The Case Against Human Rights

[MJ12 Commando]

The case against human rights | Eric Posner

It is time to start over with an approach to promoting wellbeing in foreign countries that is empirical rather than ideological. Human rights advocates can learn a lot from the experiences of development economists – not only about the flaws of top-down, coercive styles of forcing people living in other countries to be free, but about how one can actually help those people if one really wants to. Wealthy countries can and should provide foreign aid to developing countries, but with the understanding that helping other countries is not the same as forcing them to adopt western institutions, modes of governance, dispute-resolution systems and rights. Helping other countries means giving them cash, technical assistance and credit where there is reason to believe that these forms of aid will raise the living standards of the poorest people. Resources currently used in fruitless efforts to compel foreign countries to comply with the byzantine, amorphous treaty regime would be better used in this way.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the human rights treaties were not so much an act of idealism as an act of hubris, with more than a passing resemblance to the civilising efforts undertaken by western governments and missionary groups in the 19th century, which did little good for native populations while entangling European powers in the affairs of countries they did not understand. A humbler approach is long overdue.

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Posner's argument is that the western attempt to enforce and create a coherent human rights regime has basically been a complete and utter failure on basically every level, because it's basically been imposing a cookie-cutter idea of what rights are the most important to people on everyone without care or inclination as to how effectively that sort of agenda can be imposed and how much the public cares about it, while also having an overinflated sense of how successful such movements can be.

IMO, his observations-that the coercive regime of human rights enforcement has largely failed, and not only that but they have often failed in ways which have only strengthened illiberal regimes and weakened the moral authority of the west, and that human rights advocates should be considering letting local movements take the lead and providing them with assistance to achieve more modest human rights goals rather than trying to impose moral leadership from the top down and punishing people who don't comply (unless they're allies of the west in which case nothing bad will happen to them ever)-are pretty convincing. I think that this sort of non-coercive system can easily create a less hypocritical sort of human rights enforcement because now the same constraints can be applied to allies as they can be to enemies, which is helpful in and of itself.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I'll agree that we've failed to spread human rights, not that we've been trying very hard when we support any kleptocrat willing to throw communists out of helicopters, but it's missing the elephant in the room.

The fastest, easiest, and most effrective way to improve human rights is to open borders.

Nobody wants to live where they will be oppressed and will move if it's an option.

We could obliterate rights violating nations with free citizenship and plane tickets if we wanted to. The Berlin Wall was built for a reason.

We've basically ended the best way of doing it and are now confused as to our lack of success.

 

[Emote Control]

I'm with @Cloak&Dagger. It's true human rights haven't spread as far as we would like, but America has never made a priority of doing so --even domestically.

 

[pheonix89]

...Did Cloak just actually make sense?

I think he did.

 

[Godwinson]

I'll agree that we've failed to spread human rights, not that we've been trying very hard when we support any kleptocrat willing to throw communists out of helicopters, but it's missing the elephant in the room.

The fastest, easiest, and most effrective way to improve human rights is to open borders.

Nobody wants to live where they will be oppressed and will move if it's an option.

We could obliterate rights violating nations with free citizenship and plane tickets if we wanted to. The Berlin Wall was built for a reason.

We've basically ended the best way of doing it and are now confused as to our lack of success.

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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

[Dromon]

The case against human rights | Eric Posner



Posner's argument is that the western attempt to enforce and create a coherent human rights regime has basically been a complete and utter failure on basically every level, because it's basically been imposing a cookie-cutter idea of what rights are the most important to people on everyone without care or inclination as to how effectively that sort of agenda can be imposed and how much the public cares about it, while also having an overinflated sense of how successful such movements can be.

IMO, his observations-that the coercive regime of human rights enforcement has largely failed, and not only that but they have often failed in ways which have only strengthened illiberal regimes and weakened the moral authority of the west, and that human rights advocates should be considering letting local movements take the lead and providing them with assistance to achieve more modest human rights goals rather than trying to impose moral leadership from the top down and punishing people who don't comply (unless they're allies of the west in which case nothing bad will happen to them ever)-are pretty convincing. I think that this sort of non-coercive system can easily create a less hypocritical sort of human rights enforcement because now the same constraints can be applied to allies as they can be to enemies, which is helpful in and of itself.

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I don't disagree with Posner's empirical conclusions on the failure of human rights, but I don't think his suggestions hold out any particularly higher chance of success than the coercive regime he criticizes. There's a hidden element of "what empirical measures" should we prioritize, or how we should measure positive impact, which will smuggle back in the same ideological positions as the old regime. In addition, reliance on local groups to determine how human rights should be developed in each country is all well and good, but that tells us little about what "the West" should do to determine which groups to support or whether to provide support at all. Its also unclear to me how a non-coercive human rights regime would have any teeth at all (I may have missed this in the article itself). Is the theory here that we have no coercion and just give everyone the same treatment US allies get? What actually constrains any nation from violating human rights under your theory? Does such prevention now rely on domestic pressure from a more engaged citizenry? That is probably the only thing that can successfully defend a population's rights anyway, so if this model leads in that direction it'll probably be better than what we have.

I personally agree that the human rights bureaucracy is useless, so I think we will see little difference in respect for human rights in Posner's suggested system. However, the benefits of it are really about reducing hypocrisy and releasing "us" from the tension that hypocrisy induces.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

I don't disagree with Posner's empirical conclusions on the failure of human rights, but I don't think his suggestions hold out any particularly higher chance of success than the coercive regime he criticizes. There's a hidden element of "what empirical measures" should we prioritize, or how we should measure positive impact, which will smuggle back in the same ideological positions as the hold regime. In addition, reliance on local groups to determine how human rights should be developed in each country is all well and good, but that tells us little about what "the West" should do to determine which groups to support or whether to provide support at all. Its also unclear to me how a non-coercive human rights regime would have any teeth at all (I may have missed this in the article itself). Is the theory here that we have no coercion and just give everyone the same treatment US allies get? What actually constrains any nation from violating human rights under your theory? Does such prevention now rely on domestic pressure from a more engaged citizenry? That is probably the only thing that can successfully defend a population's rights anyway, so if this model leads in that direction it'll probably be better than what we have.

I personally agree that the human rights bureaucracy is useless, so I think we will see little difference in respect for human rights in Posner's suggested system. However, the benefits of it are really about reducing hypocrisy and releasing "us" from the tension that hypocrisy induces.

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You're focusing on "punishing" nations that violate human rights and having "teeth" but Posner's entire thesis is that we've been trying this endlessly and it literally doesn't work. In fact some human rights scholars have gone farther and argued that far from creating any benefits, the schema of punishing nations that violate human rights has in some cases encouraged nations to double down harder, turning what could have been a single violent clash into mass murder, or what could have been mass murder into actual genocide.

Posner's argument is that if the west wants to actually help make the lives of citizens of countries better, it should instead focus on areas where non-coercive intervention is possible. As an example, you might have a country where significant judicial reforms are going on. These judicial reforms are meant to reduce false convictions for non-political crimes and streamline the judiciary so civil suits are more effective at compensating people for actual injuries. They are also coming alongside a significant political crackdown. The argument Posner is making is that instead of what we'd do now, which is basically let them do that on their own while complaining about how they're oppressing political prisoners, we should be willing to encourage the improvements by being willing to provide aid and cooperation on the reforms they're willing to make to ensure that they go faster and are more effective at reaching their goal.

In other words, it's not about focusing on what we think are the most important rights. It's about making people's lives better in small ways even if it means accepting that it won't give them certain rights the west takes for granted. It's about accepting that we really can't help unless the government and the people both want us to help, so we might as well do what we can in that framework instead of futilely beating our head against a brick wall.

 

[Dromon]

You're focusing on "punishing" nations that violate human rights and having "teeth" but Posner's entire thesis is that we've been trying this endlessly and it literally doesn't work. In fact some human rights scholars have gone farther and argued that far from creating any benefits, the schema of punishing nations that violate human rights has in some cases encouraged nations to double down harder, turning what could have been a single violent clash into mass murder, or what could have been mass murder into actual genocide.

Posner's argument is that if the west wants to actually help make the lives of citizens of countries better, it should instead focus on areas where non-coercive intervention is possible. As an example, you might have a country where significant judicial reforms are going on. These judicial reforms are meant to reduce false convictions for non-political crimes and streamline the judiciary so civil suits are more effective at compensating people for actual injuries. They are also coming alongside a significant political crackdown. The argument Posner is making is that instead of what we'd do now, which is basically let them do that on their own while complaining about how they're oppressing political prisoners, we should be willing to encourage the improvements by being willing to provide aid and cooperation on the reforms they're willing to make to ensure that they go faster and are more effective at reaching their goal.

In other words, it's not about focusing on what we think are the most important rights. It's about making people's lives better in small ways even if it means accepting that it won't give them certain rights the west takes for granted. It's about accepting that we really can't help unless the government and the people both want us to help, so we might as well do what we can in that framework instead of futilely beating our head against a brick wall.

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I was perhaps not clear, but its not important to me that human rights regimes have teeth or that violators of human rights be punished because I agree with you and Posner that such regimes do not work. Hence my comment that I agree with Posner's "empirical conclusions." I am interested in what his system's relationship is to gross violations of human rights such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. In such a case should there be no intervention, or even condemnation? I think that is consistent with Posner's theory in this article. The problem is that this guts much of human right's laws substantive grounding. The concept of "human rights" would not survive explicit transformation into merely a series of suggestions which nations can ignore. The idea that these evils have to be condemned and are universally wrong is, in theory, as much a restraint on the behavior of Western nations as a wedge between cooperation with authoritarians. Furthermore, if human rights are not universal but the contingent creation of the West, why should the West obey them if circumstances have changed? Supporting political repression in other nations can be highly advantageous to the United States as much as more efficient civil adjudication.

I should state explicitly here that I acknowledge that the West's actual foreign policy is basically divorced from human rights except tangentially. That is why I said that the elimination of human rights as a universal standard is going to change little, but would rather release us from the hypocrisy of speaking of universal values while we basically follow your hypothetical in reality. Human rights already do not exist and I think Posner's argument fails in that he does not follow his own logic to their complete abandonment.

I would also say that I see little grounding for him raising up a utilitarian theory of development support as an obligation later in the article. At the very least, he does not justify why nations should engage in any development support for developing nations at all. I can imagine moral theories that may require it, but he neither states them nor situates such a theory in the framework of international law.

 

[Erandil]

You're focusing on "punishing" nations that violate human rights and having "teeth" but Posner's entire thesis is that we've been trying this endlessly and it literally doesn't work. In fact some human rights scholars have gone farther and argued that far from creating any benefits, the schema of punishing nations that violate human rights has in some cases encouraged nations to double down harder, turning what could have been a single violent clash into mass murder, or what could have been mass murder into actual genocide.

Posner's argument is that if the west wants to actually help make the lives of citizens of countries better, it should instead focus on areas where non-coercive intervention is possible. As an example, you might have a country where significant judicial reforms are going on. These judicial reforms are meant to reduce false convictions for non-political crimes and streamline the judiciary so civil suits are more effective at compensating people for actual injuries. They are also coming alongside a significant political crackdown. The argument Posner is making is that instead of what we'd do now, which is basically let them do that on their own while complaining about how they're oppressing political prisoners, we should be willing to encourage the improvements by being willing to provide aid and cooperation on the reforms they're willing to make to ensure that they go faster and are more effective at reaching their goal.

In other words, it's not about focusing on what we think are the most important rights. It's about making people's lives better in small ways even if it means accepting that it won't give them certain rights the west takes for granted. It's about accepting that we really can't help unless the government and the people both want us to help, so we might as well do what we can in that framework instead of futilely beating our head against a brick wall.

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But isn't that approach already part of the standard strategy in regards to human rights etc in international relations? A strategy that according to him has failed miserably? We are already doing stuff like helping other governments implement judiciary reforms, good government etc and I fail to see what should is so revolutionary about his idea.

And from a.personal belief standpoint I find the idea of abandoning the universal nature of the human rights and accept that certain people will never gave them deeply problematic and distasteful even if it's based on the pragmatic belief of this making the lives of people a bit better. The idealistic and ideological nature of the human rights are in my eyes a key factor of what makes them what they are.

And honestly