WHY EUROPE NEED NOT FAİL OVER HUMAN RİGHTS
The Biden administration
is making the defense of human rights one of its foreign policy priorities.
Other democracies, particularly in Europe, should actively support this shift.
·
March 22, 2021
·
U.S. President Joe Biden has hit the ground running.
His mantra “America is back” is
a much-needed boost for democracies. The Europeans, in particular, are consumed
by self-doubt, a lack of confidence, and, to make matters worse, mismanagement
of coronavirus vaccinations. Looking for scapegoats for Europe’s slow rollout
of vaccines is a daily preoccupation.
Biden doesn’t believe in the blame game. It would have
been easy for him to lash out at former U.S. president Donald Trump at every
opportunity, from dealing with the pandemic to restoring America’s standing in
the world. That blame game would have played into the hands of die-hard Trump
supporters and other Republicans, who could have accused Biden of using his
office to seek revenge.
Instead, Biden wants the United States to move on. The
Europeans should emulate—indeed, capitalize on—that energy and zeal by working
to push the transatlantic relationship and other democracies to embrace an
agenda that can marry values with interests. This could be a strategic first
for the EU—if it chooses to seize the opportunity.
Apart from the blitz-like way in which Americans (and
the British) are now getting vaccinated, which, in turn, generates an element
of self-confidence, Biden is homing in on human rights.
Whether it’s China or Russia, Saudi Arabia
or Belarus, the Biden team has not minced words.
Even better news: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who
is attending a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on March 23, has
announced that the administration will “seek election to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council starting
in January 2022.”
In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the
council, which does itself no favors with the opaque way in which it repeatedly
elects nondemocratic countries with often appalling human rights records to sit
among its forty-seven members. That has given a free hand to council members
such as China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Venezuela to block as much criticism as
possible of their own policies and those of their often authoritarian allies
who elected them.
“The United States has long been a champion of human
rights,” Blinken said. “If elected to the Human Rights Council,
we will use the opportunity to be a leading voice within the Council for
promoting respect for human rights.” In other words, contrary to Trump’s
policies of disengaging from multilateral institutions, Biden’s team believes
that it is better to engage in—and, possibly, reform—institutions than to
remain outside them.
But what does “engage” mean? Here’s what Britain’s
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told
staff in a leaked video call. Referring to the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR), he said, “If we restrict [trade] to countries with ECHR-level
standards of human rights, we’re not going to do many trade deals with the
growth markets of the future.” That says a lot about the state of human rights
in those countries. He continued, “I think we’re in a much better position to
do that if we’re willing to engage.”
But on what terms, and in what ways that reconcile
universal human rights with interests?
London has been extremely critical of human rights
violations in China, Beijing’s clampdown on democracy in Hong Kong, and events
in Russia. The EU’s
reactions have been weak. Yes, the union imposed limited sanctions on a group
of officials implicated in the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei
Navalny and announced on March 22 it would impose sanctions on China for
its detentions of members of the Uighur community. But these measures are
probably ineffective as policy changers. Also, several EU member states are
uncomfortable with them. They fear retaliation.
Take the case of Australia. It is being heavily
penalized by China after it called for an investigation into the how the
coronavirus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Other democracies are
helping compensate Australia for the decline in its trade revenues. Democracies
can and should pull together. It’s one way of standing up to regimes that use
trade as blackmail.
There’s another way to reconcile values with
interests. Many countries want to forge trade accords with Brussels. Look at
the EU-China investment deal that
was clinched at the end of December 2020 just before Germany ended its
six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council. This was surely the ideal
opportunity to link trade with values such as the rule of law, transparency,
clear procurement procedures, and human rights—for instance, through something
as basic as how employees are treated. The point is that the EU, as a big,
wealthy market, has leverage. When it comes to human rights, it should use that
clout.
However,
democracies won’t get that traction if they don’t deal with human rights in
their own countries. Operating with double standards is a nonstarter when it
comes to democracies aiming to project influence. So when Blinken
criticized China’s human rights violations,
he sure got a rebuke from his Chinese interlocutor over
the racism and police violence that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
All Blinken had to say was, “Yes. There’s a big problem. We’re dealing with it.
And what about your human rights issues?”
Dempsey is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in
chief of Strategic Europe.
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