I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.
I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.