For foreign policy observers, US President George Bush’s human rights rhetoric strikes a chord distinctly reminiscent of the Reagan administration. First impressions, however, can be deceiving. With respect to human rights, the new policies coming out of the White House are actually far more regressive than those of the Reagan era.

The Bush administration’s clearest articulation of human rights policy can be found in the National Security Strategy, a 31-page report that President Bush submitted to the US Congress at the end of September 2002. This comprehensive restatement of US foreign policy made headlines for its endorsement of pre-emptive military action and its support for unilateral US actions in place of international treaties and organizations. Equally troubling for those who support multilateral approaches to security and safeguarding justice is the document’s replacement of human rights with the watery notion of “human dignity.”

The National Security Strategy specifies “aspirations for human dignity” as a primary tenet of US foreign policy. “Aspirations of human dignity,” however, do not go far enough. The invocation of “human dignity” instead of “human rights,” if accepted and repeated elsewhere, may overturn 50 years of progress in international law. The National Security Strategy is peppered with a handful of references to human rights, but human dignity has prime billing. The White House’s message is clear: the United States does not seek to champion human rights, but instead promotes an abstract substitute. The international community would agree that “aspirations for human dignity” are important, but insufficient as foreign policy goals. The National Security Strategy reflects at best a misguided application of the terms “human rights” and “human dignity” and, at worst, a deliberate attempt to distort and manipulate them.

The Strategy defines the “nonnegotiable demands of human dignity” as “the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property.” This eclectic list is wholly divorced from any that has ever appeared in international human rights treatises, serving merely as a compilation of the administration’s current priorities. It omits nearly all of the human rights deemed inviolable in international human rights treaties, including the right to life, freedom from torture, and freedom from slavery.  Also missing is any mention of those rights associated with civic participation and democracy, a popular nonpartisan tenet of US assistance abroad.

The National Security Strategy also weakens the enforcement potential for the rights it does include. The rights of religious and ethnic groups to nondiscrimination are reduced to mere “tolerance,” a passive concept that fails to create any proactive obligations. Similarly, a woman’s right to nondiscrimination is downgraded to a vague notion of “respect,” another passive concept, reminiscent of the paternalism of the days when women, specifically white women, were placed on a pedestal, but denied agency to make legal and political claims. Only the right to property is elevated to a higher status than that recognized in international human rights law.

The document’s definition of human dignity is a product of the Bush administration’s understanding of “American values” as described in the US Constitution and the country’s “experience as a great multi-ethnic democracy.” While the National Security Strategy alludes to the fact that states may find guidance for their foreign policies in many places, there is no mention of any international principles to guide US foreign policy. International norms are reserved for other, lesser countries.

US foreign policy has always been caught between the competing forces of international expectations of cooperation and universal standards on the one hand and domestic expectations of US exceptionalism on the other.  In a 1978 Foreign Affairs article that is as relevant today as ever, Arthur Schlesinger observed that the question has never been whether the United States has a moral mission, but how it should execute this mission.

The range of possibilities for human rights foreign policy consists of three sets of choices: domestic or international definition of norms, unilateral or multilateral action, and domestic or international focus in applying human rights norms. In unilaterally applying domestic norms to the behavior of certain enemy states, the current administration is patterning itself after the second Reagan administration, which made similar choices in its human rights policy.

In a February 1984 speech, US Secretary of State George Shultz explained that US human rights policy reflects the country’s “moral values and a commitment to human dignity.” Like the current administration, the second Reagan administration was not interested in the application of international human rights norms to its own behavior, but instead with how they could be employed against other states in a strategic, selective manner. Instead of isolationism, the Reagan administration supported “a commitment to active engagement, confidently working for our values as well as our interests in the real world, acting proudly as the champion of freedom.”

Comparing these words to the new National Security Strategy, it appears as if President Bush’s staff has simply lifted a page out of the Reagan administration foreign policy playbook in crafting the document. However, they missed a significant element of the Reagan strategy, namely the willingness to use international human rights treaties and mechanisms. Though it was by no means an enthusiastic proponent of multilateralism in international affairs, the second Reagan administration demonstrated at least a pragmatic understanding of the modern human rights regime. In the same 1984 speech, Shultz made clear that the Reagan administration would seek to work with international human rights organizations and treaties.

Thus, the new National Security Strategy radically departs from contemporary understandings of international human rights in two fundamental ways: first, it adopts a unilateral stance, and second, it puts forth a definition of rights that undermines international understandings. The impact of this policy is not necessarily conservative or liberal, but is far from pro-human rights.

The problem with taking a unilateralist stance is that it permits the administration to create and apply its own definition of human rights, even when doing so runs contrary to widely accepted international standards and practices. Reading this National Security Strategy is like traveling back in time, before the drafting of the post-World War II human rights treaties and the advent of the modern human rights movement. The Preamble of the UN Charter states that one purpose of the organization is to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” This language, which is repeated in numerous international documents, is clear: “dignity” is one core element of human rights, and “worth” is another. The modern idea of human rights requires the presence of both concepts. One cannot claim to believe in the idea of human rights and also believe that these rights apply only to some individuals or that only some states have a responsibility to respect them. But this is precisely the stance the Bush administration has adopted.