The Russian Approach to Human Rights Intervention

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THE end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the only superpower raised several questions concerning the direction of the country's foreign policy. There is an assumption, at least among some representatives of the American elite, that the country should lead the world in a global implementation of 'human rights' (i.e. the liberal principles of the Western world). If needed, arms would be used for this very noble purpose. This option was favoured by, for example, R. Kaplan who elaborated on it in a recent issue of the New York Times. Yet these ideas are questioned. The new President Bush asserts that American foreign policy shall be shaped by national interests not by moral considerations. In this emphasis on pragmatism he, or at least his foreign policy advisers, acknowledge that it was not ideology but national interest which led America into confrontation with the USSR during the Cold War.

The post-Soviet Russians have become even more sceptical in regard to the moral underpinnings of 'humanitarian intervention'. Many of them have discarded not just the idea of humanitarian intervention but the idea of human rights, the liberal principles of Western capitalism in general. This decline in the interest in human rights in Russia has alarmed some observers who …