AMAC Exclusive by Seamus Brennan
In a move that further highlights the Biden administration’s warped vision of America, along with its zealous commitment to the tenets of Critical Race Theory, the State Department recently announced that it intends to issue a formal invitation to the United Nations to advise the United States on its “shortcomings” in the realms of “human rights” and “systemic racism.” Following months of foreign policy missteps and diplomatic humiliations, this invitation is the latest indication that President Biden’s international relations strategy is rooted in weakness, aimed at redefining American identity, and ultimately antithetical to American interests at home and abroad.
In a recent statement from July 13, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave notice that the United States “intends to issue a formal, standing invitation to all UN experts who report and advise on thematic human rights issues.” According to the statement, the Department has already contacted the UN Special Rapporteurs – a title given to so-called “experts” to whom the UN gives special investigatory missions – to explore “contemporary forms of racism” and “minority issues,” including within the United States. Blinken went on to say that he “urge[s] all UN member states to join the United States in this effort, and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia.” Blinken also noted that this effort was being undertaken as part of an effort to “strengthen our democracy” and “give new hope and motivation to human rights defenders across the globe.”
In the same statement, Blinken also celebrated the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) adoption of a resolution to create a panel to address “systemic racism” in law enforcement. The resolution was presented by former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights and a member of the Socialist Party of Chile, whose views on race are largely in sync with Critical Race Theory advocates.
Under President Trump, the United States withdrew from the UNHRC, citing its “disproportionate focus” on criticizing nations like Israel rather than other member countries that clearly violate human rights. “If the Human Rights Council is going to attack countries that uphold human rights and shield countries that abuse human rights, then America should not provide it with any credibility,” former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said in 2018.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement in June of 2020 on the UNHRC that echoed Haley’s comments and directly countered Blinken’s recent announcement. The Council, Pompeo wrote, “has long been and remains a haven for dictators and democracies that indulge them.” He concluded: “If the Council were honest, it would recognize the strengths of American democracy and urge authoritarian regimes around the world to model American democracy and to hold their nations to the same high standards of accountability and transparency that we Americans apply to ourselves.”
The Biden administration quickly reversed the Trump withdraw, reentering the Council just weeks after Biden took office.
Upon introducing her resolution, Bachelet insisted there exists “an urgent need to confront the legacies of enslavement, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and successive racially discriminatory policies and systems, and to seek reparatory justice.” Though the resolution purports that the panel will investigate alleged systemic racism on an international level, it refers to the 2020 death of George Floyd several times, suggesting that in the eyes of the United Nations, the United States faces a more severe problem with racism than other countries and will be a focal point of the panel’s work.
Yet, as has been consistent with the UN’s handling of so-called “human rights” issues for much of its existence, this initiative is steeped in hypocrisy. The UNHRC, which is tasked with enforcing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, includes countries like China, Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela, all of which have miserable records on human rights.
Communist regimes such as China’s and Cuba’s killed an estimated 100 million people in the last century, some of the greatest mass murder in history. They are in no position to be lecturing the United States on human rights.
In addition to China’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party has also used military force to stifle free speech, end democratic governance in Hong Kong, and it continues to threaten an invasion of Taiwan. The Cuban regime, which has for years quashed any dissent and subjected its people to harsh treatment, violently suppressed pro-democracy protests just last week. Hundreds have been arrested, and internet access is still restricted across much of the island in an effort to stop the spread of pro-democracy demonstrations The Russian and Venezuelan governments have long been known for the unjust imprisonment of opposition leaders and movements. Just ask Alexei Navalny, whom the Russian government attempted to poison and subsequently imprisoned for speaking out against the government, or Freddy Guevara, who was similarly unjustly imprisoned by the illegitimate Maduro regime just last week on vague charges of having ties to “extremist groups.”
Blinken’s invitation to foreign dictatorships to criticize the United States is a sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s absolute refusal to kowtow to a thoroughly and transparently corrupt body of the United Nations. Blinken’s embarrassing statement also suggests a sharp departure by the Biden administration from the law and order policies of the Trump administration. In noting that the Biden administration is committed to addressing “systemic racism…in the context of law enforcement,” Secretary Blinken is clearly taking the “Defund the Policy” movement international. Judging by what has been happening with crime in American cities in the wake of adopting such woke ideology, it won’t be long before crime rates skyrocket in those countries around the world that sign on to this nonsense coming out of Biden’s State Department.
If Secretary Blinken actually wanted, as he says, to “lead by example,” he would do well to follow the example of strong leadership on human rights shown by the Trump administration, rather than heeding the criticism of the United States by the hypocritical and anti-American countries in the United Nations who have appalling records on human rights.