Contending Perspectives on Responding to Human Rights Abuses 393Henry Kissinger has warned, a wise realist policy maker would not be moved by senti-
ment alone or by personal welfare, but by the calculation of the national interest.^22 How
else can we explain why, on specific issues, one or more of the five permanent UN Secu-
rity Council members has exercised its veto, or has asserted that it would exercise its
veto, to prevent a concerted international response to egregious violations of human
rights, as occurred with the United States regarding Rwanda, China regarding Darfur,
and Rus sia regarding Syria?
While national interest is generally viewed in terms of security, it may be broader
than that, encompassing historical tradition or domestic values. The United States has
historically fought for human rights consistent with its domestic values. President
Franklin Roo se velt in 1941 affirmed, “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights
everywhere. Our support goes to those who strug gle to gain those rights and keep
them.” After World War II, Americans advocated punishing the guilty and, at the UN’s
founding conference, there was strong American support for including human rights
as a key area of responsibility. Yet, other U.S. actions have not followed. During the
Cold War, the United States supported anti- communist regimes, even those having
abusive human rights rec ords; the United States supported the South African white
regime. It failed to ratify many key human rights documents, including the statute on
the International Criminal Court. The realist explanation is that these actions were in
the national interest and consistent with protection of sovereignty.
Liberals would be more likely to advise state intervention in response not only to
genocide but also to less dramatic abuses. Liberals’ emphasis on individual welfare and
on the malleability of the state makes such intrusions into the actions of other states
more appealing to them. Like the realists, they may prefer that nongovernmental actors
or humanitarian agencies take the initiative. Hence, sending in the UN humanitarian
agencies is often the first response. But liberals generally see it as a state’s duty to inter-
cede in blatant cases of human rights abuse. However, that interest may conflict with
other contending interests— preserving an alliance, hamstringing an enemy, or put-
ting resources into domestic policy initiatives. U.S. justification can also be found in the
liberal thinking: the U.S. domestic imperative is the primacy of the U.S. Constitution,
and the division of power between the federal government and states often makes it dif-
ficult to incorporate international law.
Radicals have dif er ent reasons for not intervening. To them, the injustices in the inter-
national system stem from an unfair economic system— namely, the international cap i tal-
ist system, where some groups and individuals are exploited. If intervention is justified, it
must be applied without discrimination. And radicals do not believe that will occur,
because the economic interests of the most power ful states will drive the interventions.
While human rights may be “the single most magnetic po liti cal idea of the con-
tempora r y time,”^23 other transnational issues are emerging— and that is the subject of
the next chapter.