But the most expert of these advocates [of human rights] understand (at least wh en the microphones are

off) that America operates in the real world: that our in fluence over the internal abuses of other countries is limited; that it s easier to condemn a relatively inconsequential regime than one that provides us with oil o r military bases; that humiliating leaders of countries like China may strengthe n the hand of hard-liners; that sometimes quiet diplomacy is more effective than a public rebuke. So wrote Bill Keller in a recent op-ed in the New York Times.[1] It was a burst of candid sense in an article otherwise devoted to the standard (public) line he ld by most prominent human rights advocates: that America is only as strong as t he fervor with which it upholds the values it espouses and that by showing a willing ness to compromise on matters of supposed moral principle, America is dangerousl y mis-communicating its resolve to its adversaries. It's rare to see the two arg uments so clearly and jarringly juxtaposed in one article: the case for taking c ontext into consideration versus the assertion that human rights are paramount a nd somehow exist outside and above the real world. A somewhat analogous juxtaposition subtly flavors the new book by Aryeh Neier, T he International Human Rights Movement. On the one hand, it's exactly the kind o f book you'd expect from one of the founders of Human Rights Watch, and the curr ent president of George Soros' Open Society Foundations: a soaring survey of the movement's history which glorifies its triumphs, minimizes its mistakes, and pu lls no punches against its enemies. On the other hand, the book, if read carefu lly, suggests a critique of what the human rights movement has become. It doesn' t quite amount to the 'closed-mic' confession that human rights exist in a real, political world and are contingent upon these realities. But it does indicate t hat there is some level of quiet unease among the old guard of the movement as t hey observe how the battle over human rights is being waged today. As a work of history, Neier's book is largely without surprises. It doesn't try to problematize any aspects of the human rights movement, nor does it think too deeply about the philosophy that underlies it.[2] It's written in the style of a n introductory text meant for undergraduates who probably already hope to pursue a career in NGO work, and thus don't need much convincing as to the merits of t heir chosen path. It's not uninformative if you're new to the field, and while t here is a very unambiguous slant in the presentation of the material, Neier is n ot trying to keep his biases hidden. The presentation can get rote, but at only three hundred sixty-some pages, it's difficult to give a thorough treatment of s uch a broad movement, even if one limits oneself to hagiography. The first part of the book is by far the strongest. It traces the early developm ent of the movement, from its intellectual roots in natural law doctrine through its struggles against slavery and for universal suffrage. Neier shows how the c ommon law tradition in England and the United States, based as it was in first p rinciples, was more conducive to the development of human rights activism than t he statute-based civil law tradition of continental Europe. He presents a series of thumbnail sketches of some of the important personalities that have moved th e ball forward people like Henry J. Morgenthau, Sr., the American Ambassador to Turk ey who forcefully denounced the Armenian massacre in 1915, and Edmund Morel, the enterprising chronicler of King Leopold's bloody-minded rape of the Congo, whos e efforts are the prototype for much of the activism that goes on today. However successful these early movements and movementarians were, Neier points out that their goals were rarely universal in nature, and that once the proximate goal w as achieved (women given the right to vote, global slave trade ended, King Leopo ld deprived of his African fiefdom), the movements tended to fade away. World War II changed all that. The horrors of the war, both on the battlefield a nd in the concentration camps, focused global opinion on coming up with means of preventing and discouraging such terrible excesses from happening again. Neier'

s synoptic presentation of the relevant treaties, covenants and agreements serve s as a cogent backgrounder for those hazy on the contours of international law. In the realm of humanitarian law, he outlines how the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (and the two subsequent Additional Protocols of 1977) have successfully defined a modern standard which countries have at least paid lip-service to when prosec uting war in the twentieth century. He also sketches out the efforts of idealist s like Eleanor Roosevelt and crusaders like Raphael Lemkin in the realm of human rights. He outlines how the non-binding Universal Declaration on Human Rights a nd the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were birthed at the still-brand new United Nations, and explains the tortuous path t hat the Declaration took to becoming a legally binding agreement in the shape of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the more controver sial International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights some twentyfour years later.[3] Neier goes on to explain how these new frameworks allowed for the flowering of p olitical dissent on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and the concomitant rise of NGOs such as Amnesty International and his own Human Rights Watch here in th e West. The chapters on Amnesty and especially Human Rights Watch in the 1980s a re probably the least nuanced in the book, but they're also quite revealing due to the author's personal involvement during that period. For example, Neier tell s us that the Reagan Administration was routinely referred to as "proxy villains " within his organization, and he details how the Reaganites' often strident opp osition would redound positively to Human Rights Watch's reputation with donors and other activists. Such juicy tidbits won't really surprise anyone who's been paying attention to how the human rights industry has developed over the years. Many will see it as further proof, if any more was needed, of an anti-Western bi as and craven opportunism which is ingrained deep within these institutions. Def enders Neier foremost among them will argue that episodes such as these prove that Human Rights Watch and its ilk sit above the national and ideological fray, naming an d shaming the nations which most deserve the opprobrium regardless of what 'side ' they're on. The final chapters of the book, dealing with human rights in the post 9/11 age, while not exculpatory, at least suggest Neier is arguing in good faith. He ackno wledges that in al-Qaeda, the West facing an enemy which could not be cowed by s hame for not holding to ethical norms. Unlike totalitarian regimes, terrorists f launt ethical norms as a means to an end. Though he laments that the United Stat es under George W. Bush decided to make prevention of another attack a priority rather than pursuing the perpetrators using the international legal frameworks a vailable to it, he seems to at least understand the decision and how popular it was with the public. He spends the last chapter of the book urging the new gener ation of human rights activists to think creatively about how to fit into these new geopolitical realities, helping to adapt and expand the international law to olset to function in an age of terrorism. You'd be forgiven for having missed it there at the end Neier's ever-so-subtle conce ssion to the exigencies of reality on the practice of human rights advocacy. Ind eed, you'd be forgiven for failing to pick it out in the text itself, where it's buried between a torrent of complaints over the lack of due process, the employ ment of military tribunals, the widespread use of U.S.-sanctioned torture in Abu Ghraib and beyond and most of all the failure of Barack Obama to reverse many of th ese trends after campaigning to do so in 2008. But it's there, and it's signific ant. Its significance is highlighted by a passing lament of Neier's earlier in t he book which I've so far failed to mention. And its broader import is best appr eciated when you look at some of the shenanigans Human Rights Watch in particula r has been getting into lately, especially in its work having to do with Israel. Neier's lament comes early, and seems a bit esoteric on the surface. At the end of a lengthy discussion of the three tiers of rights civil and political, economic a

nd social, and the newfangled 'green' rights to a healthy environment and to pea ce he comes down \ assertively against the pursuit of the last two categories and ur ges focusing on the first instead. His argument is that most rights advocacy end s up seeking redress to grievances through whatever court system is available to it, but that this is absolutely the wrong way to have the judiciary engaged in a functioning democracy when it comes to questions of scarcity and wealth distri bution. "Economic and security matters ought to be, and are, constant questions of public debate..." he warns. "Some who question the concept of economic rights believe that to withdraw such questions from politics, and to attempt to settle them on the basis of rights... is to carve the heart out of the democratic proc ess." He ends the chapter thus: It is possible that proponents of [economic and social] rights will in time disc over new means to enforce them and that jurisprudence will evolve more effective ways to promote such rights through litigation. A dwindling minority of rights proponents are skeptical that this is possible; and an even smaller number which inc ludes the present author doubt that it is desirable. For the time being, those withi n the rights movements who contend that the concept of rights should be circumsc ribed and limited to civil and political rights, are on the losing side of the a rgument. The passage has an ominous tone in a book that's otherwise preaching to the conv erted. And it illustrates exactly how Neier's generation may in fact be losing v oice among the newer, more ideologically pure crop of activists who are less con cerned with repercussions and context than with doing that which is in their min ds incontestably correct. An instructive, parallel drama overtook Human Rights Watch more than two years a go, when another one of its founders, Robert Bernstein, complained in an impassi oned New York Times op-ed about the way which his own institution was unfairly a nd disproportionately focusing on Israel in its report-writing.[4] He raised two points of context which HRW was studiously avoiding. First, there are important differences between open and closed societies. Israel is clearly open, with "at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free p ress, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules aga inst the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties a nd, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world many of whom are there expressly to cover the I sraeli-Palestinian conflict." The Arab states which surrounded Israel (at the ti me, before the Arab Spring) were by and large "brutal, closed and autocratic". T his distinction, argued Bernstein, does not mean that Israel is necessarily blam eless in everything it does. But it does suggest that given its relative edge in openness means that Israel can do a better job at policing itself and instituti ng needed reforms. Second, and perhaps more important, Israel's wars with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza were defensive in nature, and were actively provoked by malevolent actors who repeatedly called for the eradication of the Jewish state, and raini ng down rocket barrages on its civilians for days on end. Furthermore, when the conflict started, both Hamas and Hezbollah waged their campaigns from densely po pulated areas, using the civilian population as human shields. Again, this is no t to argue that anything goes in a defensive war. But once again, context is cri tical. Neier all-too-briefly summarizes and dismisses Bernstein's complaints pter on Human Rights Watch. Siding with the moral absolutists on this issue, he replies blithely that while Berstein is correct that there ences between open and closed societies, "he is wrong to suggest that ties should be spared criticism for human rights abuses." It would be in his cha particular are differ open socie truly diff

icult to conjure up a more disingenuous straw-man argument. And it's confusing t o hear Neier make it, when only a few chapters later, he's urging the broader co mmunity to think more contextually about these very issues. Why does any of this matter in the larger frame? It turns out, to our peril, tha t the human rights movement has been more successful than Aryeh Neier dares to i magine. For apart from a pundit class which continues to draw deeply from the we ll of comforting moral certainties and platitudes which are the movement's great est legacy, more than four decades' worth of politicians and civil servants have come up through the system believing that America's responsibility in the world is to actively work on promoting and protecting human rights everywhere it can, regardless of context. And though America's foreign policy decision-making is f ar from dominated by the blinkered idealist set, there are enough of them floati ng around to get us involved in counter-productive interventions (the war in Lib ya), empty grandstanding (the proposed Magnitsky bill against Russia), and poten tially disruptive brinksmanship with our biggest adversary (the Chen Guangcheng case). America of course neither can nor should become a completely Machiavellian super power. Natural law first principles are in its DNA, and completely ignoring them as some realist thinkers counsel is neither realistic nor likely to succeed. Bu t especially as we head in earnest into an uncertain 21st century, wise stewards hip of our power and attention is an absolute must. This will require strategic thinking, which not only operates within the realm of the real and possible, but also shrewdly walks the line between championing the cause of human rights as a good in itself and wielding it as a cudgel against our adversaries. The older g eneration of human rights activist such as Robert Bernstein, and to a lesser ext ent Aryeh Neier, seem to get this. One can only hope that the next generation he eds their counsel. [1] NYT citation. [2] FF citation. [3] The former was approved by the United States Senate in 1992 with several res ervations, understandings and declarations which circumscribe its relevance as b inding domestic law. The latter, though signed by the Carter administration, was never brought before Congress for approval.