Kirkpatrick Doctrine: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Kirkpatrick Doctrine was a political doctrine expounded by United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick in the early 1980s which attempted to justify U.S. support for right-wing anticommunist dictatorships in the Third World in the context of the Cold War. Kirkpatrick claimed that pro-Soviet communist states were "totalitarian" regimes while pro-Western anticommunist Third World dictatorships were "authoritarian" ones. Kirkpatrick claimed that "totalitarian" regimes were more stable than "authoritarian" regimes, and thus had a greater propensity to influence neighboring states (see "domino theory").

Kirkpatrick's tenet that "totalitarian" regimes are more stable than "authoritarian" regimes has come under criticism since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Others counter that the Soviet Union fell only amid steady U.S.-led Western opposition to Communism during the Cold War.

According to Kirkpatrick, "authoritarian" regimes merely try to control and/or punish their subjects' behaviors, while "totalitarian" regimes moved beyond that into attempting to control the thoughts of their subjects (by not just propaganda but "brainwashing", re-education, widespread espionage on private citizens, and mass purges on ideological basis). The Soviet Union (particularly under Stalin) and Nazi Germany are archetypical examples of 'left' and 'right' totalitarian regimes, respectively.

Totalitarian regimes also often attempt to undermine or destroy community institutions deemed ideologically tainted (e.g., religious ones, or even the nuclear family), while authoritarian regimes by and large leave these alone. For this reason, she argues that the process of restoring democracy is easier in formerly authoritarian than in formerly totalitarian states, and that the former are more amenable to gradual reform in a democratic direction.