This paper focuses on how US foreign policy during the Reagan administration has integrated concern for human rights and democracy promotion goals in the context of its broader foreign policy goals. More precisely, it studies the discourse of the formulators of North American foreign policy; the articulation between the declared objectives of concern for human rights and the promotion of democracy with other purposes of the international action of the United States; and, the relationship between declared objectives and the selection of means available to the current US administration. Its purpose is to understand the direction and intensity of current United States human rights policy and to study the margins within which its future evoluti...