On Values, the U.S. Says One Thing and Does Another

During his seventh trip to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a message he hoped would resonate from the Middle East to the Columbia University campus in Manhattan: the United States takes its human rights obligations seriously and doesn’t pick favorites. “When it comes to human rights, look, let me be very clear: There is no double standard,” Blinken insisted to reporters traveling with him.

U.S. officials may genuinely believe what Blinken is saying. It’s not like the U.S. is callous about human right; there is an entire bureau in the State Department focused exclusively on the issue. By law, the U.S. is required to cease defense assistance to any unit of a foreign security force found to be committing human rights abuses. The State Department also publishes an annual report on human rights practices around the world, with country-by-country analysis.

But what the U.S. says doesn’t always square with what the U.S. actually does. While Blinken and others might scoff at the suggestion that the U.S. levies preferential treatment on what should be a universal value, the reality is exactly that. Bluntly put, the U.S. treats allies and partners much differently than it does competitors and adversaries.

Take Israel as an example. The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ deadly onslaught in southern Israel, compelled the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to launch its biggest military campaign since the war in Lebanon in the early 1980s. The war itself has created what could very well be the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children. Families in Gaza have been displaced multiple times, with more than half of the enclave’s population now residing in Rafah, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated will be a target regardless of whether Israel and Hamas eventually reach a hostage release deal. According to Amnesty International, Israeli forces have engaged in unlawful attacks against civilians, with U.S. weapons often used in violation of humanitarian law.

The Biden administration, however, has continued to defend its support for Israel’s war against Hamas, which after all is a registered foreign terrorist organization. While there is sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza and a growing amount of concern inside the U.S. government about Israeli tactics, there have been no U.S. policy changes. Biden threatened to condition future U.S. policy on Israel increasing humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza, but he waited more than six months to read Netanyahu the riot act. Even then, no serious observer of the war actually believes Biden would reduce U.S. military aid to Israel—particularly when just a few weeks ago, Israel was attacked by more than 300 Iranian drones and missiles.

India is another example where values don’t match up with interests. India is the world’s largest democracy, but under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country has taken on authoritarian turn. The roughly 200 million Muslim population gets the short end of the stick in Modi’s India, with the prime minister using divisive language during campaign speeches that all but paint Muslims as infiltrators stealing India’s wealth and undermining its security. In March, Modi’s government announced it would begin enforcing a previously dormant law that would give persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists in nearby countries Indian citizenship. Muslims were pointedly excluded.

As India’s power in South Asia has grown over the last decade, so have its ambitions. New Delhi is now far more aggressive in defense of its security interests than it was in the past. Last June, the Indian government was implicated in the assassination of a Sikh dissident in Canada. Washington largely brushed aside the news and stuck with the generic “we call for an investigation” script. According to an exclusive investigative report by The Washington Post this week, the Indian intelligence service directed an attempted assassination of another Sikh figure in New York. The White House dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to warn New Delhi in private. In public, however, there wasn’t a single act of accountability; even the U.S. Justice Department indictment removed any reference to India’s Research and Analysis Wing.

It doesn’t take a degree in international relations to understand what’s going on here—in the cases of both Israel and India, strategic considerations are far more important to the U.S. than values. U.S.-Israel relations are seen as virtually untouchable, where any personality disagreements or policy differences are managed for the sake of maintaining the partnership.

India might not be as sacred a partner in the corridors of U.S. power as Israel is, but there’s no dispute that the South Asian giant’s value in U.S. grand strategy has increased. Former President Donald Trump and President Biden alike saw India as an instrumental component of Washington’s counter-balancing coalition against China, so much so that Washington was willing to look away when New Delhi was scooping up Russian crude oil at a discount and complicating the very sanctions regime the U.S. and Europe were trying to enforce against Moscow. U.S. officials are increasingly of the mindset that U.S.-India ties are too big to fail—and Modi is taking full advantage of it.

The United States is an exceptional nation. But we’re also far less idealistic than we like to believe.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.