U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100, has been eulogized for his work advancing the role of human rights in American foreign policy. His legacy in Southeast Asia complicates this narrative: human rights rhetoric was central to his approach, just not entirely in the way that people might think.
As Carter grappled with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and pursued detente with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), his administration utilized human rights rhetoric strategically and selectively to justify his post-war approach to Indochina. The newly unified and Soviet-aligned Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) was an easy target for Carter’s criticism, but publicly addressing the deteriorating situation next door in Cambodia threatened to destabilize the prolonged process of normalization with the PRC. While Carter brought about a new chapter in how Americans discussed foreign policy, he continued a longstanding practice of calling out human rights abuses only when doing so aligns with geopolitical interests – an unfortunate tradition that the U.S. is unlikely to deviate from anytime soon.
The language of human rights entered the political mainstream in the early 1970s as the concept of human rights became delinked from state sovereignty for the first time. Carter was the first American politician to embrace human rights rhetoric in his run for office, campaigning on a post-Vietnam foreign policy platform that positioned America to regain its moral standing abroad by committing itself to the protection of universal human rights. Carter was vocal in his criticism of Nixon and Ford’s foreign policy but steered clear of any moral reckoning with what had happened in Vietnam, creating an uplifting platform that unified a deeply divided Democrat Party.
When Carter entered the White House in January 1977, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, were a year and a half into their extreme attempt to return Cambodia to its agrarian past. In April 1975, two weeks before the fall of Saigon, they had seized the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, instigating a genocide that would take the lives of between 1.5 and 3 million Cambodians. The U.S.’ secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War had played a role in the destabilization of the country, creating the conditions in which the radically anti-Western and anti-Vietnamese Khmer Rouge rose to power.
In the early 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge were committing their first massacres of ethnic Vietnamese farmers in the Cambodian countryside, PRC leadership identified the group as a means through which to check Vietnamese and Soviet influence in Indochina and began sending them aid. U.S. intelligence had received several disturbing reports about the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal intent as early as 1973, but Secretary of State Henry Kissinger encouraged both Nixon and Ford to look the other way in order to avoid complicating normalization with China.
This approach worked for presidents Nixon and Ford, but by the time Carter entered the White House, several journalists had published writing about what was unfolding in Cambodia, leading a series of liberal congressmen to implore Carter to vocally condemn the Khmer Rouge. When Carter’s administration refused to comment, the International Organization of the House International Affairs Committee opened a hearing into the reports of human rights violations, summoning several journalists and Foreign Service Officers who had previously served in Phnom Penh to testify.
Meanwhile, tension had begun to build between factions of the White House on what to do about the growing crisis in Cambodia. The National Security Council’s Jessica Tuchman was among those who wanted the U.S. to use China to put pressure on the Khmer Rouge, criticizing Carter’s failure to follow through on promises to protect human rights in Indochina. “People are beginning to notice – talk is cheap,” she told Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, in October 1977. After a brief period during which American intelligence incorrectly suggested that the PRC was tempering their support of the Khmer Rouge, Brzezinski advised Carter to make a public statement on Cambodia. For a moment in early 1978, it seemed as if Carter’s promise to focus on human rights and his commitment to Cold War strategy might be able to coexist in the administration’s approach to Southeast Asia.
In April 1978, more than three years after Pol Pot’s forces took Phnom Penh, Carter finally issued a condemnation of the Khmer Rouge, calling them “the worst violators of human rights in the world today.” Carter’s statement was applauded by both the public and the press, but PRC leadership was quick to reveal their immense displeasure, accusing Carter of supporting Soviet interests in the region. Returning from a visit to China that was initially meant to further the process of normalization, Brzezinski told Carter that the Chinese government’s negative response to his April condemnation of the Khmer Rouge posed a serious risk to the process of détente. Despite calls from Congress to ask the Chinese to put pressure on their Cambodian allies, Brzezinski and Carter agreed that they needed to shift course to protect their Cold War strategy. Carter’s April 1978 statement was the first and last time he spoke out in a public manner while the Khmer Rouge were in power. But this didn’t mean that Carter eliminated human rights from his Indochina strategy. Instead, he and Brzezinski shifted who the criticisms were directed at – to the Vietnamese.
On December 25, 1978, Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia. Within two weeks, they had toppled Pol Pot’s regime, sending Khmer Rouge fighters scrambling into the northwest jungles of Cambodia where the PRC continued to send them aid. The Vietnamese brought an end to a regime that killed millions, but Carter’s administration was quick to condemn the invasion in the strongest of terms, fearful that a Vietnamese-backed regime in Cambodia would enable the Soviets to finally establish a military presence in Indochina.
In September 1979, the U.S. infamously voted alongside China for the Khmer Rouge to retain Cambodia’s seat in the United Nations. Carter’s attempts to explain that a vote otherwise might undo the newly established diplomatic relations with the PRC were met with skepticism, even within his own administration. The following month, Carter held a press conference in which he pledged $70 million to try and avert a famine – which he called a “tragedy of genocidal proportions” – occurring under the Vietnamese-installed Heng Samrin government. While he compared the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia to the Holocaust, Carter steered clear of making any reference to the millions of Cambodians who were still fresh in their graves after the reign of the Khmer Rouge.
The resurrection of human rights in Carter’s Cambodia strategy was directly correlated with the reduced risk that speaking up posed vis-à-vis détente with China. By this point, criticisms had become useful, serving the dual purpose of undermining the new Soviet-aligned regime in Phnom Penh and fulfilling Carter’s promise to prioritize human rights in foreign policy. Brzezinski later admitted that the Carter administration had enabled the Khmer Rouge to support its Cold War strategy. “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot,” he later told journalist Elizabeth Becker. “Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.”
U.S. strategy in Southeast Asia today is primarily shaped by a new Cold War: competition with China. As under Carter, addressing human rights abuses in the region moves to the backburner when it threatens this agenda. More than 160 journalists and activists are currently imprisoned by the Vietnamese government on falsified charges of sedition and public disturbance, a number that places Vietnam at 174 out of 180 on the global press freedom index. But, given Vietnam’s strategic positioning as an economic partner and its similar interests in the South China Sea, the country’s deteriorating human rights situation will likely remain unaddressed by the U.S. – at least for the next four years, under an incoming administration that is obsessively focused on mitigating Chinese influence.
Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has a history of calling out the Vietnamese government on its detainment of journalists and environmental defenders that includes sponsoring the 2017 Vietnam Human Rights Sanctions Act. However, it is extremely unlikely that any of Rubio’s prior calls for action will influence Trump’s foreign policy. Both Trump and Rubio know that any vocal criticisms of To Lam’s government will only complicate the year-old U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, and Vietnam has made it abundantly clear that they are just as happy to work with China if the U.S. does not cooperate on its terms.
It’s easy to take human rights rhetoric at face value, but it’s important to remember that the U.S. will never put the interests of other nations above its own – even when theatrical language makes it seem otherwise. While Carter made critical steps forward to protect human rights in other parts of the world, his administration fell short in Southeast Asia. Given the region’s strategic significance for staying competitive with China, it is very likely that history will continue to repeat itself: the U.S.’ tendency to use human rights rhetoric only when it is geopolitically beneficial is not set to change anytime soon.