US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) writing in Foreign Affairs, S/O 2015, "Member of the Obama administration have signaled a disturbing willingness to ignore human rights violations in the hopes of appeasing the Chinese leadership. In the administration's early days in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that human rights "can't interfere" with other ostensibly more important bilateral issues, and in the months before Xi Jinping ascended to China's top leadership post in 2012, Vice President Joe Biden told him that U.S. support for human rights was merely a matter of domestic political posturing."
Jim Note: I can understand from this passage why Senator Rubio has risen so rapidly in the GOP and why he has grown a national following on foreign policy.
Further, Senator Rubio wrote: ""[T]he manner in which governments treat their own citizens is indicative of the manner in which they will treat other nations."
Rubio was writing about China's human rights abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet, the Falun Gong practitioners, and the prolonged and unchallenged Chinese cyber attacks against the US and the Chinese multiple violations of multiple international treaties in the South China Seas.
The senator could have also easily have been writing about Russian President Vladimir Putin's persecution of his LGBT citizens and Russian aggression in the Ukraine and "peace" efforts against ISIS in Syria. Perhaps the Senator if elected will evolve on human rights like Obama and the Clintons did on same-sex marriage.
Of course, the United States is not innocent when it comes to human rights abuses. Native Americans. Japanese Americans. African Americans. Disabled Americans. LGBT Americans. Women. This history, many historians argue, led to colonization, Vietnam, global exploitation by the US government and corporations and by negotiation of "terrible trade deals" GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump argues are made by "political hacks" presumably administration political hacks but also likely "hacks" at State, USTR, Commerce and other agencies.
US history of human rights abuses combined with "political hacks" and traditional government arrogance may have been other contributing factors in decisions made by Pfc,.Chelsea Manning and NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Manning, many supporters believe "had" to "free information" on US war crimes though she allowed her attorneys to tell the military tribunal she was so naive she did not understand what she was doing when she emailed classified government documents to WiKiLieaks. Criminal Snowden, however, remains defiant he did the right thing by exposing Obama's spying on allies including German PM Angela Merkle, various Japanese government trade minsters, and French President Hollande.
Japanese diplomats in Washington told me both nations learned a lesson from the Snowden disclosures. It was a diplomatic response to an awkward US policy of illegal international spying on the personal handhelds of allied heads of state and other allied government officials "Yes," I told my Japanese host, "President Obama learned the lesson not to illegally spy on Japanese officials?" My host smiled, before saying yes.
-30-
Jim Patterson
Member California State Society
JEPDiplomat@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment