Moral Linkage: The Impact of Transnational Networks on the Early Advocacy Campaigns of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1978-1982

Abstract

This thesis traces the influence that transnational networks had on the early advocacy campaigns of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, from its founding in February 1979 through the Madrid follow-up Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which began in November 1980. An investigation of the organization’s early advocacy strategies reveals how contact between activists in the United States and the Soviet Union helped shape the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee’s presentation of Soviet human rights abuses to American audiences. U.S. Helsinki Watch utilized nongovernmental contact across transnational networks to advocate for greater human rights protections using a strategy I refer to as “moral linkage.” This strategy reframed the Soviets’ failure to observe such rights as an obstacle to greater cultural, educational and scientific exchanges between states, calling upon private organizations and individuals involved in such exchanges to insist that future cooperation be contingent upon the recognition of these rights.