The New Challenges to Human Rights

Zbigniew Brzezinski

There is nothing more satisfying in life than to be associated with a cause in which one deeply believes that is also just. Perhaps there is one thing that is even better--and that is to be associated with a cause in which one deeply believes, which is just, and which is also a "winner." That is how I feel about my involvement in the international struggle for human rights, and especially about my association with the National Endowment for Democracy. I have been on the NED Board of Directors for nine years, and I leave it with the same feeling that most of my friends in the Congress have about the idea of term limits.

During these nine years, however, there occurred a fundamental change in the world. We have closed a whole chapter--a critical chapter--in the history of our century. The central drama of this chapter was the struggle over human rights between democracy and communism, an ideology that challenged human rights directly. Our century was dominated by these two opposing ideological formations, which had altogether different concepts of society, based on altogether different concepts of the nature of the human being. Communism was based on the notion that by using force, and by eliminating unredeemable people, one could create a perfect society. The consequences of that belief, naturally enough, were massive repression, tremendous suffering, the destruction of freedom, and ultimately social and economic failure.

That is what the struggle was about, and these past nine years were [End Page 3] in effect the culminating years. Things came to a head, the scales of history tipped, and freedom prevailed in the contest with an ideology fundamentally antithetical to freedom. (Communism, of course, proclaimed itself to be a liberating ideology, but that proclamation was fundamentally false; it was a contradiction in terms.) So we have passed through a historical phase of enormous importance, and we successfully asserted the relevance and the primacy of human rights worldwide.

The Challenge of Culture

Today, however, we are at a stage when some new frontiers in the struggle for human rights will have to be crossed, and thus a new historical agenda confronts those of us who are committed to human rights. I defined the struggle that we have won as a contest of ideologies. The new struggle will involve not ideology, but culture. I think that culture is now going to be the dividing line in the debate over the question of freedom and the question of human rights. We are all familiar with the cultural argument. It rejects the notion of inalienable human rights, deriving from certain fundamental human aspirations and innate human proclivities, on the grounds that this notion merely reflects a very provincial Western perspective. It is only the West--it is said--that has cooked up these ideas, institutionalized them, formalized them, and proclaimed them.

According to the cultural argument, the ideas of human freedom and of the primacy of the individual are essentially parochial. They were initially confined to a small number of European countries, though they have also become enshrined and successful in countries elsewhere settled by Europeans. So there is this parochial segment of the world, consisting of Europe, North America, Australasia, and perhaps Latin America, that is somehow imbued with this perspective, falsely thinks that it is universal, and now is fundamentally on the historical defensive. This argument is being heard in many parts of the world; in Asia, it has been articulated very openly. We have all heard about "Asian values," and how they are supposed to be different: the collectivity over the individual, harmony over dissent, hierarchy over choice. We are familiar with these concepts, which are being articulated not only in Asia, but also in our own society by some who say that the message of the West perhaps can be defended on other grounds, but that it is hypocritical for the West to argue that its message has a universal validity.

This argument poses a challenge to democracy and human rights that is as tough as the ideological one. In fact, in some respects it is even tougher, because the ideological challenge can be met head-on at the level of intellect and the level of performance. It was clearly a damned lie when you went to the Soviet Union and heard people say that the Soviet Union was free. That was an evident contradiction in terms. But [End Page 4] today you can go to Shanghai, or to Singapore, or to some other places in the world, and hear the case that a society based upon hierarchy and discipline works better: the streets are cleaner, fewer people spit on the sidewalk, fewer people drop garbage, and there is a sense of dedication to the larger whole. This kind of society works better, according to its Asian advocates; in any case, they claim, this is "our perspective," the perspective of a large segment of humanity, perhaps the majority of humanity, and it creates societies that work. And that is in many respects a more difficult contention to refute.

Yet this, too, is a challenge that we who support democracy and human rights not only need to rebut, but over which we can prevail. For I am convinced that what is ultimately at issue in this debate is not cultural differences but temporal ones--the periods of time that it takes for people to become literate, to become wealthy, to begin to realize that there is a connection between their freedom of choice and their chance of economic success. It is a matter of time lags rather than unbridgeable cultural divides. There is nothing parochial about the notion that a human being who is literate, is educated, can perceive reality, and is exposed to it will aspire to freedom. On the contrary, human beings do want to fulfill themselves by maximizing their range of opportunities and by attaining whatever aspirations they have. And this requires the freedom to make choices, as well as a political order that provides recognition of one's dignity and respect for one's viewpoint. These are universal aspirations.

It so happens that we in the West simply got there a little sooner than others, but not because our culture (whether it is rooted in Christian, or Judaic, or Hellenistic traditions) predisposes us that way; we are predisposed that way because we are human beings. Through a variety of historical accidents, it happens that the West created societies in which that human potential could be fulfilled earlier than elsewhere. The "Asian values" doctrine is nothing but a rationalization for a certain phase of historical development. Moreover, it is not even espoused by Asia as a whole. China is indeed successful (at least as viewed from Shanghai), but so is Taiwan, whose people today enjoy freedom of choice. Yet they are no less Chinese and no less Asian than their fellows across the Taiwan Strait. Korea today is democratic, which it was not a decade ago, but it certainly is still Asian. Last but not least, consider the enormous contrast between China and India. China is orderly, India is messy; China is developing, India is also developing; China is not democratic, India is democratic. Both of them are Asian. And yet India has succeeded in the institutionalization of democratic practices, which, in spite of many imperfections, nonetheless work. The Indian experience confirms a very basic principle: the concept of human rights, the idea of human freedom, and respect for the individual are universals. They may not be achieved universally at the same time, but [End Page 5] they remain universally pertinent, and we must promote them to the extent that we can.

We also must recognize, however, that the time lags of which I spoke also exist. It is no concession of principle to recognize their reality, and sometimes even to work with them. To take a specific political example, I am not particularly enamored of the dictatorships that currently govern parts of Central Asia. Yet I do not think that some of these countries are ready for instant democracy. They may have to be consolidated as independent nation-states under their present dictatorships before they can become democracies. If they are not consolidated as nation-states, they will fall apart, or be reabsorbed into Russia. Therefore, I am willing to provide assistance to these Central Asian rulers, even though they are not democrats, because I think it is necessary at this stage of the historical process. But this does not mean that I respect dictatorship as an enduring reality, or that I think it reflects some kind of "Asian value" that is applicable to Asia and not to the West.

The case is similar with respect to China. I think that China eventually will have to democratize. It will be in the interest of China to democratize, and one day the Chinese will realize that it is in their interest. The issue of democratization is therefore a concern in the U.S.-China relationship, but it is not the only one. There are some other concerns in the U.S. relationship with China that we have to take into account. But none of that, in my view, involves any admission that the concept of human rights lacks universal validity. The cultural relativism regarding human rights and democracy to which some of our friends are now beginning to subscribe is self-defeating, parochial, and just plain wrong.

The Challenge of Science

The challenge to human rights beyond that of culture is one that I am just beginning to think about, but I believe that we will all soon be thinking about it a great deal. This more distant frontier beyond ideology or culture can be summed up by the word "science." The advance of science is going to raise some very serious questions about the meaning of freedom and individuality, and even of human consciousness. We are just on the eve of fundamental scientific breakthroughs regarding the human being. We are all vaguely familiar with this in differing degrees. Such things as organ transplants, genetic engineering, cloning, artificial intelligence, and improvements in health and longevity (even in looks) are going to present us, before too long, with certain fundamental challenges: How do we understand that transcendental mystery which we define as the human being, and how much can we tamper with it? And when we tamper with it, for what ends? Tamper with it we will, [End Page 6] because the scientific revolution cannot be stopped. In many respects we will be able to live healthier lives; we will be able to improve our intelligence, our memories, and our looks. But how far can we go, and how can we apply these scientific breakthroughs in a way that does not create new and profound inequalities? Many of these new techniques are going to be available only to the privileged few, because of their wealth and levels of development.

This is sure to create a whole range of new dilemmas regarding the scope and meaning of human rights. We are already beginning to experience that in the United States. The debate about abortion is now leading to a debate about euthanasia. Euthanasia also involves the questions: What is life? Who has the right to end it? Is this a private or a public decision? What is the nature of public responsibility in this area? As cloning, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence become more available, we will have to make many difficult decisions. Will our senators and congressmen try to act as scientists? Will they know what decisions to make? Will they reflect the public will? Will they make their decisions on the basis of scientific judgments or ethical judgments? And if they rely on ethical judgments, what will be their basis, and what will be the grounds for achieving consensus? We have already seen how difficult it is to achieve consensus with regard to abortion. I think the debate about the prolongation of life, the transformation of life, and the ending of life is going to be just as divisive. It will revolve around the questions of what are human rights, and what is the human being.

Thus I think that the frontiers before us are widening. We have won a conflict with a hostile ideology that directly challenged our basic principles. We now face a cultural challenge that is more diffuse and more vague; in some respects, this new threat is more pernicious, because it tempts us to retreat from universal principles and declare our own parochialism. Soon we are going to face an even more complex conflict over the relationship of science to human identity. It will force us to think about the nature of the human being--a profoundly philosophical rather than a political issue, and thus one about which it will be much more difficult to find consensus. So despite our victory over communism, challenges to human rights and democracy are going to be with us for a long time to come.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, is professor of U.S. foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This essay is based on remarks that he delivered at a dinner on 4 February 1997 honoring his retirement from the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy after serving the maximum tenure of three three-year terms.

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