Universal human rights - are they really universal and are they really helpful?

University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner asks some hard questions about the role the international human rights regime has played in improving the lot of the world's humanity.

In Saturday's Wall Street Journal Online, Posner first acknowledges that the end of the Cold War was supposed to have ushered in a new era. Finally all of the world's people were supposed to have, under the leadership of the U.S., of course, guaranteed the minimal protections expressed in the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But as Posner points out, "several forces have conspired to ruin this pretty picture."

As he writes:

First, genuine disagreement exists about the proper moral ordering of society. Where once it could be thought that totalitarian regimes suppressed people's natural instinct in favor of human rights, it has become clear as electoral democracies have replaced authoritarian regimes, that this is simply not true. People also care about tribal, ethnic, and religious ties; they care about order and security. An Islamic democracy will not necessarily endorse religious pluralism or women's rights; a country with a long history of tribal dispute resolution practices will reject Western style law enforcement.

The tension between promoting democracy and promoting human rights, when newly enfranchised peoples turn out not to subscribe to the ideals of the Enlightenment, is the dirty secret of the human rights movement. As the expanding franchise continues to expose the fissure between the two ideals, human rights advocates are finally going to have to choose between them.

Moreover, Posner goes on to suggest:

[T]he ideology of human rights advancement relies on a false picture of human motivation and global politics. Human rights advocates seem to think that closing Guantanamo Bay would improve the behavior of governments in other countries. But foreign governments have no reason to think that they should do whatever the U.S. does. Indeed, if the U.S. closed Guantanamo Bay, and some of the freed detainees returned to Afghanistan (as some reportedly have) and killed American troops, the lesson learned by the world is not one that would advance the cause of human rights.

While he concedes that, in his words, "the future of the international human rights legal regime is bleak," Posner doesn't necessarily think that this bodes poorly for humanity:

[I]f what matters is not conformity with the rules of the human rights treaties, but the well-being of the world's population, things have never been better. Mortality rates are down, per capita income is up, literacy has spread, democracy is flourishing. Economic growth in China and India, which together account for a third of the world's population, largely accounts for improvement in overall well-being, but there is also good news in Latin America, South Africa, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

This is because, according to Posner:

As technology and trade have advanced and spread, so has wealth and education, and with wealth and education has come political reform, and the expansion of civil and political rights. This is part of a long-term trend that goes back centuries.

There is no guarantee that it will continue, but one central fact needs to be recognized: The role of legalized international human rights in this process has been minimal or nil. Much more important in the 20th century were the determined efforts of liberal democracies to oppose powerful, dangerous, expansionist states that rejected markets and democracy, and imposed their views on small countries. These efforts required pragmatic accommodation of unsavory allies, and even compromising of Western values, for the sake of the greater goal of keeping dangerous forces in check. For the conflict with radical Islam, this history holds important lessons.