ABSTRACT
Assessing the American record on human rights over the period since World War II is problematic on several counts. The political assessment offered suggests that the status of human rights issues is resolved within the American political center, and characteristically located below midpoint line C. The ideological constraints on human rights derive from several general concerns held by adherents of conservative III, moderate IV outlooks. In 1978 the debate over the Panama Canal treaties illustrated in vivid form the veto power of the American moderate right in the context of coalition-building for foreign policy purposes. To promote human rights necessarily implies mounting an anti-Communist ideological attack, with all that this portends for deteriorating Soviet-American relations. In conclusion, the Jimmy Carter experiment on human rights diplomacy has revealed the basic dynamic of the American political scene, and is unlikely to persist, much less prevail, because of the character of this dynamic.
