Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
21 - The Cold War and human rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2010
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
Summary
Neither the course nor the ending of the Cold War can be understood without some reference to the impact that human rights ideas had on East–West rivalries. Whereas Communist governments regarded civil and political rights as bourgeois trappings, stating a preference instead for the collective rights appropriate to the social and economic goals they propounded, Western liberal capitalist governments gave priority precisely to those rights that the Soviet bloc derided. These divisions in interpretation were crucial because of the way they related to the broader contest. They were ’not mere preferences which outsiders could take or leave’, but were powerful emblems of success on the ideological battleground. The gaining of adherents to one interpretation over another signalled victory for one and defeat for the other – outcomes that, in turn, could strengthen or undermine the domestic legitimacy of their competing political systems.
This particular aspect of the Cold War struggle had both positive and negative results for the promotion and protection of human rights. Rhetorical arguments about the priorities to be given to certain values helped to sustain attention to the human rights idea, even as actual behaviour could prove devastating for human rights protections. Similarly, some of the seeds of the ending of the Cold War germinated as a result of the disillusion of those who experienced the double standards and the failures to promote the conditions under which those protections could advance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Cold War , pp. 445 - 465Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights (Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
and , The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990).Google Scholar
and , ‘The Impact of the Cold War on Latin America’, in and (ed.), Origins of the Cold War: An International History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2005).Google Scholar
, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), Introduction and ch. 1;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, My Six Years with Gorbachev, trans. and ed. by and (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
, Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001);Google Scholar
, ‘Human Rights, Freedom of Information, and the Origins of Third World Solidarity’, in and (eds.), Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002) –09;Google Scholar
, ‘The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States’, Journal of American History, 86 (December 1999) –50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘We are masters in our own house’: quoted in (ed.), The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks between Beijing and Moscow (New York: New Press, 1998).Google Scholar
, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
, ‘Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative’, Stanford Law Review, 41, 1 (1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Road(s) Not Taken: Causality and Contingency in Analysis of the Cold War’s End’, in (ed.), Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debates (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003) –51.Google Scholar
, ‘Ideas and the End of the Cold War: Rethinking Intellectual and Political Change’, in and (eds.), Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 2005);Google Scholar
, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
, US Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), xi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Ironies and Turning Points: Détente in Perspective’, in (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 2000) –36.Google Scholar
and , Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998) –75 and 251–53.Google Scholar
, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998);Google Scholar
, The Unhcr and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. ch. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933–1950’, Historical Journal, 47, 2 (2004) –87;Google Scholar
, ‘The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe’, International Organization, 54, 2 (2000) –52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Transformative Military Occupation: Applying the Laws of War and Human Rights’, American Journal of International Law, 100, 3 (July 2006).Google Scholar
and , ‘Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights’, Diplomatic History, 28, 1 (January 2004) –43,CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002).Google Scholar
, ‘The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe’, in and (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) –70.Google Scholar
, Mixed Signals: US Human Rights Policy and Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), ch. 2.Google Scholar
, ‘Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Regime Consolidation in the People’s Republic of China, 1950–1953’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44, 1 (2002), 83, 87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Human Rights Ideas, The Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7, 2, (Spring 2005);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1946, VI (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969).
, Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
, ‘Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, Third World Quarterly, 23, 3 (2002) –48;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States’, Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The End of the Cold War as a Hard Case for Ideas’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7, 2 (Spring 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 31
- Cited by