by John McCain
I believe the United States has a special responsibility to champion human rights in all places, for all peoples, and at all times. I’ve believed that all my life. I was raised to believe it, to see it in the examples of gallantry put before me, in the histories and novels and poems I was encouraged to read, in the conduct of the heroes I admired, those to whom I was related or knew personally, and those who were commended to me. I am a democratic internationalist, a proud one, and have been all my public life. I could have been nothing else given my role models and influences. I took from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that defending the dignity of others is never a lost cause whether you succeed or not. And I thrill to the exhortation in the poem that inspired the novel, to be “part of the main,” to be “involved in mankind.”
It’s who we are. The right to life and liberty, to be governed by consent and ruled by laws, to have equal justice and protection of property, these values are the core of our national identity. And it is fidelity to them—not ethnicity or religion, culture or class—that makes one an American. To accept the abolition or abridgement of those rights in other societies should be no less false to Americans than their abridgment in our own society. Human rights are not our invention. They don’t represent standards from which particular cultures or religions can be exempted. They are universal. They exist above the state and beyond history. They cannot be rescinded by one government any more than they can be granted by another. That’s our creed. The authors put it right at the beginning of the manifesto they wrote to declare our independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
That creed gave us a purpose in the world greater than self-interest, a cause that encompasses our interests but is not defined by us alone. As Harry Truman once said of America, “God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.” Where rulers abused their people, we spoke up, we protested, we drew attention, we identified with the abused, and demanded better from the abuser. We used diplomatic and economic pressure to protect dissidents, to free political prisoners, to restrain autocrats, to get them to stop resisting change or at least modify their behavior enough to let change eventually undo them.
Human rights advocacy isn’t naive idealism. It’s the truest kind of realism. Statesmen who think that all that really matters in international relations is how governments treat each other are wrong. The character of states can’t be separated from their conduct in the world. Governments that protect the rights of their citizens are more likely to play a peaceful, constructive role in world affairs. Governments that are unjust, that cheat, lie, steal, and use violence against their own people are more likely to do the same to other nations.
Take Russia, for example. It’s not a coincidence that as the Kremlin has reverted to autocracy at home under its crooked ex-KGB colonel, Vladimir Putin, it has become ever more aggressive abroad, occupying territories that belong to its neighbors; helping one of the cruelest regimes on earth, Bashar al-Assad’s, slaughter hundreds of thousands of Syrians; interfering in an American presidential election with the intention of helping elect the candidate they believed would pose the least resistance to their ambitions. Not even that last offense is entirely surprising considering the character of revanchist Russia, and its vain and corrupt leader, who decried the collapse of the Soviet Union and its evil empire. Why? Because of all the good the Soviets did in the world? They were the eastern front against Nazi Germany. That is their only welcome political or military contribution to history. The rest is a saga of corruption, brute force, and atrocious inhumanity followed by decay and collapse.
If we don’t accept that the nature of a regime shapes its conduct, we risk profoundly misreading international politics. We expect better behavior from despots than we have reason to. We miss what can be the most transformational force for good in the world: the anger of oppressed people, and their hope, their imperishable hope for change. That anger and hope filled the streets of East Berlin twenty-nine years ago, tore down a wall separating half a continent from liberty, and made the United States and our allies a whole lot safer. A world where the human rights of more people in more places are secure is not only a more just world, it’s a safer world. For reasons of basic self-interest we must continue to lead the long, patient effort to make the world freer and more just.
I consider myself a realist. I have certainly seen my share of the world as it really is and not how I wish it would be. What I’ve learned is that it is foolish to view realism and idealism as incompatible or to consider our power and wealth as encumbered by the demands of justice, morality, and conscience. In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality. By denying this experience, we deny the aspirations of billions of people, and invite their enduring resentment.
The benefits of promoting our values can be a long time coming. The rights of others will never be our only priority. But they must always be a high priority. Our interests will often necessitate dealing with some pretty bad actors. But we shouldn’t pay for the privilege by declining to criticize how they mistreat their people. We should demonstrate to the oppressed that as we negotiate with their oppressors we haven’t forsaken them, we are still on their side. Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviets when he believed it was in our security interests to do so. And while he did so, he routinely reminded them they were on the wrong side of history. He told Mikhail Gorbachev what he should do with his wall. He used engagement with our adversary as an opportunity to, among other things, demand better treatment for the captive peoples of the evil empire. And when he tempered his public criticisms of Soviet behavior it was in response to real progress on their part, not in exchange for engagement itself.
My youngest children have only read about the Berlin Wall. Their world was never divided by it. Their lives weren’t affected by its shadow. But for those of us born before or during the Cold War that blessing was the achievement of “a long, twilight struggle.” I remember the enormous sacrifice it entailed—the many brave souls, some of them my friends, who gave their lives to secure it. I remember a span of half a century when, for all our differences, Americans maintained a bipartisan commitment to the freedom and security of our allies. And together we kept faith with those on the other side of the walls that divided the free and the oppressed. We were confident they wanted the same things we did—freedom, equal justice, the rule of law, a fair chance to prosper by their own industry and talents. We kept the faith, and we prevailed.
No one of my acquaintance ever believed in that faith more sincerely, more ardently than Henry “Scoop” Jackson, U.S. senator from the state of Washington, and, in his time, the Senate’s great apostle of freedom. I knew him when I was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate, and escorted him on some of his many travels abroad. He was a champion for the world’s oppressed, and an enemy to those who gained power for themselves by disregarding the humanity of others. He was a classic Cold War liberal, anticommunist to the bone. He complicated the Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger policy of détente with the Soviets by insisting it not come at the expense of America’s commitment to human rights. Over their objections, he passed legislation that conditioned trade with the Soviets and other autocratic regimes on the relaxation of emigration policies. He was a hero to Soviet Jews wishing to immigrate to Israel. I once escorted a large Senate delegation on a trip to Israel. The delegation included many strong supporters of the Jewish state, but only one man among them was greeted with the ecstatic approval more typical of a pop star’s welcome. As the delegation’s bus passed through the gates of Tel Aviv airport, a crowd of nearly a thousand, mostly former refuseniks and their families, had gathered to shout their gratitude and admiration for Scoop Jackson. They mobbed us, slowing the bus
’s progress to a crawl. Scoop and his beloved wife, Helen, were genuinely moved by the outpouring of affection. So was I, recognizing it, as Scoop surely did, as an outpouring of affection for America and our ideals.
We don’t always appreciate as we should the value others place on the public statements of American officials. It matters what we say and what we don’t say. The U.S. remains the world’s leading power, and when our leaders speak, governments and people take notice. Natan Sharansky told me how word of Reagan’s statements on their behalf reached him and his fellow dissidents in prison, and sustained them, knowing they were not forgotten by the world’s greatest power and most idealistic nation. Reagan’s famous speech to the British Parliament in 1982 that envisioned the West’s approaching victory in the Cold War, and committed America to vigorous support for democratic movements the world over, inspired the men and women who persevere through threats and setbacks to claim for their nations the universal values that bind ours. And the products of his Westminster speech, the National Endowment for Democracy, and its affiliated organizations, including the International Republican Institute, have given support and advice to many of those movements.
Our public support for the oppressed and criticism of their oppressors can effect change. I speak from personal experience. After America and the world learned that the POWs in North Vietnam were being mistreated, Hanoi was stunned by the criticism they received even from antiwar voices in the U.S. and in the capitals of other countries that opposed America’s intervention, and our treatment improved.
Often the very act of supporting human rights overseas compels us to make our own “shining city upon a hill” worthier of such a boast. There’s a story about Vice President Richard Nixon visiting the West African country of Ghana in 1957 to mark its official independence from the British Empire. Moved by the jubilant celebration, Nixon is reported to have asked one ecstatic Ghanaian after another, “How does it feel to be free?” until one young man replied, “I wouldn’t know, sir. I’m from Alabama.” Our support during the Cold War for the human rights of the peoples of the Soviet Union and its satellites helped force us to face up to our own failings more honestly. Russians, Cubans, Vietnamese, and just about every Marxist-Leninist regime in the world responded to our criticism of them with reminders that we continued to deny full citizenship to African Americans. Exposing our hypocrisy to the world played a part in forcing change in America, helping convince leaders to adopt laws that oblige us to live up to our values. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Detainee Treatment Act forty years later were to an extent a response to accusations that our proselytizing on behalf of the God-given dignity of all people was cynical.
Most important of all, America’s support, rhetorical and material, for the advance of freedom and justice to all peoples everywhere is sometimes the only expression of international solidarity that is known to the world’s worst oppressed, the jailed and tortured and murdered, the only glimpse of hope in their despair, the only evidence they are not forsaken.
• • •
I traveled with a Senate delegation to Burma in January 2012. It was my second trip there in four months. The long-suffering Burmese people were on the cusp of real progress. The military junta that had misruled, mistreated, murdered, and imprisoned them had given way in 2011 to an elected government of mostly ex-military officers, not fairly elected, to be sure, but a government that appeared to recognize the need for political reform. Any sign of an opening in Burma, renamed Myanmar by the junta, was encouraging considering the many atrocities committed by the regime, from child conscripts to ethnic cleansing. Regime officials had opened talks with the last fairly elected leader of the country, Aung San Suu Kyi, whom I had met on my first trip to Burma in the 1990s, and who was a personal hero to me. Those talks led to genuine political reforms and a promise of parliamentary elections in April 2012 that Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, would win. I had gone to Burma in September 2011, to encourage the progress that had begun, to urge the release of all political prisoners, and to meet for the first time in fifteen years the woman I so admired. I came back the following January with friends Joe Lieberman, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, after hundreds of prisoners had been released. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had come the month before, the most senior U.S. official to visit the country in more than half a century. We were there to reinforce that a better relationship with the U.S. was within prospect, including the lifting of economic sanctions we had imposed on Burma, were the April elections, as promised, free and fair. We reminded our hosts that the Obama administration and Congress would be guided in those decisions by Suu Kyi’s views.
It was a brief visit and a crowded schedule, but I’ll remember one of our meetings for as long as I live. Full diplomatic relations between our two countries had yet to be reestablished, so we didn’t have an ambassador in Burma. A chargé d’affaires led our country team there, and the meeting was held at his residence. The men we had come to meet, all in their fifties, were leaders of the 88 Generation, an organization of Burmese democratic activists that takes its name from the student protests in 1988 that culminated in a general strike and ultimately in Suu Kyi’s election in 1990. The men had been active in the protests, which had been suppressed with terrible bloodshed, and were arrested in the ensuing crackdown. They formed the 88 Generation in 2005 and played a critical role in organizing massive protests against the regime in 2007, when hundreds of thousands of Burmese led by Buddhist monks took to the streets of Rangoon. The Saffron Revolution was the largest political demonstration since the 1988 uprising.
Min Ko Naing was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment in 1988. Tortured, his health wrecked, and his case championed by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, he was released after fifteen years in 2004. He was rearrested in September and imprisoned for several months. No charges were filed and no reason given for his release, shortly after which he helped found Generation 88. He was arrested again in August 2007 for his role in the Saffron Revolution and sentenced with other 88 Generation leaders to sixty-five years in a remote prison where he was held in solitary confinement.
Ko Ko Gyi had been arrested and held briefly in 1989, then rearrested in 1991. He was released in 2005, arrested in the same crackdown that claimed Min Ko Naing. Like Min, he was released without explanation in January 2007. With Min, he was arrested again during the Saffron Revolution, and sentenced to sixty-five years in the same remote prison.
Htay Kywe was arrested in 1991 and released in 2004, rounded up with Min and Ko in September 2005. Although he managed to evade capture a couple months longer than Min and Ko, he was again arrested in 2007, tried, and sentenced to sixty-five years’ hard labor in another remote prison.
All three men had been released from prison in a general amnesty ten days before our meeting. Each had spent cumulatively more than twenty years in prison. All had been tortured, held in solitary confinement for long periods, and had suffered from poor conditions and malnourishment. Their cases had been publicized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various other human rights organizations, as well as by the State Department and American politicians from both parties. I had been vocal about Burma since my first visit, had sponsored legislation sanctioning the regime, and had regularly made statements, signed letters, and given interviews on behalf of Suu Kyi and the 88 Generation prisoners, including the suffering souls I met that day. They had heard and seen all of it, all the advocacy in the West for their cause and for them personally. It had helped sustain them in dark hours. These simple, easily made gestures of solidarity had meant everything to them. They were emotional when we were introduced. One wept when I started to speak. My disembodied voice had become familiar to him from Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts. They embraced me over and over again and thanked me profusely as if I had saved their lives when all I had done was mention their names every now and
again. It was one of the most touching encounters of my life. There is nothing so rewarding as contributing, even if only in the most modest way, to the defense of another human being’s dignity, all the more so when the person is otherwise a stranger to you.
God bless the people who devote themselves to the liberation of the oppressed, to the spread of democracy and the rule of law in countries that are not their own, particularly those who do so at the risk of their own lives. Their example instructs us to speak up for our values and for people denied them wherever they are. Sometimes that’s harder to do than on other occasions. Sometimes we have security interests at stake that loom larger on our list of priorities than the rights denied citizens in the country concerned, in Saudi Arabia, for example, with whom we have enemies in common. Sometimes the criticism falls on friends with whom we have more than just common enemies, but common values and shared causes.
I have admired few public figures more than I admire Aung San Suu Kyi. I have spoken and written of my admiration for her many times. And yet, if we are truly committed to the progress of democracy and justice in Burma, she must be held to higher standards than we expected from the regime that held her under house arrest for so many years. The atrocities perpetrated against Rohingya Muslims in the northern Burmese province of Rakhine by the Burmese military and, allegedly, by Buddhist monks in the world’s latest episode of ethnic cleansing should be condemned by every decent person with knowledge of them. That surely includes the recognized leader of Burma’s democrats. Many thousands have been killed, a half million have fled the country and are homeless, tales of their suffering are rife with accounts of rape and the most extreme physical abuse and cruelty. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi, who gave up her freedom, her family, her comfortable life in the West to help free her native country from tyranny, has been mostly silent about the inhumane treatment of the Rohingya. Political change in Burma is delicate and reversible. She has to be careful not to alienate the military, which allows her and her fellow democrats to govern and to move the country slowly toward a time when political reforms are firmly rooted. But that caution must not demand that a voice as important as hers be stilled when confronted with human rights abuses on a grand scale. Nor can ours be quiet out of respect for her. The rights of the Rohingya are as sacred as the rights of the 88 Generation. They, too, deserve to hear voices raised in their defense in the leading democracies of the world. They, too, deserve our respect for their dignity and our condemnation of those who oppress them. It’s as wrong to refuse them our support as it would have been to refuse it to Suu Kyi, to the 88 Generation activists, to the Buddhist monks in the Saffron Revolution.