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Communication
A communication will be considered only if it relates to an article or review published in this journal; publication is solely at the editor's discretion. The AHA disclaims responsibility for statements, either of fact or opinion, made by the writers. Letters may not exceed seven hundred words for reviews and one thousand words for articles. They should be submitted in duplicate, typed double-spaced with wide margins, and headed "To the Editor."
ARTICLES
To the Editor:
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| I am mystified by Kenneth Cmiel's reference to my book, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, as part of a chorus singing with "Panglossian cheer" and telling an "it's getting better" story of human rights ["The Recent History of Human Rights," AHR 109 (February 2004): 117–35, 131]. I can only assume that this is a case of judging a book by its cover—or rather, its title. |
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The book's message is far from Panglossian. After a dispassionate survey of American and British human rights campaigns, I conclude that governments have consistently benefited more than—and sometimes at the expense of—the supposed beneficiaries. Washington administrations have repeatedly reaped rewards from the issue, especially in the domestic arena. Thus Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked human rights to win support for new policies and institutions; Jimmy Carter used the cause as a national pick-me-up at a time of post-Watergate disillusionment; and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush appealed for rights abroad to enhance their moral stature at home. The plight of the persecuted has always come a poor second to political requirements. |
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The author's assertion that the book belongs to the "it's getting better" school of thought is presumably based on a misunderstanding of the title, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (p. 131). Had he ventured further, he would have realized that it does not refer to the alleviation of suffering but to the status of human rights as a political process. In particular, I argue that, in Western capitals, human rights doctrine has waxed and waned inversely with the Cold War, assuming a prominent role at times when anti-communism lost its momentum. Human rights thus enjoyed a brief but significant ascendancy in the 1940s, was subordinated to anti-communism in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1980s but enjoyed a renaissance during the détente years in the 1970s and again in the present post–Cold War era. |
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The author goes on to assert that books such as mine fail to take account of "dirty work" in Rwanda and Kosovo or machinations over the International Criminal Court, and that they place too much store by the human rights organizations. He presumably overlooked Chapters 2, 3 and 9, which offer a critical appraisal of international war crimes tribunals (including the ICC and those dealing with crimes in Rwanda and Kosovo), and Chapters 5 and 7, which provide an equally forensic assessment of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others. Furthermore, the book debunks some of the myths, based on wishful thinking, concerning the evolution of the Universal Declaration (Chapter 1), the legacy of Nuremberg (Chapter 2), and the movement's founding figures (Chapter 4). |
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As for Cmiel's suggestion that mine is among the "breezier accounts aimed at a popular audience," I make no apology for attempting to make my book accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and I hope my writing avoids the worst excesses of academic prose (p. 131). But breezy or not, it was written to make serious points about the politics of human rights. That is why it is carefully supported by primary source material (some previously unpublished) from the State Department, Foreign Office, and Quai d'Orsay, as well as from Parliamentary, Senate, and House debates and hearings. |
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Kenneth Cmiel's unsubstantiated assertions do a disservice to those who wish to take a sober look at human rights policy. |
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| Kenneth Cmiel does not wish to reply.
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ERRATUM
In the April 2004 issue, the book The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic was listed incorrectly as edited by two people; it should have been James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf as editors (review, p. 518). We regret the error, which will be corrected in the annual index.
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| In Arnold J. Bauer's review of Mimi Sheller's Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (AHR 109 [April 2004]: 573–74), the reviewer reports he misquoted the author on page 573. He meant to write, "Sloane's biographers, however, do not mention that the income was produced through slave labor 'with all the attendant coercion, rape and mortality of slaves,'" not "morality." He regrets the error. |
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LINKS
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