Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the OSCE ministerial in Dublin Dec. 2012. Photo by OSCE/Sonya Lee.
So Hillary Clinton had her swan song -- or one of her swan songs -- at the OSCE ministerial in Dublin, and won't return to the world stage as an elected politician, well, until maybe 2016 if she runs for, and is elected for president.
And I'd be one of those who'd vote for her, and the Republicans would really have to come up with someone a lot better. And the reason would be a rather tiny point, perhaps, but big for me: unlike Obama, Hillary never calls for redistribution of wealth; she calls for social justice. I've never heard a "you didn't built that" narrative out of her. She may be on the left, but she has investments herself (which were controversial at one point) and she doesn't hate capitalism and business with the same ideologically frenzy as Barack Obama and some of his chief lieutenants. She is all for women in small business, and of course women's rights as human rights. And that all suits me fine, and I'm all for that.
She also doesn't bring with her that pro-Kremlin tropism that the socialist movements of the 1960s and 1980s bring to bear on today's Russia that one senses in Obama's approach. Say what you will about Hillary -- and there are things to criticize -- but she's normal. She's solid. She isn't cerebral and ephemeral trying to crush ideological templates down on people's living realities like Obama. Bill Clinton, her husband, was popular because he also didn't hate on business and hate on capitalism -- it was more of an approach of trying to ensure more social justice, emphasizing human rights, but not dumping on business with hatred. There wasn't that sense of Shakedown Street -- "let's make those rich people pay, aren't they awful." And these may be nuances. They may be cultural things. But they do count with me. The Clintons mean to me what the liberalism of the Democratic Party should be, in which in my view is lost as it lurches to the left and the "progressive" agenda. I'd rather there be four parties. Not what we have.
Now, what did Hillary say in her speech at OSCE, which might be the last speech she will ever give in a multilateral setting ever again as a world official?
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, it is important to remember that those accords and this organization that sprang from them affirmed an inextricable link between the security of states and the security of citizens. They codified universal rights and freedoms that belong to all citizens, and those commitments empowered and encouraged dissidents to work for change. In the years that followed, the shipyard workers of Solidarity, reformers in Hungary, demonstrators in Prague all seized on the fundamental rights defined at Helsinki and they held their governments to account for not living up to the standards to which they had agreed. We are the inheritors and the guardians of that legacy.
This is a very important statement, and I'm glad it's still part of US foreign policy, and I'm glad it's still said in the OSCE context: the inextricable link. This was the term that Dr. Andrei Sakharov used, and his colleagues about the inseparable link between human rights and peace, between human rights and security. I remember once sitting up late in Moscow talking to Sergei Kovalev, the scientist who was Sakharov's friend and inherited his mantle as a leader of the human rights movement. He asked me earnestly if I and others in the West really understood that this inextricable link really was true? That it really was indissoluble. That this really was a philosophical notion about an inherent property of human rights -- that you really would not get security -- peace, disarmament, detente -- until you got human rights.
I said I did understand it. But too many of my contemporaries in the 1980s did not. They were happy to forego human rights for peace, and sell Soviet dissidents down the river or even forego their own rights. I'll never forget the astonishing thing said by a peacenik in Montana worried about missile silos -- that he would be willing to give up his First Amendment rights at home if it would mean security against a nuclear attack. Imagine that! Those were the days when Jonathan Schell's "nuclear winter" animated the imagination with horrible scenarios, the way "global warming" does today...
Now, has Hillary gotten this quite right here in her speech? Well, I'm somewhat perturbed that instead of saying what I believe to be the "classic" form of this Sakharov doctrine or Helsinki doctrine, if you will -- human rights and security, there has been a different rendering: security of states and the security of citizens.
In part, this is a nod to the modern concern about security from terrorism or security from state intrusion of privacy on the Internet or whatever, but it's also an invocation of a somewhat newfangled notion called "human security". This was pushed for a time quite strongly at the UN by a group of states from Europe, Canada, and so on as a way to try to get the security-minded authoritarians to apply some of that lovely security concern to actual people -- refugee flows became the issue of human security most often invoked -- in other words, if a state thought it gained "security" by oppressing minorities and chasing people off their land, and they began to flee to other parts of the country or nearby countries,in fact, their plight was a security issue, too, and they had to take responsibility for it. I really don't have a problem with the notion of "human security" as it has been (over) developed by various UN think-tankers, yet like "responsibility to protect," it's essentially a linguistic gimmick to avoid confronting offending states with their offenses.
But, well, I like human rights better. It's really more explicit and comprehensive at the same time. Human rights are still seen by authoritarian states, and Russia is at the top of the list there in the OSCE setting, as some kind of threat to the state. They aren't a threat to a *good* state; a capable state, as some analysts would describe it. But they are a threat to a bad authoritarian state at times, and naturally, autocrats like Putin reach for notions like "foreign agents" and "interference in internal affairs" -- security -- to undermine human rights. In one sense, human rights, if really implemented, probably does threaten a tyrant like Putin; yet in another sense, states can go a certain ways in fulfilling human rights and still stay in power, and it can even enable them to stay in power longer if they allow some of them. I suppose the autocrats are eternally in a quest for that perfect formula of balance...
I'm a tad annoyed at the hipster Obama lingo in the speech -- empowered and encouraged dissidents to work for change. You know, I never heard Yuri Orlov tell me that he felt "empowered" and he was "working for change". In fact, the Bolsheviks brought so much "change". I think what some people wanted after they were done wrecking everything was normalcy. They wanted justice to work. "Empowerment" wasn't the word they used. You know, what was it, 32 years ago, Yuri Orlov was in Perm labour camp, and he smuggled out this little tiny piece of paper from the camp to the Madrid review conference of the CSCE, as OSCE was called then. The paper (translated by Ludmila Thorne at Freedom House) said:
I am convinced that our sacrifices are not in vain. I am sewing bags on the machine.
They were sacks for potatoes, and hard and numbing work -- forced labour. But he said all the pain and suffering wasn't in vain -- although it took quite a while to realize anything from it -- it would be some six years before he was released from the camps, and then more finally released in 1991. And now some are being put back in again...
But empowered? It was more like validated. Respected. Authenticated. "Know and act upon your rights" was the phrase. "Empowerment" isn't a word I like precisely because it always implies that there is some thing or some person or -- some state -- that does that "empowering" of you. In some identity-politics setting, usually. But "know and act upon your rights" means the law is above the state -- and you -- but you can claim it, against the state's violations.
Now Hillary -- her speechwriters -- have a list of the kinds of citizens who made the Helsink Accords real: "In the years that followed, the shipyard workers of Solidarity, reformers in Hungary, demonstrators in Prague..."
I was very, very disappointed in this line. In fact, my heart sunk. In fact, since Magnitsky was on the floor being debated when this speech was being made, I was quite upset. It didn't mention the Moscow Helsinki Group! And it should have. Yuri Orlov, the chairman of the group, Ludmila Alexeyeva, a founding member who was the Western representative in exile in the US for many years, and now the chairwoman in Moscow -- they should have been mentioned as they are the ones who came up with the idea of "Helsinki Watching" in the first place! There wouldn't have been any Human Rights Watch without them first. Remember Millicent Fenwick, founder of the CSCE? She was among the first to meet with the Moscow Helsinki Group.
The Soviet Helsinki Watch groups in a number of the Soviet republics -- more than 50 of these brave people went to labour camps and exile for their work -- shouldn't have been overlooked in Hillary's speech. That they were -- that they weren't automatically included -- was a function of a) someone young drafting the speech or b) some strange desire not to dis the Russians, and leave out mention of a "foreign agent" -- as Ludmila Alexeyeva has already been called -- to Putin's eternal shame.
Well, Hillary trips along further -- mentioning that OSCE election observers even came "to my own country" -- although there was controversy there -- and that there was a...peaceful transition in Georgia. Okay. It was that! Such a peace, that not a minister from the previous regime will be left out of jail!
But Hillary is never one to shrink from the challenges of human rights, and to stand side by side with the civil society actors -- in fact she has done far more of that than Obama:
But I see a growing concern for the future of this organization and the values it has always championed. More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the work of creating a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace remains unfinished. I just met with a group of the Civil Society Solidarity Platform leaders from a number of member states. They talked to me about the growing challenges and dangers that they are facing, about new restrictions on human rights from governments, new pressures on journalists, new assaults on NGOs. And I urge all of us to pay attention to their concerns.
I'm less than impressed with the Civil Society Platform -- one pictures bouncing beaverboard -- look at the typically anodyne statement they turned in -- and Harry Hummel of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee is harumphing about drones and Guantanamo instead of more than 400 disappeared people in the Caucasus...
In any event, they do flag the obvious: human rights monitors (which we used to call them before they began to be called "defenders" after the passage of the long-sought "Defenders' Declaration" at the UN in 2000) suffer terribly for their work. I'm told that at the NGO briefing for the members of the UN Committee Against Torture, the experts asked the NGOs who had written "shadow" reports as alternatives to the misleading official state report from the Russian government, how many people in the room had experienced reprisals for their work. Nearly all of them raised their hands. And these are people with foreign languages; with the ability to travel abroad; intelligent people who are part of the world's intelligentsia. And they suffer for their work. Do you?
And now, the litany of abuses -- we've all written them, they are all familiar:
For example, in Belarus, the Government continues to systematically repress human rights, detain political prisoners, and intimidate journalists. In Ukraine, the elections in October were a step backwards for democracy, and we remain deeply concerned about the selective prosecution of opposition leaders. In Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, there are examples of the restrictions of the freedom of expression online and offline as well as the freedom of religion. In the Caucasus, we see constraints on judicial independence, attacks on journalists, and elections that are not always free and fair.
And we have seen in Russia restrictions on civil society including proposed legislation that would require many NGOs and journalists to register as foreign agents if they receive funding from abroad. There are unfortunately signs of democratic backsliding in Hungary and challenges to constitutional processes in Romania and the ugly specter of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, discrimination against immigrants, Roma, LGBT persons, and other vulnerable populations persists.
All correct, as far as it go. But there's that troubling downplaying of the severities of the Russian scene. Rozvozzhayev was kidnapped from Ukraine, tortured into confession, and is still held in Russia. And we're only talking here about "restrictions on civil society including proposed legislation"? Really, guys?
I hope that this line, "the ugly specter of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, discrimination against immigrants, Roma, LGBT persons, and other vulnerable populations persists" -- applies not only to Hungary and Romania (as it seems to) and not all the other countries, particularly Russia and the stans (as it should).
And now for some American chest-beating -- we're not perfect, although we don't let lawyers die in jail or assassinate them! -- and the rest:
So it is worth reminding ourselves that every participating state, including the United States, has room for improvement. The work of building a democracy and protecting human rights is never done, and one of the strengths of the OSCE has been that it provides a forum for discussing this challenge and making progress together. But there is even trouble here. This organization operates by consensus, so it cannot function when even a single state blocks progress. Forty-seven states have cosponsored the draft declaration on fundamental freedoms in the digital age, yet its path forward is blocked. The same goes for measures on media freedom, freedom of assembly and association, and military transparency.
I'm actually quite impressed that there are 47 whole states that voted for the digital age freedoms. That's way more than the 26 or so that had lukewarmedly signed on by June 2012 when I went to the Dublin conference -- and the Irish chair convinced the US to drop efforts to lobby for it and not even mention it because it was so contentious -- and Ireland itself didn't endorse it! And given that the CIS has 11 members, you can do the math to figure out where the 10-vote shortfall is... Somehow I don't think it's Andorra...
Ireland had such hopes of resolutions it was going to win...media freedom...journalists' protection...well, none of it came to pass. Really, no human rights progress at all because of Russia blockage -- and that's all there is to it. There isn't a doubt in my mind that every single one of the "frozen conflicts" would be better off today if Russian weren't meddling and needling.
But if you found the Irisn chair lack-lustre if well-intentioned -- oh, wait until you see who's next in the chair -- Ukraine. Fasten your seat belts, we're going back to Astana...
And this 40 year anniversary roadmap stuff? For the birds, totally. Hate it. Bad idea. A very, very wan and weak placebo for real human rights. "Roadmaps" are what you put in when you can't even get weak consensus on a few over-arching principles. Authoritarians love roadmaps -- they're doing the driving.
So some stern words from Hillary particularly on military matters -- which disturbingly, haven't been mentioned as much in past years after the Cold War, and now are back again -- again, due to Russia:
The OSCE must avoid institutional changes that would weaken it and undermine our fundamental commitments limiting the participation of NGOs in our discussions, offering amendments and vetoing proposals to respond quickly to conflicts and crises, trying to exert greater central control over the field offices and field workers to curb their efforts on human rights, suspending implementation of treaties and agreements so there is less military transparency in Europe than a decade ago. These are not the way to progress in the 21st century.
All of this is Russian meddling and weakening of this institution -- they want to do their own crisis response their way through the CSTO; they don't like OSCE field offices because that enables countries to be more independent without their pressure on a host of situations from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan to Georgia to Belarus. And as we know from Lavrov's raging yesterday on Russian TV, what really got the Russians mad the most was a comment Hillary made not in this speech but in remarks to the press afterward, that there was a disturbing trend to a Soviet re-union, that this "integration" process in the post-Soviet space was not welcome.
Sounding little different than Mitt Romney who said during his campaign that Russia was America's greatest geopolitical foe, Clinton warned, as the Financial Times report (registeration required):
“There is a move to re-Sovietise the region,” the US secretary of state told a news conference in Dublin hours before going into a meeting with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
“It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that,” she said, referring to various iterations of a Moscow-backed plan to deepen economic ties with its neighbours.
“But let's make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.”
While I have my insider critique of Hillary's speech from long practice of wincing when certain things are left out as if they have meaning, Reuters picked up this speech as strong -- and as a stern warning that "Europe's rights watchdog' was in danger. And that is the size of it.
It's a bleak time for all of us who have stayed the course these 37 years with the Helsinki process. The wind isn't at our backs now, the flags are in tatters. But, like Yuri as he sewed his bags on the machine, "I am convinced that our sacrifices are not in vain."
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