The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

26 JUNE 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL that come with a values-based foreign policy. Raising such viola- tions can be difficult in our bilateral meetings, but they must be on the agenda, though our position can be delivered with the acknowledgment that every country, including ourselves, has had to deal with similar issues. I think that one can also pitch the practical benefits of improving protection for human rights. I know that this is dif- ficult when you are talking to a guy whose forces have commit- ted mass crimes, but I will admit to suggesting to leaders that the best way to avoid an international arrest warrant would be to pursue genuine investigations and prosecutions of direct perpe- trators. If that happens, it will at least be harder for such leaders to recruit others to commit similar crimes in the future. Of course, sometimes the requirements of national security require us to work even with criminal leaders. Roosevelt and Churchill allied with and aided Stalin in order to beat Hitler. But in less extreme situations, we often shoot ourselves in the foot by allying with leaders who are mistreating their own people. I remember when it was said that Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was “an SOB, but our SOB” and recall how the shah of Iran was feted by U.S. administrations of both parties. They were hated at home and eventually overthrown, and we have been unable to accomplish much for the people of either country since. What are the benefits or pitfalls of the Trump administration’s aims to focus more narrowly on the defense and protection of core “unalienable” rights as opposed to a broader basket of identities, activities and liberties? What is your view of the Commission on Unalienable Rights established by Secretary Mike Pompeo in 2018? What advice would you offer the com- mission, if asked? I was scheduled to see the Commission on Unalienable Rights at Chatham House in London at the end of April. If the meeting had taken place, I would have encouraged a broader view of human rights, both because of the relationship of these rights to each other and because of the need for allies who take a broader view and whose support is necessary if we are to make progress on the international protection of any of them. What is the prospect of the U.S. continuing to lead the inter- national human rights agenda in light of current political chal- lenges at home and abroad? The Pew Research Center tells us that support for U.S. leader- ship by citizens of our European allies has fallen precipitously since 2016. Sadly, the polling also shows less dramatic, but still signifi- cant declines in favorable views of the United States itself. But at the same time, European voters do not strongly support their own politicians when they advocate for human rights or values-based foreign policies. In the past, however, when we led, others joined us in part because of the favorable views of the United States by their citizens. In the future, it will be more difficult, andmore costly. When you were Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice, what were the top U.S. foreign policy goals in the realm of human rights? Has that changed now, and if so, how? Let me cite one difference, and it is not only between this administration and the last one, but between the current one and the last two. In the past, we made it a high priority of the U.S. government that leading alleged war criminals face trial in international courts. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration refused to participate in a donors’ conference in Belgrade unless former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was transferred to The Hague. In 2006 President Bush himself refused to meet the presi- dent of Nigeria until former Liberian President Charles Taylor, then in exile in Nigeria, was arrested and sent for trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone where I was Prosecutor. From 2009 to 2011, the Barack Obama administration engaged on multiple levels, with both carrots and sticks, to successfully bring the last of the indicted war criminals of the former Yugo- slavia, including Serbian Army General Ratko Mladic, to interna- tional courtrooms where they would face the survivors of crimes like the murder of 8,000 Muslimmen and boys at Srebrenica. Now there is the case of former Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who is under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for genocide and crimes against humanity, and who was overthrown in April 2019 and soon thereafter jailed on corruption charges in Khartoum. There has been justified fears that he will break out and destabilize the fragile transition, and even the military elements of the transitional government have wanted him gone. Is there any doubt that if the United States exercised its for- mer leadership, he would not have soon been on a plane to The Hague? n I think that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 says it all very well.