
US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House on June 22, 2023, in Washington, DC. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
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US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House on June 22, 2023, in Washington, DC. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
Thereâs a subtle but deeply ideological media trope that asserts, with no evidence or explanation, that supporting despotic, human rights-abusing countriesâan ongoing and decades-long traditionâis something the US, the most powerful country in the history of earth, is reluctantly âforcedâ to do. Take as a recent example an ostensibly straight New York Times report by Peter Baker and Mujib Mashal explaining why the US just rolled out the red carpet for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, âdespiteâ Indiaâs increasingly grim human rights record.
Itâs simply taken for granted that US officialsâ default position is identical to that of a scrappy, well-meaning humanitarian organization, unless circumstances âforceâ them to take a different position.
The headline alone is a masterclass in obfuscation: âIn Hosting Modi, Biden Pushes Democracy Concerns to the Background.â The term âDemocracy Concernsâ is not put in scare quotes or otherwise presented as something that ought to invite skepticism, a self-serving claim of internal motive made by the White House that the reader should perhaps take with a grain of salt. The Times simply states as an agreed-upon fact that President Joe Biden, along with the broader US diplomatic apparatus, have genuinely felt âdemocracy concerns.â No other major global power enjoys the taken-for-granted presumption of its perpetual, axiomatic concern for democracyâitâs a moral tiara only placed upon the head of The New York Timesâ home country.
After much hand-wringing about Modiâs well-documented illiberal policies, the Times breathes a sigh, then assertsâagain, without any skepticism or evidenceâthat the US sincerely cares about âhuman rightsâ but simply Has No Choice but to look the other way in this instance:
Mr. Biden has concluded, much as his predecessors did, that he needs India despite concerns over human rights just as he believes he needs Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and other countries that are either outright autocracies or do not fit into the category of ideal democracies. At a time of confrontation with Russia and an uneasy standoff with China, Mr. Biden is being forced to accept the flaws of Americaâs friends.
That the US would back a country because it is autocratic, as opposed to backing a country despite this fact, never crosses Baker and Mashalâs minds. Itâs simply taken for granted that US officialsâ default position is identical to that of a scrappy, well-meaning humanitarian organization, unless circumstances âforceâ them to take a different position.
For being such a noble empire, the US is âforcedâ into such moral compromises quite frequently. Last summer, for instance, when Biden rolled out the red carpet for Saudi dictator and journalist-slayer Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, we were told repeatedly that he was, again, âforcedâ into doing so (emphases mine):
Forced by whom, exactly? Where is that outside force coming from? A morally sensible person would understand that if âdemocracy concernsâ are so quickly jettisoned when they become modestly inconvenient, then they are, indeed, not real concerns, much less principles in any meaningful sense. They are self-aggrandizing marketing fluff. No one on the media or politics side is actually having a serious conversation about the principle of defending human rights around the worldâonly a child would believe this. The point is the theater of acting like one is Very Concerned With Human Rights because itâs good for branding, both internal and external.
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It makes sense that these bureaucratic systemsâas well as the domestic populations in whose name they actâwould develop their own sophistic moral ecosystems to rationalize the otherwise banal, cruel, might-makes-right exercise of power. What doesnât make sense, though, is why any ostensibly âobjectiveâ news organization would unquestioningly accept the transparent PR framework of the morally upstanding superpower begrudgingly forced to compromise when reporting on the realities of global politics. Imagine reading a headline like âDespite Concerns over Greenhouse Emissions, Exxon Forced to Extract More Oilââany reporter who put their name on an article like that would justifiably be ridiculed. But when it comes to âreportingâ on the machinations of US power, this brand of institutional credulity is the norm, giving the average reader the clear impression, over and over and over again, that US policy makers are actually motivated by a genuine concern for democracy and human rights.
In the worlds of war and work, hardly anyone wakes up feeling like theyâre the bad guy.
The US has a long, detailed history of carrying out human rights abuses itselfâas well as arming, supporting, and funding others who do the sameâup to and including the present day. To achieve the goal of shutting down an anti-colonial rebellion in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902, the US burned down entire villages. The US supported Indonesiaâs Suharto government in the mid-1960s as that same government mass-killed up to 1 million people suspected of being communists. The US killed an estimated 10% of North Koreaâs population during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The US invasion of Iraq killed as many as 1 million Iraqis, according to one estimate. Post-9/11 US wars have caused the deaths of an estimated 4.5 million people, according to a recent Brown University study. US sanctions on Venezuela were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 40,000 Venezuelans from 2017 to 2018, one analysis found. The US-backed Saudi War in Yemen has killed over 11,000 children directly since 2015âand another 85,000 have died from starvation as a result of the warâwith the vast majority of those deaths resulting from US-supplied Saudi bombs. The US has been the primary backer, arms supplier, and funder of Israeli occupation and the arbitrary killing and maiming of Palestinians for over 70 years; it is also the most vocal and unwavering defender of a racist system that Human Rights Watch and virtually every other major human rights organization calls an âapartheid regime.â Less than two weeks after Modiâs visit CNN reported President Biden planned on appointing documented war criminal Elliott Abrams to United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
Was the US âforcedâ into taking all of these anti-democratic, anti-human-rights actions? If so, what mysterious geopolitical dark matter has been compelling US policy makers, against their will, to abandon their ostensible commitment to democracy and human rights for all these decades? If they werenât âforcedâ in 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003, 2013, then what makes us think they are being âforcedâ in 2023? What existentially changed about US foreign policy that would make the situation todayâwhere certain âpolitical realitiesâ are âforcingâ a reluctant US to ignore human rights abusesâan outlier in US empireâs consistent, historically contiguous track record of disregarding human rights?
If handwaving about ârealitiesâ and âpractical considerationsâ in a âmessy worldâ is enough to justify brute realpolitik when it comes to US relations with countries like Saudi Arabia, then why isnât this also the case for Russia and China? Couldnât one argue that all of their human rights abuses are the result of certain ârealitiesâ compelling them to do evil things? No, of course not. When Official Enemy States commit similar human rights violations or go to war, we are told by US media, itâs due to deliberate, long-term plots of global conquest, clear moral choices, and cynical might-makes-right exercises of power.
A thorough review of The New York Timesâ archive produces no example of reporters framing Chinese, Russian, or Iranian human rights abuses as something these regimes were âforcedâ to do. It is simply taken for granted they do such things of their own perverse volition, as purely cynical exercises in arbitrary power grabs. There is no reluctance, no heavy sighs beforehand, no mysterious âpolitical realityâ or ârealpolitikâ âforcingâ them to do The Bad Thing. They simply do it because they are axiomatically evil.
A thorough review of The New York Timesâ archive produces no example of reporters framing Chinese, Russian, or Iranian human rights abuses as something these regimes were âforcedâ to do. It is simply taken for granted they do such things of their own perverse volition.
But this feigned naivete about the good intentions of American empire serves a very specific purpose. When the press is compelled to report about the US embracing a repressive regime but still needs to maintain the moral fiction of the US as the rightful arbiter of global democracy and human rights, the only propaganda move is to acknowledge both but insist the latter isnât undermined by the former because the US Simply Has No Choice. (Itâs somewhat difficult, after all, to simply ignore either Modiâs visit or his numerous human rights, anti-democratic abuses.) What other play is there? Itâs a popular trope because itâs the only way one can report on these two, obviously contradictory, realities, whichâgiven the range of autocratic US allies, from Uzbekistan to Jordan, to the UAE, to Turkey, to Egypt, to Israel, from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia to Tajikistan, to Djibouti, to Kazakhstanâit is compelled to do frequently. Cognitive dissonance requires these two antithetical news items are reconciled, and the only way to do that is to have the high clergy of Americaâs civic religion of The Rules-Based Liberal OrderâąÂ intervene, as the Timesâ Baker reliably does, and explain how outside forces compel the US to âpush Democracy Concerns to the background.â
Itâs not a new framing, of course. In the previous Democratic administration, Barack Obama was âforcedâ to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. âErstwhile human-rights iconâ Samantha Power was âforcedâ to support Saudi Arabiaâs destruction of Yemen. Our do-good American liberal leaders are constantly and reluctantly forced to defendâand carry out themselvesâhuman rights abuses quite often.
Whatâs important to emphasize is that accepting and running with this premiseâthat the US only engages in human rights abuses, or allies with human rights abusers, With A Heavy Heart when It Has No Choiceâis pure, unchecked dogma. Itâs just a baseless assertion, a totally made-up ideological thingamajig for which we have no historical evidence. Baker, somewhat infamously, has made public statements that he has zero personal politics of his own, telling theTimes in 2020 that he, like the great King Solomon, is without prejudice:
âAs reporters, our job is to observe, not participate, and so to that end, I donât belong to any political party, I donât belong to any non-journalism organization, I donât support any candidate, I donât give money to interest groups and I donât vote. I try hard not to take strong positions on public issues even in private, much to the frustration of friends and family. For me, itâs easier to stay out of the fray if I never make up my mind, even in the privacy of the kitchen or the voting booth, that one candidate is better than another, that one side is right and the other wrong.â
But Baker is very much taking a position on a public issue. Just as he did when lobbying against the US withdrawal from Afghanistan by interviewing, without disclosure, a Raytheon board member, Baker is dutifully holding up the entire moral pretext for the USâs expansive military footprint. By accepting the highly contestable premise that the US only undermines its âdemocracy agendaâ when itâs âforcedâ to do so, by not putting âdemocracy concernsâ in scare quotes, by not even questioning at all the nominal motives of US foreign policy, he is carrying dumpster truckloads of ideology in his reporting. This double standardâof accepting noble motivations on the part of the US, and simply assuming craven calculation on the part of Enemy Statesâis so ubiquitous, one hardly notices it. Like a fish in water, the average media consumer swims in the ideology of American exceptionalism and saccharine do-gooderism. That this childlike view of US motives has zero historical basis doesnât seem to matter much at all.