more on smart power . using human rights

Human rights seen as a "tool" of US "Smart Power:" Suzanne Nossel, the current executive director of Amnesty-USA, previously worked at different times as a State Department official for Richard Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton and is personally credited with having coined the term "Smart Power," which Clinton announced as the defining feature of current US foreign policy.  "Smart" indeed—certainly better-sounding—to project a contrast with the formerly unabashed Bush-Cheney reliance on "Hard Power." "Smart power" employs "Soft Power:" diplomatic, economic, and cultural pressures, which can be combined with military force, to "work our will" upon foreign nations, as described by Nossel:

"To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war…"

Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership—diplomatic, economic, and not least, military[writer's emphasis]—to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Even more relevant to the issue of human rights and peace and justice organizations being co-opted, however, Nossel also described Smart Power, in Foreign Affairs magazine, March/April 2004, as "knowing that the United States' own hand is not always its best tool: U.S. interests are furthered by enlisting others on behalf of U.S. goals."