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This book analyzes the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administrations.

This article examines the human rights claims made by the George W. Bush Administrations of their post 9/11 foreign and security policy. Two common scholastic explanations of this narrative are evaluated: (i) that human rights constitute, at least in part, independent foreign policy goals and; (ii) that the human rights claims of policymakers can be dismissed as hypocritical rhetoric. The article informs and progresses this debate by revisiting the works of the early twentieth century political culture theorists Gabriel Almond, Graham Wallas and Edward Bernays. The article details the consistent use of a human rights narrative by administration officials as a technique of political discipline. The article identifies five linguistic mechanisms through which this technique of discipline was made manifest in practice. The article thereby explains how a human rights narrative was employed as an instrument to inculcate, rather than describe, reality. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article examines the human rights claims made by the George W. Bush Administrations of their post 9/11 foreign and security policy. Two common scholastic explanations of this narrative are evaluated: (i) that human rights constitute, at least in part, independent foreign policy goals and; (ii) that the human rights claims of policymakers can be dismissed as hypocritical rhetoric. The article informs and progresses this debate by revisiting the works of the early twentieth century political culture theorists Gabriel Almond, Graham Wallas and Edward Bernays. The article details the consistent use of a human rights narrative by administration officials as a technique of political discipline. The article identifies five linguistic mechanisms through which this technique of discipline was made manifest in practice. The article thereby explains how a human rights narrative was employed as an instrument to inculcate, rather than describe, reality.

The George W. Bush Administrations presented foreign policy in terms of universal liberal values, including human rights. This has led to a number of scholastic comparisons being drawn with the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson. This article seeks to contribute to this debate by identifying and accounting for three internal rules common to the human rights discourse expressed by the Wilson and Bush Administrations. Bush is argued to indeed be an inheritor of the Wilsonian legacy but not because the Administrations were characterized by the naive advocacy of idealistic values. Instead, human rights have been discursively co-opted by both Presidents as a technique of governance in the sense of producing reality by insisting on one specific interpretation of identities and intents.