2 - The Reagan Turnaround on Human Rights

Summary

Chapter 2 investigates the Reagan administration’s approach to human rights within the context of its broader foreign policy. After introducing the key members of Reagan’s foreign policy team situated within two camps of hardliners and moderates, the chapter examines the development in the administration’s approach to human rights. The chapter demonstrates how the administration initially sought to downgrade the importance of human rights concerns in US foreign policy. However, pressure from Congress and the human rights community, culminating in the Senate’s rejection of Ernest Lefever to head the State Department’s Human Rights Bureau, led the administration to incorporate human rights into its overarching foreign policy agenda. The chapter argues that Congress was key to this turnaround, but it also demonstrates that the seeds for a more proactive human rights policy were present within the administration from early on. Highlighting the importance of Elliott Abrams as head of the Human Rights Bureau, the chapter traces how the administration proceeded to craft a conservative human rights policy centered on anti-communism and democracy promotion. An unintended consequence for the administration’s congressional critics, this new approach resulted in a continued contestation over the appropriate role of human rights in US foreign policy.