On Human Rights, American Exceptionalism, and the Architecture of Convenient Conscience
Swati Sakshi Mishra
Geopolitical Journalist, MEA WorldWide
Masters, International Relations
JECRC University, India
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0912-7913
Abstract
This essay interrogates the foundational myth of the postwar human rights regime: that its authority rested on universal principle rather than on the reputational arithmetic of American power. Beginning with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by a United States that simultaneously practiced racial segregation, administered colonial territories, and engineered coups in Iran and Guatemala, the piece argues that rights language has functioned historically as a Cold War instrument, calibrated to discipline rivals while insulating its architect. The implicit bargain that sustained this architecture was never moral; it was reputational. Dictators observed limits not because Washington had a conscience, but because it had an image to protect. That calculation has now definitively ruptured. The essay documents how the active dismantling of multilateral commitments, from withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council and WHO to executive attacks on judicial independence, civil society, and press freedom, constitutes not isolationism but demolition: the meaningful difference between a state that stops attending the meeting and one that burns the meeting hall on its way out. Governments in Budapest, Ankara, and Riyadh do not feel embarrassed by Washington’s conduct; they feel vindicated. Against this backdrop of declining global freedom, shrinking civil-society funding, and institutions being starved rather than reformed, the essay advances a paradoxical claim: that the departure of the hegemon-patron may be the most honest moment human rights discourse has ever occupied. Stripped of its association with Western foreign policy, a contamination that postcolonial critics and feminist IR theorists had long diagnosed, the idea must now earn authority on its own terms. Youth-led mobilizations in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, and Venezuela suggest that accountability does not require American endorsement; it requires publics angry enough and organized enough to demand rights as an autonomous political project. The policeman has left the building. The test is whether human rights ever meant anything beyond his convenience.
Keywords: human rights, American exceptionalism, multilateralism, reputational power, civil society, postcolonial critique, democratic backsliding
There is an old joke in international relations: human rights are what powerful states demand of weaker ones. It is not actually a joke.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, the United States voted in favour. Eleanor Roosevelt had chaired the drafting committee. The symbolism was enormous, the sincerity, selective. At the time of signing, the US maintained legal racial segregation at home, ran a colonial administration in Puerto Rico, and was orchestrating coups in Iran and Guatemala within the same decade. The Declaration was a magnificent document. It was also, in significant part, a Cold War instrument, a rhetorical cudgel with which the West could beat the Soviet Union while (silently) exempting itself from the same blows.
You might think it’s cynicism. But (unfortunately) this is history.
For seventy years, the global human rights system operated on an implicit understanding: the United States was its guarantor of last resort. Flawed, hypocritical, frequently absent, but present enough to give the architecture some credibility. Dictators knew there were limits. Not because Washington had a conscience, but because it had an image to maintain.
Reputational cost is a real cost in international politics, even when moral cost is not.
That calculation has now collapsed.
In the course of a single year, the Trump administration undermined trust in elections, attacked judicial independence, defied court orders, rolled back women’s rights, stripped protections from trans and intersex people, eroded privacy, and used government power to intimidate the media, law firms, universities, civil society organizations, and, remarkably, even comedians. Comedians. The regime that cannot tolerate a joke is historically not a regime that tolerates much else.
The US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and announced plans to exit 66 more international institutions. You might its isolationism but Isolationism, my dear readers, is passive. This is active demolition.
There is a meaningful difference between a country that stops attending the meeting and one that burns down the meeting hall on its way out.
The consequences are not abstract. Authoritarians worldwide have monitored this assault and learned that they are unlikely to be held accountable internationally in the near term. Observation and emulation are the sincerest forms of political flattery. When Budapest, Ankara, and Riyadh see Washington sanction ICC judges and call it foreign policy, they do not feel embarrassed. They feel vindicated.
Here is the deeper problem, and it requires some philosophical honesty to state: the human rights system was always underpinned more by American power than American principle.
John Rawls built his theory of justice on the idea of a veil of ignorance, that we design fair rules when we do not know which position we will occupy. The American approach to human rights worked on the opposite logic. Washington always knew exactly which position it occupied, and designed the rules accordingly. What is remarkable is how long the rest of the world politely pretended otherwise.
Freedom House recorded its 19th consecutive year of declines in global freedom. Human rights funding globally faces a projected reduction of $1.9 billion by 2026 compared to 2023 levels. Civil society organizations are being defunded, banned, and in some cases disappeared. Nearly 44 percent of peacebuilding organizations surveyed would run out of funds by the end of 2027. The infrastructure of accountability is not being reformed. It is being starved.
So where does that leave human rights as a political project?
Precisely here: stripped of its most powerful patron, the idea must now justify itself on its own terms. That is, paradoxically, the most honest position it has ever been in. For decades, human rights advocacy was contaminated by association with Western foreign policy, a problem that scholars from the Global South, feminist IR theorists, and postcolonial critics had been raising long before it became fashionable to notice. When Amnesty International’s credibility depended partly on the State Department’s credibility, that was always a fragile foundation.
Civil society organizations are more important than ever and can play a critical role in defending rights, protecting minorities, and holding governments accountable. Youth movements in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal and Venezuela demonstrated in 2024 and 2025 that accountability does not require American endorsement. It requires people who are angry enough and organized enough to demand it themselves.
The policeman has left the building. He was, admittedly, a policeman who sometimes robbed the same houses he claimed to protect. His departure is not a tragedy for human rights. His departure is a test of whether human rights ever meant anything beyond his convenience.
The answer to that test will define the next century of global politics.