Human rights groups and experts are charging that President Obama’s experiment of trying to engage with repressive regimes instead of shunning them and sanctioning them has been a dud so far.
His recent trip to Vietnam and lifting the arms embargo on the communist nation was met with cries that Vietnam’s human rights record has actually worsened since the U.S. began normalizing relations with its one-time foe.
And the release of the latest “global slavery index,” which showed India is home to the world’s biggest slave population, fresh claims that Obama isn’t tough enough on the issue undoubtedly arise during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington this week.
“He touts the benefits of engagement but offers economic and security benefits without conditions, giving dictators unwarranted legitimacy,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., charged during Obama’s tour of Vietnam last month.
Obama’s historic visit to Cuba in March received even harsher reviews. But whether it’s communist countries like Cuba and Vietnam, or junta-controlled Myanmar, Obama continues to argue that isolation has not worked, and that interaction with the U.S. will help these countries’ repressed citizens.
“The expectation that … we just stand back and scold — that somehow that’s going to change these internal dynamics, has proven to be less effective than us engaging,” Obama recently explained. “[O]ver time we’ve seen results, more modest than I would hope, but that’s true of pretty much everything about foreign policy and domestic policy and the human condition.”
The Obama administration always points out that engagement includes frank discussions with leaders, meeting with dissidents and addressing the locals. “I was very blunt with the Vietnamese government,” he said, relaying how he told officials that “these kinds of heavy-handed actions end up being counterproductive. It’s the same message I had with Cuba.”
But in Vietnam and Cuba, both governments prevented some key activists from attending, and his critics say Obama should not tolerate such insults.
Standing next to Obama in Havana, dictator Raul Castro answered “what political prisoners?” and asked for a list of names when an American reporter asked him about the no-shows.
“Obama stood mute; it would have sent a powerful message to Castro if the president had ticked off a list of Cuba’s remaining political prisoners by name … and demanded that they be released,” the Cato Institute’s Nat Hentoff wrote about the incident. “But sending powerful messages to dictators is not one of Obama’s talents.”
Ahead of the Vietnam trip, Human Rights Watch commended Obama for meeting with dissidents and addressing the public and taking questions but urged him to go further.
“Obama should stand next to Vietnam’s leaders in public and call on them to respect the right to freely choose government representatives, stand for office, and peacefully advocate for democracy,” said the group’s Asian director, Brad Adams. “If this trip is partially about legacy-building, as some suggest, there can be no more meaningful legacy than helping the people of Vietnam achieve fundamental reforms.”
Obama did remind the Vietnamese people that speech, press, assembly and protest freedoms are written into their constitution in his Hanoi address. But also said he was not singling out Vietnam and that “no nation is perfect.”
Further diminishing Obama’s record, at least in the short-term, is the May recommendation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the State Department designate Vietnam a “country of particular concern” and return Myanmar to that list. The commission also said Cuba and India should be counted as “tier 2” violators of religious freedoms.
In total, the commission recommended 27 nations for the aforementioned designations, including Egypt and Iraq in the first category, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the second and Afghanistan and Russia in the last.
Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at Cato, said the U.S. needed a new approach, especially when it comes to Cuba.
“Overall, a policy of isolationism is deeply unwise; it doesn’t make any sense,” he said. Evidence suggests that as people are allowed to interact with Americans, they gain more appreciation for what makes the U.S. unique, he said.
In the case of Myanmar, formerly Burma, it’s been a “qualified success,” Preble said.
As for Obama not demanding more human rights progress, “the same could be said anytime any U.S. president meets with any leader who has a horrendous human rights record,” Preble said, noting American leaders historically make strategic value the deciding the factor, as in the case of Saudi Arabia.
“It’s reasonable he could have demanded more; it’s also reasonable that he probably would not have gotten more,” Preble said.
