6 - Human Rights

Summary

If the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia helped to shatter an already ailing anti-imperialist internationalism, a concomitant refugee crisis offered the rival vision of human rights internationalism a remarkable opportunity to fill the void. What remained of the anti-imperialist left contributed little to resolving the issue, yet the human rights internationalists stepped into the breach. Former French radicals turned humanitarians worked with Vietnamese refugees, Eastern European dissidents, and human rights groups such as Doctors Without Borders to organize a campaign against human rights violations in Vietnam. They chartered a hospital ship to rescue the refugees, which amounted to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation-state, showcasing a new kind of humanitarian interventionism. At the same time, they internationalized the campaign, even winning the support of the US government, which was only too happy to use the crisis to rewrite the history of the war, rebrand itself as a virtuous nation, and shine a harsh spotlight on the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Despite efforts to deflect charges of rights violations, the SRV could do little to explain itself in the face of undeniable evidence of repression. If anti-imperialism helped secure their international victory in the 1960s, human rights sealed their defeat a decade later. The remaining radicals in the North Atlantic fought back but had little to offer as an alternative. With the core notions of the Leninist problematic in question, the radical left’s vision of internationalism lost its appeal, particularly among a new generation of activists looking for a way to do good in the world. And with anti-imperialism’s influence over the wider progressive milieu slipping, human rights internationalism made a giant leap in consolidating its hegemony, so much so that even some committed anti-imperialists ended up accepting its terms as the least bad option.