Why do we support countries that abuse human rights ?

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I do know that democratic countries such as my own (the UK) supports authoritarian regimes around as Saudi Arabia and some extent China. I also remember finding out a while ago that to my horror that in 1994 when the Rwandan Genocide was going on the French were still sending arms to the militias that were carrying out the genocide. I seem to think we choose not to break off ties with some of the countries despite the abuses they carry out on their own peoples because it might end up leaving us isolated and cut us off from trade and so on. Would it cause damage it cut off ties with those countries. I seem to think that if my country's representative met another country's representative about the fact that it is concerned with human rights abuses happening the other's country they'll just tell us to stop meddling or interfering with their affairs.

Which country doesn't abuse human rights?

Seriously? EVERY country abuses human rights.

One word: money

My "we" doesn't include my country.

They do it because they're politicians and do politician things. They trick you into voting for them and then do what they and their friends want.

Obviously they would be against direct democracy, because then they can't do what they want anymore. They created systems by politicians for politicians, not by the people for the people.

Economic or geopolitical considerations, typically.

Well…exactly what do you want done better? What CAN these countries do better? And I don’t mean a Captain Obvious “just stop sending aid to countries who commit genocide.”

I have no problem with selling weapons to other countries, even potentially genocidal ones. Because, to be frank, you don’t really know who will become genocidal and who won’t. And…I don’t take genocide as objectively immoral by logical necessity, anyway. Japan in the course of WW2 became a suicide state for lack of a better term. If WW2 had been part of your world, it probably wouldn’t have bothered you that much that the US rained down nukes on them. That act might be labeled genocidal depending on how you look at it, intent versus reality. So it doesn’t make sense to go screaming at governments to stop committing genocide. If the effects of government action happen to be genocidal in nature, I want to know what the victims did to provoke retaliation on that scale. If the genocidal act is retaliatory or defensive, you really can’t blame a government for doing whatever it takes to protect itself and its citizens. If the result is genocide, so be it.

And no, I’m not advocating for genocide. I’m only exploring the logical possibility that a total commitment to destroying a country might reasonably be met with a response in kind. The plain fact is nations properly have the right to self-defense. So selling weapons for a nation to reasonably defend itself and causing the death of a group of people committed to their own self-destruction may technically count as genocide. I have no problem supporting a nation in the way of protecting itself.

Things I DO have a problem with: GIVING AWAY weapons el freebo. Make a secure loan to cover weapons, sure. Exchange currency, sure. But just handing weapons over and telling a foreign government to go have fun? Not cool. Trading/giving away weapons at the expense of defending one’s OWN domestic interests? Very bad. Outright getting involved in foreign conflicts that do not cross your own borders? ABSOLUTE WORST. And by that I mean boots on the ground.

I wouldn’t begrudge any American who cared enough about Ukraine the right to join forces with Ukraine and remove Russians from Ukrainian territory. But to send our own military units over there would be a terrible thing to do. I think sending weapons and equipment right now might be stretching things, but it’s better than sending troops. I happen to believe Ukraine is worth fighting for. Just not with OUR military.

If Russia launches a preemptive strike against the U.S., I would most likely change my mind.

I think people don’t worry too much about it because they don’t see it directly. Most people try not to think about it. Most people also try not to think about the deplorable living conditions of the animals that are raised for consumption.

They have something we want or need.

the Hindus of olde refer to our planet as a "hellworld." giving welfare to tyrants is one reason why.

Because abused human beings live in those countries.

There are three answers.

1) what do you mean by “we”?

2) what do you mean by “support”

3) what do you mean by “abuse human rights”?

Broadly, I think the question you’re trying to ask is “why do democratic, liberal Western governments maintain cordial relations with governments that do a variety of seriously bad things beyond those typical of a liberal Western government?”, correct?

You give the examples of Saudi Arabia and China. While I think those were just meant to be examples, they can both serve as examples.

Saudi Arabia is a large, populous, rich, militaristic, and stable country that makes up the bulk of the Arabic peninsula. It borders most countries in the region. Destabilising it would probably have consequences for its neighbours, as well as for supplies of oil and other, less-heralded natural resources. Its large geographic area would make governing it hard, its military strength would make fighting it harder than fighting the Iraqi army, its large population means any war would hurt a lot of people. Those same things also make it a useful ally, as it was in the Gulf War, and it would be if the West wanted to intervene in a neighbouring country. We would rather have it as our ally than scare it away to ally with Russia and/or China against us. Finally, it is a useful counterweight to Iran, which is somehow even worse, and has allied strongly with Russia.

China has the largest population and largest economy in the world, as well as the second strongest military and the third largest nuclear arsenal. We cannot reasonably overthrow the regime. However, in recent years the West has pivoted away from viewing China almost like India (getting richer, getting freer, a useful if unreliable partner) to viewing it more like Cold War Soviet Union (a potential existential threat which should be disengaged from as far as possible). China is now seen more as an adversary than as an ally. That said, it is too rich and too powerful to ignore completely.

Most human rights abusing countries are not as dramatic as those two. So let’s think about Eritrea. It has very little strategic value, and there is very little reason for other governments to fear it. It could hardly become less stable. So why don’t we intervene in Eritrea? For the very same reasons: it holds little strategic value and it is not a threat. Why would we send soldiers to die there? Sometimes humanitarian arguments will work (and they are personally arguments I would use!) but most governments aren’t going to listen to them unless they really get through to the public. After the Iraq War, there is very little appetite in the West for further military adventurism.

^^^The Vietnam War was really what killed it for the United States. Since then we've acted on the lessons learned from the Vietnam experience. For one, there really was a lot of local support for what the USA initially accomplished in the early stages of the war. Once Saddam was eliminated and a new government firmly in place, there was little real need for continued presence there. And that's one huge difference between Iraq and Vietnam. I still believe Vietnam could have been won, especially if the war had been fought on the same scale as Iraq given the resources at the time. But the United States did not properly prepare for anything except a protracted war. Also...go back and read up on your history. The objectives in Vietnam were never to fight a war. It was to support the South Vietnamese government. To train soldiers. Simply put, we were playing by a set of rules to "help" our friends while the other side was fighting to win. You can't fight any war that way and expect to win. In Iraq, the enemy was exhausted before the first bomb fell.

The problem we had in Iraq was simply we overstayed our welcome.

Afghanistan...whole other beast. The Afghans rather enjoyed their existence at the time we invaded them, for starters. There were simply not enough Afghans who wanted regime change enough to keep fighting for it. Also, Afghanistan was turned into a sort of political football that could fuel elections in the USA. You cannot run an election on the promise of getting our troops out of Afghanistan if you ACTUALLY GET OUR TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN. You make the promise, you get elected. And in a few months, you say, "they're not ready yet. We need to give them more time." Osama bin Laden was the real target of Afghanistan. As long as bin Laden's loose, you get to say, "we're hunting bin Laden." So you can make your whole existence about hunting bin Laden. Once you actually capture him and kill him, though, you don't have a football you can pass around anymore. You have to learn to play a new game.

If your party is going down in the polls, switch tactics. Actually KILL bin Laden and run on the record of getting rid of him. Good stuff. But then you say, "BUT the Taliban is still a threat. We need to run the Taliban out of Afghanistan." And so you still fight in Afghanistan on the promise of keeping America safe and saving the Afghan people. If you ACTUALLY eliminate the Taliban, again, you lose your ball.

Next election.

Well, we've been in Afghanistan for 2 decades now, and there's really no point to keep kicking this can. Let's just finally withdraw. We've made our point. And then you ACTUALLY DO IT. If you time it right, you get a similar victory as with Iraq--a democratic regime that stays in power and is strong enough to hold up against the Taliban. You go home with your buddies and celebrate with beer and champagne.

REALITY is that the Taliban rushed back in within weeks of withdrawal. So not only do you throw away your ball, you throw away your ball and the fallout is disastrous. In the end it was not even worth it. How do you save face from that?

Well...there's a way you can salvage it politically. Just flat out admit you made mistake and there's nothing you can do right now. The Taliban is now your political ally because the next time you need a bump in the polls, you can show "hey, it's the Taliban, and we're going to do it right this time." In the meantime, just say, "well, these things happen and it can't be helped, but we don't need to be over there when we have people starving at home."

I say just keep out of foreign matters period. I believe we owed bin Laden retaliation for 9/11. I think we could stick it to the Afghan government for its tacit involvement and support of bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But once you hold the right people responsible for what happened, go home. And for that, we were in the wrong for staying in Iraq and Afghanistan too long. And, really, Iraq should have been left to a domestic revolt within Iraq. They didn't really need us for that. It wasn't our job to take out Saddam Hussein when he never attacked the USA. I think maybe the outcome was for the best. But it's not our job to make everyone else's outcomes good.

This thread is vaguely like the other one about Hitler versus other dictators. You can take many of these examples and write a manual on how to be evil. I do believe the USA is better than any other country out there. But there's no point in denying we have our share of evil within our government and our leadership.

Afghanistan, how to be evil: Track Osama bin Laden, delay actually killing him as long as possible; make as many excuses as you can to stay in Afghanistan. Make promises of withdrawal, win elections.

Iraq, how to be evil: Win a war in which the enemy barely fires a shot, show "shock and awe" in real time on Fox/CNN. Capture their leader to be put on trial and executed by his own people. Continue to occupy for years to come so you can "protect free and fair elections."

Why did we fail to get a new Republican POTUS right after Bush? The answer is obvious, and it's a sad one: McCain/Palin were "good people." They were good people who, well, at least with McCain, openly opposed the previous administration's policies and had no clear vision on how to move forward. I for one never thought they deserved to win the primaries. I think Dubya must have had some magic 8 ball towards the end of his second term when he responded EXTREMELY badly to the coming economic crisis. It was a setup so obvious for the Obama administration, and there's no way McCan't/Failin' could have weathered that storm without making things worse. It took two Obama terms for the long term effects to accumulate, but I'm convinced ANY Republican would have won that next election. Trump just happened to want it worse than other candidates, but it was so obvious that Clinton was yet another "good person" nobody seriously wanted in office but were too chicken$#!+ to run against. I mean...I guess you can't really blame most democrats for keeping themselves as far away from Clinton as possible. But with Trump, I'm sure if HIS magic 8 ball had actually worked, he'd have delayed running until AFTER COVID because it would be Democrats having to deal with the damage of delaying vaccines that would have weakened the Democratic position to the point any Republican could have gotten two terms after. He could run his entire campaign on getting the vaccine for everyone and win.

History has a way of unfolding as it will. Woulda/Coulda/Shoulda, hindsight's always 20/20, and all that. There's ton of evil going on in USA administrations regarding foreign policy, and it all just comes down to elections. It's easy to run an election on promises that we'll end a war with someone. It's impossible to run an election on promises of ending a war when there's not a war going on. So, you need to start being evil by finding someone to declare war on. Take a map of the world, throw some darts at it. Pretty much any country will do as long as they don't have nukes or they aren't close to another country that does. See your evil through by making promises you have no intention to keep. Get reelected. Double down on your evil by making excuses why you can't end the war. Then make the war someone else's problem when you leave office. The next guy has to decide if he's going to continue your evil by kicking the can further down the road or if he's going to create entirely new evil that he can miraculously solve any time it seems his party is in danger.

I like to think the current POTUS is salivating over this thing between Ukraine and Russia. Just...nukes. That's really the main problem. So we just send them a few tanks and call it our good deed for the day. Besides, it'll take a few months to get the tanks over there anyway, so nothing really to worry about in terms of political risk. There's a lot of American interest in getting involved in the war, and it would certainly score points for our own current regime to do it. The principle is still the same: Find some easy evil cause to get involved in, draw it out as long as you can, blame everyone else for YOUR mistkakes, leave a legacy of problems for the next administration to fix.