Pressing for Human Rights

In contrast to more divided attitudes about pressuring countries to be more democratic, large majorities favor putting diplomatic pressure on governments to respect human rights, speaking out against human rights abuses, and encouraging other countries to do the same.

A significant majority favored pressuring governments to respect human rights as a method to encourage greater democracy. The September 2005 PIPA-Chicago Council poll asked specifically about seven nations--Burma (also called Myanmar), China, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia--a majority--66% to 71%--in each case favored putting diplomatic pressure on the government to respect human rights, speaking out against the country's human rights abuses and encouraging other countries to do the same. Of five different methods that were listed as possible ways to encourage democracy, including pressure on human rights, warning of military intervention, and economic sanctions, the most favored method was pressure on human rights. [35]

Americans also appear to be ready to accept significant political costs as part of pressing for human rights. In another question in the PIPA-Chicago Council September 2005 poll on human rights, nearly three-fourths of respondents favored investigating possible human rights abuses even if it meant that the United States would lose the ability to utilize a foreign military base as a result. Asked whether the United States should have called for an international investigation of a protest in Uzbekistan in which the government shot and killed several hundred Uzbeks and as a consequence Uzbekistan ordered the U.S. to close its airbase and leave, 72% said the United States did the right thing.[36]

 

 

The Role of The United States in the Global System after September 11th

By Dani Nabudere

Published on: Mar 26, 2004

Most recently Nabudere has edited Globalisation and the African Post-colonial state (AAAPS, Harare, 2000) and is author of Africa in the New Millennium: Towards a post-traditional renaissance (forthcoming-Africa World Press).

Introduction

It is clear that power relations in the global system have been severely tested since the events of September 11, 2001, so much so that it has become fashionable these days for people to argue that the world has irrevocably changed with those events. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11th, 2001 were calculated moves to test the standing and political and economic positions of the world's sole superpower. They were aimed at delivering a blow that could carry several messages around the world at once. Indeed, it is clear that this fateful event was a manifestation of the contradictions of the modern world system since its foundation some five hundred years ago, and the messages the attacks were calculated to transmit were intended to convey to all and sundry those contradictions.

The first of these messages was the expression of anger by those disaffected social and political forces, that felt mistreated, marginalized, and oppressed by U.S. global power relations. The second was to demonstrate to the U.S. that those global power relations were vulnerable and could be attacked at the very heart of the system any time. Thirdly, the attacks gave signal to other disaffected groups opposed to U.S. dominance of the world that it was possible to weaken this power in such a way that their grievances could be addressed through the overthrow of that system. Fourthly, by attacking these two pillars of U.S. economic and military power, al Qaeda wanted to demonstrate that the U.S. was not as powerful as it thought and that its economic power and military power could be broken down by well organized, and well manned attacks.

These messages had other side interpretations. To U.S. neo-conservative forces as well as to some in the right-wing liberal political establishment, these attacks signaled an attempt by fundamentalist political Islam to overthrow Western civilization at the core and, in this respect, the attacks were interpreted as not just constituting a threat to the U.S. as a country but to the whole Christian, western civilization project. This was in fact what president Bush dubbed an "attack on civilization" in his condemnation of the strikes. This interpretation had the effect of influencing the way the world looked at the attack and the U.S. response to it. While not necessarily accepting this interpretation, it forced all foreign governments, with the exception of the very few, to side with the U.S. ideologically on the issue. Thus in addition to the overwhelming humanistic outpouring of sympathy for the victims, it enabled the Bush administration to arm-twist all governments and individuals throughout the world to side with its response on the grounds that the attacks were not on the U.S. as such but on "civilization" in general. It forced these governments to side with the U.S. government, faced with its accompanying threat that: "Either you are with us, or you are against us."

At the same time, the attacks had other interpretations. The generalization of the consequences of the attack also put emergent "anti-globalization" activists on the spot since any attempt by them to express sympathy with the attackers by asking that the causes of the attacks be examined and addressed was interpreted as being "unpatriotic" expression of sympathy with "the enemy." For this reason, the attacks had the effect of dampening the activities of the global solidarity movement, at least for some time, since its strong showing at the Seattle WTO demonstrations in 1999. This interpretation was also used to crack down on the democratic and civil rights of U.S. citizens and to reinforce authoritarian regimes throughout the world. Thus, the event and the reactions surrounding it were turned from a political discourse into a moral-religious event in which "the enemy" was equated with evil and barbarism, while the victim was equated with virtue and civilization.

Nevertheless, these interpretations have begun to have an opposite effect in that the widening of the net in "the war against terrorism" with the attack against Iraq has caused many countries to pose questions that were not posed earlier. Questions are being asked whether the tragic events of September 11 are not being misinterpreted to advance a narrow political agenda of some cliques within the U.S. political establishment. Something like a return to a political discourse is beginning to emerge with a call being made to address the real causes that led to the September 11th attacks against the headquarters of the "Free World" and for the United Nations to resume its responsibilities for international peace and security. President Bush's threats against the United Nations to act according to his will "or become irrelevant" are being taken as rantings of a president whose unilateralism has gone wild. The war against Iraq has again undermined the hope of a return to a multilateral world.

In may ways, therefore, these events, and particularly the unilateral action of launching the war against Iraq with the support of Britain and the so-called "alliance of the willing," have confirmed a predictable hegemonic trend in U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War 2. This trend has afflicted all great hegemonic powers in history. Nevertheless the role of the U.S. in international relations since the end of that war has confirmed the traditional realist and hegemonic stability theories, which have argued that for the stability of institutions of global international public good to prevail, there must be a hegemonic power that is able to enforce certain rules of behavior in international relations, because the hegemon in that case can afford the short-run costs of achieving the long-run gains, which also happens to be in its national interests. These theories have been challenged by institutional stability theorists, who have argued that the model of institutionalized hegemony, which explains the functioning of multilateral arrangements based on the cooperation of a number of core countries to overcome "market failures," is preferable to the hegemonic power model [Keohane, 1980].

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