So far so good, one is prompted to respond on hearing incoming US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pronouncements on proposed new directions in US foreign policy. Besides promising to ‘build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries’ for the US, Clinton is on record as saying that, ‘our foreign policy must reflect our deep commitment to the cause of making human rights a reality for millions of oppressed people around the world’.

This is welcome news for those looking forward to a change in US foreign policy perspectives which promise a de-escalation of military tensions in particularly this part of the world but do these pledges necessarily translate into less realpolitik considerations in the conduct of US foreign policy? This is the prime poser arising from the Clinton announcement. In other words, would we be having a less hegemonic US?

The observer’s mind goes back to the tenure of the Jimmy Carter administration of the late seventies and early eighties, when human rights became a veritable catch phrase in US foreign policy. That was in the immediate aftermath of the US’ military and foreign policy debacle in Vietnam and the incoming Democratic administration was obliged to bring about a change in direction in US foreign policy, with the need for a less militaristic approach to foreign relations beginning to gain emphasis. The circumstances in the foreign policy sphere facing Washington then were not very dissimilar to those confronting the incoming Obama administration today. A ‘change’ for the better topped the foreign policy agenda then as well as now.

It would be relevant to remember that the Carter administration soon came to be dogged by the perception that it was incapable of protecting US foreign policy and security interests and such disillusionment came to a head with the seizing of the US embassy in Tehran by radical Iranian students in 1979. ‘The US hostage crisis’, as it came to be known, dragged on for some two years and the next presidential election saw the coming to power of Ronald Reagan who presided over a steady militarization of US foreign policy over the next eight years. The ‘hawkish’ Reagan administration came to be credited by some sections as having restored US ‘prestige’ and power the world over.

The need to highlight some recurring US foreign policy dilemmas accounts for this brief look at history. Apparently, the Obama administration would be compelled to walk a tight rope between conducting a human rights-sensitive foreign policy and one that would help perpetuate US ‘prestige’ and hegemony on the world stage. The lesson of history is that the two usually do not co-exist easily.

To Obama’s credit, however, it must be said that he had some sense of this uncomfortable foreign policy poser. This accounts for his choice of a de-escalation of the US military presence in Iraq but a corresponding beefing-up of US troops in Afghanistan. Significantly, Obama was not at pains to emphasize that a drastic disengagement of the US troop presence was on the cards in South West Asia, a region of immense strategic interest to the West. In fact hunting and ‘killing’ Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, was identified by Obama as one of his priorities during the presidential election campaign months ago. To be sure, there would be a US troop disengagement from Iraq by the end of 2011, but there would be no let-up in the US military engagement in Afghanistan. As this is being written, some 20,000 US troops, including an undisclosed number of Marines, are reportedly being withdrawn from Iraq and brought into Afghanistan, to bolster US forces there.

Therefore, although human rights may figure significantly in US foreign policy formulation and implementation in the days ahead, one could not expect to see a pronouncedly idealistic bent in the conduct of US foreign policy. The hegemonistic mindset would continue to be a moulding influence on US foreign policy thinking and Hillary Clinton would indeed be compelled to do some fine-balancing between ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’.

Nevertheless, heavy-handed military saturation is unlikely to be the dominant US policy in Afghanistan. Apparently, the US military has learnt many a lesson on counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and these would be applied in Afghanistan for the purpose of speeding-up what would hopefully be a normalization process. The military saturation policy is said to have played a role in restoring a degree of law and order in Iraq but the US military is believed to have ‘reached out’ to the civilians in Iraq and helped in shoring-up civilian administrations in these neutralized areas instead of relying too heavily on military measures. The US military is under instructions to adopt the same approach in Afghanistan and this augurs well for effective conflict resolution.

Indeed, a human rights approach would prove productive in areas which are thus militarily neutralized. There is no getting away from the need to not only treat the civilian populace which is ‘liberated’ from the grasp of militants in the Afghan theatre humanely but to also restore to them the totality of their fundamental rights; a point that should be taken note of even by the Sri Lankan authorities who are currently conducting military operations in what are said to be the last strongholds of the LTTE. From this point of view, it was encouraging to hear a senior Sri Lankan government minister say recently that all sections of the people should enjoy equal rights in all parts of the country.

The Lankan authorities need to reiterate and constantly emphasize these policy positions and, of course, ensure their implementation because there are quite a few misguided persons and groups in Sri Lanka who believe that equal rights for all is not possible and that only the majority community should enjoy fundamental rights in full. It was glaring and dangerous misconceptions of this kind which plunged Sri Lanka into a harrowing 25 year separatist war and stability would continue to elude Sri Lanka if discrimination against minorities of all kinds is continued to be winked at by the state. May it not be so, is our hope.

If parts of Iraq are enjoying a degree of stability today, it is because some important rights of the civilian population, such as the right to local governance, have been restored by the US military. This needs to be the policy thrust in Afghanistan too and it is hoped that there would be no deviation from it. However, it needs to be pointed out that total stability is not possible without a steady US military disengagement from this region.