United States hypocrisy

United States hypocrisy refers to the alleged contradiction between US foreign policy rhetoric (that typically celebrates the promotion of US ideals), and foreign policy conduct (that primarily emphasizes the safeguarding of US strategic interests). This mismatch, according to Professor John Mearsheimer, is a "discernible difference" between US foreign policy rhetoric based on high liberal ideas and US foreign policy behavior based on cold realist logic. Such a chasm, according to Eugenio Lilli, has had unintended consequences over time: it has fueled accusations of US hypocrisy and double standards, severely harmed the United States image among Muslim communities, and provided fertile ground for extremist organizations to recruit people willing to carry out terrorist attacks against US citizens and assets.

Regional policies (such as constant support for Israel), have harmed the United States image in the Greater Middle East. An example of United States hypocrisy is the US government talks about promoting democratic values, but the only Muslim countries with which the US has good relations are monarchies or dictatorships in the Middle East. The alleged hypocrisy of "human rights diplomacy" of the United States is perceived as another issue discussed in this context. While claiming to believe in the essential concepts of human rights, for strategic reasons, US did not pursued its human rights policy in some countries. The attack on Iran over its nuclear programme, that is not met with any US position towards Israel which possesses more than 200 nuclear warheads, is perceived as another issue of this kind.

Concept

Hypocrisy is defined as behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel, such as when a morally responsible agent (in this example, the United States) freely engages in specific behavior while denouncing others for the same behavior. Critics of American hypocrisy, according to Daryl Glaser, usually aim to reveal what they consider as substantively "bad acts", and it is these acts that matter in the end, not the actor's hypocrisy.

Human rights

While professing worldwide leadership in the field of human right the United States has been accused of getting away with scant ratification of human rights treaties. The U.S. has been criticized for not maintaining a consistent policy; it has been accused of denouncing alleged rights violations in China while supporting alleged human rights abuses by Israel. The U.S. has also been criticized for advocating concern for human rights while refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.S. has publicly stated that it is opposed to torture, but has been criticized for condoning it in the School of the Americas. The U.S. has advocated a respect for national sovereignty but has supported internal guerrilla movements and paramilitary organizations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua. It has also supported the unilateral independence of Kosovo (see here) while also condemning other countries for unilateral independence, citing territorial integrity (Abkhazia, Crimea). The U.S. has been criticized for not maintaining a consistent policy; it has been accused of denouncing alleged rights violations in China while supporting alleged human rights abuses by Israel.

For strategic reasons, Defense Technical Information Center reports, the US did not pursue its human rights policy in countries like South Korea, the Philippines, and Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, which consistently abused human rights. This, according to this report, exposed the hypocrisy of "human rights diplomacy" to its full extent. According to United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, United States fundamental problem in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world is not that people despise US because of freedoms in the United States, but because they do not trust U.S. to strive for and maintain their freedoms. Arabs and the rest of the Muslim world, according to this report, have simply spent too much time listening to US rhetoric and then watching US continually fail to deliver on it.

The US attitude on international human rights treaties is viewed by Ahmed An-Naim as a basic moral and political failure; and although under existing international law, any state including US has the ability to refuse to ratify any human rights or other treaties, but US, he asserts, cannot claim to believe in the essential concepts of human rights. The ironic part of all, according to An-Na'im, is that the United States monitors every country's "human rights record," save its own, for inclusion in the State Department's annual reports to Congress. None of this, An-Na'im argues, is motivated by a desire to serve humanitarian goals, but rather by a desire to maintain the pretense of global moral leadership in order to justify imperial policy and coercive so-called humanitarian intervention at the sole discretion of the US in pursuit of its own foreign policy goals. All former colonial powers, including Russia, according to An-Na'im, engaged in such manipulative practices. However he singled out the United States for its combination of minimal human rights ratification, emptying the few treaties it does ratify of all meaningful human rights content, and highly effective propaganda claiming the United States' exclusive role as the global guardian of human rights. An-Na'im, therefor consider the "supreme hypocrisy" as the only accurate definition of the United States' human rights policy. Attacking US foreign policy, Francis Boyle writes that in today's world, genocide is perceived legal as long as it is carried out at the request of the United States and its NATO de jure or de facto allies, such as Israel. He continues to write that when the US government blew up an Iranian civilian plane, they don't punish the accused to Iran, or even punish him for his crimes, but instead awarded him a medal. When someone else blowed up a US airliner— which according to Boyle was a feeble, made-up case against Libya—the US goes to the Security Council to sanction Libya.

Democracy

US foreign policy language extols the need of supporting democracy and claims that ideal interests are just as important to the US as realist or socioeconomic (strategic) goals, however, according to Eugenio Lilli, there has been a clear mismatch between rhetoric and conduct in US foreign policy, which has been particularly true in the case of US policy toward the Greater Middle East region. In an article called Astounding Hypocrisy, Arab News writes that Palestinians voted for Hamas in the hopes of electing an administration that will face up to Israel more forcefully and produce a just and permanent peace from a position of strength, however when Hamas won the elections, George W. Bush's administration made it clear that despite holding a free and fair election, the Palestinians had made the wrong decision; and that America would not accept it. In the same speech, Bush expressed his hopes for a democratic Iran and a freely elected government with whom the United States could engage in the future. This contradiction, according to this article, casts doubt on everything America claims to be striving to achieve in the region, an example of which is the negative impressions of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Muslim communities believed that the Bush administration had used the issue of promoting democracy as a justification for invasion.

Before US invasion to Iraq, the search for restricted weapons was the first priority for the United States. Then president Bush openly proclaimed regime change as the military's goal. The invasion was codenamed "the battle for Iraqi freedom," and American propagandists, according to Mack H Jones, flooded their messaging with homilies about the United States desire and intention to liberate the Iraqi people and offer them western-style democracy. The Bush administration's ostensible desire to provide democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people is yet another example of American duplicity, according to Jones.

Weapons of mass destruction

Al Raya in Qatar criticizes the perceived hypocrisy of American activities: "The strange thing is that the attack on Iran over its nuclear program is not met with any Western position towards Israel which possesses more than 200 nuclear warheads."

Sokolski and Gilinsky in an article called Biden Should End U.S. Hypocrisy on Israeli Nukes assert that every US president since Bill Clinton has signed a secret letter upon entering office, at Israeli insistence, that effectively pledges the US will not "press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region." As a result, the US does not press Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, despite the fact that doing so would have been the only route consistent with US nonproliferation policy, so corrupted its efforts at cohesive and constructive policy-making. Also the US government has enacted a regulation—described in the US Energy Department's Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities—that threatens government employees with severe punishment if they admit Israel has nuclear weapons.

It is also said that the invasion and conquest of Iraq had little to do with Weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with the PNAC-led aim to establish a permanent US military presence in the area and install a puppet state that would do its bidding.

War on terror

Francis Boyle believes that if the US government was serious about solving the interconnected problems caused by international terrorist actions directed against American interests around the world, the first and most effective step it could have taken would have been to finally implement the Palestinian people's international legal right to self-determination and a state of their own. The United States alleged hypocrisy in supporting the Israeli government, pro-western Arab dictatorships, and authoritarian Islamist groups while militarily attacking designated "rogue" states such as Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Daryl Glaser, undermines the purpose of combating terrorism. While Abu Nidal organization bears sole responsibility for the Rome and Vienna bombings, President Reagan asserted that "these murderers could not carry out their crimes without the sanctuary and support provided by regimes such as Col. Qaddafi’s in Libya." As a result, Reagan ordered that all commercial transactions between the US and Libya be essentially halted, and that all Americans living or working in Libya must leave. Surprisingly, Boyle argues, U.S. oil companies doing business in Libya were granted an exception from the economic disengagement.

Because the alleged American dishonesty inflames Arab and Muslim rage, Daryl Glaser argues, it enhances the likelihood that new terrorist groups will emerge from their ranks; So the wider goal of the 'war on terror' is undermined by the alleged American foreign policy hypocrisy.

See also

• Human Rights Record of the United States
• Criticism of United States foreign policy
• Unethical human experimentation in the United States
• Hypocrisy

References

• Boyle, Francis A. (2013). Destroying Libya and World Order The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution. ‎ Clarity Press, Inc. pp. 117–118. ISBN 978-0985335373. Search this book on
• An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed (2021). Decolonizing Human Rights. Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 1108265790. Search this book on
• Jones, Mack H. (2013). Knowledge, Power, and Black Politics. SUNY Press. ISBN 1438449097. Search this book on
• Lilli, Eugenio (2016). New Beginning in US-Muslim Relations: President Obama and the Arab Awakening. London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-58623-0. Search this book on

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