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TheKirkpatrick Doctrine was a foreign policy doctrine expounded byUnited States ambassador to the United NationsJeane Kirkpatrick in the early 1980s based on her 1979 essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards".[1] The doctrine was used to justifyU.S. foreign policy of supportingThird Worldanti-communistdictatorships during theCold War.[2]
Kirkpatrick claimed that states in theSoviet bloc and othercommunist states weretotalitarianregimes, while pro-Western dictatorships were merely "authoritarian" ones. According to Kirkpatrick, totalitarian regimes were more stable and self-perpetuating than authoritarian regimes, and thus had a greater propensity to influence neighboring states.
The Kirkpatrick Doctrine was particularly influential during the administration ofPresidentRonald Reagan. The Reagan administration gave varying degrees of support to several militaristic anti-communist dictatorships, including those inGuatemala (to 1985), thePhilippines (to 1986), andArgentina (to 1983), and armed theAfghanmujahideen in theSoviet–Afghan War,UNITA during theAngolan Civil War, and theContras during theNicaraguan Revolution as a means of toppling governments, or crushing revolutionary movements, in those countries that did not support the aims of the U.S.[3]
According to Kirkpatrick, authoritarian regimes merely try to control and/or punish their subjects' behaviors, while totalitarian regimes move beyond that into attempting to control the thoughts of their subjects, using not onlypropaganda, butbrainwashing, re-education, widespread domesticespionage, and masspolitical repression based on stateideology. Totalitarian regimes also often attempt to undermine or destroy community institutions deemed ideologically tainted (e.g., religious ones, or even thenuclear family), while authoritarian regimes by and large leave these alone. For this reason, she argued that the process of restoring democracy is easier in formerly authoritarian than in formerly totalitarian states, and that authoritarian states are more amenable to gradual reform in a democratic direction than are totalitarian states.[citation needed]
Kirkpatrick's tenet that totalitarian regimes are more stable than authoritarian regimes has come under criticism since thecollapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, particularly as Kirkpatrick predicted that the Soviet system would persist for decades.
Ted Galen Carpenter of theCato Institute has also disputed the doctrine, noting that while communist movements tend to depose rival authoritarians, the traditional authoritarian regimes supported by the U.S. came to power by overthrowing democracies. He thus concludes that while communist regimes are more difficult to eradicate, traditional autocratic regimes "pose the more lethal threat to functioning democracies."[4][undue weight? –discuss]
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