Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy

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"Human Rights and US Foreign Policy provides a comprehensive historical overview and analysis of the complex and often vexing problem of understanding the formation of U.S. human rights policy. The proper place of human rights and fundamental freedoms in U.S. foreign policy has long been debated among scholars, politicians, and the American public. The history of United States human rights policy unfolds as a series of prevarications that are the result of presidential preferences, along with the conflict and cooperation among bureaucratic actors. Since the inception of U.S. human rights policy, presidents have attempted to tell only part of the truth or to reformulate the truth by redefining the meaning of the terms human rights, democracy, or torture, for example. In this way, human rights policy has been about prevarication. While Human Rights and US Foreign Policy is a key text for students, it will appeal to all readers who will find in a single volume a historically informed, argument driven, account of the erratic evolution of U.S. human rights policy since the Nixon administration"--