Luckily, Kirkpatrick was only 15 when WW2 broke out and had not had a chance to create a doctrine.
A coherent foreign policy can’t just take things as they come, it has to have a goal and then interpret events and policies in light of that goal. Fascism was more dangerous than communism, so the defeat of Germany was the goal, so we supported Stalin, after that communism was the most dangerous ideology and we fought that. Now islamic terrorism is the most dangerous ideology and we need to fight that.
I don’t think so. This was one of the big points of contention between Stalin and Trotsky: should the Soviet Union work on perfecting communism inside one country (Stalin’s position) or work on spreading communism around the world (Trotsky’s position)? The world revolution argument was effectively rebutted when Stalin had somebody put an ax in Trotsky’s head.
Hitler, meanwhile, was looking to conquer the world or at least a significant portion of it. So the United States ended up following what was the core principle of the Kirkpatrick doctrine: we allied with a dictator who was evil (Stalin) against a dictator who was evil and threatening (Hitler).
I disagree, the core principle of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine was that communist dictators are more evil and threatening than non-communist dictators by definition without analysis of the actual circumstances. It’s not the same as choosing one dictator over another out of necessity. It also seems to me to presuppose that it is in our interest to support non-communist dictators opposed to communism without even considering that we may not have to support either one.
Then I guess we do disagree. I feel the doctrine was arrived at as the conclusion of the analysis not in lieu of an analysis.
I think we, justifiably, saw the Soviet Union as the most serious threat to the United States. Countries that allied with the Soviet Union made that country stronger. Countries that allied with the United States made us stronger.
If the Soviet Union had been willing to ally with dictatorships while the United States rejected dictatorships as allies, the United States would have ended up being weaker than the Soviet Union. We had to consider the conditions in a world in which we tolerated dictatorships versus the conditions in a world in which the Soviet Union was stronger than the United States. And keep in mind this would have also been a world with greater toleration for dictatorships.
We decided that it was better to tolerate dictatorships on a temporary basis in order to reduce Soviet power. This was essentially the same reasoning we followed in WWII when we tolerated dictatorships in order to reduce Nazi power. Once the main threat was gone, we could begin addressing the lesser problem of dictatorships.
And give it credit, it seems to have worked. The Nazis are gone. The Soviets are gone. And a lot of countries that used to be dictatorships are now democracies.
The Chinese and Vietnamese have liberalized their systems!
ETA: Cuba, too, is far more liberal today than at some times in the past.
A doctrine is intended to be used to decide the course of action in future events so it can’t have been used after an analysis of a situation that hadn’t occurred yet.
We supported a non-communist dictator against a communist one in WWII because the analysis showed that was to our advantage. We’ve made other good choices in other situations, but not always, our flip-flopping support of Iran and Iraq has not worked out so well.
You see elections anywhere on the horizon?
A benevolent dictatorship is better than a brutal dictatorship. But it’s still a dictatorship. (And a benevolent dictator always has the option of turning brutal.)
Until we invent time travel all doctrines use the evidence of past events and current events to predict future events. If you’re going to insist governments wait until events are over to react to them, then you have a government with no policies at all.
The Kirkpatrick doctrine was put forth in 1979. I think it was reasonable to form a working hypothesis on communist governments by that point.
One aspect of this is the how it played in the court of public opinion in the third world. In The World Was Going Our Way KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin explicitly mentioned how that attitude by the US, played into the Soviets hands in the Third World. The US’s actions in deposing democratic regimes, and supporting dictatorships made it east for the Soviets to portray themselves at the good guys.
But nothing you say here contradicts what I said…where what I said flatly contradicts what adaher said. He was wrong: some communist nations have liberalized their policies, which he said (or implied) never happens.
You and I are both right, but he was flat wrong.
griffin1977 lays out clearly the problem with relying on doctrine. I expect our government to react to every new situation based on that actual situation. As I’ve already pointed out the Kirkpatrick doctrine would have had us siding with Hitler against Stalin. There are more ways to evaluate the threat a dictator poses other than his position on communism. There were no dictators threatening the Soviet Union in 1979, this was all about the proxy battles between smaller nations.
Propaganda is always out there. And there are always going to be people willing to believe it. But that particular line would require people to ignore a lot of reality.
Is the American record perfect? No, of course not.
Was the Soviet record absolute evil? No, of course not.
Was the American record better than the Soviet record? Yes. And not only overall. I think at pretty much any point, you would have found the Americans were better than the Soviets. If we were overthrowing one government, they were overthrowing three. If we were supporting one dictator, they were supporting a dozen.
And I think you’re misreading how the doctrine was applied. I didn’t simply judge any communist government as evil. The United States recognized that some communist countries were not Soviet allies.
And we did to react to new situation based on that situations. While you seem to feel it didn’t happen, we did work with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. And we did support Iraq, a Soviet ally, against Iran, which wasn’t a Soviet ally. Why? Because at the time, Iran was a bigger threat than Iraq.
The doctrine was much more flexible than you’re giving it credit for.
I didn’t see it that way, but it does seem to have been a political excuse and not the actual basis for all decisions. We wasted our time in the Middle East and Central America with this doctrine. Had it simply been said that it is in our interest to support dictators that oppose the Soviet Union if they don’t rise beyond some level of evil then my anti-doctinaire attitude in general wouldn’t be sufficient to disagree, but I found this one to convenient for use in justifying actions that were actually counter-productive, and also being ignored by the major proponent of the doctrine when he decided to sell the Soviets wheat to sustain their failing economy for a political advantage here at home when they were on the verge of economic collapse. I don’t see a case where this doctrine was actually applied to our advantage.
So the government was wrong because it blindly followed doctrine without considering the circumstances. Except when it did consider the circumstances and changed. In which case the government was wrong for not following its own doctrine and abandoning its principles.
You don’t seem to have left any room for the government to have been right.
Well, we won. There’s that.
Actually, I acknowledged that they liberalized their economic systems in some cases. But politically, they are all just as repressive as ever.
There’s a lot of talk about the Kirkpatrick Doctrine in the thread, but nobody’s actually linked to the article that set it out:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/dictatorships-double-standards/
From the essay:
If you’re a great power looking to create proxy states the problem with democracies isn’t they’re unstable. The problem is the people might vote the wrong way. Unless “stability” is a euphemism for obedience, then never mind (e.g. when American enemies intervene they destabilize a region, when America intervenes they stabilize it).