Office of the Historian

164. Memorandum From Guy Erb of the National Security Council Staff to Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Robert Pastor of the National Security Council Staff1

Washington, September 13, 1978

SUBJECT

  • Human Rights

Jessica’s remark in her nightly report about her “shock” at yesterday’s discussion of human rights prompts me to caution both of you against an overreaction to the events in Geneva and likely comment in the Press.2 Sure, we will be criticized by Errors and Nofax3 and others of their ilk but that in itself should not determine our own actions.

The President has never said that the United States has a perfect human rights record. Our current performance is flawed and in any historical perspective we are no better than many other countries.4

I am sure that, if confronted by this issue, the President could turn it to our advantage, stressing his own commitment to improvement of all countries’ human rights performance. We should advise him along those lines, rather than treating this episode as some sort of disaster that requires a defensive response. Above all, we should avoid any tinge of self-righteousness, a reaction that may have delayed HA’s reply to communications from Geneva on this issue.

  1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Global Issues—Mathews Subject File, Box 7, Human Rights: 5/77–9/78. Secret.↩
  2. In the NSC Global Issues Cluster’s September 12 evening report, Tuchman Mathews and Denend both described the events at that day’s NSC North/South meeting. According to Tuchman Mathews, the attendees participated in “an absolutely shocking discussion” of the issues surrounding the Memphis complaint. Denend noted that the meeting was “dominated by a heated discussion about the relative harm of the US being cited by the UN Human Rights Commission for human rights violations.” (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Global Issues—Oplinger/Bloomfield Subject File, Box 36, Evening Reports: 9–12/78)↩
  3. Reference is to syndicated political columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.↩
  4. Tuchman Mathews highlighted this sentence and added a handwritten postscript at the end of the memorandum: “Guy—I still find this shocking. To recognize the virtues of our own system in no way minimizes or discounts its past and current failings with regard to blacks or others. But I can not imagine any historical perspective in which it would not be accurate to say that the US is far superior to most other countries in all areas of human rights and freedoms (civil, social, economic, religious etc). All of this aside it should also be obvious that enormous political damage would result from being cited by the UN as a gross and consistent violator. We could certainly kiss our human rights policy good-bye—just as a beginning. Nobody is pretending we are perfect, but that’s a far cry from being put in a category with the likes of Uganda, Cambodia, Argentina, Nicaragua, the USSR, Equatorial Guinea, etc etc. Where would you rather live? JTM.”↩