Sunday, August 12, 2012

Ideas and foreign policy

In my U.S.-Latin American relations class, I use Kathryn Sikkink's work in particular to show how ideas and foreign policy can interact, especially with regard to human rights.

In Honduras, for example, we would expect concerns about drug trafficking--a national security priority--to trump everything else. Yet what Sikkink has argued is that local activists can make connections to international actors like NGOs and academics, who can then transmit human rights concerns to influential policy maker like the Secretary of State. Right now, the US is withholding aid to certain law enforcement units until the police chief's role in death squads can be investigated.

Ae shouldn't overstate the importance here, since this will not drastically change U.S. policy toward Honduras. But it does demonstrate that human rights are more embedded in U.S. policy than many people realize, and certainly far, far more than in the past.

And, as Mike notes, it is nice to know the petitions can periodically end up in my inbox actually do make a difference sometimes.

3 comments:

Justin Delacour 3:25 PM  

"shouldn't overstate the importance here, since this will not drastically change U.S. policy toward Honduras."

My sense, however, is that Sikkink tends to overstate the degree to which human rights considerations affect U.S. foreign policy. After all, if human rights considerations were really that central to U.S. policy in Latin America, one would expect an awful lot more concern among policy-makers about the kinds of things that go on in Colombia.

Greg Weeks 9:33 AM  

She never argues they're central, though, just that they have become more relevant in a way that realism does not account for.

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