Human Rights in the Reagan Era: Acceptance in Principle

Over eight years, the Reagan administration's policy on human rights shifted dramatically. At the outset, some in the administration repudiated promoting human rights internationally as a foreign policy goal of the United States; others argued that the United States should condemn abuses by hostile totalitarian governments but not by friendly authoritarian governments. By the time the Reagan administration left office, it accepted that promoting human rights was a major goal and that the United States should be evenhanded in condemning abuses. Despite the seeming headway, much remains to be done. The Reagan administration equated elections and democracy with human rights and failed to condemn abuses by ostensible democracies such as the Philippines and Guatemala; it promoted human rights in high-profile countries such as Chile while ignoring abuses in obscure countries such as Somalia; and it failed to condemn abuses by Communist governments, such as Yugoslavia and China, that had broken with the Soviet Union. In the Bush years, the task of the human rights movement is to secure implementation of principles that are now accepted.