Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Prevarications and Evasions

Human Rights and U.S. 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. Clair Apodaca argues that the history of U.S. 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. She demonstrates that 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.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 200 pages
\n Publication date: 20 May 2019
\n Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
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The intricate and frequently perplexing issue of comprehending the genesis of U.S. human rights policy is thoroughly explored and analyzed in Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy. Scholars, politicians, and the American people have long debated the appropriate role of human rights and fundamental freedoms in U.S. foreign policy. Clair Apodaca contends that the history of U.S. human rights policy is marked by a series of duplicity resulting from presidential preferences, as well as the interplay of conflict and cooperation among bureaucratic actors.

She provides a comprehensive historical, social, and cultural context to understand the development and implementation of U.S. human rights policy through a series of chapters dedicated to U.S. presidential administrations from Richard Nixon to the present. For each administration, she pays close attention to how ideology, bureaucratic politics, lobbying, and competition affect the inclusion or exclusion of human rights in the economic and military aid allocation decisions of the United States. She further demonstrates that from 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 terms such as human rights, democracy, or torture, for example. In this way, human rights policy has been about prevarication.

Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy is a vital text for students, appealing to all readers who will appreciate a historically informed, argument-driven account of the erratic evolution of U.S. human rights policy since the Nixon Administration.

\n Weight: 314g\n
Dimension: 152 x 226 x 11 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780815383550\n \n