Dictatorships and Double Standards - Criticism

Criticism

The AFL-CIO's Tom Kahn criticized conceptual problems and strategic consequences in Kirkpatrick's analysis. In particular, Kahn suggested that policy should promote democracy even in the countries dominated by Soviet communism. Kahn argued that the Polish labor-union Solidarity deserved U.S. support and even in its first years demonstrated that civil society could expand and that free labor unions could be organized, despite communist regimes. Kirkpatrick's analysis of communism underestimated the democratic potential of the working class.

Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute noted that while Communists movements tend to dispose rival authoritarians, the traditional authoritarian regimes supported by the US came to power by overthrowing democracies. He thus concludes that while Communist regimes are more difficult to eradicate, traditional autocratic regimes "pose the more lethal threat to functioning democracies."