The reemergence of a Leninist level of cynicism in the form of Putin’s rule, following the chaos of the 1990s, was actually foreseen, albeit indirectly, by the late policy intellectual and former ambassador to the United Nations Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, in her historic and seminal essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” published in the November 1979 issue of Commentary. It is worth spending some time with Kirkpatrick’s essay in order to comprehend what we are still up against.
