Systemic Hypocrisy in United States Foreign Policy

Why is contemporary United States foreign policy systemically hypocritical? This essay offers a legal realist perspective, which considers human rights and democracy-oriented narratives as morally appealing meta-discourses that are subject to reframing, weaponisation, and instrumentalisation by a wi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inSocial Change (New Delhi) Vol. 53; no. 3; pp. 391 - 398
Main Author Regilme, Salvador Santino F.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Delhi, India SAGE Publications 01.09.2023
Sage Publications, New Delhi India
Subjects
Democracy
Foreign policy
Human rights
Post Cold War period
Social change
United States > US
Democracy promotion
foreign policy
legal realism
United States
human rights
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Why is contemporary United States foreign policy systemically hypocritical? This essay offers a legal realist perspective, which considers human rights and democracy-oriented narratives as morally appealing meta-discourses that are subject to reframing, weaponisation, and instrumentalisation by a wide variety of contending political actors in pursuit of concrete material or policy objectives. The perspective of legal realism is used in the case of post-Cold War United States foreign policy to understand how normative discourses are used across various geographies of geopolitical contestations in which state-initiated violence and death are prevalent. This commentary suggests that in pursuit of its geostrategic and economic objectives, the United States government’s human rights rhetoric abroad did not match the actual consequences of its domestic and foreign policies, thereby showing systemic hypocrisy.
ISSN:0049-0857
0976-3538
DOI:10.1177/00490857231188993