Human Rights Versus Multilateralism
19th October 2009
Human rights advocates are unhappy with the Obama administration’s foreign policy, citing three developments: (1) the failure to back the Goldstone Report; (2) the failure to pressure Sri Lanka to improve its treatment of Tamils; and (3) the willingness to deal with Sudan’s President Bashir, who was recently indicted by the International Criminal Court. It turns out that Sudan is a useful ally in fighting terrorism and Sri Lanka is, well, complicated, and Israel is Israel. As Julian Ku notes, coddling Bashir is hardly a way to support the ICC, which is already reeling from the decision of members of the African Union not to extradite him to The Hague if he enters their countries, in violation of their legal obligations (most of them belong to the ICC; a few have since backpedaled). Meanwhile, the Obama administration has apparently succeeded in pressuring Spain to water down its universal jurisdiction statute, the one that the Spaniards were supposed to use to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and David Addington. Well, good for the Obama administration: it has implicitly repudiated campaign rhetoric that endorsed global legalism, and it didn’t take it as long as one might have thought.