The Obama administration would marry principle to pragmatism in promoting democracy and human rights, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week, invoking President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize address to forcefully articulate a holistic approach that linked human rights and democracy to developmental imperatives.
“When a person is too hungry to work or vote or worship, she is denied the life she deserves,” she told a Georgetown University audience. “Freedom doesn’t come in half-measures,” she said.
Outlining a nuanced but consistent approach, she insisted that fundamental principles of democracy and human rights would be the “North Star” guiding policy, but implementation would be flexible, and state-specific.
Autocratic regimes would be engaged where necessary and policy would be driven by the need to “make a difference, not prove a point.”
She rejected an “either/or” approach pitting democracy and human rights against national security interests. Employing “principled pragmatism,” the administration can engage states like Russia or China on strategic interests while still raising the killing of Russian journalists and suppression of Charter 08 activists in China.
“With China, Russia, and others, we are engaging on issues of mutual interest while also engaging societal actors in these same countries who are working to advance human rights and democracy,” she said.
“With Russia we deplore the murders of journalists and activists and support the courageous individuals who advocate at great peril for democracy,” Clinton said.
“The assumption that we must either pursue democratic rights or national security is wrong,” she insisted.
Where appropriate, the U.S. would act as a tribune for democracy and human rights activists, “shining a light” on their work and sacrifices. In other instances, human rights will be raised behind closed doors but no less forcefully, as the administration has done in Beijing, calling for minority rights to be protected in Tibet and Xinjiang.
“People must be free to choose their own laws and leaders,” she said, but they would lack the capacity and inclination to pursue political objectives if their basic human needs of health, nutrition and security were not addressed.
Citizens need the negative liberties of freedom from want and oppression, but also need the positive economic and other opportunities they need to fulfill their potential, she said, all but invoking Isaiah Berlin.
Democracy, human rights and development are intertwined and mutually reinforcing, and the administration’s strategy would stress four key elements: accountability, principled pragmatism, partnerships with civil society, democracy and rights activists, and focusing on states facing the most acute human rights and development challenges, including hard cases like Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Sudan.
In some states, like many in sub-Saharan Africa, leaders were willing to promote their people’s welfare and freedom, but lacked the capacity. In others, like Cuba, the leadership was able, but unwilling to do so, while in others, like the Eastern Congo, states lacked both the will and the capacity.
[...] Allen at Democracy Digest has [...]