Human rights credibility solves nuclear war.

For most of the past fifty years, U.S. foreign policymakers have largely viewed the promotion of human rights and the protection of national security as in inherent tension. Almost without exception, each administration has treated the two goals as mutually exclusive: promote human rights at the expense of national security or protect national security while overlooking international human rights. While U.S. policymakers have been motivated at times by human rights concerns, such concerns have generally been subordinate to national security. For example, President Bush’s 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy speaks of a “commitment to protecting basic human rights.” In the same document, President Bush makes it clear that “defending our Nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government.”1 This subordination of human rights to national security is both unnecessary and strategically questionable. A more effective U.S. foreign policy would view human rights and national security as correlated and complementary goals. Better protection of human rights around the world would make the United States safer and more secure. The United States needs to restructure its foreign policy accordingly.

This Article presents a strategic--as opposed to ideological or normative--argument that the promotion of human rights should be given a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. It does so by suggesting a correlation between the domestic human rights practices of states and their propensity to engage in aggressive international conduct. Among the chief threats to U.S. national security are acts of aggression by other states. Aggressive acts of war may directly endanger the United States, as did the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, or they may require U.S. military action overseas, as in Kuwait fifty years later. Evidence from the post-Cold War period [*250] indicates that states that systematically abuse their own citizens' human rights are also those most likely to engage in aggression. To the degree that improvements in various states' human rights records decrease the likelihood of aggressive war, a foreign policy informed by human rights can significantly enhance U.S. and global security.

Since 1990, a state's domestic human rights policy appears to be a telling indicator of that state's propensity to engage in international aggression. A central element of U.S. foreign policy has long been the preservation of peace and the prevention of such acts of aggression. 2 If the correlation discussed herein is accurate, it provides U.S. policymakers with a powerful new tool to enhance national security through the promotion of human rights. A strategic linkage between national security and human rights would result in a number of important policy modifications. First, it changes the prioritization of those countries U.S. policymakers have identified as presenting the greatest concern. Second, it alters some of the policy prescriptions for such states. Third, it offers states a means of signaling benign international intent through the improvement of their domestic human rights records. Fourth, it provides a way for a current government to prevent future governments from aggressive international behavior through the institutionalization of human rights protections. Fifth, it addresses the particular threat of human rights abusing states obtaining weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Finally, it offers a mechanism for U.S.-U.N. cooperation on human rights issues.