Rights talk is enforced selectively by powerful states, which is what makes it an instrument

The argument

A second argument concerns practice rather than content. Proponents observe that the framework is not applied evenly, and that it could not be: criticism, conditions attached to aid and trade, sanctions and intervention all require the capacity to impose them, and that capacity is held by a small number of states. Where it is exercised follows their interests. Allies are handled gently and in private, adversaries are treated as cases requiring action, and materially similar conduct attracts condemnation in one place and silence in another. From this proponents infer that in operation the vocabulary works as an instrument of foreign policy rather than as a standard binding on all. It supplies a language in which interference can be described as obligation, and proponents argue this is considerably more useful to a powerful state than the older language of civilising missions was, because it is harder to refuse. A government that objects is not disputing a policy but appearing to defend abuse, which is a position from which nothing can be argued. Proponents hold that the selectivity is not an incidental failure to be corrected but the mechanism by which the thing works. A standard applied only by those strong enough to apply it, and only when application suits them, is power operating in the form of law. That the content is frequently admirable is, on this account, exactly what makes the instrument effective: an unattractive pretext can be rejected, while one that invokes the prohibition of torture cannot be, however selectively it is being invoked.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents answer that selective enforcement is an argument for enforcing a standard more evenly rather than for discarding it, and that the same reasoning would discredit any law that is unevenly policed. They add that most human rights work is not done by powerful states at all but by domestic lawyers, journalists and campaigners invoking the framework against their own governments, which an account of it as an instrument of foreign policy explains poorly.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Enforcement by states is one use of the framework and not the main one. Most invocation happens in domestic courts, tribunals and campaigns, where the capacity of foreign powers is not engaged at all. [Rejecting P2] Selectivity is real and is condemned in the framework's own terms, which is why the charge of double standards has any force. A standard that supplies the grounds of complaint against its own misuse is not reducible to that misuse. [Rejecting P3] Unevenly policed law is the normal case, and nobody concludes from the uneven policing of theft that property law is merely an instrument of the powerful. [Rejecting C] Making admirable content evidence of imperialism leaves no possible observation that could count the other way, which is a sign the conclusion is not being tested.