The Return of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine

In August 1981, US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick traveled to Santiago to meet with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, eight years after he seized power in a military coup. Kirkpatrick cheeringly described their talk as “most pleasant” and announced that the Reagan administration would fully normalize relations and resume arms sales—support that Pinochet quickly used to claim renewed legitimacy and crack down on opponents.

The episode crystallized what became known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine: the notion that the US government should embrace any autocrat who aligned with Washington’s anti-communist agenda while working to undermine, sanction, or topple any left-wing leader who refused to “play ball,” even if they were democratically elected (and popular). Protecting American economic interests was the lodestar, and just about anything was permissible in service of that goal.

The Kirkpatrick Doctrine shaped US Cold War policy across Latin America under President Ronald Reagan. It was invoked to justify participation in Operation Condor, a transnational repression system that coordinated dictatorships’ assassinations and torture chambers. It was used to rationalize funneling weapons and training to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and to support Brazil’s military junta and its anti-communist crusade.

And it explained why Washington turned a blind eye to the Argentine junta’s Dirty War, which disappeared tens of thousands of citizens while receiving US diplomatic cover. In Kirkpatrick’s view, these horrors were an acceptable price for preserving American hegemony and global “liberalism.” Kirkpatrick is still hailed as a “True American Hero” by conservatives, knowing full well the horrors she committed.

This imperialist view was not entirely new. US foreign policy had long operated on behalf of economic interests. The “Banana Wars” and “Banana Republics” of the early 20th century and the invasions of the Philippines and Caribbean islands were justified in the same way. What changed under Reagan was the sheer arrogance and brazenness of American evil. Washington packaged its hyper-capitalist, immoral backing of tyrants and terrorists under the banner of freedom, insisting to the world that the US was a “shining city upon a hill.” It was nonsense, but the message resonated at home.

The main architect of this approach was Jeane Kirkpatrick. Long discredited after the Cold War ended, her ideas seemed destined for the dustbin. Yet under US President Donald Trump, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine’s ghost has come hauling back. It is now a cornerstone of foreign policy in conservative circles.

Human rights, democracy, and human progress are expendable when they collide with American profits and hegemony.

There has been plenty of talk about this being the new Monroe Doctrine. A Newsweek piece this week argued that Trump’s America First agenda in Latin America is a “MAGA Monroe Doctrine.” But there is a contemporary precedent to Trump’s kind of imperialist chest-thumping.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a handful of other Trump-aligned hawks have pushed for the Kirkpatrick Doctrine’s revival. The GOP, under Trump, has openly flirted with copying Reagan’s playbook in Latin America and making it clear the region is a no-go zone for foreign competitors. US military and economic power could, at any time, be deployed to bully Southern nations into protecting American profits, once again.

This thread runs through both Trump terms. In the first, neoconservatives like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams held sway. In the second, the torch has been picked up by figures like Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Rubio.

In just over four years, the US has shown itself willing to deploy military forces against “subversive forces,” allegedly support coups such as the Silvercorp operation in Venezuela or the Organization of American States-assisted 2019 ouster of socialist Evo Morales in Bolivia, and meddle in elections to achieve its preferred outcome.

It has protected and propped up leaders engaged in authoritarian wars on drugs and socialism—Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele—while punishing leftist leaders like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Lula, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with tariffs, sanctions, and economic warfare. It has also supported right-wing opposition figures across the continent, from son-of-Nazi-SS-lieutenant José Antonio Kast in Chile to oligarch María Corina Machado in Venezuela to far-right groups in Peru and Colombia.

The US has also supported paramilitary groups. Colombia is the clearest case. For decades Washington poured weapons, training, and billions of dollars into the Colombian military, mostly under the Plan Colombia program, all while it collaborated with right-wing paramilitary death squads that murdered tens of thousands of civilians.

The US participated in the “False Positives” scandal, where the Colombian Army, armed with US weapons, training, and equipment, killed thousands of civilians before claiming they were guerrilla fighters, often planting evidence to do so.

Similarly, police and military units engaged in war crimes and brutality have been given US weapons and training. In Brazil, most foreign weapons for the police and military are American, including the very snipers used to gun down children in favelas. Meanwhile, the US has sanctioned any Latin American country from purchasing Chinese and Russian weapons, equipment, and technology, to help feed the American military-industrial complex’s profits.

The doctrine also shows up in how the Trump administration uses pressure campaigns. In Venezuela, the “Maximum Pressure” campaign from the first term has escalated to outright military confrontation. Just last week, the US allegedly destroyed a fishing boat in Venezuelan national waters, killing 11 people. It claimed the boat was transporting drugs headed to the US, affiliated with Tren de Aragua.

There is no evidence for this claim, and even if there was, should drug traffickers be massacred without respect for sovereignty, due process, or congressional approval? Such a war crime could lead to full-on regime change or a new War on Drugs on Venezuelan shores.

This is all while ExxonMobil and Chevron have practically bought Washington’s Venezuela policy, and as the Venezuelan opposition, backed by the US, has said it would give oil rights to US corporations.

The underlying interests are clear. The US wants to maintain dominance over investment and markets, ensuring preferential treatment while shutting out competitors like China and Russia. This has meant pressuring governments not to buy BYD cars, threatening sanctions for buying Russian oil and weapons, strong-arming Panama to ditch Belt and Road projects, and trying to block Chinese banks from opening across the continent.

As South America becomes a breadbasket for the world, countries are turning to Brazilian, Russian, and Chinese fertilizers, cutting into US Big Agriculture’s profits. Oil and gas are front and center in Venezuela, where the largest proven reserves on Earth remain largely untapped.

Mining is increasingly important in the Andes, with lithium, copper, and other critical minerals needed for the global energy transition—and US firms want to be at the center of it, despite Chinese companies leading the way. This can help explain why the administration, particularly Marco Rubio, is so obsessed with supporting oil-rich Guyana, where ExxonMobil and Chevron have billions at stake.

The region is viewed as an extension of US dominance over global commerce—and measures to protect that dominance will be taken accordingly.

Locally, elites close to Trump are eager to profit from the US. They expect fatter contracts, looser regulations, and lower taxes under right-wing authoritarian governments backed by Washington. Brazilian business magnates, including real estate developers involved in building a Trump hotel in Rio de Janeiro that was shut down over corruption investigations, were key actors in pressuring Trump into putting 50% tariffs on Brazil, a move that has backfired massively.

The Trump administration has also pressured Latin American governments not to diversify away from the dollar, discouraging them from signing trade deals in yuan or joining BRICS currency initiatives. China’s opening of multiple bank branches across Latin America has also been a target of US pressure. Countries are now able to sign deals, both internationally and regionally, using foreign currencies like the yuan. This threatens dollar dominance, and the US simply cannot abide by a globally competitive system in “our hemisphere.”

The Trump agenda in Latin America is, most conveniently, about protecting US economic and financial interests, just as it was under Kirkpatrick’s reign of terror-for-profit. The rhetoric may change; today it is about fighting socialism, China, or “narco-terrorism” rather than communism; but the underlying logic is the same.

Human rights, democracy, and human progress are expendable when they collide with American profits and hegemony. Ironically, that very logic destroys US credibility, and may help bring about a truly multipolar system in a region long hurt by unipolar imperial control.