Dictators And Democracy

We were once honest about our client states

Back when I was young, I was very impressed by Ronald Reagan’s UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick. She was tough as nails and very impressive as a speaker. I did not know much about her besides her role working for Reagan.

When I went to college, I read more about her and read, for the first time, her 1979 article, Dictators and Double Standards. It was impressive on my young mind. I had already read realist treatises while in high school. Her argument that America should not focus on civil liberties in our foreign policy, but on which countries support our policies, no matter their domestic political situation, sat well with me.

Kirkpatrick wrote this article in wake of the fall of the Shah and the victory of the Sandinistas, and that both could have been averted. The Carter administration had prioritized human rights and caused harm to the international system in its foolishness. Kirkpatrick could not have known that Iran would be under the same regime 43 years later, or that Nicaragua would have the Sandinistas back after they lost power for a few years.

What she knew is that global power politics requires strange bedfellows and one either has allies or one loses them for ideological purposes.

Kirkpatrick was originally a socialist, from a Midwestern socialist family, and entered Democratic politics under the Scoop Jackson faction. She served on the 1976 Democratic Party platform committee. She was not a Republican when she wrote this article.

This article so impressed Reagan and his advisors that she was brought into his inner circle and had an important role in shaping his foreign policy. Under Reagan America supported dictators that were on our side and opposed democracies that refused to support the USA and its goals.

Later, while working on my PhD, it became clear to me that the major dividing point was not even the form of the leadership of a country or its willingness to join a side in the Cold War that had mattered. No, it was whether a country opened up its markets to US businesses.

The US empire served its oligarchs. Open the door to our goods and dollars and all would be OK. Keep the door closed and you are our enemy. This was really not new under Reagan or the realists. The Open Door policy was our policy in China against both Chinese restrictions and European enclaves. It was why America pushed open Japan, which led to the Meiji Restoration.

Some theorists put the Open Door as the primary US foreign policy position. Autarky was the greatest threat to America under this idea. Have whatever form of government you want, but do not close your markets to the US and its merchants. It helps explain why the US pushed for the end of the European empires after WWII. It explains why the Soviet Union and its allies were such a great threat to America. The Open Door was deep-seated in America thought. It was an aspect of liberalism that held sway even when other aspects were less in favor.

It did not matter that trade was mostly miniscule in the US economy for most of the post-Civil War era until 1972. The US domestic economy consumed most everything it produced and foreign markets just were not that important in comparison. Foreign trade was vital to bankers and those who would leverage trade to gain a domestic advantage.

JFK was loved throughout the Third World in large part because people thought he supported the end of dictators and empires. JFK was also a realist who really did not support democracy around the world. He would have felt at ease with Jeane Kirkpatrick and her ideas. The Scoop Jackson faction of the Democratic Party was very skeptical of humanitarian focused foreign policy and many of its supporters did what Kirkpatrick did and switch sides.

Why does this matter? Because DC is lying to itself. Supporting Zelensky is not supporting democracy but supporting a dictator. Zelensky and his regime have killed civilians, jailed political opponents, shut down opposing media, and all other acts typical of a dictatorship. It is utterly ridiculous when any pundit or politician claims to be supporting democracy by supporting Ukraine.

They would be better off justifying their support in other terms. They could easily argue that Russia is opposed to the US-led economic community, while Ukraine was “open for business” for America and the EU. It is more complicated argument, but at least there is some truth to it.

Any to have dictator Z go into Congress and be lauded by Congress as he was grifting for more money was a bigger assault of American ideals than anything that happened on January 6th. If Ukraine represents American democracy, then no wonder we are lost.