Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLI, Global Issues II

66. Briefing Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Abrams) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, November 23, 1983

SUBJECT

• Key Issues in Thinking About U.S. Human Rights Policy

Potential Advantages of a Human Rights Policy

—It can reduce suffering in certain specific cases.

—It can help explain to the public why our relationship with the Soviet bloc constitutes a permanent problem—why they are not like us and why there is no simple answer to getting along with them.

—Human rights policy can make visible what we have in common with our Western European and Japanese allies, transcending short-term irritations over trade and foreign policy issues.

—Finally, a human rights policy can tap the idealism of the American people and use it to reinforce effective foreign policy, reducing the temptation to isolationism.

Potential Dangers of a Human Rights Policy

—Such a policy if not carefully designed can harm bilateral relations.

—It can impede us in meeting security threats, as in El Salvador.

—Because existing legislation and public concern focuses on cases where the U.S. is giving assistance or otherwise involved, there is a real danger that human rights policy will harm friends, but leave enemies unaffected. There is a danger that we will be active not where the problems are most serious, but where we are already at work. Such a process would create a double standard by which similar human rights violations are treated much more severely in friendly countries than in communist countries. (A double standard is also possible in the other direction: to hit communist countries but ignore friends.)

—Finally, human rights policy can give opposition groups a means of destabilizing their own governments by provoking the withdrawal of American support.

Limits to Any Human Rights Policy

—For no country can human rights be our sole motive. This imperative must always be weighed with other U.S. concerns: security, the economy, etc.

—The internal practices of states are deeply ingrained, and therefore difficult to change from outside. Our experience in Vietnam and El Salvador has underlined this fact.

—Good human rights practices rest on many preconditions and traditions which United States foreign policy cannot create in the short run.

—Certain emergency situations almost inevitably result in human rights violations (civil war as in El Salvador, terrorism as in Argentina).

—For these reasons, no human rights policy can avoid frequent and tormenting dilemmas for policymakers: what to do about the Nuns’ case in El Salvador, for example.

Options for Constructing a Human Rights Policy That Will Minimize Its Potential Disadvantages, and Maximize Its Potential Advantages

—One option is to do the minimum required by legislation and by public opinion. This option would evade some difficulties, but does not help with the double standard problem. In fact, it makes this problem worse, because the legislation and public concern disproportionately target friendly countries. This option frustrates, rather than utilizes, the idealism of the American people.

—Another option would focus our concern on “basic” human rights, such as freedom from murder or torture. Such a stance would have the advantage that this kind of human rights observance can be demanded nearly everywhere; such rights have fewer preconditions than things such as freedom of the press. This option has the drawback that it emphasizes some of the cases most difficult for our foreign policy, such as El Salvador. The kind of violations this option would concentrate on are often less common in communist countries, because they are no longer needed—the basic repression of the society has been accomplished at an earlier stage. Such totalitarian societies are not in fact better, but this option tends to exonerate them. Finally, both the foregoing options deal only with symptoms—with specific violations of human rights—and not with their causes.

—A third option is the two-track policy adopted by the Reagan Administration in October 1981,² which calls for us to respond to specific human rights violations in the short term, as during the Carter Administration, but also to encourage the growth of democracy world-wide over the long term. Accordingly, this policy sees U.S. strength as useful to human rights policy. A further important element of this policy is to report and respond to human rights violations by opposition and guerrilla groups as well as those by governments. This policy is the root of the President’s Westminister Speech, The National Endowment for Democracy, and similar efforts along this line.

Disadvantages: The non-democratic character of some important Third World allies, the impossibility of democracy in some places (e.g. Zaire), and the incomplete nature of our knowledge about how to encourage democracy.

Advantages: This policy correctly understands that specific human rights violations are not an accident; they are symptoms that flow from the underlying political order. Only democracy has proved to be a good guarantee of proper human rights practices. This policy also has the advantage that it takes off part of the pressure to react to human rights violations only in the short term—as in El Salvador—because short term reaction is not all we are doing. Such a policy thus makes it easier to explain apparent inconsistencies in our short term human rights responses.

What Is Our Attitude Toward Existing Non-Democratic Regimes?

—We ought in time to be able to shape a situation like the one the USSR now enjoys: the USSR is able to work flexibly with non-communist regimes in practice, but without giving up the long term encouragement of communist regimes.

—Throughout the world’s nations different categories of human rights violations are combined in many different ways. In the Philippines, for example, there are political killings, but also considerable freedom to oppose the government; in China there are very few killings, but no freedom to oppose the government. Our attitudes thus must be determined on a case by case basis.

—In determining our attitude, we will need to raise the following questions: What is the likeliest alternative to a regime? Is it in transition toward democracy? How great are our security interests? (The alliances of the democracies with Stalin and, after Stresa in 1935, with Mussolini against Hitler show the power of security interests, but also their limitations in democratic societies.) How great is our power to change a system? Finally, how great is a regime’s potential for internal change? (Grenada is the first communist regime to be displaced from power since 1919.)

Is the Totalitarian/Authoritarian Distinction a Useful Guide?

—Advantages: This distinction forces us to think about the result of political changes. It plausibly argues that “authoritarian” governments do not control the whole of society, and that they are usually forced in practice to resort to democratic codes of legitimacy, which may create an opening for democratization.

—Disadvantages: This is only one of a number of distinctions necessary to explain human rights behavior. It does not explain, for example, why the Idi Amin regime was as brutal as many totalitarian regimes. The distinction can be misinterpreted as implying that we are less opposed to authoritarian torture than to totalitarian torture. It should always be clear that we react to a given human rights violation with the same seriousness, regardless of its author; the distinction is useful only in predicting human rights behavior after a change of regime.

What Instruments Should We Use?

—We are obliged by law to use security assistance, economic assistance, MDB votes, crime control licensing, and the Human Rights Reports in certain circumstances. All recent administrations have also used some mix of private diplomacy and public comment on abuses.

—This administration has generally chosen to use private diplomacy more and public denunciation less, arguing that we should use the instrument most effective in a given case. Traditional diplomacy is obviously more useful where we have a friendly relationship, public statements where our best tool is the mobilization of world opinion—as often in the case of communist regimes. In most cases, it is probably necessary to have some mixture of traditional diplomacy and symbolic affirmation of the U.S. commitment to human rights.

Dealing With Charges of Inconsistency

—These necessarily arise, due to bureaucratic interests that put bilateral relations before everything, to the variety of conditions, to the variety of appropriate instruments, and to competing foreign policy priorities.

—To deal with this charge, must we be willing to show that we will inconvenience friendly, as well as communist, countries when necessary? Will it help to be honest when security considerations take priority, as with the PRC? It helps to emphasize that security or economic priorities which may compete in the short run will reinforce our human rights policy in the long run.

Attached are the Clark-Kennedy memo which set our current human rights policy, (Tab A),³ a more detailed memo partly used in developing it (Tab B),⁴ and the Country Reports introduction (Tab C),⁵ which was intended as an authoritative exposition of the intellectual background of this policy.

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, P910037–2272. Confidential. Drafted by Fairbanks on November 22. Fairbanks initialed for Abrams. A stamped notation on the memorandum indicates that Shultz saw it.
2. See Document 54.
3. Tab A is attached and printed in Document 54.
4. Tab B is attached and printed in Document 53.
5. Tab C, dated March 1983, is attached but not printed.