HOW DOES THE CLINTON TEAM HONOR HUMAN RIGHTS DAY? APPARENTLY, BY ABANDONING THOSE RIGHTS IN VIETNAM

(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton
Administration chose a curious way to
observe today’s anniversary of the
signing of the Universal Declaration on
International Human Rights: It dispatched
Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs Winston Lord to
treat with Vietnam — a nation whose
communist dictators assert the
Declaration does not apply to their
people.

As a consequence, Secretary Lord was
unable to be in the Senate Caucus Room
this morning when a capacity crowd of
Vietnamese-Americans and others who
vehemently dispute Hanoi’s stance
gathered there to memorialize Human
Rights Day. Instead, he sent a
representative with a letter intended to
assure the assembled multitude — which
included Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA) and
Rep. James Moran (D-VA) — that human
rights would be on his agenda with the
Vietnamese government. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Human Rights Won’t Be
Allowed to Get In The Way

Unfortunately, in a pre-departure
meeting at the State Department, Mr. Lord
strongly signalled once again the Clinton
Administration’s eagerness to end the
U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. He
and other spokesmen have repeatedly made
clear that the only remaining impediment
to such a step would be improved
cooperation from Hanoi in resolving the
status of unaccounted-for U.S. prisoners
of war and missing- in-action from the
Vietnam war — not human rights
for the long-suffering Vietnamese people,
not establishing democracy, not
free elections, not even free
markets.

In that connection, according to the
Associated Press, Secretary Lord told
officials at State:

“[The Vietnamese] have been
going all out. I think it’s fair
to say this is the single best
year in terms of remains and
documents and…cooperation and
so on that we’ve had since the
war. The prospect is, on the
basis of continued
Vietnamesecooperation, you will
continue to see an incremental
approach toward better
relations.” href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Accordingly, while the Lord
delegation will doubtless go through the
motions of complaining about Hanoi’s
continuing, absolute repression, the
communists understand full well that the
Clinton Administration — like the Bush
Administration before it — is satisfied
with exchanging empty platitudes about
respect for human rights. Regrettably,
a similar conclusion has also been
drawn by the despots of China, North
Korea, Syria and Iran.

Life-support
for Hanoi

Consequently, as Sen. Robb noted in
the course of today’s proceedings,
Vietnamese-style “economic
liberalization” is not moving in
parallel with political reform. To the
contrary, it is being accompanied
by redoubled efforts by the regime to
maintain and tighten political
control. Inevitably, all other
things being equal, further
expansion of U.S.-Vietnam trade relations
will come to represent economic and
political life-support for the communist
masters of Vietnam, not unlike
that currently propping up their
counterparts in Beijing.

Such a development would be tragic on
several grounds:

• It will mark yet another, sorry
  chapter in the America’s history
  of abandoning the people of
  Vietnam.
• It will assure that the
  Vietnamese people remain
  condemned for the foreseeable
  future to unchecked repression,
  exploitation and hardship at the
  hands of Hanoi’s totalitarians.
• It will demean the sacrifice of
  all those Americans and
  Vietnamese who gave their lives
  so that it might be otherwise, so
  democracy and freedom might take
  hold in Vietnam. And,
• It will show — in a sense, worst
  of all — that we have yet to
  learn one of the most fundamental
  truths: Those who refuse
  to respect their own laws and
  people’s inherent human rights
  will not respect international
  law or the rights of others.
  Placing trust in such
  individuals, to say nothing of
  actively (or effectively)
  supporting them, simply ensures
  future grief for those both
  inside and outside the country in
  question.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that it is devious and
pernicious to suggest — as the Clinton
Administration and its supporters are
wont to do — that the United States will
retain leverage to advance political
reform in Vietnam so long as it withholds
normalized diplomatic relations, even
if it allows full economic ties to be
restored. As a practical matter, economic
relations are vastly more important to
Hanoi than formal recognition.
Once those relations are fully in place,
the regime will be less — not more —
resistant to outside pressure for an end
to its repressive behavior.

In their determination to “put
the war behind us” as Winston Lord
recently put it, he, NSC Advisor Tony
Lake, Pentagon “consultant”
Morton Halperin href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
and other senior Administration personnel
who share a past, vehement opposition to
and lingering guilt about the Vietnam
conflict are — presumably inadvertently
— promoting a policy that will undermine
the prospects for Hanoi’s improved
observance of human rights. Their efforts
clearly enjoy the strong support of other
officials, such as Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown and his Chief of Staff, Robert
Stein, who reportedly have for some time
had financial interests in ending the
U.S. trade embargo.

Such efforts make a mockery, however,
of the Universal Declaration on Human
Rights. They also assure that that
historic document will continue to be
commemorated one day a year — because
its obligations will continue to be honored
in the breach by Vietnam’s communist
tyrants and their ilk, on that day and
every other.

– 30 –

1. Interestingly,
the effort to dramatize the problem of
human rights abuses in Vietnam was also
undercut when President Clinton chose
this morning to mend political fences
with AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Mr.
Kirkland — whose organization has been
at the forefront of the fight for
democracy and liberty in Vietnam — was
scheduled to be the keynote speaker at
the event. Presumably to allay any
suspicions that this was a maneuver
calculated to reduce the political impact
of the meeting, the President sent Sen.
Robb a note expressing his concern about
human rights in Vietnam. Its professions
received a polite reception when the
Senator read it to the crowd.

2. For
a fuller treatment of the reasons why
such assertions from Winston Lord and
other Administration officials involved
in the POW-MIA issue should be
discounted, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled, “
MacNeil-Lehrer Post-Mortem: If Clinton
Wants the Truth on Vietnam, He Better Not
Look To Winston Lord, href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_80″> (No. 93-D 80, 20
September 1993).

3. The
Pentagon’s organization responsible for
human rights policy would report to
Halperin if he is confirmed by the
Senate.