U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100, has been eulogized for his work advancing the role of human rights in American foreign policy. His legacy in Southeast Asia complicates this narrative: human rights rhetoric was central to his approach, just not entirely in the way that people might think.
As Carter grappled with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and pursued detente with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), his administration utilized human rights rhetoric strategically and selectively to justify his post-war approach to Indochina. The newly unified and Soviet-aligned Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) was an easy target for Carter’s criticism, but publicly addressing the deteriorating situation next door in Cambodia threatened to destabilize the prolonged process of normalization with the PRC. While Carter brought about a new chapter in how Americans discussed foreign policy, he continued a longstanding practice of calling out human rights abuses only when doing so aligns with geopolitical interests – an unfortunate tradition that the U.S. is unlikely to deviate from anytime soon.
In full: https://thediplomat.com/2025/01/carters-complicated-cambodia-legacy/
