Frida Ghitis
As the world watches the chaotic countdown to a new president in Washington, one anticipated policy shift after Joe Biden’s inauguration is causing anxiety in some quarters and optimism in others: the return of human rights to the global agenda.Donald Trump’s open disdain for human rights was one of the earliest signs that his presidency would look like no other in the White House. Defending human rights around the world has always required a complicated balancing act, often—though not always—with a tradeoff between American interests and values. Under Trump, values consistently took a back seat. The only time he brought up human rights abuses was when he thought he could extract a personal political benefit, as in the cases of Cuba and Venezuela, whose human rights violations remain a top concern for voters in the key electoral state of Florida.
The approach will change under Biden. The incoming president is sure to disappoint some human rights activists, as have all his predecessors, but he will nonetheless bring a starkly different tone to foreign policy, one in which human rights will be discussed and even championed, both in private and in public.
Among many decisions, Biden will have to choose whether or not to rejoin the controversial United Nations Human Rights Council, a body where much of the membership looks like a who’s who of dictators and the worst human rights violators. The Trump administration withdrew from the council in 2018 after failing to push through standards for membership. That has left it even more exposed to bad actors, with China fortifying its position on the council to protect itself from scrutiny ahead of the expected change in tone from Washington.
Human rights activists have raised the alarm that Beijing’s repressive ways threaten freedom elsewhere. Unrestrained by Western critics, Beijing has tried to impose its own standards on international human rights organizations, as Human Rights Watch has warned.
Making America a defender of human rights again will take some legwork after what the world has seen from Washington these past four years. The U.S. will enter the human rights arena humbled. Before his administration can speak with credibility, Biden will have to address abuses at home, working to reverse some of Trump’s most egregious actions against asylum-seekers, to name just one area.
Still, the arrival of Biden and his foreign policy team is undoubtedly causing anxiety in places like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Egypt and others, which all benefited from Trump’s deliberate blind spot. Trump lavished over-the-top praise on some of the world’s most brutal dictators, boasting of exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and regaling other tyrants with barely restrained praise, admiration and even envy.
Trump didn’t find much to criticize as China tightened its grip on Hong Kong and Tibet, and brutally repressed Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the country’s western Xinjiang province, complete with concentration camps holding at least a million people that Beijing downplays as “reeducation camps.” According to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, when Trump discussed the matter with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Trump told him that building the camps was “exactly the right thing to do.” When the Treasury Department drafted a plan to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the Xinjiang crackdown, Trump blocked it. Asked for the reason, he explained, “We were in the middle of a major trade deal.”
Biden is sure to disappoint some human rights activists, as have all his predecessors, but he will nonetheless bring a starkly different tone to foreign policy.
It’s a reminder that defending human rights can interfere with other objectives. But U.S. concern for human rights can also be used as an additional point of leverage—another weapon in the U.S. arsenal—with the potential to extract concessions. Unless, that is, negotiators completely ignore it, which they seemed to under Trump. In the end, Trump didn’t obtain much from Beijing in exchange for blocking sanctions over the mass internments in Xinjiang.
It’s also unclear what Trump received in exchange for defending another notorious violator of human rights: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose agents killed and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump reportedly told the journalist Bob Woodward, “I saved his ass,” claiming that he shielded the crown prince from any scrutiny or sanctions from Congress.
Biden’s comments about Saudi behavior during the campaign undoubtedly caught the crown prince’s attention. Biden promised to “reassess” America’s long-standing ties with the kingdom, and referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.” He also promised to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Still, Washington isn’t about to sever ties with Riyadh. Relations are about to change, though, and human rights will become a factor—one of many. America’s links with the kingdom have always been emblematic of the trouble of defending human rights when there are strategic, diplomatic and economic factors to consider.
The changing of the guard in Washington is resetting the chess board in Moscow, too. Although U.S.-Russia relations remained strained throughout the Trump presidency, President Vladimir Putin enjoyed four years of having at least one person—the president of the United States, no less—side with him consistently, even over American intelligence agencies and members of his own administration.
Even if other parts of the U.S. government have remained critical of Moscow, Trump never found a reason to say a negative word about Putin. He still hasn’t, even as the U.S. is now enduring what top American officials say is a massive, Moscow-directed cyberattack against U.S. government agencies. Nor, for that matter, has Trump said anything as more damning details emerge about the assassination attempt against Putin’s top critic in Russia, Alexei Navalny.
The Biden administration will speak much more forcefully about Russia, and that silence from the White House may be replaced with stiffer sanctions. The Trump years showed just how much power a U.S. president has to loosen the reins on human rights violators around the world. American institutions, including the State Department, tried to push back in many cases, but the blasé attitude from the Oval Office signaled that even if there were sanctions and other consequences for these countries, relations with the U.S. would remain secure and there would be little to no accountability.
With a new president riding into town, tyrants are on edge. Human rights won’t dominate the conversation, and they won’t even become the most powerful factor in U.S. foreign policy. But human rights are about to move off the back burner, and violators are right to be concerned.
Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is a regular contributor to CNN and The Washington Post. Her WPR column appears every Thursday. Follow her on Twitter at @fridaghitis.
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