Natural Allies
Jimmy Carter’s Human Rights Policy and the
United Nations
Laura Ornée
10003449
July 7, 2017
Advisor: Dr. Ruud van Dijk
University of Amsterdam
2
Contents
Introduction 3
Domestic Action 8
The UN System 16
Human Rights in Foreign Policy 23
Epilogue 46
Conclusion 53
Sources 56
3
Introduction
On January 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter spoke soothing words that contrasted with the icy wind lashing the crowds assembled in front of the Capitol. He promised a new morality for a country that had lost faith in its leadership after the bloody Vietnam war and the political scandal of Watergate that uncovered the nasty underbelly of its previous government, led by Nixon. ‘Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together,’ he beseeched the people, ‘confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right.’ After a few first hesitant claps, applause swelled into a crescendo of appreciation after this conciliatory statement.1 The American people desperately needed to believe in their own decency and the peanut farmer from Georgia, with his humble words that sounded almost like a sermon, could provide that belief.
The road to absolution, according to Carter, was human rights. His election was the culmination of a growing movement, not only in the United States, but worldwide, demanding rights earned merely by the virtue of being human, demanding protection from the government instead of by it. Human rights abuses by authoritarian regimes in Chile, Argentina, Greece and elsewhere sparked mass protests in the early 1970s and politicians in the US jumped on the activist bandwagon. Passionate Congressmen such as Donald Fraser campaigned for human rights considerations in foreign policy, but Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and especially National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger resisted vigorously. In 1976, the presidential election showed there was no longer a place for Kissinger’s realpolitik in the White House and Carter, in his inaugural speech, earnestly proclaimed: ‘Our commitment to human rights must be absolute.’
In recent years historians have started to unravel the phenomenon of the human rights boom in the 1970s. The debate was kicked off by Samuel Moyn, who posed in The Last Utopia that the human rights idea as we now know it does not have a long history, often described as originating in the 18th century and gaining prominence after the Holocaust, but rather it was redefined in the 1970s.2 Other authors have followed suit and explored this idea, including historians of American politics and foreign relations. Barbara Keys, for instance, agreed with Moyn in Reclaiming American
Virtue that the seventies were the human rights decade and argued that the discourse could become
1
Cover photo: Jimmy Carter and Kurt Waldheim on October 5, 1977, UN photo/Teddy Chen, available at:
http://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/1097/1097092/ [accessed July 6, 2017]. For a video of Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, see: ‘January 20, 1977: inaugural address,’ University of Virginia, Miller Center, url:
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-20-1977-inaugural-address [Accessed: June 5, 2017]. For a transcript of Carter’s speech, see: The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Hereafter referred to as: Papers of the Presidents), Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 1, ‘Inaugural Address of President Jimmy Carter,’ January 20, 1977 (Ann Arbor, 2005) 1-4.
2 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in the 1970s (New York, 2010). For the orthodox view see: Lynn
4 popular because of the horrors of the Vietnam war. For American liberals, it was a source of guilt, while for conservatives the horror lay in the fact that the US was shamefully defeated.
Other authors have explored Jimmy Carter’s human rights based foreign policy and usually concluded it was inconsistent, incoherent and ineffective and one of the reasons he left office as one of the most unpopular presidents ever. Over the past two decades, however, a new regard for his presidency has surfaced. Schmitz and Walker argued that Carter’s foreign policy was not weak or naïve, but well thought out and, although it was more successful in some cases than in others, it established an influential precedent not only for human rights considerations, but for a less bipolar view of the world in Cold War times as well.3 Daniel Sargent recently wrote about US foreign policy in the 1970s in A Superpower Transformed, judging Carter’s ‘more coherent’ than often thought.4 Kathryn Sikkink approached the subject from a political scientist’s point of view and judged that in Latin America Carter’s pressure on right-wing regimes did have some positive effects, especially in the cases of Chile and Argentina.5 The debate has not definitively swung to one direction yet, however, since one of the newest revisionist additions by Joe Renouard, Human Rights in American
Foreign Policy, again criticized Carter. Renouard argues he failed to explain his human rights policy
properly to the American public and even commends Reagan for devising a more far reaching and strategically coherent human rights policy in his second term.6
Although literature on human rights in the seventies has proliferated over the past decade, one glaring gap remains: The role of the United Nations, or the effect of the human rights boom on the organization, has been almost entirely neglected in the historiography of this period. It seems a strange oversight, considering the UN is now the most important institution for the promotion of human rights worldwide. The UN had been around for thirty-five years at the dawn of the decade in question and considering its central role in international politics right now, its development is vital to our understanding of the history of international relations. Yet, most of the literature on the UN, both in political science and history, focuses on the period after the Cold War, when the UN became significantly more active, finally freed from the deadlock of the two opposing super power vetoes in the Security Council.
In addition, the role of the US in the UN, and its policy towards the organization, have been mostly overlooked by historians. The US has always been the biggest contributor, by far, to the UN budget and yet the dominant impression of the US’s attitude towards the UN is either one of
3
David F. Schmitz and Vanessa Walker, ‘Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights: The Development of a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy’ in: Diplomatic History vol. 28, no. 1, 2004, 113-144.
4 Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s
(Oxford, 2015) 199, 231-4.
5
Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America (New York 2004).
6 Joe Renouard, Human Rights in American Foreign Policy, From the 1960s to the Soviet Collapse (Philadelphia,
5 hostility or lack of interest altogether. Most authors have ascribed this to the rapid decolonization process that started in the sixties. Former colonies became independent nations and one by one they joined the General Assembly on the East River in New York. By the 1970s they had become a majority, sharply decreasing the influence of the US and the West.7 As one former senator put it at the time, in a worried letter to Cyrus Vance, the GA ‘is loaded with people who hate America’s guts.’8
The apex of American hostility towards the UN was the UN ambassadorship of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who held the job for less than a year in 1975 and 1976. He felt the US was under pressure from the developing world’s majority, which grouped together in the Group of 77, or G-77, and pushed proposals the US strongly opposed. Throughout the seventies they tried to implement, for example, a ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO) to replace the Bretton Woods System, which in their opinion only benefited Western countries and especially the US. Another, successful, move was the equation of Zionism with racism in a UN resolution, a slap in the face of Israel and its ally the US. Moynihan fought hard against these ideas at the UN and his antagonistic, bombastic style gained him acclaim from the American public. However, the narrative of US disinterest or hostility at the UN often stops here and does not examine the profound change that occurred when Carter took office.
Gary B. Ostrower, writing about the relationship between the US and the UN over a fifty-year period, argued the UN was simply not important to the US and Carter’s human rights talk did not change that. When Reagan came to power, internationalism took a hit and became even more unpopular, signaled by the cuts in the UN budget by Congress. He did not see any increased interest in the UN until after the end of the Cold War.9 Glenda Sluga was somewhat more nuanced, painting a picture of a paradox in the seventies, with growing internationalism and globalism on the one hand, but increasing fragmentation and the assertion of states’ rights within the UN on the other. She found that Moynihan used his influence to draw the US away from the UN.10
None of the above-mentioned authors, however, wrote specifically about the 1970s or conducted large scale archival research into UN matters for that period. Two historians who did are Iain Guest, in 1990, and Nancy Mitchell, in 2016. In Behind the Disappearances Guest discussed the Dirty War in Argentina, conducted by the right-wing Videla government against leftist ‘subversives’ from around 1974 until 1983. He analyzed the diplomatic war Argentina waged simultaneously at the United Nations and examined the Americans’ role at the UN.11 Mitchell wrote in Jimmy Carter in
Africa about US policy in Africa under its 39th president and included the US’s efforts at the UN on
7
Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York, 2012) 305-317.
8
Yale University Archives, New Haven, Connecticut, USA,Cyrus R. and Grace Sloan Vance Papers, Gr. 1664 – SV – Box 52 – Folder 37, ‘Letter from Peter H. Dominick to Cyrus Vance,’ December 14, 1976.
9 Gary B. Ostrower, The United States and the United Nations, 1945-1995 (New York, 1998) 159-91. 10
Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia, 2013) 118-49.
11 Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations
6 the issue.12 Both authors concluded that, in the case of their specific area of policy, Carter gratefully used the UN system to complement his own bilateral human rights policies.
Ambassadors’ biographers, the last category of works about the issue, don’t entirely agree with each other about their subjects or their subjects’ time. According to Gil Troy, for instance, the US switched from a strong, confrontational attitude with Moynihan to a more cooperative, but weak position with Andrew Young and Donald McHenry. Troy lamented Young’s and McHenry’s unwillingness to fight tooth and nail to prevent more resolutions condemning Israel and found Reagan’s appointment of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was a more ‘Moynihan-style’ diplomat, an improvement.13 Kirkpatrick’s biographer, Peter Collier, was appreciative of her work too, writing that with her critical stance she took the ‘“Kick Me” sign off the back of the United States.’14 Young’s own biographer, Andrew J. DeRoche, was more positive about the ‘Civil Rights Ambassador,’ as he calls him. He argued his ambassadorship was successful, especially his efforts on human rights and Africa. He described his style as informal, but very outspoken and strong on issues concerning racism.15
This thesis intends to fill some of the gaps in existing literature. Using archival sources from, for instance, the Foreign Relations of the United States Collection, the United Nations Archives and the Cyrus Vance Papers, I will answer the question what role the United Nations played in US human rights policy under President Carter. I will also venture further in time to determine whether and how policy changed under Reagan, especially the first few years of his term, to discover any continuities or breaks with Carter’s measures and better assess their long-term influence. This research will shed more light on the relationship between the US and the UN at that time, but will also add to our incomplete understanding of Carter’s human rights policies. In addition, it will deepen comprehension of the development of the UN as an organization in a period that is usually overlooked, but held some significant changes.
I will discuss domestic policy action Carter took regarding the UN and then look at his efforts to improve the UN system, especially its human rights machinery. Finally, I will analyze the way the UN featured in Carter’s human rights centered foreign policy. Time and space constraints prevent me from tackling all aspects of this policy, so this chapter will focus on Latin America and Southern Africa, which both emerged as priority areas for Carter’s human rights policy. Countries like Argentina and Chile had experienced right-wing, military coups in the early 1970s and the juntas there engaged in gross human rights violations, including torture and disappearances, in the name of fighting leftist subversives. Before Carter came into office they did so with tacit support from the US,
12 Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Washington, 2016). 13
Gil Troy, Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism (Oxford, 2013) 220-232.
14 Peter Collier, Political Woman; The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick, (New York, 2012) 124. 15 Andrew J. DeRoche, Andrew Young, Civil Rights Ambassador (Wilmington, 2003).
7 which rather allied itself with abusive right-wing regimes than risk any leftist influence in the region. In Southern Africa, a major human rights issue was racism, in the form of apartheid in South Africa and Namibia and white minority government in Rhodesia. Here the US had supported the white governments, claiming they were bastions against communism in Africa. On both continents Carter reversed this policy, cut bilateral aid and criticized abusive regimes heavily.
8
Domestic action
Setting the Stage
After Jimmy Carter was elected, he set out to appoint his Cabinet members. The composition of his team signaled the importance of both human rights and the UN as an organization to promote those rights to Carter right away. First up was his new UN ambassador, Andrew Young. Young was a black civil rights leader from Georgia and an undiplomatically ‘blunt speaker’, according to the New York
Times, which interviewed him after rumors of his appointment started in December 1976. It became
clear immediately that Africa, especially apartheid in South-Africa, would be a point of focus for Young and the Carter administration. Young argued that in South-Africa the US had ‘unwittingly supported the worst leadership groups and as a consequence we have become party to a vast network of oppression. We have ignored real human needs.’16 While Young did not intend to vote South-Africa out of the UN, something that was up for discussion at the time, he firmly believed the US should ‘exact some sense of social responsibility’ about their affairs in the country.17
Another key appointment was that of Charles William Maynes as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Maynes’ former job had been Secretary of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy think-tank, and he was convinced of the importance of the UN, especially when it came to economic issues. He explained his views in an article in Foreign Policy about six months previous to his appointment:
‘Everyone understands that U.N. debates have little leverage in the “real world” of disarmament talks. […] If we turn to economic issues, the United States is faced with a completely different reality. There, […] the former hegemony enjoyed by Western countries like the United States has been significantly weakened (though not destroyed). The gap between U.N. rhetoric and the “real world” has significantly narrowed as a result.’18
Lastly, the new Secretary of State Cyrus Vance did certainly not feel unsympathetic towards the UN either. He had been chairman of the United Nations Association (UNA), a non-profit working for support of the United Nations’ ideals. He was also chairman of the board of directors of the United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC), which assists the UN in New York with its real
16
Peter Grose, ‘Andrew Young, In Line for U.N., A Blunt Speaker,’ New York Times, December 14, 1976.
17 Graham Hovey, ‘Conflict in the U.N. Role is Doubted by Young,’ New York Times, January 14, 1977. 18 Charles William Maynes, ‘A U.N. Policy for the Next Administration,’ Foreign Policy, 54:4 (1976) 806.
9 estate and development needs, right up until he was appointed Secretary of State.19 His strong belief in diplomacy was visible throughout his career and was in large part the reason for his resignation in 1980: he wanted to continue diplomatic efforts to free US hostages in the embassy in Iran, while Carter favored a rescue mission. Vance and Secretary-General (SG) Kurt Waldheim had already made each other’s acquaintance before he joined Carter’s government. They were on first name basis and the tone of their correspondence was almost always warm and friendly.20
The UN Political Affairs Division (PAD), within the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs (DPSA), was optimistic about Carter’s appointments and recognized them as a signal that his administration would attach greater value to the UN than previous governments. When the news about Maynes circulated, the chief of PAD sent a memo to the assistant of the SG saying: although ‘I imagine that the article by Maynes on a “UN Policy for the Next Administration” […] has been widely read on the 38th floor,’ the SG might appreciate another look at it in preparation of a meeting with Secretary of State Vance.21 One day later the PAD sent out a report about Carter’s expected foreign policy priorities, arguing that ‘the experience and orientation of senior appointees […] are such to suggest that greater utilization will be made of the United Nations as an instrument of dialogue and negotiation than in the past.’ The report mentioned Vance’s past experience with the UNA and named Ambassador Young and Maynes as important figures in the administration, quoting the latter’s Foreign Policy article.22 In addition, about a month into his Presidency, Carter invited Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to the White House in a rare gesture of respect to the office he held. He spent multiple days in Washington and talked to Carter for hours. As Waldheim himself correctly observed: ‘the timing of the visit was “a good omen for future cooperation between the United States and the United Nations.”’23
International Human Rights Treaties
One of the first policy actions Carter took was announcing he intended to sign and ratify the four most important international human rights treaties by the UN. The oldest was the Convention
19
Yale University Archives, Cyrus Vance Papers, Gr. 1664 – SIII – Box 39 – Folder 306, ‘Wartime technology to be made available for peacekeeping missions,’ 1970, 1, and Gr. 1664 – SIII – Box 39 – Folder 303, ‘Resignation letter from Vance to Mayor Abraham D. Beame,’ December 24, 1976.
20
UN Archives, New York City, New York, USA, S-0904-0046-0002, ‘Letter from Cyrus Vance to Kurt Waldheim,’ December 30, 1976.
21
UN Archives, 0904-0042-0006, ‘Memo from James S. Sutterlin to Ferdinand Mayrhofer-Grunbuhel,’ January 26, 1977. The reference to the 38th floor pertains to that level of the United Nations main building, where the Secretary General and his cabinet had their offices.
22 UN Archives, 0904-0042-0006, ‘Political Affairs Division, Foreign Policy Priorities of the Carter
Administration,’ January 27, 1977, 6.
23 ‘Carter gives Waldheim a Welcome Ceremony,’ New York Times, February 26, 1977, and James Reston,
10 on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948 and signed by the US, but never ratified by the Senate. Other treaties were the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, also signed but not ratified, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both not signed or ratified.24 Jessica Tuchman, head of the Global Issues Cluster of the National Security Council (NSC) and responsible for human rights policy in the NSC, identified action on these last three documents as ‘some immediate steps the United States could take in the UN to signal its intent to take serious action on human rights.’25 In February 1977 Carter instructed his staff to proceed with these efforts and in March he laid out his plan in his first major foreign policy address, given at the UN General Assembly.26
The choice of venue for this speech was an important gesture as well. A telegram to all diplomatic posts explained that the administration’s conscious ‘decision to deliver first major foreign policy speech at United Nations underlines major importance administration attaches to UN system.’27The goal of the speech was to take the ‘high ground’ in relations with other countries, to show that the US sought ‘sympathetic and mutually beneficial relationships’ and to give new impetus to work in international organizations.28
Although diplomats at the UN were reportedly pleased with Carter’s specific commitments, not everyone was convinced of their benefits.29 The New York Times editorial of March 20 complained that with his promise to ratify the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ‘Mr. Carter in fact reversed the policies of a decade without a word of explanation.’30 Tuchman, however, disagreed and called the Times editorial, in a memo to Brzezinski, ‘a cheap – and ill-informed – shot.’ She argued that previous policy had been one of inaction, but not
24 For UN treaties and their status, see: United Nations Treaty Collection, at: www.treaties.un.org 25
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, (hereafter referred to as FRUS), 1977-1980, Volume II, ‘Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs,’ Document 4, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ January 24, 1977 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 2013), ed. Kristin Ahlberg. For online access of the FRUS collection, see: https://history.state.gov/
26 FRUS, 1977-1980 Volume II, Document 16, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security
Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ February 26, 1977.
27
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, Document 26, ‘Telegram from the Department of State to all diplomatic and consular posts,’ March 21, 1977.
28
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume I, ‘Foundations of Foreign Policy,’ Document 25, ‘Action memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Affairs (Maynes) and the Director of the policy planning staff (Lake) to Secretary of State Vance,’ March 3, 1977 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2014), ed. Kristin Ahlberg.
29
Kathleen Teltsch, ‘U.N. Diplomats Pleased by Carter’s Specific Commitments,’ New York Times, March 19, 1977.
11 necessarily opposition towards the treaties.31 Ten days later Louis Henkin, one of the most influential scholars of international law, echoed this sentiment with a letter to the New York Times in reaction to the editorial, arguing for the importance of signing and ratifying the Covenants.32
Tuchman and Henkin might have disagreed with the critics, but Carter’s intention to become party to four treaties at once did represent a departure from previous policies. The US at that time had not ratified any major international human rights treaties and carefully guarded its sovereignty and that of its individual states on the matter. The last major opportunity for signing and ratifying treaties had been in 1968, the UN’s International Human Rights Year, but in spite of President Johnson’s encouragement and a ‘special invitation’ from the UN to countries that had not signed or ratified yet, not a single US ratification went through.33 The idea that the UN should not ‘interfere’ in countries’ domestic affairs was ingrained in the charter. Article 2 (7) reads: ‘Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.’34 Although the State Department made sure to add ‘reservations’ to the texts making them essentially in line with domestic laws already in place, the early action on the Covenants was a sure sign that this president was perhaps less anxious to strictly maintain the non-interference principle.
Politically, Carter’s plan was both a logical step and a bit of a gamble. Not being party to the treaties was a source of embarrassment for the US, which found itself outshone by the Soviet Union on a human rights issue. It was especially uncomfortable for this new administration, since it had made human rights a central aspect of its foreign policy. However, promising ratification when the Senate had never ratified any international human rights treaty before was risky, because it could damage Carter’s credibility if it failed. Anthony Lake, Director of the Policy Planning Staff, and Maynes noted this too and warned in a memo about the foreign policy address at the UN that ‘a danger to which we must be sensitive in drafting is the possibility of implying more than we can deliver.’35
This danger quickly became apparent with the effort on getting the Genocide Convention ratified. On May 23 Carter delivered a message to the Senate, urging the Senators to vote in favor of ratification, because it ‘would be a significant enhancement of the human rights commitments of
31
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 27, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ March 21, 1977.
32
Louis Henkin, ‘Letters: The Case for U.S. Ratification,’ New York Times, April 1, 1977.
33
William Korey, ‘Human Rights Treaties: Why is the U.S. Stalling?’ Foreign Affairs, 45:3 (1967) 414-424.
34 Charter of the United Nations and the Statute of the International Court of Justice (San Francisco, 1945), 3.
Available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf [Accessed: July 6, 2017].
35
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume I, Document 25, ‘Action memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Affairs (Maynes) and the Director of the policy planning staff (Lake) to Secretary of State Vance,’ March 3, 1977.
12 this nation.’36 However, action on the issue was slow to take off after that. By June, Brzezinski worried that the Genocide Convention was
‘in pretty serious trouble on the Hill, and will not be ratified without strong help from the White House. Moreover, the human rights groups are watching what we do very carefully to see whether the Administration will push hard for this, or whether we will simply send it up and allow it to die, as has happened so many times before. Therefore, if the vote fails, the Administration will get a lot of criticism on this score, and the President will be accused again of “backing off” on human rights.’37
In October, still nothing had happened and Tuchman was annoyed that ‘we haven’t really tried’ with the Convention and people were starting to notice.38 That same month, two weeks after the opening of the General Assembly of the UN for that year, Carter signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It was a ‘low-key’ affair accompanied by a short, five-minute speech, that was not particularly fiery according to the New York Times’ UN correspondent.39 Carter also gave a foreign policy speech in the General Assembly, like in March, but this time he didn’t mention human rights once, although in an early proposal from Lake human rights did feature as a topic.40
So clearly Carter and his staff were approaching the issue a little more carefully by now. One of the reasons for the administration’s demure attitude on human rights at the opening of the General Assembly, the signing of the treaties and towards the Senate concerning the Genocide Convention was that the Panama Canal treaties would also be up for ratification soon. These treaties between Panama and the US would regulate the ownership and use of the Panama Canal and were of critical importance to the Carter’s foreign policy. They also drew considerable resistance from conservatives (Ronald Reagan, among others) and needed a strong lobbying effort from the White House to be steered through the Senate.41 Tuchman’s proposal was to ratify the Genocide Convention, the oldest of the four human rights conventions, first, to prove that the ‘Right wing can
36
State Department Bulletin, Volume LXXVI, No. 1983, June 27, 1977, ‘Message from President Carter,’ May 23, 1977, (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1977) 676.
37 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 80, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security
Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ October 10, 1977.
38
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 57, ‘Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to the President’s Assistant for Domestic Affairs and Policy (Eizenstat), June 10, 1977.
39
Kathleen Teltsch, ‘U.S., fulfilling promise, signs 11-year-old pacts at U.N.,’ New York Times, October 5, 1977.
40 Papers of the Presidents, Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 2, ‘United Nations,’ October 4, 1977 (Ann Arbor, 2005)
1715-1723, and FRUS, Volume II, document 291, ‘Action Memorandum from the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Lake) to Secretary of State Vance,’ July 22, 1977.
41 Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, 2009) 95-106.
13 be defeated’ before introducing the Panama Canal treaties.42 She suggested an ‘all-out effort’ to get ratification during the fall session.43
However, there was some disagreement about tactics within the administration. In December Brzezinski wrote to the president that, although the Genocide Convention was very important as the administration’s first public human rights goal, its ratification ‘must of course wait until after Panama is resolved, but it should be attempted as soon as possible thereafter.’ Vice President Walter Mondale was even less eager to push hard for the Genocide Convention. He argued that after Panama, the Senate would probably move on to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), treaties between the US and the Soviet Union, and ‘it would be a mistake to make this [the Genocide Convention] the subject of a prolonged, controversial and emotional Senate debate.’44
Carter evidently agreed with Brzezinski and Mondale, because ratification of the treaty was pushed back, and kept being pushed back, in favor of other urgent matters for the Senate. Tuchman from the NSC and Patricia Derian, head of the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, remained strongly in favor of early action on ratification of the Genocide Convention and tried to impress the importance of the issue on the higher officials in the administration. They kept arguing that, for both Panama and SALT, ratification of the Convention would ‘be an important victory for the President’ that would make ratification of these other treaties easier. Tuchman reiterated: ‘if he wins on this, Carter will have achieved something that five previous Presidents have tried and failed to do, and that’s a powerful argument.’45
Another argument Tuchman and Derian used was that failure to ratify the Convention ‘seriously impairs our credibility in the human rights areas.’46 In August 1978 in the Soviet Union the newspaper Pravda had started a ‘propaganda campaign’ denouncing the US human rights policy as ‘solely for export’, because the country wouldn’t ratify any international treaties at home.47 Human rights organizations in the US were disappointed with Carter’s inaction as well and urged him to
42 FRUS, 1977-198, Volume II, document 80, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security
Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ October 10, 1977.
43
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 76, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ September 12, 1977.
44
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, Document 97, ‘Memorandum From Vice President Mondale to President Carter,’ December 7, 1977.
45 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 170, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Leslie
Denend of the National Security Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ November 20, 1978.
46 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 194, ‘Briefing memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Derian) to Secretary of State Vance,’ October 22, 1979.
47
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 161, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Robert Pastor of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski), August 23, 1978.
14 ratify all four Conventions as soon as possible.48 In a series of discussions between a group of NGOs and Derian’s Bureau for Human Rights in June 1979 about the administration’s human rights policy, which was seen as slowing down significantly, virtually all NGOs recommended ratification of the Conventions first as a sign human rights still mattered.49 Meanwhile, criticism from the UN was growing too. In late 1979, they established a ‘working group’ to examine the ‘circumstances’ that prevented governments from signing or ratifying international human rights treaties. Derian and Maynes informed Warren Christopher of the Interagency Group on Human Rights and Foreign Assistance that the US could expect a letter from the Secretary-General asking for explanations and an ‘international and public spot-light on our non-ratification record in a forum where we already have been subjected to considerable embarrassment on this score.’50
Carter kept occasionally mentioning the need for ratification of the Genocide Convention and other international human rights treaties at appropriate occasions, like the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1978, but also at the State of the Union of 1979.51 However, a strong lobbying campaign from the White House never materialized and neither one of the four Conventions was ratified during Carter’s term. It was a clear choice to prioritize other efforts in the Senate, because multiple preliminary vote counts showed that ratification would probably have been possible with a push from the administration.52 Carter did add another treaty waiting for Senate action to the list: The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which the US signed on July 17, 1980, at the World Conference of Women in Copenhagen.53
So Carter was aware of the symbolic value of signing and ratifying international human rights treaties and for that reason made it an early priority for his presidency. By lending his autograph to three new treaties during his term, he broke with previous US policy and made an important addition to his own human rights policy. However, despite continued urging for ratification from
48 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 178, ‘Letter from the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs (Derian) to William Butler, David Hinkley and Jerome Shestack,’ January 22, 1979.
49
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 187, ‘Briefing memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Derian) to Acting Secretary of State Christopher,’ June 13, 1979.
50
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 193, ‘Briefing memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Derian) and the Assistant Secretary of State for International
Organization Affairs (Maynes) to the Deputy Secretary of State (Christopher),’ October 4, 1979.
51
Papers of the Presidents, Jimmy Carter, 1978, book 2, ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Remarks at a White House Meeting Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Declaration’s Signing,’ December 6, 1978, (Ann Arbor, 2005) 2163, and 1979, book 1, ‘The State of the Union,’ January 25, 1979, (Ann Arbor, 2005) 162.
52 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 170, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Leslie
Denend of the National Security Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ November 20, 1978.
15 certain members of the administration, like Tuchman and Derian, the White House’s enthusiasm for the ratification effort dwindled when other issues took center stage.
16
The UN system
Carter’s attitude towards the UN was a positive one and when he started his term he meant to follow a policy directed at strengthening the UN system and, especially, its human rights instruments. As Tuchman argued, ‘no other national or international organ has the same potential as the UN to advance the cause of human rights.’ However, ‘there are many in this country as there are in other nations who have become disillusioned with the United Nations. […] The way to disarm that disillusionment is to make the UN work better.’ The first ‘major steps’ she proposed, which Carter all included in his foreign policy address at the General Assembly in March 1977, were US support for the proposal to create a ‘High Commissioner for Human Rights’, a move of the UN human rights division back from Geneva to New York, ‘where the most active human rights non-governmental organizations are situated, and where the permanent press corps with its proddings and its disclosures can stimulate a more positive UN role,’ and ‘certain mechanisms’ to strengthen the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the Sub-Commission on Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and the Human Rights Committee.54
Shortly before Carter’s UN speech the Costa Ricans had reintroduced their proposal to create a High Commissioner for Human Rights, who would have full autonomy to research and bring attention to human rights abuses. They had first put the proposal forward in 1965 and the US had backed it then too, but not very enthusiastically. The main US objective then in supporting the establishment of a High Commissioner, was to ‘remedy [the] current imbalance in UN consideration [of] human rights issues.’ Because, in the State Department’s opinion, ‘presently most of almost all focus is on racial discrimination. Little attention [is] given [to] progress we have made or to human rights violations [in] other fields, such as Soviet treatment [of] Jews.’55 More than anything the High Commissioner would be a useful tool in the Cold War, but in 1967 the proposal was shut down in the General Assembly. Although the US had supported it, the Mission in New York had been instructed ‘to refrain from taking any initiative in introducing or pressing the proposal, and to try to assure that any resolution adopted would be compatible with United States interests.’56 The US was in favor of the new attempt as well and pursued it with a lot more zeal. Carter pledged his support for the
54 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 16, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security
Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ February 26, 1977.
55
FRUS, 1964-1968, Volume XXXIII, document 344, ‘Circular telegram from the Department of State to certain Missions,’ March 12, 1965 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 2004) eds. David E. Humphrey, James E. Miller.
56
FRUS, 1964-1968, Volume XXXIII, document 347, ‘Memorandum from the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Read) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),’ April 20, 1965.
17 proposal in his speech and argued that ‘strengthened international machinery will help us to close the gap between promise and performance in protecting human rights.’57
Although Carter and his team were in favor of the Costa Rican proposal, doubt about its viability rose immediately. Paul Henze, deputy to Brzezinski, replied to Tuchman’s draft for Carter’s speech at the GA that he was ‘skeptical’ of the likelihood of obtaining agreement on the resolution: ‘I fear that a majority of UN members will find various reasons to oppose the creation of an Office of UN Commissioner for Human Rights. The Soviets will see it as an American attempt to create a new platform for meddling in their affairs; the Chinese can hardly support it; most Africans will be fearful of it; many Latin Americans and Asians too.’58
Henze turned out to be right, because a procedural motion put forward by Cuba in December 1977 referred the matter back to the Human Rights Committee, shelving it for at least a year. This move effectively meant the end of the resolution until 1993, when it was finally voted on and approved.59 However, the Carter administration remained hopeful that the High Commissioner post would be established soon. State Department instructions for the Mission in Geneva, seat of the Human Rights Commission, two months after the vote were clear: the proposal was not to be altered or amended and the US delegation should continue to strongly support the creation of the office as proposed in the original resolution.60 The US delegation did was what asked of them and ‘managed to keep the idea alive’ in the 34th session of the Human Rights Commission, in 1978, but not much more.61 By June the delegation tentatively questioned whether the idea of a High Commissioner was ‘still worth fostering after 15 years of effort, or should we think in terms of an amended proposal and a different strategy?’62 Still, the State Department’s instructions remained the same: keep expressing US interest for a mostly unaltered proposal for a High Commissioner.63
The tactic was not enough and, again, Carter failed to deliver on a promise he made in his speech at the General Assembly in 1977. This time it had more to do with difficult circumstances at the UN, where countries on both the left and right were nervous about creating a Human Rights
57 Papers of the Presidents, Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 1, ‘United Nations, Address before the General
Assembly,’ March 17, 1977 (Ann Arbor, 2005) 450.
58
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 16, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ February 26, 1977.
59
Theo van Boven, ‘The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: The History of a Contested Project,’ Leiden Journal of International Law, 20 (2007) 767-784.
60 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 116, ‘Telegram from the Department of State to the Mission at
Geneva,’ February 10, 1978.
61
FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 125, ‘Telegram from the Mission in Geneva to the Department of State,’ March 11, 1978.
62 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 146, ‘Telegram from the Mission in Geneva to the Department of
State and the Mission to the United Nations,’ June 9, 1978.
63 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 155, ‘Telegram from the Department of State to the Mission in
18 Commissioner with broad, autonomous power, than with a lack of effort by the administration. Regardless of causes, however, it was another possible win in the human rights area for the Carter administration that did not pan out.
Interest in the UN had not only increased in the executive branch, but Congress wanted to see a more involved policy as well. It was not surprising, given the activism Congressmen like Donald Fraser had shown in the early 1970s about human rights issues. Before Carter ever became president, some important human rights legislation, like section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 and the Harkin amendment of 1975, had already been pushed through against the wishes of Nixon, Kissinger and Ford.64 Now, an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal year 1978 required the government to ‘make a major effort toward reforming and restructuring the United Nations system so that it might become more effective in solving global problems.’ The president was to submit a report on his recommendations to the House.65
In March 1978 Carter complied with this provision and submitted the report Proposals for
United Nations Reform. It was based on recommendations by the State Department, included in the
document, which laid out six goals to help improve the human rights machinery at the UN, including the creation of a High Commissioner for Human Rights and a move back to New York for the Human Rights Division, although that was deemed unrealistic for the moment. Another measure was improvement and depoliticization of the special procedure under resolution 1503 from the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which allowed for private complaints about human rights abuses by citizens and organizations which were then reviewed by the Commission. Furthermore, the CHR should meet more often so it would be able to finish its long agenda and the same should be considered for the Sub-Commission on Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which was responsible for screening the petitions under 1503 and judging whether they formed a ‘gross and consistent pattern of violations.’ A last, long-term goal was the establishment of a Human Rights Council. The final report by the president was a less specific summary of the State Department’s recommendations. The proposals regarding the human rights machinery remained almost the same, but the idea of moving the human rights division back to New York was left out. 66
In October 1979, the Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the report and, as Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell concluded, citing a study by the Library of Congress, ‘the report of the President poses no major innovative reforms of the United Nations. It does, however, suggests
64
Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue, 165, 171-2,
65 H.R. 6689 (95th Congress): Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 1978, P.L. 95-105, section 503,
available at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/95/hr6689/text [Accessed July 4, 2017].
66
Proposals for United Nations Reform, Report pursuant to section 503 of the foreign relations authorization act, fiscal year 1978 (Public Law 95-105) to the Committee on Foreign Relations Unites States Senate, March 1978 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1978) 31-35.
19 some small, practical steps for reform in several areas.’ Multiple representatives from NGOs and universities agreed, arguing that on some points the US was too pessimistic, but on others too optimistic. The proposal for a High Commissioner, for instance, was a fine initiative, but according to one representative it had been an ‘error in judgment’ to bring it up in the 32nd General Assembly as it had little chance of success at that time. On the other hand, setting as a long-term goal the creation of a Human Rights Council, or adding human rights to the responsibilities of the Trusteeship Council, was thought a bit unambitious. Even though it required an amendment to the Charter this proposal might have more support.67
Although most of the proposed reforms from the report, like the move to New York and the establishment of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, died a silent death in Carter’s term, the Human Rights Commission and its 1503 procedure did become more effective. It did not necessarily reform, but set some important precedents. From 1978 on, for instance, the confidentiality protocol of the 1503 procedure was less strictly interpreted. The case of Equatorial Guinea was made public entirely and the Chairman of the Commission publicly announced which countries were being reviewed under 1503 in 1979 and 1980, making the process more threatening to violating governments.68
One action that did not seem in line with Carter’s UN policy was the US’s withdrawal from the International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency from the ECOSOC which concerns itself with international labor issues, like standard setting and workers’ rights, and had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. In the early seventies, the new ILO director appointed a Soviet citizen to the post of assistant director general, which the US strongly opposed, it condemned Israel for its occupation of Arab territory and granted observer status to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). These three slights, combined with the bothersome third world majority in the agency, led Kissinger to announce US withdrawal from the ILO. There was a two-year notice period for such a move, which meant the final decision was to be made by the new administration. As Paul Masters argues, Carter was not necessarily in favor of withdrawal, but was pressured by the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest federation of unions and the organization that selects the labor delegate to the ILO. Vance, Brzezinski and Young opposed withdrawal, all member states from the European Community urged the US to remain in the organization, and Secretary General of the UN Kurt Waldheim sent multiple
67 United Nations Reform, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate,
Ninety-Sixth Congress, First Session on Various United Nations Reform Proposals, October 26, 1979 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1980) 2, 50-2.
68 M.E. Tardu, ‘United Nations Response to Gross Violations of Human Rights: The 1503 Procedure,
20 letters to both Carter and Vance pleading with them to remain in the ILO.69 However, pressure from labor organizations and a firm majority in Congress in favor of withdrawal were enough for Carter to announce the US was leaving the ILO on November 1, 1977.70
In addition, although Carter would rather remain in the ILO, he could spin withdrawal as a positive action for human rights. The original letter of intent to withdraw that Kissinger had sent to the ILO stated four reasons: Erosion of the tripartite representation, selective concern for human rights, disregard of due process and the increasing politicization of the organization. Of course, these were politically correct translations of the reasons mentioned before driven more by national interest, but Carter could continue this letter’s reasoning and announced that when the ILO would improve on these issues, the US would return. It was an effective measure, considering the US provided 25% of the ILO’s annual budget. The organization pushed through some reforms and in 1979, the committee monitoring progress at the ILO judged that enough had been done for the US to return. Without much ado, it rejoined in early 1980. It was not the first and certainly not the last time the US used its leverage as biggest financial contributor to the UN in this fashion.
Throughout Carter’s term, pressure from Congress to cut funding to the UN for various reasons rose. One of the big problems on the Hill was the impression that the UN did not effectively manage its resources and wasted money. The financial situation of international organizations is often a point of debate, not only for the UN, but for others like the EU as well and probably always will be. It was no different in the seventies and before Carter started his term the problem was already being discussed in Congress. On February 6, 1977, a Senate Committee led by seasoned Democrat Abraham Ribicoff presented a report that was critical of international organizations, among which the UN:
‘All too often the organizations, headquartered in extravagant and luxurious surroundings, are ineffective, over-staffed with high-paid officials, under-represented by United States personnel, uncertain in their purposes, and unduly repetitious of the activities of other organizations. The excessive salaries of UN officials need review. The result is that worthwhile goals of some international organizations are not being achieved.’71
Congress’s concern increased after 1977. Part of the reason for this was the economic situation in the US at the time. The country saw a strong increase in inflation during Carter’s
69
UN Archives, S-0904-0044-003, Letter from Waldheim to Carter, October 31, 1977, and S-0904-0046-0002, Letter from Waldheim to Vance, August 31, 1977.
70 Paul Masters, ‘The International Labor Organization: America’s Withdrawal and Reentry,’ International Social Science Review, 71:3/4 (1996) 14-26.
71 UN Archives, S-0904-0046-0006, Speech by Abe Ribicoff, ‘International Organizations,’ February 6, 1977,
21 presidency and since the UN received all its contributions in US dollars, it needed to increase its requests for funds with the value of the dollar at a low point. Conservatives had always been complaining about the UN for multiple reasons, including that the organization was anti-American, anti-Israel, dominated by developing countries or simply not effective. But now liberals started worrying too and conservatives saw an opportunity: Republican Senator Jesse Helms introduced an amendment to the Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1979, cutting 27.7 million dollars from the UN budget, in September 1978, which Carter grudgingly signed.72
It was an embarrassing situation for Carter, since the amendment caused the US to no longer be in compliance with legally binding obligations to the UN. However, the passing of the amendment, just like the episode concerning the ILO, were not necessarily signs of decreased interest in the UN by Congress. If anything, it showed the House and Senate were anxious to ‘improve’ the UN so the US could become more involved. Ribicoff expressed this sentiment when he presented his report: ‘While the international organizations must improve their own operations, we must improve the way we participate in these organizations as well. In the past our government neglected this increasingly important side of international relations. We have been paying the price for our neglect in the past few years.’73
Congress’s wish did not fall on deaf ears and the White House started pressing for budgetary restraint and balancing of personnel with Secretary-General Waldheim early. In February 1977, Vance, in a discussion about a change in leadership at the World Food Programme, explained to the SG that ‘his government placed a good deal of importance on the continuity of American participation in the work of this programme. This was an especially important argument vis-à-vis the Congress which has to allocate US contributions.’74 When Carter visited the General Assembly in October 1977 he personally raised the financial issues with Waldheim in a private meeting, stating he was ‘quite concerned whether United Nations handling of its budgetary questions was as efficient as it should be’ and asking for an analysis of ‘dormant or obsolete’ activities of the UN which he could present to Congress.75
Although Carter agreed with the need for frugality at the UN, he fought hard to keep the US budget for the organization at a workable level. The administration started pushing for the repeal of the Helms amendment right away and sent its officials to hearings about the matter. Young, for
72 Papers of the Presidents, Jimmy Carter, 1978, book 2, ‘Departments of State, Justice and Commerce, the
Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 1979,’ October 10, 1978.
73
UN Archives, S-0904-0046-0006, Speech by Abe Ribicoff, ‘International Organizations,’ February 6, 1977, page 3.
74 UN Archives, S-1808-0021-0018, Notes on a meeting in the State Department, in Washington D.C. on
February 26, 1977, at 10 a.m., page 8.
75 UN Archives, S-0904-0044-0003, Record of a meeting in the Secretary-General’s office on Wednesday,
22 example, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for State, Justice, Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations on April 2,1979. He echoed the criticism of the conservative approach to the UN that the Ribicoff report had articulated:
‘It has been hard for some to accept that the UN can no longer be the instrument of Pax Americana. Instead of trying to effectively cope with a new constellation of power within the UN, they remained startled that we do not command automatic majorities and bewildered that our good intentions and designs are not always taken at face value. They became angry rather than seriously reformulating our policies and approaches to the UN. And these reactions put us right in the center of the minefield.’76
Evidently, he and others had been persuasive enough, because a week after his statement the House had voted in favor of freeing funds for the UN. By August a relieved Carter could announce to the UN that US resources were available again and sent a ‘buoyant’ Young to Waldheim, check in hand.77
Although the executive branch had won this particular battle, the war over UN funds with Congress continued. Later that year, for instance, the Kemp-Moynihan amendment was attached to the appropriations bill, preventing the US from paying its share of the funds for liberation movements like the Palestine Liberation Organization.78 Congress kept pushing, both for financial reform and for the use of US funds as leverage to advance national foreign policy interests within the organization. Carter and his Cabinet continued to urge the UN for reform, but the crisis continued and the fight over funds with Congress even intensified under Reagan. The Carter White House was invested in reforming the UN to make it more effective, especially when it came to the human rights machinery, but booked only a few small successes in this area.
76
Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year
1980, Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate,
Ninety-Sixth Congress, First session on H.R. 4392, part 3 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1979) 2557.
77
‘U.S. Makes Payments On Money Owed U.N.,’ New York Times, September 1, 1979.
78 Akiko Fukushima, ‘The Uses of Institutions: The United Nations for Legitimacy,’ in: G. Ikenberry, T. Inoguchi
23
Human Rights in Foreign policy
Carter inherited some difficult foreign policy puzzles from previous presidents, but promised a new style of dealing with them. He narrowly defeated President Ford in the 1976 election, pledging both to be tough on the Soviet Union and to make human rights a key aspect of his foreign policy. Authors generally divide his foreign human rights policy in two periods: the first two years of his presidency, in which his administration pursued human rights quite actively, and the last two years, when the White House became distracted by other major foreign policy concerns, such as the SALT II negotiations, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran hostage crisis and the leftist revolution in Nicaragua.79
The first period was characterized by cuts in aid to multiple countries, most notably in Latin America (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador) but to others as well, like the Philippines, Ethiopia and South Africa. In addition, Carter pressured the Soviet Union on human rights issues and spoke out on behalf of dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, while assuming a strong role in the process of the Helsinki Accords.80 This treaty was the final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and was signed by the US, Canada, the Soviet Union and most European states. The bulk of the treaty covered security issues, but it also had a human rights section that turned out to be, against both Soviet and US expectations, quite powerful, as it developed into a ‘manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement,’ as John Lewis Gaddis argues.81 Sarah B. Snyder has shown that under Carter, the US became a major advocate for compliance at the CSCE follow-up meeting in Belgrade (1977-1978) and it joined European countries in establishing Helsinki committees.82
After 1979, however, a decline was visible in Carter’s human rights activities. Détente was crumbling and Cold War considerations took priority over human rights more and more often, as Carter went along with Brzezinski’s view that national security and the fight against communism were bigger issues.83 Most of the criticism of Carter’s human rights policy focuses on the inconsistency this produced. Countries that were simply too important to national interests, like Iran with its oil supplies or South Korea with its dangerous communist neighbors, did not have to be afraid of rigorous arms or aid cut offs despite their human rights violations. In other countries, like the closed off society of China, the US believed it did not have enough influence or information to
79
Renouard, Human Rights in American Foreign Policy, Sikkink, Mixed Signals, Glad, An Outsider in the White
House.
80 Renouard, Human Rights in American Foreign Policy, 129, 101.
81 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005) 190. 82
Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki
Network (New York, 2011) 81-114.
24 make a real difference in the human rights situation. The most painful omission in Carter’s human rights policy was Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge regime carried out a genocide there, but fear of entanglements in South-East Asia, a lack of sway over the regime and a wish to prevent Soviet influence in the region prevented Carter from acting forcefully.84 This did not mean that Carter did not press these countries for reforms, but he did not back up his diplomacy with material threats, like he did in many other countries.85
Historians have not really uncovered the nature of Carter’s human rights policy at the UN regarding violating nations yet, leaving out an important aspect of both his foreign policy and his human rights policy. This chapter will discuss his UN policy for Argentina and Chile in Latin America and for South Africa, Namibia and Rhodesia in Southern Africa. In both regions Carter’s human rights policy and his policies at the UN were very active. His objective to consider human rights in foreign policy and reverse the realpolitik designed by Kissinger in the years before him went hand in hand with closer cooperation with and within the United Nations. In September 1978, James Sutterlin of the Department of Political Affairs at the UN attended a closed meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, where Brzezinski laid out an overview of Carter’s foreign policy. He spoke about human rights, non-proliferation, improvement of North-South relations, and cooperation with countries outside of the traditional alliances. Sutterlin sent a summary of the speech to the Secretary-General, with the comment that ‘somewhat surprisingly it was heavily oriented towards subjects we tend to identify with the United Nations.’86
Latin America
One of the priority areas for Carter was Latin America, where multiple countries were now run by right-wing dictators who had come to power with the help of the US. The most poignant examples, when Carter started his term, were Chile and Argentina. In 1973 Chile’s democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, was toppled by the right-wing general Augusto Pinochet with covert assistance from the CIA.87 The US was uneasy with having another socialist country, besides Cuba, in the Western Hemisphere and followed a policy of support for right-wing governments. The Chilean coup sparked international outrage, because it was the first country where a socialist was freely and fairly elected president and although US involvement could not be proven yet it was
84 Kenton Clymer, ‘Jimmy Carter, Human Rights and Cambodia,’ Diplomatic History, 27:2 (2003) 246-7. 85 Renouard, Human Rights in American Foreign Policy, 136-148.
86
UN archives, 0904-0043-0001, ‘Memo from James S. Sutterlin to Ferdinand Mayrhofer-Grunbuhel: Brzezinski’s interpretation of US foreign policy,’ September 29, 1978.
25 suspected right away by critics.88 Not much later, in 1974, death squads from the ‘Anticommunist Alliance’ emerged in Argentina and in 1976 a military junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla put itself in place in Buenos Aires with tacit approval from the US.89 In both countries people who were suspected of leftist leanings were persecuted relentlessly, making them a priority for Carter’s human rights policy.
Carter had created two new agencies in his administration to deal with human rights in foreign policy, the Bureau for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, led by Patricia Derian, and the Interagency Group on Human Rights and Foreign Assistance, informally called the ‘Christopher Group’ after its chief, Warren Christopher. Derian’s first foreign trip as head of the Bureau was a tour of Latin America to a number of countries all led by right-wing regimes targeted by Amnesty International for serious human rights abuses.90 Another US official visited Latin America in August 1977 as well, Allard K. Lowenstein. He was the newly appointed representative of the US to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva for the 1977 session and alternate representative for the 1978 session and was another strong addition to Carter’s human rights team. Especially Jessica Tuchman liked his work:
‘I don’t know who was responsible for his appointment, but it was a good one. […] Lowenstein took the unusual course of not assuming at the beginning that our efforts would be doomed to failure, and succeeded remarkably well in energizing the meeting and changing its tone. There were two votes on which even such traditional clients as Cuba and Syria refused to support the Soviet position limiting human rights investigations.’91
Lowenstein resigned after 1978 to run for Congress, but his active attitude in the Human Rights Commission was continued by his successors, Edward M. Mezvinsky and, especially, Jerome Shestack.92
Derian and Lowenstein warned governments on their trip that from now on their human rights record would have an impact on bilateral relations with the US and the administration soon started to follow up on these threats.93 Military aid and sales to Chile were cut off and economic aid reduced significantly. Military aid to Argentina was halved, after which the junta angrily rejected the
88
Bernard Gwertzman, ‘U.S. Expected Chile Coup But Decided Not to Act,’ New York Times, September 13, 1973 and ‘Demonstrators in Argentina Charge U.S. With Chile Role,’ New York Times, September 13, 1973.
89
Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 111.
90
Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue, 262.
91 FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume II, document 38, ‘Memorandum from Jessica Tuchman of the National Security
Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski),’ April 20, 1977.
92
Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War against Human Rights and the United Nations, (Philadelphia, 1990) 190.
