Hanged as a sheep.

• Author: Jones, David T.
• Position: United States foreign relations - Essay

Editor's Note: American inconsistency in our approach to other countries' human rights violations has again been illustrated, according to this essay, by the Obama administration's reaction to the Iranian election.--Ed.

The dramatic aftermath of the 12 June Iranian election has caught President Obama in the classic conundrum regarding U.S. attitude/action toward human rights. For a generation, U.S. foreign policy, driven inter alia by the annual State Department human rights reports, has focused prominent attention on human rights. Throughout this era, we have balanced between:

1. unmitigated denunciation of specific abuses by specific countries (the worst criticism directed at the most prominent abusers) that are also clear enemies of the United States, e.g., North Korea, Burma, and Iran); and

2. nuanced criticism of friendly states that have specific violations of human rights (Israel, Saudi Arabia) or with whom we are attempting to maintain and improve a multifaceted relationship of which human rights is but one (and sometimes a peripheral) element, e.g., China, Russia.

Thus for the latter states, we are in a constant betwixt-and-between bind. Do we belabor the USSR to release Jewish "refusniks" when higher profiles bring them not release but increased persecution? Do we emphasize Chinese repression of Tibetan nationals and Falun Gong religious practitioners when we have complex economic trade/debt issues with Beijing, not to speak of our need for Chinese leverage over North Korean action?

And a complicating factor is that those being persecuted (refusniks, Falun Gong adherents) often prefer the publicity from denunciations and accept upgraded persecution. The moral question then becomes: Are we complicit in the persecution? Did we encourage the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet occupation that resulted in thousands dead? When words can have bloody/brutal consequences, is silence (or muted speech) the best approach?

But silence/muted comment is also a betrayal of our first principles. If we do not speak out--strongly--against outrageous abuses, the conclusion must be that our outrage is selective and calculated rather than principled. And this has been the case for the Iranian election.

The Obama administration has determined that it will do foreign policy differently--certainly differently than Bush 43. That decision meant reaching out to states such as Iran with an apology for interfering in Iran in 1953 and an outreached hand...