The West can't interfere in others' domestic affairs

The argument

This argument holds that the difficulty of promoting human rights internationally is what makes the West's record hard to assess, because the same advocacy can be read either as principle or as interference. The perception it starts from belongs to the countries on the receiving end. In most cases, non-Western countries perceive international human rights treaties imposed by the West as cultural colonization and as a stepping on their domestic affairs. What is objected to is not necessarily the content of the rights but the manner of their arrival: a standard set elsewhere and applied from outside is experienced as an act of superiority, resembling the other forms of colonization Western countries undertook throughout history. Where that reading takes hold, the practice of human rights is repelled along with the theory. The second element is the charge of inconsistency. Non-Western countries would strike back against the West on the point that the West itself is acquainted with social injustices and is far from being in a state free of human rights violations. That does not refute the rights being asserted, but it undercuts the standing of the country asserting them, since an advocate who has not met the standard is easily answered without engaging the substance. Together these leave Western governments with no clean option. Advocacy invites the colonialism charge, while restraint invites the accusation of indifference — and each response can be presented as evidence about what the West really values. For such reason the West must act with caution in dealing with the boundary between promoting human rights internationally and intervening in the internal political issues of others. Because that boundary is genuinely difficult to locate, this argument holds that it is hard to say whether the West still values human rights.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that these premises describe how human-rights advocacy is received, not whether the West values it. That governments accused of abuses characterise scrutiny as cultural colonialism is expected — the objection is raised by the actor with the strongest interest in deflecting it — and cannot by itself settle the question. They also dispute the "Western imposition" framing on the record: the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration included delegates from China, Lebanon, Chile, India and the Philippines, and the African and Arab regional human-rights charters were authored by non-Western states. The hypocrisy point, meanwhile, bears on the West's consistency rather than on the validity of the claims: a state can fail its own standards and still be right about the standard, and pointing to a critic's failings does not answer the criticism. The most direct objection is that the argument supports its sibling positions rather than this one. If the difficulty is that Western governments invoke rights where it is convenient and retreat where it is not, that is the "selective" or "hypocrites" reading of the debate, not genuine uncertainty. Critics add that the killing at issue took place on foreign soil and involved a resident journalist, a case the non-interference framing does not obviously cover.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That some governments describe rights advocacy as cultural colonisation shows how criticism is received, not that the norms were imposed: the objection comes from actors with a direct interest in deflecting scrutiny, and non-Western states helped draft the Universal Declaration and authored the African and Arab regional charters. [Rejecting P2] Western hypocrisy bears on the West's consistency rather than on the validity of the rights claimed; a state can fall short of a standard and still be correct about it. [Rejecting P3] Even granting the difficulty, the conclusion does not follow — if rights are invoked where convenient and dropped where they are not, that is the "selective" or "hypocrisy" reading held by the sibling positions rather than real uncertainty about whether the West values them.