"Dictatorships and Double Standards" is an essay by

Jeane Kirkpatrick Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a lo ...

published in the November 1979 issue of ''

Commentary Magazine ''Commentary'' is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, and politics, as well as social and cultural issues. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945 under Elliot E. Cohen, editor from 1945 to 1959, ''Commentary'' magazine dev ...

'' which criticized the foreign policy of the Carter administration. It is also the title of a 270-page book written by Kirkpatrick in 1982. The article in ''Commentary Magazine'' in 1979 is credited with leading directly to Kirkpatrick's becoming an adviser to Ronald Reagan and thus her appointment as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Hence, the views expressed in Kirkpatrick's essay influenced the foreign policy of the

Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over ...

, particularly with regard to Latin America. Kirkpatrick argued that by demanding rapid liberalization in traditionally

autocratic Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except per ...

countries, the Carter administration and previous administrations had delivered those countries to

anti-American Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment) is prejudice, fear, or hatred of the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centr ...

opposition groups that proved more repressive than the governments they overthrew. She further accused the administration of a "double standard" in that it had never applied its rhetoric on the necessity of liberalization to the affairs of Communist governments. The essay compares traditional autocracies and Communist regimes: Kirkpatrick concluded that while the United States should encourage liberalization and democracy in autocratic countries, it should not do so when the government is facing violent overthrow and should expect gradual change rather than immediate transformation.

Criticism

AFL–CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...

Tom Kahn Tom David Kahn (September 15, 1938 – March 27, 1992) was an American social democrat known for his leadership in several organizations. He was an activist and influential strategist in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a senior adv ...

criticized conceptual problems and strategic consequences in Kirkpatrick's analysis. In particular, Kahn suggested that policy should promote democracy even in the countries dominated by

Soviet communism The ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Bolshevist Marxism–Leninism, an ideology of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state to realise the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Un ...

. Kahn argued that the Polish labor-union Solidarity deserved United States support and even in its first years demonstrated that

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.labor unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (su ...

could be organized despite Communist regimes. Kirkpatrick's analysis of Communism underestimated the democratic potential of the working class. Ted Galen Carpenter of the

Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Ind ...

noted that while Communist movements tend to depose rival authoritarians, the traditional authoritarian regimes supported by the United States came to power by overthrowing democracies. Thus, he concludes that while Communist regimes are more difficult to eradicate, traditional autocratic regimes "pose the more lethal threat to functioning democracies".Ted Galen Carpenter (August 15, 1985)
"The United States and Third World Dictatorships: A Case for Benign Detachment"
Cato Policy Analysis. No. 58.

References

{{reflist 1979 essays American essays Anti-communism Essays about politics Foreign relations of the United States Presidency of Jimmy Carter Works originally published in American magazines Works originally published in political magazines

Criticism

See also

References