the rest of the world from a powerful but poorly accountable to its public opinion US machine.

The practice of imposing “democracy” and the US models of development on other countries and entire regions is the thrust of the present US Administration’s international strategy. Hence the inherently uncritical perception of the US domestic situation in this area and the ideology-dominated approach to international issues. Besides, a vast majority of Americans do not share the corresponding official approaches which do not result from a free democratic debate.

Washington’s foreign politics objectives are a secret to nobody. The US tendency to mask these objectives with the help of universal goals like the global triumph of democracy, a slogan similar to Khrushev’s notorious victory of communism in the whole world, is also a definite danger. The entire world deems these goals a disguise which is to make it possible for the US to avoid criticism internationally and domestically and to cover up a pursuit of its own interests in the global politics. The overstatement of the exterior threats to the US security, which allegedly justify any licenses in human rights and democratic norms, leads to the same result.

All the above is just a part of the problem which Americans define as “morally ambiguous times”. The uncertainty of the moral foundations of the domestic and foreign politics always ends badly for a country whose leadership chooses this course under the slogan of political expediency. Justifying claims for new regions by the need to protect old dominions is the classics of imperialism. On the eve of World War II Berlin kept referring to the need to defend Sudete Germans, to provide for a natural configuration of borders, etc. The logical completion of this type of a philosophy is the global conquest, since only then a country can finally conclude that no exterior danger to its possessions exists. Altogether this can be termed precisely as a full bankruptcy of liberalism as a philosophy and of the Western democracy as its practical implementation.

Like the early XX century Bolsheviks, the ideological mentors assert the right of the “advanced and progressive” countries to push forward those who stayed behind. The similarity is not limited to the doctrine proclaiming the universality of liberalism as the Khrushev-era scientific communism postulated that the Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. Even the invectives against the noncompliant are in the style of the 1960ies Khrushev-era propaganda: “While history evolves steadily towards market and democracy, some countries deviate from this high road” – this is not a citation from a 1960ies Communist Party Congress, but the words of Condoleezza Rice [4] (Condoleezza Rice, In the Name of National Interests. Pro et Contra, Spring 2000, Moscow, p. 118 (in Russian)).

The US with its shrinking freedom of expression and views becomes increasingly similar to the Soviet Union with its ideological campaigns against dissenters. Ironically, now it is time to remind the US that neither the inquisition, nor the tsars succeeded in stopping the propagation of ideas and views opposite to the officially adopted doctrine. A. de Tocqueville wrote: “The empire of the majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it actually removes any wish to publish them.” In all epochs societies found ways to reveal the vices and follies of the rulers. “Moliere criticized the courtiers in the plays that were acted before the court. But the ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of. The smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke that has any foundation in truth renders it indignant …everything must be made the subject of encomium… The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can learn only from strangers or from experience”, wrote A. de Tocqueville.

This article was originally published as the preface to the Special issue of "Links" (III, 2006) entitled "Human Rights in the USA".