The rhetoric of human rights and morality has dominated the first two months of the Carter Administration’s foreign policy. But Carter’s has been a highly selective concern over human rights, expressed most decisively only where it has been ideologically convenient, and not contrary to America’s global, economic, and political stakes.
In those countries where America has the most diplomatic leverage by virtue of their dependence upon the United States, Carter’s words and actions have been the weakest. In fact, the Carter Administration’s new budget has proposed to actually increase the level of economic and military aid over that spent last year in certain key American fiefdoms throughout the globe--where human rights are crushed with impunity by increasingly repressive regimes.
Consider these examples:
• The Philippines: Ferdinand Marcos continues his autocracy and martial law. Amnesty International estimates that the Marcos regime holds at least 16,000 political prisoners. Yet direct U.S. economic aid would be increased by the new Carter budget from $76.7 million to $100 million, keeping our military aid nearly the same as last year’s.
Meanwhile, negotiations continue over the amount of additional military and economic aid Marcos will receive in future years from the United States as payment for maintaining American troops and bases there. An offer of $1 billion over the next five years made by Kissinger in the last days of his power was rejected as insufficient by Marcos.
• Indonesia: The United States has been careful not to offend this oil-rich ally. Little mention is made of the political prisoners languishing in its jails--estimated between the 37,000 admitted by the present government, and Amnesty International’s estimate of closer to 100,000. In order to support further the Suharto regime, the new Carter budget would increase military aid from $47 million to $58.1 million, and economic assistance from $125.8 million to $147.8 million.
• Korea: Most stunning of all is the Carter budget’s proposal to raise direct military and economic aid to the dictatorial regime of President Park by a full 39% over what was spent last year. Military aid would climb from $158 million to $280 million, while economic aid would rise from $81.2 million to $111.1 million.
A major portion of this issue of Sojourners documents the climate of fear, intimidation, and ruthless repression which have come to dominate political life in south Korea, making it little different from the totalitarianism characterizing its northern neighbor.
The pattern of U.S. complicity with the repression of the Park regime is a classic case study of how the economic and military influences determining American foreign policy will belie freedom and crush human rights even while self-righteously trumpeting their defense elsewhere around the globe. Thus, Secretary of State Vance can conveniently minimize Park’s tyranny and announce to the Congress that no changes should be made in our aid to his regime because of the “security interests” involved.
Korea is a linchpin of U.S. foreign policy. Documents just recently made public reveal that U.S. generals searched for suitable targets on which to use the atomic bomb during the Korean War. Any means is justified by the end of preserving a dependent ally in the south. If militarization, bribery, corporate corruption, and the death of democracy accomplish that goal today, they will be condoned and even encouraged.
The complex web knitting the United States into Park’s repression goes far beyond the bilateral military and economic aid extended to him. In fact, in fiscal year 1976 the Park government was strengthened by a total of $1.6 billion in various forms of external aid in which the United States played a large role--more aid than was given to any country in the world except Israel. But only 22% of this amount was comprised of direct, bilateral programs of foreign military and economic aid approved by the Congress--programs including AID, Food for Peace, and Military Assistance Program grants, military training, and credit sales for arms. The remainder was comprised of loans, insurance programs, and other financial support flowing through such U.S. government arms as the Export- Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Commodity Credit Corporation, plus financial assistance given by multilateral institutions in which the U.S. has an influential role, such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
These governmental programs nurture a “favorable investment climate” for private corporations, which means a climate in which they can make profits. Their activities are underwritten in turn by private U.S. banks. And the mindset of Western economics is that all this is supposed to produce “self sufficiency.”
What this web has actually created in Korea is an ugly mirror image of the dominating American society. Park’s government uses self-righteous anti-communism and a barrage of national security rhetoric to protect its own political and economic power. It then arms itself to the teeth, while the techniques of financial and sexual bribery of elected officials, covert activities, and pervasive intimidation of dissidents are reproduced in the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. The sad truth is that we have imparted American values to south Korea, and the U.S. Justice Department is now investigating the consequences: a scandal implicating several members of the U.S. Congress.
The American church presence in Korea has often forged one more link in the heavy chain binding these two governments even while a faithful remnant of Korean Christians are held in bondage. Today, while the Park regime proves its readiness to supply us with persecuted Christian saints, most of the church remains silent. Notable segments of the evangelical community--who still claim to be nonpolitical--come running to the defense of Park’s rule, proclaiming oppression rather than liberty for the captives. Other leading evangelical voices now speak of their supposed “neutrality,” not wanting to be “controversial,” as if the gospel can be otherwise.
President Carter has become penpals with Andrei Sakharov and visiting Soviet dissidents are ushered into the oval office. But where are his letters to those courageous Korean Christians who waste away in jail for urging the restoration of democracy?
What Iranian dissidents, whose lives are harassed by agents of the Shah’s secret police even in America, have been invited to the White House? What word of encouragement has President Carter given to those students, professors, and democratic politicians who have been ruthlessly repressed by the new right-wing military clique reigning in Thai land?
Why hasn’t our president spoken a word for those voiceless victims who continue to disappear in Chile? Or sat down with those fortunate enough to escape from Pinochet’s grasp?
The Carter Administration announced a reduction in military aid to Uruguay and Argentina on human rights grounds--cuts which Congress had already implemented in the case of Uruguay, and strongly pressured for in Argentina. A far more dramatic act would be for Carter to meet publicly with Wilson Ferriera, the Uruguayan who received more votes than anyone else for president in 1972, but was denied the election, and fled the oppressive ruling powers in his country to save his life. Or Carter could write a letter to Hector Campora, who received 50% of the vote for President of Argentina when that country held elections, in 1973; Campora took refuge from the increasing brutality sweeping through Argentina in 1976 by seeking asylum in the Mexican Embassy in Buenos Aires, and is still there today.
In addition to decrying the wanton, brutal slaughter of Idi Amin, the president or Andy Young could lament the estimated 20,000 people who have been killed through political violence in Guatemala during the past several years. Most of them were the victims of right-wing-inspired terrorism. Or he could raise his voice on behalf of the other thousands of people who are being tortured and imprisoned because of their political dissent by the iron-fisted military regimes dotting Latin America, infused with American economic interests.
If the president feels some reluctance to speak with foreign dissidents from nations other that the U.S.S.R. and its satellites there are extraordinary U.S. citizens whose experiences have given them unique voices for the cause of human rights. The president could invite Father Edward Gerlock to visit him, the Maryknoll priest who spent 14 years working with the poor in the Philippines and was recently thrown out of the country by Marcos for protesting that regime’s persecution and martial law. Carter would ask Fred Morris to come to the White House, the American Methodist missionary who was brutally tortured by Brazilian authorities, principally because he was a friend of Dom Helder Camara. Or Carter could meet with Jim Sinnott, the American priest who formerly served as the Catholic vicar-general for the Inchou diocese in Korea, until his 15 years as a priest there ended with his expulsion from the country in 1975 because of his criticism of the Park regime.
But it is unlikely that you will read of any of these events happening in the weeks ahead. Human rights in the Carter Administration are ideologically captive, conditioned by the demands of U.S. security interests. Morality is only selectively relevant.
The foes of the United States are those singled out for Carter’s preachments on human rights, while the violations of our allies are largely whitewashed. The world cannot help but wonder why this concern is so persistently compromised or forgotten within the boundaries of America’s foreign economic empire.
One would not be surprised, it seems to me, if the Soviets conclude that human rights rhetoric is simply a new form of Washington’s continuing ideological combat designed to destabilize their government, and then react in paranoid ways. The most tragic result would be if prospects for nuclear arms limitations were set back by a one-sided human rights campaign by the Carter Administration. It is unlikely that inconsistent application of human rights will bear much fruit anywhere, and it may bring real harm.
Americans need to ask why they should expect the world to believe the Administration’s rhetoric about human rights. What does a nation with hands so recently stained with the innocent blood of the Indochinese, whose CIA has been shown to be adept in lining of pockets of friendly foreign leaders--and inept in trying to assassinate hostile ones--whose FBI has violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of its own citizens, and whose corporations invest hundreds of millions in countries like South Africa where violations of fundamental human dignity are so flagrant--have to say to the world about the state of human rights? When other nations then see America speaking with a forked tongue on this issue, why should we expect them to listen?
It is here that the church of Jesus Christ has a unique contribution to make in the struggle for human rights. The Christian community’s concern for the rights of others is grounded in God’s compassion for all humanity, and his focused concern for those most op pressed. This compassion knows no limits. It is constrained by no national boundaries. There are no exceptions made for the “security” of a political regime. And there are no ideological blinders applied from the right or the left.
The church has a universal identity, one which transcends every temporal political allegiance, and one which refuses to be confined to the parameters of any given regime or bloc. It undermines all these because of its fundamental loyalty to the kingdom of God.
Our Lord initiated his public ministry with a call to that kingdom which cried for the oppressed to be freed. His church today builds that kingdom as it speaks, works, and acts to carry out Christ’s liberating call.
The Christian is grounded in the nature of the church’s universal identity in working for the basic human rights of all people. When we plead the cause of the oppressed, there are no acceptable rationalizations, exceptions, or excuses which mitigate the justice of God.
Finally, because of the church’s universal identity, it must not define human rights in distinctively Western ways. Most of the secular concern over human rights voiced by the West both by the leaders of governments and their critics centers around extending the political rights associated with pluralistic democracies. But the Christian’s view of true human rights is far more inclusive, including the rights to those basic necessities which make life possible and livable--food, shelter, health, and a caring environment. These must be central for the Christian in an authentic commitment to human rights. The church must never be content when dissident intellectuals are simply freed from a Latin American or Asian jail; its standard of human rights will not simply ask how a regime treats the small minority of its educated, dissident politicians, but also whether the children or its masses of poor have true hope for their future lives.
The new administration has focused the attention of the nation’s media on the rhetoric of human rights. Those who follow Christ can impart true meaning to the term, provide a normative standard of judgment free from self-serving nationalistic purposes, and act in ways characterized by a resolute allegiance to a transcendent, hope-giving kingdom that is grounded in long-suffering love. And we will have the spirit of their Lord with us, whose suffering we share with all those living in oppression, and whose hope and compassion we extend to and share with them, even as we conform ourselves to the shape of his suffering and liberating love.
Wes Michaelson was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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