THE SALUTARY FASCIST INTERLUDE:

In 1979, political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick published a widely discussed essay in Commentary entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards," in which she lambasted the Carter administration for entertaining a double standard of its own: accepting the status quo in Communist regimes while taking a hard stance against authoritarian allies. Kirkpatrick criticized Carter for abandoning pro-US dictators in Iran and Nicaragua and allowing revolutionary groups to rise to power. The problem was not just that the upheavals in 1979 could benefit the Soviet Union, which appeared to be on a roll in the 1970s under Leonid Brezhnev's iron grip. According to Kirkpatrick, the Islamic Revolutionaries and Marxist Sandinistas that came to power in Iran and Nicaragua, respectively, were "totalitarian" groups that were even more oppressive than the tyrants they had replaced. US support for right-wing dictatorships was thus not just strategically justified--it was also morally justified, since traditional autocracies were essentially the lesser of two evils compared to their totalitarian opponents.

This distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism was a cornerstone of Kirkpatrick's argument. Traditional authoritarian leaders are oppressive and constrain political participation, but "do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations" like totalitarian regimes do. Authoritarian states enforce order, whereas totalitarian states enforce order and belief. To Kirkpatrick, this distinction gave authoritarian states some chance of evolving into democracies down the road, whereas radical Communist and Islamist dictatorships grounded in revolutionary ideology would not liberalize voluntarily.

"Dictatorships and Double Standards" resonated with many neoconservatives who had become disillusioned with Carter's passivity towards the Soviet Union as well as with Nixon's concessions to Moscow under "détente." However, not all neoconservatives agreed with Kirkpatrick's implications. Paul Wolfowitz, for instance, felt that the goal of US policy should not just be containing the Soviet Union, but also spreading democracy worldwide, whereas Kirkpatrick represented the "realist" neoconservative camp. Kirkpatrick never advocated abandoning the cause of freedom altogether, but she warned that the imposition of liberalization risked inadvertently paving the way for revolutionary agents in the Third World. Democratization, she argued, should not be expected to happen overnight through forceful policies that alienate "friendly" autocrats, but rather through a gradual expansion of political liberties.

Kirkpatrick's argument proved to be prescient on many accounts. In East Asia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and China remain one party dictatorships, whereas South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines became democracies as the Cold War drew to a close. Similarly, many Latin American military dictatorships, despite grotesque human rights records, evolved into democracies of some form in the late 20th century. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is often cited by Kirkpatrick's supporters as an example of an authoritarian who enacted liberal reforms and eventually stepped down. Meanwhile, Cuba continues to suffer under Communist domination, and Venezuela has grown more authoritarian under Chavez and Maduro since 1999.

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