Has the Obama administration been too timid in defending human rights? Or, to the contrary, has it been energetically promoting democracy even as U.S. public opinion becomes more isolationist?
“We will call out those who suppress ideas and serve as a voice for those who are voiceless,” President Obama told the UN General Assembly, calling on member states to match the U.S. commitment to defend democracy and civil society.
“The arc of human progress has been shaped by individuals with the freedom to assemble; by organizations outside of government that insisted upon democratic change; and by free media that held the powerful accountable,” he said, citing the anti-apartheid movement, Polish Solidarity, Argentina’s mothers of the disappeared, and the U.S. civil rights movement.
But Obama has not met the standards set in last September’s speech, writes The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, and failed to invigorate his administration’s “notoriously weak defense of human rights.”
To support his case, he cites the administration’s tepid response to Egypt’s fraudulent elections, Bahrain’s authoritarian regression, and curbs on civil society in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
But the administration “is running an activist foreign policy — on behalf of human rights and democratic ideals — despite the mood at home,” writes Jeremy Kinsman.
In fact, the U.S. is performing relatively well.
“We don’t see many other countries working that way in the composite photo” presented by the Wikileaks cables, he notes.
Public support for promoting democracy abroad fell from 44 per cent in 2001 to only 10 per cent today. For the first time since 1945, a near-majority — 49 per cent — believe the U.S. “should mind its own business and let other countries get along as best they can.”
[Although it has been noted that the dubious language of the survey question exaggerates isolationist sentiment in the U.S.]
A “global virus” of cynicism and self-interest has emboldened dictators to cling to power in Belarus and Ivory Coast, and prompted authoritarian regimes to crack down on democracy activists, says Kinsman, a former Canadian diplomat who now heads the Community of Democracies program for democracy development.
But with the European Union stymied by its own introspective public and politicians, the Western democracies have yet to develop a coordinated response to the backlash.
