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[SPEAKER 1]
Thank you for your time.
[SPEAKER 2]
On behalf of the, uh, Graduate Council of the–
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I think I’ll– May, may I start again?
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No. On, uh, on behalf of the Graduate Council of the University of California at Berkeley, I’d like to welcome you all to the Winter 1983 Jefferson Memorial Lecture. I think it’s appropriate to say a word about the Jefferson Memorial Lecture Series, which has brought a great number of distinguished scholars from around the world to this campus—
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Yeah.
[SPEAKER 2]
to examine and study the promotion of American democracy.
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Appropriately, appropriately named, I believe, from my experience in constitutional law, for, for one of the fathers of the First Amendment. It’s my pleasure this afternoon to introduce this Jefferson Memorial Lecturer. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was born-
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Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. She received her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College in 1948, and her master’s and PhD from Columbia University in 1968. Between 1961 and ’67, she taught at Trinity College, and from 1967 to 1982 was a professor in the political science department of Georgetown University.
She, she, she has held a- has held a series of research positions at several prominent research institutions and has published a- has published a list of scholarly books and articles that I will not burden you with at, uh, at this point. In 1982, she was appointed Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations. Tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon at this same time and place, she will deliver the second of her lectures on human rights and wrongs in the United Nations.
I am privileged to present to you at this time, the Honorable Jeane Kirkpatrick on the subject, “Human Rights and Wrongs in the United States,” and I might add that Ambassador Kirkpatrick has expressed her willingness to respond to questions, uh, at the end, at the end of her address. It’s my pleasure to present her to you.
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(door slam)
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[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
What I was about to say was, was that there is a widespread sense that we are living through critical times when common understandings about rights and duties, about truth and beauty, even about freedom and slavery are in flux. That they are questioned, debated, denied, finally fought and died for. This may not be the case.
The very feeling that these are critical times may have little to do with historical realities and everything to do with the human tendency to dramatize our own lives and times. But I doubt it.
(coughs)
Concerning what Hannah Arendt termed this terrible century, it may be said that no comparable period in human history has seen as much violence, mayhem, and murder, or heard as much talk of morality and human rights. The relationship between hostile, violent deeds-
[SPEAKER 2]
Excuse me.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Yes.
[SPEAKER 2]
Would you excuse me for a moment? You know, I can do very little to, uh, stop the remarks and the- And the, uh,
(shouting)
I’d like to repeat that. I can do very little to stop the remarks and the noise that’s being made. But I, uh, I would, if you’ll permit me just a moment, uh, like to say just one thing. Ambassador Kirkpatrick is a guest of the university. She is not only-
(shouting)
She is not only a high-ranking government official, but also a member of the university faculty of a sister institution. You know, the major principle that distinguishes our form of government and this society from many others, and one that I have a sense that some of you disapprove of in other societies, but the major principle that distinguishes ours from others is, is a, uh-
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Well, uh, I think…
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I think the major principle is the freedom of people to get up and express their views- irri-
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irrespective of who they are and irrespective of what the content of those views may be. I would like to make an appeal to you who disagree with the views, uh, that have been expressed, at least in other contexts, by our guests this afternoon, to permit the ideal of this government, of our form of society, and of the theme of these lectures
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to proceed. It seems to me-
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It seems to me that it would be the ultimate irony-
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if at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley- someone were denied the very right that gives you the opportunity to demonstrate outside and express- and express your views. It seems to me it would be extremely unfortunate, and as I said, ironic, that someone would appear-
(shouting)
-on this campus and have their views censored, as some of you apparently seek to do, because of who they are or because of the content of what they have to say. I-
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I, I promise you that you will have adequate opportunity to express any substantive views that you have during the question and answer, during the question and answer period thereafter.
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I think I’ve said enough. Would you, would you please, in the name of free speech and the rule of law, permit, permit, in the name of free speech and the rule of law, permit this lecture to continue.
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[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
I was going to talk about what, uh, Hannah Arendt termed this terrible century. Of this terrible century, it may be said that no comparable period in human history has seen as much violence, mayhem, murder, or heard as much talk of morality and human rights. The relationship between hostile, violent deeds and sweeping moral claims is as close in our times as the relationship between the fact of tyranny and the rhetoric of freedom, or the fact of war and the discourse of peace.
Often it seems that the dreams and the claims overwhelm experience, obscuring the facts about our violent century. In his last novel, The Dean’s December, Saul Bellow noted how very difficult it is for contemporary Americans to see or believe the truth about our times or ourselves. For “Where the communists saw class war,” said Bellow, “civil war, pictures of catastrophe, we see only temporary aberrations.”
Capitalistic democracies could never be at home with the catastrophic outlook. We are used to peace and plenty. We are for everything nice and against cruelty, wickedness, craftiness, monstrousness.
Worshippers of progress, its dependents, we are unwilling to reckon with villainy, misanthropy.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Look in the mirror.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
We reject the horrible. This is the same as saying we are anti-philosophic.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
And anti-intellectual.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Such truths are unwelcome. So obviously is freedom here to some of you. The examination of preferred prejudices-
(unintelligible question from audience)
The examination of preferred prejudices, conventional pieties, and fashionable intolerances, I may say, is often irritating. We would rather talk about arms control than war, about socialism than about solidarity, about human rights than unanticipated repressions. Scholars, however, since Plato, have seen themselves as capable of bearing truth.
So may I say have serious students, as capable of bearing both truth and freedom, even truths with which they disagree. Able to look into the sun and see things as they are. Able to see society devoid of myths.
Able to see myths stripped of conventional pieties. In this spirit of scholarship, I propose to discuss today and tomorrow the theory and practice of human rights in the United States foreign policy and in the United Nations. My mode, it may come as a disappointment to some of you, will be analytic.
There is, I believe, no more affect-laden topic in our times than this, which is another way of saying that there is no topic more centrally involved in the most passionate political controversies of the age. No topic can that, that can be expected to lead us more directly to the heart of politics. Debates such as the current one about human rights reflect less a disagreement about the appropriate role of human rights in foreign policy than a clash of civilizations, each with distinctive moral and epistemological foundations.
What is often described and presumably perceived as a domestic policy debate about how much weight should be given in the making of foreign policy to considerations of human rights as opposed to considerations of the national interest is, I think, fundamentally a debate about the nature of human rights. Why? About the nature of international obligations, about the relationship of violent means to moral ends.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Like you! Like you! Talk about violence!
(laughter)
Imperialist! Genocide in Guatemala!
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Concerning this issue and its effect on U.S. foreign policy, I shall argue that there is no debate whatsoever as between human—about which, as between human rights and the national interest should have most weight. There is only a debate about which human rights of which people should be given priority, you know what, under which circumstances? Some of you here are posing the question very sharply about whose rights under which circumstances should be valued and honored.
Virtually all Americans have almost always agreed that foreign policy should serve moral goals.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Good for you.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
And that- And the fact is that the United States was born with a self-conscious moral purpose.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
That’s right.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Unlike, unlike older societies which have gone through diverse political transformations which therefore have an identity that transcends particular regimes, In the United States, our identity is inextricably involved with the Constitution and with the- and with the ethos expressed by and through it.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
(audience member)
Tell the enemy of America!
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Moral purpose is therefore indissolubly involved with our conception of national identity. The notion that policy should not reflect moral purpose is as far-fetched as the notion that foreign policy should not express the nation. A corporate act of an organized people, foreign policy should be particularly clear-cut expression of our corporate identity.
Herein lies, I believe, the explanation of why U.S. foreign policy has historically been less pragmatic and more doctrinaire and moralistic than domestic policy. More than one observer has juxtaposed American pragmatism in domestic affairs with our idealism in foreign relations. The contrast– I’m using, by the way, idealism there in a technical philosophical sense here.
The con– Maybe some of you don’t know what the technical philosophical meaning of idealism is, in which case I refer you to your local philosophy courses here. The contrast, and maybe some of you in that process would take a course in liberalism and rule of law. The contrast between the American approach to domestic policy, which is historically pragmatic, and to foreign affairs, which is historically idealistic, is sharp.
It forms the core of George Kennan’s famous study and has been repeatedly described and disapproved of by such writers as Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and many others. A recent book by Cecil Crabb, who’s a, an interesting scholar in the field of foreign policy observes, and I quote, “Pragmatic as American attitudes have been historically, the United States has also exhibited an affinity for diplomatic doctrines.” And this “doctrines” in quotes, huh, and this process has been greatly accelerated in the post-war period.”
(background speaker: Answer the question.)
“Domestic policy reflects the compromises brokered out of the expression of diverse competing pieces of the nation, but our foreign policy is doctrinal because it is expected to reflect the identity of the whole.” The moral core of the American concept of identity has always been a doctrine of universal human rights- the protection of which-
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Perhaps you should also go take a course in history at your local university.
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[SPEAKER 2]
You know, uh, you know, folks, I, I really do think you’ve made your point,
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And I–
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If you’ll, if you’ll join me, I’d be glad to.
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I, I really do think the, uh– I, I think you’ve made your point. If the First Amendment, if the spirit of the First Amendment does not have its proper appeal as I hoped it did, how about some common decency and civility?
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You, you will have, you, you will have your opportunity to make any relevant points at the end of the lecture. Please. Would, would you please?
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(shouting)
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
What’s the assurance she’ll stay for how long?
[SPEAKER 2]
You will be given adequate opportunity to raise any questions that you have at the end of the lecture. In the name of, uh, the decency, it seems to me, that characterizes this, this camp- this campus.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Why don’t one of you get up there and talk if you know so well how to do it?
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[SPEAKER 2]
I’d like to ask you to please, please, your point having been made, please hold your comments to the end of the lecture. On behalf of those who are sponsoring the lecture and those others who have come to hear whether they agree or disagree with what is being said.
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I ask you, please.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Try again. There’s a very special irony, of course, about having so many problems about speaking in a Jefferson lecture.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Maybe it shouldn’t be there.
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[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
What I was going to say is that from the time of the Declaration of Independence on, a doctrine of universal human rights has been seen in the United States as the very justification of government. As in, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Throw him out! Throw her out!
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Oh, now you’re sad and creepy.
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USA! USA! USA! USA!
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[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
I’m sorry. I quit. I quit.
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[SPEAKER 2]
You children ought to be ashamed of yourself. And the man who cited the name of Barbie ought particularly to know where conduct of this sort emanated. You ought to be ashamed and embarrassed.
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[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
They’re celebrating!
[SPEAKER 2]
Make sure that’s the base.
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Thank you. I’ll be right back.
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[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Thank you very much. What I was going to talk about, as you know, is human rights and foreign policy, freedom, rule of law, that sort of thing. What I was saying was that the… nobody in the United States in our whole history has, or no significant number of people have ever argued or believed that our foreign policy should be oriented to anything except moral ends.
There have been differences about which moral ends foreign policy should be oriented to, but there have virtually never been differences about whether foreign policy should, in fact, serve moral ends rather than some sort of, uh, power, let’s say. The notion, uh, that foreign policy should be oriented toward balance of power. Politics or realpolitik is totally foreign to the American tradition and, in fact, foreign to the American scene today.
They… All our wars, beginning with the Revolutionary War, were justified in terms of the pref- the protection and the extension, the defense of human rights, universal human rights. Beginning, of course, with the Declaration of Independence itself, penned by the man for whom these lectures are named, writing, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
They, and to secure these rights from time to time, wars are fought for their protection or extension. The Revolutionary War was such a war. The Civil War was the next experience of violence on a national scale that was justified in terms of human rights.
World War I and World War II again saw the United States mobilize in defense of what was always described as universal human rights. The Korean and the Vietnam Wars as well were justified by our governments, as was the containment policy itself, in terms of the protection of the rights of diverse human populations. From early in their history, Americans have not only thought that it was justifiable to use whatever means was necessary to protect their own rights, we have also believed and argued that we had a kind of vocation with regard to securing the rights of others.
Our politics rings with declarations that respect for the rights, for one’s own rights depends on respecting the rights of others. That one’s rights are, that no one’s rights are safe while someone’s rights are violated. We have always had a sense that our moral mission meant not just perfecting ourselves, but perfecting the world.
This is the very essence, by the way, of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism expresses the conviction that the United States has a moral mission which flows out of its identity and which should guide its policies. Our exceptional character, which was originally used to justify disdaining alliances and quarrels of the so-called Old World, has often been cited as the grounds of an obligation to improve the world.
Lincoln frequently expressed the notion of a universal obligation that accompanied universal human rights. He said, for example, “While man exists,” it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating that of mankind.” That conviction that because of our special circumstances, we have a special duty to improve mankind is a homegrown brand of meliorism.
It has never been more clearly expressed than by Woodrow Wilson in his lecture on patriotism and the sailor. Wilson said, and I quote, \”It was not merely because of passing and transient circumstances that Washington said that we must keep free of entangling alliances. It was because he saw that no country had yet set its face in the same direction in which America had set her face.
We cannot form alliances with those who are not going our way, and in our might and majesty, and in the confidence and definitiveness of our own purpose, we need not and we should not form alliances with any nation in the world. Those who are right, those who study their consciences in determining their policies, those who hold their honor higher than their advantage do not need alliances. You need alliances.
You do not need alliances when you are strong. You are weak only when you are not true to yourself. You are weak only when you are in the wrong.
You are weak only when you are afraid to do the right. You are weak only when you doubt your course. This passage of Woodrow Wilson’s, which justifies both isolationism and internationalism, could have been r-written as a preface to our human rights policy.
As Gordon Levin put it, an exceptionalist America had a mission to lead mankind toward an orderly international society of the future. Louis Hartz said that Americanism had a dual life right from the beginning, and that it had confused many observers. First of all, he said, from the time of Jefferson onward, it was characterized by very strong isolationist impulses.
Hartz said, quote, “The sense that America’s very liberal joy lay in the escape from a decadent old world that could only infect its own disease drove our isolationism. This was the spirit that pervaded most men, even during the revolutionary age of American history.” Yet, said Hartz, in the twentieth century, Americanism has also crusaded abroad in a W-Wilsonian way.
It has been driven onto the world stage by events. It’s inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien thing that is the world it had tried until then to avoid. Its messianism, said Hartz, is the polar counterpart of its isolationism.
An absolute national morality is inspired either to withdraw from alien things or to transform them. Since these national characteristics are profoundly rooted in our political culture, it was probably inevitable that once the objective facts of international interdependence had been created, had driven us into the world in Hart’s terms, the United States should seek ways of acting in the world compatible with our national predispositions. One such way has been the effort to create universal institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.
A second way has been to act through moral doctrines such as containment or human rights. The doctrine of human rights and foreign policy is the most recent example of this impulse. Both the creation of universal international institutions like the League of Nations and the United Nations, and such doctrines as human rights reject utterly the balance of power conception of foreign policy.
Both spring from a profound concern with our own virtue and with making the world more virtuous. Both create terrible problems in the real world. The doctrines embraced by Americans, Cecil Crabb asserted, have three important characteristics.
They have a legal dimension, a religious dimension, and they involve a forceful assertion of the ideological principles espoused by American society. These include an emphasis on the theme of the uniqueness of the New World, a belief in peace as the principal objective of foreign affairs, faith in self-government, in the concept of American mission and example, and millennial assumptions concerning an end to conflict or an end of the world, and a persistent unilateralism, a tendency to go our own way in pursuit of our own objectives, our own virtues in foreign affairs. Though Crabb did not say so, these characteristics are perfectly descriptive of the human rights doctrine that has so dominated discussion of U.S. foreign policy in the years since nineteen seventy-six.
And this is my first conclusion this afternoon, that the defense of human rights is more American than apple pie. It is as American as the Declaration- It is as American as the Declaration of Independence itself.
American foreign policy has always been stamped by the conviction that we have a distinctive moral character and distinctive goals, and the protection of rights is central to this. Moreover, there runs through our history the conviction that if we are to act in the world, we should try to improve it, that we should seek universal altruistic goals, not national advantage. Our tradition in foreign policy features the conviction, which is very frequently reiterated by presidents and secretaries of states and others, that being true to ourselves means acting consistently with our universal moral goals.
These qualities, which academics might term meliorism, purism, universalism, all express intimate aspects of our national character. All are present in contemporary doctrines concerning human rights and foreign policy. Universalism is, of course, present in the conviction that all men and women everywhere have rights by virtue simply of their humanity, rights of which they may not be justly deprived.
Meliorism is present in the conviction that U.S. foreign policy should be devoted to promoting those rights. Purism is present in the frequent references to the self in discussions of foreign policy, an emphasis on the importance of being true to ourselves, and in suggestions so very common, particularly in the Vietnam years, that flaws in our policy reflect domestic moral failure. If there is so much consensus in our society and in our tradition concerning this subject, wherein then comes the passionate debate on human rights and foreign policy that has taken place in the last half decade or so, or decade now?
The debate, as I’ve already indicated, occurs, I believe, first, because there is no consensus on what human rights are, or which, among all those claimed, should have priority. Second, because there’s no consensus on how much priority we are obliged to give to promoting human rights in other societies as compared to pursuing goals in our own society. And third, because there is no consensus on the relations between national interest and the defense of human rights.
Finally, because there is no consensus on the methods we may use to promote human rights. These are the questions I would like to address briefly now. Maurice Cranston is a very distinguished British philosopher who wrote a little book called What Are Human Rights?
In that little book, he defined human rights. He said, quote, “A human right by definition is a” universal moral right, something which all men everywhere at all times have the right to have, something of which no one may be deprived without a grave affront to justice, something which is owing to every human being simply because he is human. What are those rights of which no one should be deprived?
Politicians and statesmen invoke and add on. They do not practice analytic philosophy. Suppose we define the question analytically, say, as those rights which the law requires taking into account in making foreign policy.
We go then to the Foreign Assistance Act of nineteen sixty-one as amended. That’s where our core of our human rights and foreign– uh, human rights policy as it affects our foreign policy lies. We discover there, in the Foreign Assistance Act of nineteen sixty-one as amended that there is no definition of human rights, which it is said our policy must take account of.
There is instead a reference to, quote, “internationally recognized human rights.” There’s an asterisk and a footnote, and in that footnote, there are twelve international human rights covenants cited. In the back, there’s a, an appendix which prints those twelve covenants of international human rights– international covenants of human rights.
You read those and you discover that there are no internationally recognized human rights. Some of the rights listed together in the internationally hum– recognized covenants are non-additive. Others are non-enforceable.
Still others are non-attainable. Some are mutually incompatible. These lists have little to do with the lists of Locke or Jefferson or Lincoln.
These covenants contain international wish lists in which are included all of the personal and legal rights characteristic of the rule of law, all of the political rights characteristic of democracy, all of the economic rights characteristic of socialism, all of the cultural and emotional rights characteristic of heaven. These international wish lists may, as is often asserted, show that the idea of human rights has acquired an almost universal assent. Everybody in the world agrees to these long lists of human rights.
That’s why they’re internationally recognized human rights. I think they also show that the idea of human rights has been stretched until it includes virtually anything desired by virtually anybody. Freedom, security, comfort, happiness, kicks, so forth.
These lists postulate rights that can be fulfilled and rights that utter– that can– that are utterly unenforceable and probably unfulfillable as well, either because resources are lacking or because nobody knows quite what they mean. The least developed countries, for example, of whom there are an appalling number, simply cannot provide their burgeoning populations with an adequate standard of living, and all the economic well-being and opportunities guaranteed in the internationally recognized covenants on human rights. And no society, so far as I know, can guarantee all its citizens fully developed personalities and happy marriages.
The international– Those are also guaranteed, by the way. Those are internationally recognized human rights. Uh, happy childhood, by the way, is also.
Equality in marriage is, uh, internationally guaranteed human right. Um, who needs ERA? We have equality in marriage guaranteed in internationally recognized human rights covenants.
That’s a joke, in case you didn’t know it.
(laughter)
Huh? That was a joke. International human rights covenants include rights that are collective as well as individual.
The right, for example, to self-determination is guaranteed repeatedly. The right to culture, even though, as Maurice Cranston notes, these rights derive from antithetical traditions and are very frequently incompatible. They include rights that are enforceable and those that are unenforceable.
In fact, the length and diversity of the lists, yes, and the fact that the United States Congresses have incorporated them into US law reflect, I believe, the intellectual disarray that surrounds the whole subject. The lists not only confound rights and goals, capabilities and virtues, they confuse respect for human rights with the realization of the good life. The demand that governments, in dealing with their citizens, display minimum levels of respect and restraint is transformed into a demand that societies be judged worthy of survival, according to which, whether they do or do not provide their citizens every conceivable social, political, cultural, economic, psychological good.
The country reports, which are authored by the United States State Department to fulfill the Foreign Assistance Act, confirm the ambiguity of the concept. They include a hodgepodge of data on all the indicators of development, socialism, democracy, pacifism, and half a dozen other values. The problem with long lists is that they are no more useful as a guide to policy d-decisions than are ambiguous, indeterminate, or mutually contradictory categories to a social scientist analyzing data.
However, even if American law does not provide a workable definition of human rights, in the view of lawmakers, US foreign assistance and foreign policy should be oriented by law to creating and developing humane, democratic welfare states everywhere. As is always the case in human affairs, understanding an issue is easier than trying to know what to do about it. Most governments in the world, of course,
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are not very democratic, especially those which need assistance most. Taking into account the context out of which the contemporary human rights policy grew provides some illumination of the meaning of this very confused policy, and raises some questions. A principal charge made against U.S. support for South Vietnam, for example, stated more and more bluntly in the last years of that conflict, was that South Vietnam was not morally worth defending.
One heard a good deal from the anti-war movement about torturers and war profiteers, charges which were readily transferred to the Shahs of Iran and a variety of other such countries. A powerful strain in this criticism held that we should not soil our own hands or demean our own moral purity by supporting regimes that violated their own citizens’ human rights. These concerns introduced into human rights policy, a basic ambiguity, which was noted by Robert Roosa in an early study by the United Nations Association.
Roosa said, quote, ‘Should the United States try to change the conduct of repressive governments, or should we simply disassociate ourselves instead? Is the problem primarily one of leverage to exert influence or of maintaining moral purity of the United States’ role in international politics?’ This formulation illuminates the linkage between human rights doctrine on the one hand, and meliorist and purist strains in our foreign policy tradition.
It also very nicely demonstrates how these can produce either isolationism or internationalism. The purist impulse not to dirty our own hands with a dirty world, leads directly to isolationism. The meliorist impulse to improve unsatisfactory governments, economies, societies obviously produces an internationalist response.
But serious problems afflict both of these responses. Isolationism protects us from involvement with undesirable governments, but it prevents us from helping their citizens. Since most of the least developed countries, those whose citizens live in miserable poverty with per capita incomes of less than one hundred and fifty dollars a year, also live under autocracies of one kind or another, the purest response prevents us from helping precisely the people who most need help.
Some propose to solve this problem through ignorance. I heard a few years ago at Georgetown University, a presidential candidate pursuing his own campaign, uh, say, “We must stop helping countries with dictators. “We must give our assistance only to the poorest.”
The meliorist response, which makes assistant dependent– assistance dependent on in-internal improvement, naturally brings us into direct conflict with the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of others. That respect for some, however, is not conceived– that respect for that principle is not conceived by most Americans as a value of equal importance as the effort to improve the condition of people in a society. A more serious problem is confronted, however.
Do we want to deny, say, food to people who already suffer under bad government because they suffer under bad government? The fact is that even though country reports are done on all countries, there is not now, and never has been, any serious effort by any American State Department, I believe, or U.S. government administration, this one, the previous ones, to measure human rights performances across all the domains of rights listed in the 12 international covenants of human rights, and to award assistance on the basis of such measurements. Critics of our aid policy often complain that assistance is awarded on the basis of U.S. national interest and not on the basis of human rights.
We are re– we are ready enough. Sorry. We are ready enough to assert our national interest, it is asserted, when and to sacrifice human rights to it when that is required.
But others, even, uh, I believe, uh, correctly argue that a casual perusal of American aid programs and actual economic assistance figures under this administration and under previous administrations establishes that there is no significant correlation between any articulated conception of the US national interest on the one hand and the distribution of assistance on the other. Some unarticulated principles- You ought to take a good look at the aid programs before you start shouting about that. Some unarticulated principles of affinity seem to have a large effect, larger effect on our decision.
Mm. India and Bangladesh, for example, have been major recipients of U.S. economic assistance for many years, for decades, presumably because they contain so many desperately poor people. So does Pakistan. Interestingly enough, Pakistan’s government is sometimes adduced as grounds for assistance to Pakistan.
Uh, for not giving assistance to Pakistan, excuse me. But no one, so far as I’m aware, has proposed to end economic assistance to Bangladesh when its elected government was overthrown by a coup. Although that is exactly what we did in Bolivia a few years ago, of course.
No one, so far as I know, proposes applying to the nations of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, human rights standards regularly applied in this hemisphere. Monitoring human rights policy and its critics reveals, I think, without much serious question, that intangible political affinities turn out to be more important than readily discernible social, economic, political characteristics. It isn’t easy to understand why Tanzania, let’s say, has been a preferred aid recipient as compared to, say, the Cameroons or Zaire.
Both are headed in what may be charitably called– headed by what may be charitably called chieftain forms of government. Both governments have been relatively ineffective in managing their economies. Both have been intermittently repressive in dealing with their opponents.
A dozen such cases could readily be cited. If the human rights impulse is clear, we obviously do not ever desire to support repression. The fact is that we do not want to think much about it.
We don’t want to think much about the relations between trade, aid, banks, tanks, and repression. In Poland, for example, as well as in El Salvador. In Romania, for example, as well as in El Salvador.
The reason probably is that thinking hard about it brings us face to face with a sense of limits, limits to of our own power, limits of our own interests, limits of our own commitment, limits to our own seriousness. Perhaps it brings us face to face with the one thing we have sought above all, as a nation, I believe, to avoid, the appalling complexity of the relations between morality and power and foreign policy. Now that’s the end of the remarks I had planned to make today.
I would be very happy to entertain questions or hear comments if you would like to raise them.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
May I have the microphone?
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Yes.
(applause and cheering)
(applause and cheering)
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Lovely crowd
(applause and cheering)
(applause and cheering)
[MODERATOR]
Thank you, Ambassador. I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t help thinking everything is relative. The experience perhaps indicated to you that even working with Alexander Haig was tolerable.
(laughter)
The… If, if you will, uh, if you will raise your hands, I’d like to, uh, I’d like to accept, uh, questions. The, right here.
(unintelligible)
I- Uh, maybe I’ll repeat the question. Go ahead. All right.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Uh, you put quite a bit of analysis in your presentation. One can admit that
(clears throat)
in any real situation, a balance of characteristics will emerge as the real way foreign policy is conducted. You had a premise and a number of characterizations.
(coughs, clears throat)
For instance, you
(clears throat)
elaborated on what I might call, uh, the theory that there– that human rights is an indefinable quality, an indefinable class of concepts, and you use this in a way, I feel, to diffuse the concept. Now, I recall that the lecture is divided in two parts. Today, we’re talking in part about how we formulate this policy in the United States, how we conceive of this policy in the United States.
You gave a number of significant examples where you
(laughter)
felt that historically, the policy of this country, in your view, had been predicated principally on a concern for human rights. I would take some issue with that. I would say that looking at, uh, the Civil War experience, of course, the slaves were-
[MODERATOR]
Will you allow me to- Yes. Just, just… Good.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
The, the Civil War, the slaves were not free until it was over, or practically over. The Spanish-American War. Why did we get in the Second World War?
Because Britain was our friend. Now, that aside, in the, in the Vietnam issue, I must confess this. The moral issue, this comes again, when Nicholas establishes this World Court, the seminal moral issue about Vietnam for this country is 1956.
The seminal moral issue is not that we chose-
[MODERATOR]
Do you have enough of the questions?
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
…to protect South Vietnam as opposed to North Vietnam, because it interfered with the Geneva court procedure. That’s the seminal moral issue there. But the real thing that I wanted to ask Mr. Malone for-
[MODERATOR]
Just, just, uh, just another minute.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Granting me that, ultimately, there will be a balance between the various issues. If you– if I admitted to you that we will balance among this what you call the acute human rights issue, you must also admit that what you’ve started over with your non-interference provision is also susceptible of mediation. If we can say to Poland, as you rightly did, “You are suppressing your people’s rights.
We are going to, uh, have these draconian trade sanctions against you, how is it that we can possibly continue to allow ourselves to conduct a policy which effectively condones the situation in South Africa, which you and your- Okay…
(unintelligible)
[MODERATOR]
I think we have the, the- All right. Mr. Staker. Two sentences. Two- Two sentences. Two sentences would be enough.
(shushing)
Two sentences, please.
[MR. STAKER]
The issue of apartheid in South Africa, we know that those pe– that those laws in South Africa are comparable to the Nuremberg laws. They have existed. We must apply. We know if we cannot apply the rest of the world would–
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Sit down and do something! The Human Rights Court. We know that that is wrong. And you might–
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
I ask you to come here and speak– Will you not listen to me? Now recognize–
(applause and crowd chatter)
[MODERATOR]
I will, I will not repeat the question.
(laughter)
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Sure. I would, uh, I would say, first of all, what I talked about, the perception of the moral core in the United States, what… I was using language like I regularly do in political science classrooms.
I– you know, if you think about Harold Lasswell’s description of political a-activity, for example, politics is an activity which is always conducted in the name of some conception of the public good. That conception of the public good I take to be the moral core of a given society. Every society has one, it seems to me, in terms of given this kind of usage.
That’s even the… moral core may be diabolical, or it may be virtuous, uh, but it makes sense professionally to use language that way. I think that the moral core, that is, our vision of the public good in this country, has always very profoundly involved individual rights and individual freedoms. And our emphasis in this country has historically been on legal and personal rights, of course, and political rights associated with democracy.
I think that is sensible. What I meant to be saying in my prepared text was that our human rights policy is based on a very different conception of rights than is present in our traditional civil and legal and political rights. It’s much broader.
It’s based on the international covenants, which are very much broader. It leads to a very great deal of ambiguity. And, uh, it is certainly the case that it, it, it is not evenly applied.
That’s one of my points, is that it isn’t evenly applied. In the case of Poland and South Africa. That’s an interesting contrast because I think in both cases, the, there isn’t very much, uh, punitive, uh…
There aren’t very many significant punitive, uh, sanctions associated, uh, with our relations with either government because of, uh, rights questions. And we– With South Africa, we have an arms embargo which has been in effect for a decade, which was passed by the Security Council of the United Nations and has been observed by, uh, virtually all major nations. A couple of European nations, a couple of our good friends have regularly violated it.
We have not. We have no inclination to sell arms to Poland either, I may add. That’s, uh– And, uh, therefore, you could say, well, it’s equal in that respect.
On credit, a very great deal of credit has been extended by American banks to both Poland and to South Africa. Uh, a very great deal of trade is carried on with both Poland and South Africa. So, uh, without having done a detailed comparison by, you know, figures and indicators, my, uh, rough guess would be that, uh, it’s probably reasonably similar.
And probably in both cases, there are not very many sanctions attached to the repression of human rights in those countries, either in this administration or in the previous ones.
[MODERATOR]
Question? Yes. No, on, uh, back, uh, someone from there.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Um, this is regarding your discussion of the ambiguity, the definition of human rights. If your position is such an ambiguous character through all of these human rights, um, the list you’re mentioning, does that allow us to continue aid to certain regimes,
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
and I’ll take, for example, El Salvador and, uh, Guatemala? I don’t think, frankly, that there are any criteria that you or I could formulate here today which would, uh, that– which would not permit us to– on the basis of which we would eliminate aid to El Salvador. We don’t, by the way, we don’t advance any aid to Guatemala.
There hasn’t been any aid for Guatemala for a long time. But El Salvador, let’s say. That’s…
Well, let me just say, look, to the very best of my know-knowledge-
(laughter)
there is no US aid for Guatemala. There is obviously a very significant amount of US aid for El Salvador, for Honduras, and some other countries in the region. Uh, I can’t think of, uh, grounds on which we could eliminate, of principle on which we could eliminate that aid to El Salvador, which principles would not also- Which principles would not also lead to the elimination…
Why don’t, why don’t you wait a minute. Let me finish my sentence, and then you talk, huh? They– It would involve eliminating aid to most countries of Africa, a large number of countries in both Asia and the Middle East.
Uh, you know what I mean? That’s the way it is. That’s, uh…
We might decide we didn’t want to give any aid to in, you know, countries which, uh-
(crowd chanting: 40,000 dead)
(crowd chanting: 40,000 dead)
(crowd chanting: 40,000 dead)
(crowd chanting: 40,000 dead)
(crowd chanting: 40,000 dead)
Would, uh– Do you want to– Would you like to hear the end of the answer? Yes. Please.
You know, if it’s– Speaking of 40,000 reminds me of 40 countries. I have spoken in universities in probably 40 countries, and I– You might be interested in knowing that this is a unique experience for me. There is no place that I have been in the world, no place that I have been in the world in which there has been so significant a group interested in denying free speech and discussion as here at Berkeley today.
That’s, uh, it. I did, however, appreciate you letting me finish my prepared presentation, although I must say you, you sure, uh, diminished my pleasure in doing so, yeah. Fine, sir.
Yeah. Okay.
(laughter)
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
This administration is supportive of progress—
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
yeah,
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
of human rights in El Salvador. At the same time, we’re very critical of human rights in Nicaragua.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Yeah.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
How would you compare progress and absolute human rights in Nicaragua from Somoza to Sandinista and compare with El Salvador?
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Um, well, that’s a good question. I, uh, that’s a serious question, I think, which deserves serious—a serious consideration and a serious answer. The fact is that human rights, if we’re talking about le–
What I would rather do is specify which rights we’re talking about. If we’re talking about legal and political rights, they… Ah, then it is quite clear that neither under Somoza nor under what in Costa Rica they call Los Comandantes, yes, uh, in Sandinista, Nicaragua, Do the people of Nicaragua enjoy legal and political rights which we claim as the, you know, uh, our birthright, which we think all people should enjoy?
That’s just a fact. They didn’t enjoy them under Somoza. They don’t enjoy them today.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
You’re a liar.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
That’s, uh-
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
You’re a liar.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Well, anybody who thinks that they… I don’t know, you think that they did enjoy them under Somoza? Is that the point? Yeah. No.
[MODERATOR]
Uh,
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
because if you think that they do enjoy them today, then you obviously haven’t read the decrees of the government, and you’re unaware- which are very explicit.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
There’s no platform.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Which, for example, are very explicit. Oh, yes, there is.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Uh- Yeah, platform.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
They’re, they’re very explicit, and they, for example, provide for prior censorship. They also provide, if you don’t know that, then you haven’t read those decrees. They’re very explicit about that.
They don’t provide for access. They provide for very close state control of media, very close state control of, um, assembly organizations, for example. You remind me, by the way, some of you, of the divine mobs in Nicaragua, if I may say so.
That’s what they’re called, you know, here. Uh- Let me- They shove down people.
[MODERATOR]
Let me take one more question.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Okay. Where’s your coffee?
[MODERATOR]
Yes, the, uh, in the stripe, looked like a striped shirt.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
You spoke of, in, in your historical statement, you were talking about the United States commitment to, um, morals and human rights-
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Right.
[AUDIENCE MEMBER]
Yeah, in various wars and such. I was wondering if you could, uh, analyze the Spanish-American War in terms of our human rights commitment.
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
See… I’m afraid that you didn’t understand my point. I wasn’t talking- Yeah, I don’t.
I would be happy to explain it to you, if you like. I’m a political scientist, and I use language the way Political scientists usually do. And I was talking about the language and terms in which our wars were justified.
I was not, in fact, saying that, you know, this is the case existentially. I was saying, this is the way American presidents and American secretary of states, American journalists in the period and so forth, have talked about these wars and have justified them. I do believe, as a matter of fact, that the Spanish-American War wa- is a, is a more ambiguous case.
I did not cite it because I think it’s a more ambiguous case. Even then, however, there was a tendency to justify the war as an effort to provide, you know, uh, rights to Cubans. And if you just look at the historical documents of the period, I think you’ll find that a fairly, uh, accurate description.
[MODERATOR]
Ambassador Kirkpatrick, on behalf of the Chancellor, on behalf of the Graduate Council, and I know the vast majority– the vast majority of those who came here, we deeply appreciate your coming to Berkeley, your reasoned and thoughtful remarks, and particularly your courtesy and graciousness in completing this lecture. We thank you.
(applause)
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Thank you very much.
[MODERATOR]
You’re welcome.
[PROTESTORS]
No justice, no peace!
[JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK]
Thanks.
[PROTESTORS]
What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!
(cheering and applause)
No justice, no war! USA, shut it down! No justice, no war! USA, shut it down! No justice, no war! USA, shut it down! No justice, no war! USA, shut it down!
(laughter)