West-ern powers rar-ely live up to their slogans of promoting human rights in their foreign policies. In the developing world, Western homilies about the need for greater political freedoms and rule of law are met with cynicism and ridicule because we know the past and present of this doublespeak.

The selectivity with which Western nations target some abusive regimes even as they embrace and do business with other dictatorships defies the universality of Western human rights discourse.
The latest illustration of this dichotomy between talk and walk came last week when German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Russian President Vladimir Putin and conveyed a message that Berlin was concerned about rigidifying restrictions on liberal rights of Russian citizens. Although she delivered the unpleasant sermon, Ms Merkel had actually come to Moscow to further the booming economic relationship with illiberal Russia. With annual Russia-Germany trade touching $115 billion, Ms Merkel’s unhappiness about Mr Putin’s crackdown on dissent was largely symbolic and bereft of any policy import. German industry will never suffer a German government that’s inclined to sanction Russia or boycott it on human rights grounds.
Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, smugly captured the essence of Germany’s ties with Russia when he was reported saying that there is an “economic basement which influences the political house which stands on it”. In other words, Germany, which is Europe’s steward, would not jeopardise the natural gas pipelines and mutual investment opportunities with Russia for the sake of advancing civil space in Russia’s domestic affairs.
There is a dream locked up somewhere in the bosom of the European Union that it can one day “civilise” Russia and make it more European in terms of a constrained state and an empowered populace. It surfaces occasionally through hollow resolutions in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) for “democratisation roadmaps” in Russia. While institutions of the EU let off hot air about the curtailment of political rights in Russia, Europe’s leader Germany has no qualms to integrate ever deeper economically with a country that is viewed by Western liberals as a lost child of European civilisation.
Germany and France have done morally far worse by chumming with the extreme authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan, again for economic and strategic reasons. Ms Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy aggressively courted the neo-Stalinist government of Kazakhstan for mineral contracts, with Mr Sarkozy labelling Kazakh strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev a “strategic and privileged partner”. Earlier this year, German manufacturers secured bilateral agreements worth $4 billion with Kazakhstan for mining rare earths so as to challenge China’s monopoly in this field. Ms Merkel defended her policy of befriending the tyrannical government of Kazakhstan by stating that “when we speak about economic interests, we also address human rights and the need to adhere to democratic principles.” On values, the Europeans just “speak” and dole out some superficial “democratisation and civil society assistance” aid. On bottomlines, they do real substantive deals.
Across the Atlantic, the United States is equally adept at paying lip service to democratic ideals while consolidating friendships with some of the most egregious violators of human rights like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, Ethiopia, Uganda, Pakistan and Colombia (a small sample from a much bigger universe of cases).
The drama of the American “pivot” to the Asia Pacific, which is playing out prominently in Southeast Asia, has produced its share of alliances with authoritarians. Last week, in the build-up to the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Phnom Penh, US defence secretary Leon Panetta was in autocratic Cambodia to expand military assistance and counter-terrorism cooperation with the government of Hun Sen, who has been the Prime Minister with an iron fist since 1985. With China still the chief foreign patron of Hun Sen, American efforts to wean Cambodia away from the dragon’s sphere ensure that Mr Panetta’s mention of goals like “protection of human rights and the right of fair participation in the political process” are convenient masks for yet another American alliance with an undemocratic regime.
American military assistance to Indonesia, whose Army is accused of committing grave human rights abuses, and the US’ intensifying courtship of Communist Vietnam are also aimed to contain China, even though these policies have troubling repercussions for human rights. On a recent visit to Hanoi, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton parried the dilemma between securing material interests and spreading Western values by arguing that political reform and economic growth are linked, and that Washington supports progress in both areas in Vietnam. She added that she will “keep talking candidly” to her Vietnamese counterpart on the lack of free expression and tolerance for political dissent.
Just like the Europeans, the Americans insist that there is tremendous potential in engaging with all kinds of regimes and that quiet diplomacy, which never gets reported to the public will eventually succeed in opening up repressed countries. So, why does the US not “engage” with Cuba or Venezuela or Syria or Iran? Why are these countries beyond the pale and thrown in the dock as “rogue states” while Cambodia or Pakistan or Ethiopia are the “good guys” who just need reforms peppered with plenty of American aid? The answer is simple: it is strategic and economic interests which always trump ideals in Western foreign policies.
The shading and colouring of countries as sponsors of terrorism or as threats to regional peace is governed by whether or not these states are useful in a materialistic way to Europeans and Americans. So, why do Washington, Paris, London or Berlin have to pretend to be pious upholders of human rights instead of accepting the truth that they are practitioners of realpolitik just like non-Western major powers? The American University scholar Julie Mertus has compared the human rights emphasis in US foreign policy to the yarn of a crafty car salesman who peddles bogus deals to attract customers into his showroom. Western democracies need their policies — domestic and foreign — to look moralistic and win consent of their own citizens.
Ms Merkel, Barack Obama and David Cameron habitually reiterate faith in universal freedoms while supping with devils to assuage and blunt criticism at home and to generate a veneer of nobility for fundamentally unethical statecraft.

The writer is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs