34. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to President Carter1
SUBJECT
- Weekly National Security Report #9
1. Opinion
Human Rights: For a Broader Interpretation.
As I signaled to you, some elements in Congress are seizing on human rights as an excuse for blocking constructive initiatives in the area of development aid or at least as an opportunity for attaching all sorts of restrictive conditions on such aid.2 Abroad, some see our concern as excessively rigid and moralistic.
Despite this, I believe that our affirmative commitment to human rights is not only morally justified but is in keeping with historical trends, thereby giving American foreign policy additional influence and associating America as a society with a vital human concern. Otherwise, America runs the risk of being perceived only as a consumption-oriented society, making us the focus both of envy and of resentment.
However, the point to stress is that human rights is a broad concept. These two words should mean much more than just political liberty, the right to vote, and protection against arbitrary governmental action. Human rights, and this we should stress, means also certain basic minimum standards of social and economic existence. In effect, human rights refers to all three (political, social, and economic) and this is why these words have such universal appeal.
Such a broader, and more flexible definition would have several advantages: it would retain for us the desirable identification with a human cause whose time has come, and yet it would avoid some of the rigidities that are potential in the narrower political definition. It would give us the freedom to point at the most glaring abuses (e.g., political suppression in some countries, or total social indifference in others), [Page 143] though leaving us the necessary margin of flexibility in dealing with most governments. In general, we should stress that achieving human rights is a process and that we are watching carefully progress toward greater respect for human rights, realizing that there is no single standard for all the countries of the world.
I believe that all of the foregoing is implicit in what you have been saying, but making some of these points more explicit may make it more difficult for your critics to attack your position and for others to distort it into excessively rigid and politically confining meanings.
[Omitted here is information unrelated to foreign policy opinions.]
- Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Brzezinski Office File, Subject Chron File, Box 125, Weekly National Security Report: 2–4/77. Top Secret; Sensitive; Contains Codeword. Carter and Mondale both initialed the memorandum.↩
- Presumable reference to bills and amendments requiring U.S. representatives to the international financial institutions (IFIs) to vote against loans to countries designated as human rights violators. See Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Documents 33, 35–37.↩