Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Reagan Administration, and neoconservative foreign policy in El Salvador

The election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1980 was accompanied by the rise of conservatism in America. Among the groups of conservatives supporting the Reagan administration were the so-called neoconservatives. This group was comprised primarily of liberal Democrats who had become alienated from their party due to their domestic and foreign policy beliefs. Members of this group were characterized by a strong sense of American exceptionalism and anti-communism. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a prominent neoconservative intellectual and Reagan's foreign policy advisor during his 1980 presidential campaign, brought these ideas to the forefront of the administration's foreign policy initiatives. As Reagan's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Kirkpatrick became a member of the Reagan Cabinet and of the National Security Council. From this position, she provided an intellectual rationale for the administration's policies abroad through her distinctions between non-democratic governments. The Kirkpatrick Doctrine declared the administration's support for right-wing authoritarian governments over left-wing totalitarian governments. For according to Kirkpatrick, right-wing authoritarian governments, though repressive in nature, were amenable to democratic change whereas leftist totalitarian governments were not. Her distinctions were not novel, but stemmed from her critique of Carter's human rights policies, in which non-democratic governments were held accountable for their human rights abuses, and from her critique of detente in which the U.S. attempted to 'normalize' relations with the Soviet Union, a leftist totalitarian state. The utilization of Kirkpatrick's distinctions was prominent in the Reagan administration's dealing with Central America, specifically with El Salvador and Nicaragua. Nicaragua had 'fallen' to communism in 1979 with the overthrow of the brutal Somoza regime. The victory of the leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua prompted the administration to support Nicaraguan 'freedom fighters', known as Contras, in attempting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. In 1980, El Salvador faced its own leftist revolution when approximately 3,000 guerrillas attempted to overthrow the repressive Salvadoran junta. Though the Salvadoran military was able to put down the revolution, the Reagan administration 'saw red' and was determined not to let anymore dominoes fall to communism in America's backyard. Though the Salvadoran government and its military were known to be quite repressive (having killed over 9,000 civilians for 'suspected' leftist activities) the Reagan administration pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the regime throughout the 1980s in order to combat the perceived communist threat. Kirkpatrick's distinctions served as the basis for such support, for El Salvador was a right-wing authoritarian government and as such, capable of evolving into an approximate democratic state. Due to Kirkpatrick and the administration's insistence upon viewing the indigenous conflict as a Soviet-inspired attempt to communize Central America, El Salvador came to represent the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.