The End of Democracy Promotion
The human rights and democracy promotion agenda in US foreign policy arrived as the handmaiden to neoliberalism in economic policy, and it will depart along with the latter
We stand at the brink of an historical caesura in US foreign policy. I am going to make this case in the starkest possible way about what the nature of this caesura is, not because I necessarily believe 100% in the maximalist version of the normative claims I will be making, but because stating the claim in strong form will most usefully clarify the stakes.
Here’s the thesis: the time has come for the United States to abandon promoting human rights and democracy. This shift is part of the historic role of Joe Biden. Just as he is decisively ending the era of neoliberalism in domestic policy with his historic recommitment to the poor and to re-investing in the American economy, so he should end the parallel era of foreign policy which was born under the same sign.
The Twin Birth of Neoliberalism and Human Rights/Democracy Promotion
Placing democracy promotion and human rights at the rhetorical center of US foreign policy began with President Jimmy Carter and was consolidated under Ronald Reagan. As Samuel Moyn has famously established, before 1977, human rights was a rhetorical and practical afterthought in American foreign policy. Carter was the first American President to place human rights at the center of his foreign policy’s rhetorical agenda. For the American right, Carter’s human rights turn was initially greeted skeptically: Jane Kirkpatrick’s 1979 essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards” rejected the human rights agenda as a foreign analog form of bleeding-heart liberalism, defending US support for pro-capitalist authoritarian states. When she became Ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan, however, Kirkpatrick would change her tune, with the Reagan administration increasingly interested in using democracy promotion and human rights as a cudgel for beating the Soviet Union.
As Nicolas Guilhot has documented, the key turning point for the Reagan administration’s turn to the human rights and democracy promotion agenda was the sense that the Cold War had basically been won, at least ideologically. It was precisely (and only) as the threat of international socialism started to fade that the Reagan administration began to promote democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy, for example, was established in 1983, just as Reagan’s “morning in America” was breaking and the sun was setting on Soviet socialism. As the economic structural adjustments associated with the arrival of neoliberalism in places like Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe guaranteed that a transition to democracy in politics would not risk a transition (or return) to socialism, it became safe for the right to promote democracy and human rights. And so, with the end of the Cold War and the bipartisan consolidation of neoliberalism in the 1990s, a parallel bipartisan agreement emerged on the rhetorically promoting human rights and democracy.
(Before I move on, I should note that this bipartisan embrace of human rights and democracy promotion was in fact mainly honored in the breach. Whether, even in the heyday of neoliberalism – from the 1980s through the aughts – the United States did a good job of democracy and human rights promotion or even should have done it at all, is certainly questionable. Guatemalans and Iraqis might have a point of view on this, to say nothing of the inmates at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, or for that matter, Pelican Bay. But let’s leave that aside.)
In sum, human rights and democracy promotion was the foreign policy handmaiden of the transition to neoliberalism in economic policy. And as I will now argue, as goes one, so goes the other.
As Neoliberalism Goes, So Goes the Human Rights & Democracy Promotion Agenda
Today, as the Biden administration’s domestic economic reforms ushers out the era of neoliberalism in economic governance, it should recognize that the human rights and democracy promotion agenda that was always neoliberalism’s partner also needs to go.
Why? Due to self-inflicted wounds, the United States simply doesn't have the moral authority and self-confidence required to promote democracy and human rights anymore. There are two essential reasons why.
The first reason, obviously, is the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Not only was Trump himself contemptuous of human rights, arguing that the U.S. human rights record wasn’t that different from Putin’s Russia, he also routinely praised and embraced murderous dictators from Pyongyang to Riyadh to Beijing. Of course, if America had decisively repudiated Trump’s behavior, it might be different. But what actually happened is that a major faction in American politics in 2020 not only attempted to overthrow a free and fair election via an autogolpe, but also received no political punishment for the attempt. What this made clear to foreign observers is that Trump (or someone substantively like him) could soon be back in power in Washington. Under these circumstances, no matter what Biden chooses to do, no one any longer counts the U.S. as a reliable partner in democracy and human rights promotion. In short, after Trump, there’s no putting the toothpaste back into the tube.
But the moral collapse of the American democracy promotion agenda isn’t just about Trump and the transformation of American conservatism. If anything, it is even more about the transformation of American liberalism. Mainstream American liberalism at present suffers from a painful contradiction between its internal, domestic narrative and its external, diplomatic narrative. The currently dominant liberal narrative at home is that we are a country born in sin – a sin that the ongoing crisis of police violence and mass incarceration shows remains unexpiated. This, after all, is the central thesis of the Movement for Black Lives, a movement that most Americans who think of themselves as liberals like to think they stand in solidarity with.
For better or worse, however, it’s awfully hard to square this domestic narrative about a country still struggling with an unresolved original sin, with a foreign policy narrative that centers on the idea that the United States is a wonderful democracy that has a right if not an obligation to promote itself as a model for others. To put a sharp point on the matter: after a summer of BLM protests followed by the Trumpist putsch attempt, does anyone in the world look at American democracy today and say, “Hey, I’d like a big helping of that?” or “I really can count on these guys!”
Given that skepticism, I would argue that it would behoove the Biden administration do a radical reworking of the basis of its foreign policy agenda that matches the reworking it is engaged in on the domestic side.
Beyond Human Rights and Democracy Promotion
So what positive vision should replace the discredited promotion of human rights and democracy? Answering that question is the topic for a different post, but let me provide a teaser: in a word, I believe that the US needs to embrace and promote a new form of planetary politics. Instead of perseverating on the internal affairs of other countries, upon which we have lost our standing to criticize, let’s focus on the topics that are truly urgent. Such a planetary politics would transcend the human-all-too-human power struggles that international relations theorists and practitioners have long defined as the basis of international relations. Because the fact is, the carbon molecules don’t care about our borders and disputes. Neither do the microbes, or the collapsing biodiversity hotspots, or the plastics in the rising oceans. Instead of hectoring people in other countries over their internal politics, we should reach for the areas of common planetary cause.
The End of Democracy Promotion
Niles, I admire your work. You effectively utilize history to forensically uncover the roots of doctrine, policy and rule. I am in awe of the complexity of task you accomplish! Anyway, you brought up some great points, but the lag between neoliberalism and what comes next, mostly depends on China, not us.
Stating the obvious, the U.S. will continue to do what is has to do in order to remain in power, which includes fighting dirty. I don't want to mention any methods of how we actually conduct this but you've touched upon a few in your work. Now selective/manipulative use of the human rights agenda happens to be one of the more potent tools found in the constructivists armory and China seemingly never replies to this attack. Somewhat sadly, I sometimes think they never will. It's sort of ironic that the famous chengyu "seek truth from facts" finds its evil twin hiding in Constructivism where (at least) social facts are all just considered nothing but human creations, human constructs. In my view, we won't be able to meaningfully move ahead globally without China "coming clean" about what happened in the XUAR. At the very least it should begin by "constructing" a few facts of its own, some that hopefully endear it to the West. The world today seems lost at times, we are in desperate need of someone new, a new player, like China, to start delivering more than just cheap labor. They have an old civilization, one rich in tradition. We see their culture espousing essential virtuous traits like love, honor, dignity, obedience, hard work, tolerance with a disciplined pursuit of facts. I hope Xi Jinping realizes this, because this is precisely what we need, not just the production of more cheap goods! China needs to get more media savvy, they need to become more socially active and they need to develop a better, more complex IR strategy. Not just for their own good, but for ours also.
Hey Nils,
Hate starting out by being a little pushy or direct but I really dig your work and perspective. I think I have a book in mind, one that'll help tilt that already heady perspective in an even more meaningful direction. Sure, maybe I am being solipsistic, but as a fan, I think you need to read this...it's that important.