PBS – Joshua Foust: Why human rights are not paramount
In his weekly column for PBS Need to Know, ASP fellow Joshua Foust writes about the difficulty in balancing the promotion of human rights and national interests abroad.
U.S. policy makers are facing a choice in Central Asia that is very similar to Chancellor Merkel’s. The U.S. decision to reengage with the government of Uzbekistan has been controversial, and has sparked condemnations from the same human rights groups that protest Merkel’s decision. Such condemnations, however, raise a very basic question: What can be done? One hears, routinely, from rights activists that the U.S. always has a choice, and that is has leverage, but one hears very rarely what those choices are or what that leverage is.
The sad reality is, European and U.S. leaders do not have many options left in their foreign policy arsenal these days when it comes to Central Asia. Leaders face difficult situations where they must choose between supporting beleaguered foreigners and risk losing power or protecting their own countries’ interests by overlooking human rights abuses. It shouldn’t be surprising that they choose their own country over another. And despite all the hand wringing, no one really has a good answer for what else could possibly be done.
