U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights : Situating Obama

It is traditional to theorize about an Administration's foreign policy on human rights in terms of liberalism v. realism, with a dash of constructivism thrown in. This essay charts a different course. It notes three general benchmarks for discussing an Administration and its foreign policy on human rights: Enlightenment cosmopolitanism (also known as liberal absolutism), Providential nationalism (also known as Manifest Destiny), and muddling through (or case by case pragmatism) as policy reality often contradicts aspirational rhetoric. These three orientations help to summarize and situate various administrations. But the more one gets into specifics the more one has to acknowledge exceptions and blends. Nevertheless, at the end of the day the central argument here is that the Obama Administration fits with the third school of pragmatic choice. The Administration of George W. Bush fit mostly with the second approach of Providential nationalism, especially in its first term. The first two years of the Carter Administration came close to the first approach of liberal absolutism