Secretary of State Clinton’s recent speech on America’s human rights agenda at Georgetown University may deserve a place in history, if the Obama Administration sticks to its own program.

The language was definitely Clintonian (Hillarian?) – straightforward, mostly unambiguous, and inspiring in a grounded sort of way.  It included the following insights:

• “Democracy has proven the best political system for making human rights a human reality over the long term.”
• “In democracies, respecting rights isn’t a choice leaders make day by day; it is the reason they govern.”
• “We may call rights inalienable, but making them so has always been hard work.”
• “Believing in human rights means committing ourselves to action, and when we sign up for the promise of rights that apply everywhere, to everyone, that rights will be able to protect and enable human dignity, we also sign up for the hard work of making that promise a reality.”

This was “the” Obama administration human rights speech for the next few years at least, since it laid out four key ingredients for human rights  in U.S. foreign policy. These are:

1. Making “a commitment to human rights starts with universal standards . . . holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves.”
2. Staying “pragmatic and agile in pursuit of our human rights agenda – not compromising on our principles, but doing what is most likely to make them real.”
3. Supporting “change driven by citizens and their communities. The project of making human rights a human reality cannot be just one for governments.”

The fourth key human rights element for U.S. foreign policy named by Secretary Clinton shaded quickly into ambiguity.  [At this point in the speech, analysts in China, Russia, Cuba, Burma, Egypt, and several African dictatorships begin to listen very closely.]  Clinton said that the fourth essential ingredient would be “widen[ing] our focus.”  What does this mean?  The secretary waxed rhetorical:

We will not forget that positive change must be reinforced and strengthened where hope is on the rise, and we will not ignore or overlook places of seemingly intractable tragedy and despair. Where human lives hang in the balance, we must do what we can to tilt that balance toward a better future.

This is the meat of the speech, because it hints at where American money and government resources will be directed.  After all, we may perceive efforts to support free speech and freedom of the press around the world as derived from mankind’s inalienable rights, but most foreign governments see them as a form of politics by other means.

Specifically, Clinton said that in “widening our focus,” we would be paying attention to (in alphabetical order) Congo, East Timor, Georgia, Kosovo, Liberia, Moldova, North Korea, Sudan, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.  But she expanded the focus further by mentioning the “hard issue” of discrimination based on sexual identity, which Clinton said should be pursued “from the Middle East to Latin America, Africa to Asia.”  And she added a coda on the importance of women’s rights as human rights, and the difficulty of making them a coexisting reality.

Summing up, Clinton talked again about four pillars:  “accountability, principled pragmatism, partnering from the bottom up, keeping a wide focus where rights are at stake.”  Here’s one reading of these terms actually mean:

• Accountability:  practicing what we preach by ending torture and submitting accused terrorists to military or civilian trials.
• Principled pragmatism:  we will speak softly with countries like China and Russia and probably not wield a big stick either.*
• Partnering from the bottom up:  when we can’t wield a big stick, we’ll at least try to support civic movements and human rights activists with money and rhetorical support.
• Widening the focus:  We’ll be ready at least to speak out and criticize human rights abuses wherever we see them.

History has shown that American support for human rights movements, during both Democratic and Republican administrations, have played an important role in countries like South Africa and the Soviet Union.  So “widening the focus” might be just vague enough a formulation to put repressive regimes on some kind of notice about the Obama administration’s plans.  The question is whether Secretary Clinton and President Obama will occasionally narrow their focus on specific rights violations, or keep the focus so wide that the result at the end of the Obama years is blurred, fuzzy, and forgettable.

– Ned Hodgman

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*it’s worth remembering that countries with considerable human rights violations may be dangerous, but they are seldom, in the end, stable in their governance . . .

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