Reclaiming American virtue : the human rights revolution of the 1970s

369 Pages·2014·3.173 MB·English

by  Keys, Barbara J

R e c l a i m i n g
a m e R i c a n
V i Rt u e

R e c l a im in g
a m e R i c a n
V i Rt u e
the human Rights ReVolution
of the 1970s
Barbara J. Keys
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keys, Barbara J.
Reclaiming American virtue : the human rights revolution of the 1970s / Barbara J. Keys.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-72485-3
1. Human rights—Government policy—United States. 2. Human rights advocacy—
United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—20th century. I. Title.
JC599.U5K49 2014
323.0973'09047—dc23 2013015286
Contents
Introduction: Enter Human Rights 1
1. The Postwar Marginality of
Universal Human Rights 15
2. Managing Civil Rights at Home 32
3. The Trauma of the Vietnam War 48
4. The Liberal Critique of
Right-Wing Dictatorships 75
5. The Anticommunist Embrace
of Human Rights 103
6. A New Calculus Emerges 127
7. Insurgency on Capitol Hill 153
8. The Human Rights Lobby 178
9. A Moralist Campaigns for President 214
10. “We Want to Be Proud Again” 242
Conclusion: Universal Human Rights
in American Foreign Policy 269
Abbreviations 279
Notes 283
Bibliographical Essay 339
Acknowledgments 347
Index 351

Introduction
Enter Human Rights
Of the causes that fire the human imagination today, the idea of
human rights has few rivals in its power to inspire and to mobilize.
As a language of idealism, it now encompasses almost every aspiration
for human betterment, so much so that it exerts an almost irresistible
gravitational pull on the way we frame our pursuit of the good life. In
Milan Kundera’s well- known parody, even a parking spot on a crowded
Paris street becomes a human right.1 It would take a sizeable forest’s
worth of paper pulp to print the proliferating treaties, conventions, cov-
enants, declarations, and case law that comprise today’s enormous body
of international human rights law, and a small city to house the hundreds
of thousands of advocates in tens of thousands of organizations across
the globe who labor to bring force to literally hundreds of distinct, codi-
fied rights. Foundations, think tanks, universities, and foreign ministries
employ an army of human rights experts; politicians of every stripe pro-
fess fealty to human rights. Cynicism, criticism, and charges of cultural
imperialism abound, but have not dislodged human rights from their
privileged place in our moral lexicon.
This idealism attained its global stature in the 1970s, thanks in large
part to its embrace by Jimmy Carter. By giving the idea the backing of a
global superpower, he propelled it to extraordinary heights of recognition
1
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    reclaiming american virtue
and popularity around the world. The same was true at home, where
international human rights, before Carter gave them the presidential
touch, had been a minor issue on the national stage. The reasons for this
fateful shift, so consequential for America and the world, are little under-
stood. Too often it is explained as a natural recalibration of American
moral standards after the aberrational Realpolitik of the Nixon and Ford
administrations and the weakening of Cold War anticommunism in the
wake of the Vietnam War. In fact it was almost accidental, and human
rights moved slowly and fitfully from backstage to center stage because to
contemporaries there was nothing obvious about them. The concept’s
utility as an answer to pressing questions had to be tested, its contours
molded into politically useful forms, and other solutions found wanting
before human rights were anointed as a new foreign policy paradigm.
When human rights became an American rallying cry and a global
sensation in 1977, it was a transformation that seemed as sudden as it was
surprising. For decades advocates of international human rights had
toiled in obscurity, stalking the musty corridors of impotent United
Nations commissions, publishing pamphlets read only by fellow initi-
ates, and lamenting their lack of real- world influence. Suddenly they
found themselves in an exhilarating new environment. Government offi-
cials avidly read their reports; journalists called them for statements on
current events; academic and philanthropic organizations flooded them
with invitations to proliferating conferences and symposia. Their activi-
ties made headlines and were lauded in editorials. “These are heady
times,” one of them noted, not without a sense of disorientation.2
When Carter proclaimed a profound moral commitment to human
rights on taking office in 1977, he became the first leader of a major
country to elevate the international promotion of human rights to a cen-
tral role in foreign policy. Fueled by Carter’s embrace of the concept,
U.S. print and television news media used the term roughly five to ten
times as often in 1977 as in earlier years.3 Amnesty International, a
London- based human rights organization that had recently gained a
measure of global renown thanks to its campaigns against torture, won
the Nobel Peace Prize. The award brought international fame and pres-
tige to the movement and signaled the new success of human rights as a
grassroots endeavor, no longer confined to elite lobbying. Amnesty’s
(cid:5)
Introduction    
U.S. section was so strained by the pressures of its dizzying recent growth
that its leadership talked about dampening the intake of new members.4
Other organizations devoted to promoting human rights abroad grew at
spectacular rates, and it seemed that all sides of the political spectrum
hailed their work as admirable and inspiring. Journalist Ronald Steel
likened human rights to motherhood and apple pie: “beyond partisan-
ship and beyond attack.”5
This book explains why so many Americans embraced the cause of
international human rights with such enthusiasm at this moment in time,
and why and how promotion of human rights became a central aspira-
tion of U.S. foreign policy. Human rights were far more than a slogan,
and they had relevance far beyond purely diplomatic concerns. They
helped redefine America to Americans, for they were about American
identity even more than they were about foreign policy. They emerged
from a struggle for the soul of the country, for principles to define not
only America’s international behavior but its character in a world shaped
by new power relations— above all by its loss in the Vietnam War and all
the soul- searching that entailed. As Americans entered the 1970s, many
felt that they were standing on quicksand. Old certainties, beliefs, and
standards— about America’s role in the world and the nature of the world
at large— had crumbled. The promotion of international human rights
was one of the ideas that helped Americans make sense of the new global
terrain. Crucially, it served not as a means of coming to terms with the
Vietnam War but as a means of moving past it. Human rights became a
way to heal the country by taming the legacy of Vietnam.
Human rights promotion was an antidote to shame and guilt. The
popularity of human rights in the 1970s was a function of their capacity
to shift attention and blame away from the trauma of the Vietnam War
and the embarrassments and self- criticism of the civil rights movement
and Watergate. For a group of conservatives who felt that the war had
been a just and necessary cause, human rights were a way to reassert the
fundamental immorality of communism, to revive Cold War priorities,
and to position the United States once again on the side of both right and
might. For moderate liberals who had come to see the war as immoral
and a stain on the country’s honor, promoting human rights in America’s
right- wing allies spotlighted evil abroad and offered a way to distance the