Before the new government puts forth its foreign-relations policies, we need to know the effectiveness and the practicality of the "human rights card" to avoid unnecessary waste of resources and impractical expectations.
The basic appeal of human rights diplomacy lies in that, if a government does not treat its people well and violates their human rights, supposedly the government will not treat people in other countries well either. Therefore, when a government violates human rights, we should not regard it as an internal affair and look past it, because such a government is a threat to global security and a potential source of international conflict.
To safeguard the security of other countries and to protect people's freedom from fear, such violations should be considered international issues. The international community should form a united front in asking the offending government to stop the abuse for the sake of upholding justice, protecting human rights, resolving crises and seeking peace in the international community.
Theoretically, human rights diplomacy discards ideological confrontations of the Cold War and, instead, aims to protect the lives and dignity of people. It skillfully combines humanitarian concerns and moral conscience stressed by libertarians, and national interests and security emphasized by realists. It connects the two opposite camps of international politics: pragmatic interests and moral considerations. We can call it the "New Middle Way" of international foreign relations.
In fact, the human rights card is not uncommon in foreign policies of Western countries. Former US President Jimmy Carter was the first advocate of such policies. Unlike Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State who indulged himself in international power plays, the democrat president put forth human rights diplomacy soon after his inauguration. He justified his strong suppression of anti-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua with human rights protection and humanitarian concerns. His successor, Ronald Reagan, also pressured the totalitarian leaders in the Philippines and South Korea to pursue democracy in the name of human rights.
The US justifies its world leadership with human rights protection. During the Cold War, it was the US pretext for intervening in the domestic affairs of communist countries, pro-communist countries, and friendly but nondemocratic governments.
Western European countries have also included human rights in their foreign policies. One obvious example is the joint US and British economic sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s to force the abrogation of apartheid. Recently, human rights again legitimized NATO's first military action against Serbia's attack against Kosovar Albanians.
Upon further analysis, we would discover that human rights is just an instrument to justify otherwise illegitimate interventions. It has also helped break deadlocks in international affairs by blurring reality and morality. Such use of human rights is actually made in self-interest and in self-defense. In the volatile environment of international politics, it is acceptable to pursue self-interest in the name of a higher cause. It would, however, be naive to believe that the international community would join in our cause as soon as we wave a "human rights protection" banner. The following two examples reveal the reality with regards to human rights diplomacy.
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