Jeane Kirkpatrick in Retrospect: The Test of Time

The ultimate measure of Jeane Kirkpatrick's insight when she wrote Dictatorships and Double Standards, is how well the work has withstood the test of time. In at least one respect it has. Building democracy remains as difficult as ever, and many of Kirkpatrick's critics are conceding the wisdom of her warnings.

What has survived the test of time very poorly is Kirkpatrick's assumption that totalitarian (read Communist) governments are immutable and incapable of democratization. In one sense, she can be hardly be blamed for her lack of foresight. In 1979 it was universal conventional wisdom the the Soviet Union was forever. But even then, many of Kirkpatrick's critics questioned whether other Communist governments were as solid as she thought. Some, such as Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland had undergone partial liberalization, sometimes to the point that one could question whether they were truly totalitarian as that term is normally defined. A number of Kirkpatrick's critics pointed out that it was not any internal totalitarian dynamic that prevented the governments throughout Eastern Europe from democratizing, but the threat of Soviet intervention. If the threat of Soviet intervention could somehow be removed, Eastern Europe would democratize in swift order. But no one, neither Kirkpatrick's critics nor her admirers, suspected this would happen in a mere ten years!

More theoretically, Kirkpatrick's whole tendancy to equate "authoritarian" with "traditional" and "totalitarian" with "revolutionary" undermined her entire assumption about democratic potential. The trouble with "totalitarian" governments, she warned, was that they overturned entire social orders and upset tradition. But ultimately this dichotomy is relative. What is now "traditional" was once "revolutionary." What is now "revolutionary," if it remains long enough, will ultimately become "traditional." It totalitarian and revolutionary are synonymous, then even if revolutionary (i.e. totalitarian) governments are incapable of democratization, they will ultimately become "traditional" (i.e., "authoritarian") and therefore capable of democratization Revolution merely delays the possiblity of democracy; it does not preclude it.

Furthermore, Kirkpatrick wrote Dictatorships and Double Standards in November, 1979. Although it was not apparent at the time, in retrospect 1979 was a watershed year. In January, the Shah of Iran was overthrown and Ayatollah Khomeini began his experiment in theocracy. In the summer, Somoza was overthrown in Nicaragua and what proved to be the last Marxist revolutionaries came to power. In the early fall, a wave of strikes broke out in Poland, leading to the independent Solidarity union, yet the Soviet Union failed to intervene militarily. And in November, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to suppress an Islamic revolt against a Communist government they had helped to install. In short, 1979 might be considered the year militant Islam began displacing Communism as the most dangerous revolutionary ideology around.

Once again, not even the most prescient observer of the time was aware of this trend, much less predicted that Communism would largely disintigrate in a mere ten years, so Kirkpatrick cannot be blamed for sharing the universal fear of a Communist menace. But many people were already noticing that Communism was losing a certain momentum. The old revolutionary zeal was long gone in the Soviet Union and waning fast in China. Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia, which had all been socialist and pro-Soviet (though none were actually Communist) had all expelled their Soviet advisors and initiated friendly relations with the United States. The Sandinistas, newly in power in Nicaragua, were proving more flexibible and less dogmatic than Castro had been.

And then there was Iran. Although Kirkpatrick did briefly refer to Ayatollah Khomeini's regime as a "reactionary theocracy," on the whole she seemed to lump the Iranian revolution together with Communist revolutions in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc. She showed no interest in how a theocratic revolution might be difference from a Communist one, nor did it seem to occur to her that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan might alarm the government of neighboring Iran and preclude friendly relations with the invaders. In short, while Kirkpatrick can hardly have been expected to foresee just how extensive and dangerous militant Islam would ultimately become, she showed an extraordinary blindness in failing to notice it altogether.

Overall, many of Kirkpatrick faulty assumptions were simply the unquestioned wisdom of the day, which she can hardly be blamed for sharing. But in her alarmist anti-Communism, she lumped together all revolutionaries, failing to see distinctions that were obvious to calmer observers of the time. The prism of pure anti-Communism was far too simplified view to accurately describe the world of 1979. Many people at the time realized this. Jeane Kirkpatrick did not.

Jeane Kirkpatrick in Retrospect: "Forces" versus People

One of the oddest traits of Jean Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards is her view of US (and Soviet) power with respect to social conditions in Third World countries. She sees many social factors that make the development of democracy difficult and warns that we cannot impose it at will. Yet she also appears to believe that social factors have no role whatever in the occurrence of revolutions. Rather, the Soviet Union can create revolutions at, which fortunately we are always able to stop.

Kirkpatrick is most often praised these days for acknowledging how difficult it is to create a democracy:

Fulfilling the duties and discharging the functions of representative government make heavy demands on leaders and citizens, demands for participation and restraint, for consensus and compromise. It is not necessary for all citizens to be avidly interested in politics or well-informed about public affairs--although far more widespread interest and mobilization are needed than in autocracies. What is necessary is that a substantial number of citizens think of themselves as participants in society's decision-making and not simply as subjects bound by its laws. Moreover, leaders of all major sectors of the society must agree to pursue power only by legal means, must eschew (at least in principle) violence, theft, and fraud, and must accept defeat when necessary. They must also be skilled at finding and creating common ground among diverse points of view and interests, and correlatively willing to compromise on all but the most basic values.

In addition to an appropriate political culture, democratic government requires institutions strong enough to channel and contain conflict. Voluntary, non-official institutions are needed to articulate and aggregate diverse interests and opinions present in the society. Otherwise, the formal governmental institutions will not be able to translate popular demands into public policy.

In the relatively few places where they exist, democratic governments have come into being slowly, after extended prior experience with more limited forms of participation during which leaders have reluctantly grown accustomed to tolerating dissent and opposition, opponents have accepted the notion that they may defeat but not destroy incumbents, and people have become aware of government's effects on their lives and of their own possible effects on government. Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits.

These are all sound points. What Kirkpatrick ignores is that the Carter Administration was not, in fact, calling on foreign governments to become democracies overnight, only to respect basic human rights. Respect for basic human rights is part of the necessary groundwork that can later lead to democracy.

While Kirkpatrick believes that objective social conditions have a great deal to do with whether a society is capable of democracy, and that the US has little power to change them, she has no patience for the view that objective social conditions have anything to do with causing revolutions.

The idea that it is "forces" rather than people which shape events recurs each time an administration spokesman articulates or explains policy. The President, for example, assured us in February of this year:

The revolution in Iran is a product of deep social, political, religious, and economic factors growing out of the history of Iran itself.

. . . .

Harold Saunders, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, commenting on "instability" in Iran and the Horn of Africa, states:

We, of course, recognize that fundamental changes are taking place across this area of western Asia and northeastern Africa--economic modernization, social change, a revival of religion, resurgent nationalism, demands for broader popular participation in the political process. These changes are generated by forces within each country.

. . . .

So what if the "deep historical forces" at work in such diverse places as Iran, the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, and the United Nations look a lot like Russians or Cubans? . . . What can a U.S. President faced with such complicated, inexorable, impersonal processes do? The answer, offered again and again by the President and his top officials, is, not much. Since events are not caused by human decisions, they cannot be stopped or altered by them.

Something very odd is going on here. Although Kirkpatrick does not use the dread term "forces" in talking about countries' capacity for democracy, she makes quite clear that democratization is not simply a matter of individual will, but depends on objective social conditions. Yet she seems to have no concept that what predisposes a society toward revolution also has something to do with objective social conditions such as "economic modernization, social change, a revival of religion, resurgent nationalism, demands for broader popular participation in the political process." Revolutions are simply the result of Russians and Cuban stirring up trouble, or, at most, indiginous revolutionaries armed and encouraged by Russians and Cubans.

Kirkpatrick has half a point here. It is true that hard-core revolutionaries are generally a relatively small elite, and that it is this elite often tries to stir up revolution absent popular discontent. But for revolutionaries to move beyond a mere annoyance and actually menace the regime in power, they must have a certain critical mass of support. Attracting that critical mass does, indeed, depend a great deal on "broad historical forces" and objective social conditions, including the serious disruptions in people's lives that supposedly "traditional" governments can cause. And Kirkpatrick seems utterly blind to the fact that the revolutions in both Nicaragua and Iran (the countries she emphasizes) were exceptionally broad-based popular uprisings. Kirkpatrick is certainly right that in both countries it was a narrow revolutionary elite and not the general public that determined the direction of the revoultion. Doubtless it is true that in both countries the revolution moved off in directions the general public would not have chosen. But in both cases the broad public was willing to take that gamble.

Kirkpatrick heaps scorn on Jimmy Carter for saying there was not much he could do, and that he did not know whether the Shah would stay in power. She is amply clear that the United States, so powerless to create democracy, is omnipotent in maintaining autocrat in power. What Kirkpatrick is really saying is that Carter was a fool for not seeing bombing them back to the stone age or waging war on the entire population as acceptable alternatives.

Another thought Kirkpatrick should consider. If the Soviet Union was so omnipotent and could create revolutions and topple pro-Western governments anytime, anywhere regardless of objective social conditions, why did it choose such unlikely spots? If the Cubans can gobble up Nicaragua any time they want, surely Mexico would be a more attractive target. If they can wave their magic wand and create revolution in Iran, why not Saudi Arabia while they are at it? And, for that matter, what on earth possessed them to prefer Vietnam to India? Not once does she even address how the Soviets choose their supposed targets.

Kirkpatrick is doubtless right that the right conditions must be in place to create democracy. But she is dead wrong in assuming that conditions are unrelated to revolution.

Jeane Kirkpatrick in Retrospect: Anything for the Status Quo

Jeane Kirkpatrick's primary purpose inDictatorships and Double Standards was to argue that, since revolutionary regimes are necessarily worse than "traditional" ones, we are justified in supporting any degree of repressiveness or murderousness in a friendly dictator because the alternative will, by definition, be worse.

What immediately moved her to write her article was the occurrence of two recent revolutions against friendly dictators; the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by Khomeini follower and the overthrow of Somoza in Nicaragua by the Sandinistas. In both cases, President Jimmy Carter refused to prop up a friendly dictator in the face of a popular uprising and (in Kirkpatrick's opinion) helped precipitate the revolution by asking the dictator to show greater respect for human rights. However, she did not claim that this failing was unique to Carter. In fact, she said, he was merely following a familiar pattern of refusal to prop up friendly dictators, from Chiang Kai-shek in China to Batista in Cuba to the various governments of South Vietnam to UNITA in Angola.

The pattern is familiar enough: an established autocracy with a record of friendship with the U.S. is attacked by insurgents, some of whose leaders have long ties to the Communist movement, and most of whose arms are of Soviet, Chinese, or Czechoslovak origin. The "Marxist" presence is ignored and/or minimized by American officials and by the elite media on the ground that U.S. support for the dictator gives the rebels little choice but to seek aid "elsewhere." Violence spreads and American officials wonder aloud about the viability of a regime that "lacks the support of its own people." The absence of an opposition party is deplored and civil-rights violations' are reviewed. Liberal columnists question the morality of continuing aid to a "rightist dictatorship" and provide assurances concerning the essential moderation of some insurgent leaders who "hope" for some sign that the U.S. will remember its own revolutionary origins. Requests for help from the beleaguered autocrat go unheeded, and the argument is increasingly voiced that ties should be established with rebel leaders "before it is too late." The President, delaying U.S. aid, appoints a special emissary who confirms the deterioration of the government position and its diminished capacity to control the situation and recommends various measures for "strengthening" and "liberalizing" the regime, all of which involve diluting its power.

Kirkpatrick would stand for no such nonsense. She regarded such situations as cut-and-dried with only two alternatives -- our friendly autocrat or the Communist revolutionaries. In such cases, she sees no alternative; we must support a friendly leader by any means necessary. What means are those? Well, to begin with, we should never criticize a friendly government's repressiveness or ask for any restraint. Its repressiveness is simply doing what is necessary to protect itself against threat. We should do whatever is necessary to support a besieged friendly autocrat. How much may be necessary? Well, Kirkpatrick pours scorn the liberal press for interpreting insurgency as "evidence of widespread popular discontent" and sees refusal to arm a regime to suppress such an insurgency as tantamount to "toppling" the regime in power. She is also contemptuous of Carter's unwillingness to intervene militarily to keep either the Shah or Somoza in power. And apparently in Vietnam that long-term committment of 500,000 troops and large-scale carpet bombing and defoliation was not sufficient either. These days one hears praise of Kirkpatrick in some surprising quarter because she believed it was not easy to create democracy and would not have supported George Bush's world-wide military interventions on its behalf. But she would and did support military interventions all over the world to prop up friendly despots.

And there, I believe, is Kirkpatrick's most serious moral failing. She fails to recognize that insurgencies are often, indeed, expressions of popular discontent (more on that in the next post) and therefore fails to recognize just violent "traditional" leaders may have to be to uphold the status quo. In fact, the revolutions in bothNicaragua and Iran were overwhelming popular uprisings. Somoza responded, in effect, by waging war against his own people and bombing his own cities as one would bomb an enemy country. To Kirkpatrick, this just wasn't enough, and we should have helped him hit harder. The Shah, for the most part, went down without a fight, but presumably it would have taken a similar level of force to suppress the similarly popular uprising in Iran. Just how brutal does a "traditional" ruler have to be in maintaining power before we decide that a revolution might not seem so bad by comparison?

Kirkpatrick showed more clearly just how severe human rights violation she was prepared to justify in defense of the status quo when she served in the Reagan Admistration, which followed her advice when revolution threatened in El Salvador. The government there engaged in massacres of hundreds of defenseless villagers, raped 8-year-old children, tore the babies out of pregnant women, and massacred refugees as they attempted to flee. Kirkpatrick steadfastly stood by our friends throughout regardless. Never did she explore the question of whether any degree of slaughter in defense of the status quo ceased to be justifiable. Nor did she discuss the extent to which prolonged civil war tends to brutalize participants on both sides, regardless of who wins.

Perhaps the best comment on Kirkpatrick's anything-for-the-status-quo philosophy was posted recently on Glenn Greenwald:

3000 killed in Chile to "prevent a Cuba." 15,000 killed in Argentina to "prevent a Cuba." 80,000 killed in El Salvador to "prevent a Cuba." 100,000 killed in Guatemala to "prevent a Cuba." Thousands more when you add up Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic.... "to prevent a Cuba."

Jeane Kirkpatrick in Retrospect: "Traditional" and "Revolutionary"

I was an adolescent whose political consciousness was just dawning when I first read Jeane Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards. I was outraged at her amorality. Kirkpatrick has now recently died, and in the surrounding flurry, many others have having the dubious pleasure of reading her work, perhaps for the first time. Her argument has stuck with me ever since. This occasion is as good an excuse as any to address a few posts to her article.

Kirkpatrick purports to discuss the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian governments and explain why totalitarians are worse. She does not, however, define her terms. The distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian was raised long before Kirkpatrick's article. The usual distinction is that authoritarians seek to control only the government and will allow some independent institutions outside government control, so long as they do not directly challenge the regime in power. Totalitarians seek to control all of society, to destroy all independent institutions or subordinate them to the government and, in many cases, to compel everyone to participate in government-controlled institutions.

Instead of dwelling on this distinction, Kirkpatrick automatically equates "authoritarian" with "traditional" and "totalitarian" with "revolutionary" (read "Communist") and largely blurs the distinction between revolution and totalitarianism. Thus she considers any regime that upholds the status quo as inherently preferable to any one that challenges the status quo, and justifies almost anything done in defense of existing institutions. Her most famous (or infamous) quote is:

Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other resources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill. Such societies create no refugees.

Precisely the opposite is true of revolutionary Communist regimes. They create refugees by the million because they claim jurisdiction over the whole life of the society and make demands for change that so violate internalized values and habits that inhabitants flee by the tens of thousands in the remarkable expectation that their attitudes, values, and goals will "fit" better in a foreign country than in their native land.

What is wrong with Kirkpatrick's assumptions? She presupposes an immutable distinction between what is traditional and what is revolutionary, and that whatever is not Communist is, by definition, traditional and therefore not disruptive of ordinary peoples' lives. In fact, no present-day society can truly be called traditional, or non-disruptive. Africa, for instance, had its genuinely traditional societies severely disrupted in the 19th century by European colonialism, and again in the mid 20th century by independence. In Latin America, the traumas of colonization and independence were older, but contemporary society is being buffeted by modernization and urbanization. Perhaps the most extreme example is Haiti. Haiti's modern history begins with the complete extermination of its indiginous population and their replacement with slaves, forcibly transported from Africa. Because the death rate among slaves on Haitian plantations was so high, new slaves were constantly being imported (at great cost to their "habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations.") Then the slaves rebelled, killed off the colonizers, destroyed the plantation system, and sunk the country into general anarchy. Eventually a social order emerged which somehow rates as "traditional."

Legitimate distinctions between totalitarian and authoritarian do not necessarily tell us which form of government will be more disruptive. Consider the comments of Kirkpatrick critic Tom J. Farer:

If a revolutionary state commands people to move from one section of a country to another, we naturally condemn this ugly ct as violating the right to travel freely and choose one's place of residence. But if the state enforces an absentee landowner's decision to expel sharecroppers, who have tilled the land for generations, and if the landowner's choice was a rational response to market forces, even if those forces were themselve determned by political decisions about subsidies or the tariff on imported farm equipment, many economists will applaud it. . . . Quietly and anonymously, economic and social forces unleashed or at least aided by the state can eliminate entire cultures.

On the other hand, how long does it take before what was once revolutionary becomes traditional? Once people's lives have been disrupted enough by the new patterns enforced by revolutionary change, those, too, become "traditional." New "habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations" develop, along with new "traditional gods . . . and taboos." At the time Kirkpatrick wrote, the Soviet Union had been Communist longer than most African countries had been independent. Anyone in 1979 watching Soviet newlyweds lining up at Lenin's tomb to view his body could be forgiven for seeing it all as a new "tradition."

Next post: Just how much violence does Kirpatrick advocate to uphold the status quo?

Jeane Kirkpatrick in Retrospect: The Man at the Top

Another extremely dubious aspect of Jeane Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards, is the exaggerated emphasis she puts on the importance of a single leader. She warns that when revolution threatens a "traditional" autocrat, all depends on the current leader remaining in power. Without him, the whole system will collapse:

Authority in traditional autocracies is transmitted through personal relations: from the ruler to his close associates (relatives, household members, personal friends) and from them to people to whom the associates are related by personal ties resembling their own relation to the ruler. The fabric of authority unravels quickly when the power and status of the man at the top are undermined or eliminated. The longer the autocrat has held power, and the more pervasive his personal influence, the more dependent a nation's institutions will be on him. Without him, the organized life of the society will collapse, like an arch from which the keystone has been removed. . . . The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American policy-makers and journalists accustomed to public institutions based on universalistic norms rather than particularistic relations.

Superficially, this analysis may seem accurate. Revolutions do seem to proceed this way -- unrest stirs and increases. So long as the leader remains in power, he can keep a lid on it, but as soon as the leader steps down, the whole system falls apart.

But this analysis does not hold up so well in non-revolutionary situations. Both the Shah in Iran and Somoza in Nicaragua might be described as dynastic leaders, but in both cases the dynasty was a mere two generations old. But other dictators Kirkpatrick mentions, such as Chiang Kai-shek or Batista, fit this model less well. Batista, for instance, came to power by military coup, stepped down, and later seized power again. If Kirkpatrick is to be believed, the whole system should have collapsed three times over! In fact, at the time she wrote, Latin American governments were characterized, not by all-powerful dictators whose person presence kept everything together, but juntas and revolving door coups that constantly changed the man (or men) at the top with little or no impact on the greater social order.

Furthermore, if one gives the matter serious thought, no traditional society can possibly endure if "armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed." After all the one constant in all political systems is that the leader is always mortal. There are no exceptions. Any form of government which survives long enough to become "traditional" or even "semi-traditional" necessarily has to develop institutions strong enough to deal with this fact. Some form of succession, whether dynastic heredity, regular coups, or even periodic civil war, is a necessary feature of any even remotely "traditional" society.

The absence of a mechanism for replacing leaders is, in fact, a feature of non-traditional societies. Ironically, this was a serious problem in Communist countries. At the time Kirkpatrick wrote, important Communist leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao had died, and the social order had survived them, but with a paralyzing interregnum of several years. Subsequent events would show revolutions in Communist/totalitarian countries followed a similar pattern. In country after country in 1989, pressure built, rulers held it at bay for a time, but when the man at the top stepped down, the whole social order crumbled. In most countries this happened peacefully, by general consent. However, in Romania, Nicolae Ceaucescu resisted to the last and was overthrown by violent revolt and was executed. Once again, "armies collapse[d], bureaucracies abdicate[d], and social structures dissolve[d] once the autocrat [was] removed." Iraq has provided a more recent example. The Baathist regime in Iraq was properly described as totalitarian. And, in removing Saddam Hussein, we ended up bringing down the Iraqi state.

What is really going on here? Why do social orders, from military dictatorships in Latin American to Communist governments in Eastern Europe depose or bury any number of leaders and endure and then crumble when one leader steps down before a rising revolution? The obvious answer is not that the entire social order depends on one man being in charge, but that in a revolutionary situation the entire social order is undergoing an extreme crisis that the man at the top tries (vainly) to reverse. It is the magnitude of the crisis, not the importance of the autocrat, that causes "armies [to] collapse, bureaucracies [to] abdicate, and social structures [to] dissolve."