Abstract
Given both the prevalence of Friendly Tyrants regimes and the American concern with promoting freedom and democracy in the world, it may be no exaggeration to say that our policy toward such rulers — who are pro-American, right-wing, and authoritarian — constitutes the most controversial foreign policy question before us.
The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policies of the United States government.
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References
This description is drawn in part from the influential writings on the subject by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. See Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism & Reason in Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982). The essay by the same name was first published in Commentary, November 1979.
For a discussion and critique of such views, see Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Press, 1986).
This bias toward emphasizing “hard” diplomatic and security-related interests over “soft” concerns such as promoting human rights and democracy is an outgrowth of the realist paradigm. For an affirmation of this approach, see George F. Kennan, “Morality and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1985–86, pp. 205–218.
On this theme, see Robert W. Tucker, “Isolation and Intervention,” The National Interest, Fall 1985, pp. 16–25.
For a useful discussion of the difficulties in promoting so-called third forces, see Owen Harries, “The Idea of a Third Force,” The National Interest, Spring 1986, pp. 3–7.
U.S. tinkering with this notion is treated with considerable disdain in Graham Greene, The Quiet American (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955).
For the classic discussion of this topic, see John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” reprinted in Essays on Politics and Culture (New York: Doubleday & Company/Anchor Books, 1963), pp. 368–384. Mill concludes that as a general rule, one ought to desist from intervening on behalf of a people struggling for democracy against their government unless that tyranny is “upheld by foreign arms.”
Richard Pipes, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America’s Future (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 20.
Here see Owen Harries, “Exporting Democracy — and Getting it Wrong,” The National Interest, Fall 1988, pp. 3–12.
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© 1991 Foreign Policy Research Institute
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Haass, R.N. (1991). Friendly Tyrants: A Policy Primer. In: Pipes, D., Garfinkle, A. (eds) Friendly Tyrants. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21676-5_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21676-5_23
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