Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926 – December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a longtime Democrat who became a neoconservative and switched to the Republican Party in 1985. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 presidential campaign, she became the first woman to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.[1]
Jeane Kirkpatrick
December 7, 2006 (aged 80)
Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Socialist (1945–1948)
Democratic (1948–1985)
Republican (1985–2006)
Evron Kirkpatrick
3
She was known for the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine", which advocated supporting authoritarian regimes around the world if they went along with Washington's aims. She believed that they could be led into democracy by example. She wrote, "traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies."[2] She sympathized with the Argentine junta during the Falklands War when President Reagan came out in support of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Kirkpatrick served in Reagan's Cabinet on the National Security Council, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Defense Policy Review Board, and chaired the Secretary of Defense Commission on Fail Safe and Risk reduction of the Nuclear Command and Control System.[3] She wrote a syndicated newspaper column after leaving government service in 1985, specializing in analysis of the activities of the United Nations.
Career[edit]
Georgetown University[edit]
In 1967, she joined the faculty of Georgetown University and became a full professor of government in 1973. She became active in politics as a Democrat in the 1970s, and was involved in the later campaigns of former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. In addition to Humphrey, she was close to Henry Jackson, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972 and 1976.[4] Like many in Jackson's circle she became identified with neoconservatism.[7][8]
Opposed to the candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, she joined with Richard V. Allen and others in co-founding the Committee on the Present Danger, which sought to warn Americans of Soviet Union's growing military power and the dangers that the organization believe were represented to the United States in the SALT II treaty.[9] She also served on the Platform Committee for the Democratic Party in 1976.[10]
Kirkpatrick published articles in political science journals reflecting her disillusionment with the Democratic Party with specific criticism of the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Her most well known essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards", was published in Commentary magazine in November 1979.[11] In the essay, Kirkpatrick mentioned what she saw as a difference between authoritarian regimes and the totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union; sometimes, it was necessary to work with authoritarian regimes if it suited American purposes:[4] "No idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances ... Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse ... The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American policymakers."[1]
Comparing authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, she said:
Explaining her disillusionment with international organizations, especially the United Nations, she stated:
Regarding socialism, she said:
Later life[edit]
In April 1985, Kirkpatrick became a Republican, a move which The Economist called her "only recourse" after her speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention.[1] She returned to teaching at Georgetown University and became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank, and a contributor to the American Freedom Journal. In 1993, she cofounded Empower America, a public-policy organization. She was also on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars, a group that works against what it regards as a liberal bias in universities in the United States, with its emphasis on multicultural education, and affirmative action.
Kirkpatrick briefly considered running for president in 1988 against George H. W. Bush, because she believed he was not tough enough on Communism.[1][5] Kirkpatrick endorsed Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, who was the runner-up to Bush. Despite a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses, Dole's campaign quickly faded after he lost the New Hampshire primary in February 1988. Kirkpatrick was an active surrogate campaigner for Dole even as he was losing, as was her old foe, Alexander Haig, who endorsed Dole after ending his own 1988 campaign several days before the New Hampshire primary.
Along with Empower America co-directors William Bennett and Jack Kemp, she called on the Congress to issue a formal declaration of war against the "entire fundamentalist Islamist terrorist network" the day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2003, she headed the US delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Kirkpatrick was appointed to the Board of Directors of IDT Corp. in 2004.[3] It was revealed after her death that in 2003, she was sent as a US envoy, to meet an Arab delegation and attempt to convince them to support the Iraq War; she was supposed to argue that pre-emptive war was justifiable, but she knew that it would not work and instead argued that Saddam Hussein had consistently gone against the UN.[5] However she described George W. Bush as "a bit too interventionist for my taste" and felt that what she described as "moral imperialism" was not "taken seriously anywhere outside a few places in Washington, D.C."[1]
Personal life[edit]
According to a spokesperson at the American Enterprise Institute, Kirkpatrick was a Presbyterian.[32][33] On February 20, 1955, she married Evron Maurice Kirkpatrick, who was a scholar and a former member of the O.S.S. (the World War II–era predecessor of the CIA). Her husband died in 1995. They had three sons: Douglas Jordan (1956–2006), John Evron, and Stuart Alan.[34]
She had been diagnosed with heart disease and had been in failing health for several years. Kirkpatrick died at her home in Bethesda, Maryland, on December 7, 2006, from congestive heart failure.[35] She was interred at Parklawn Memorial Park in Rockville, Maryland.[35]
Awards and prizes[edit]
In 1985, Kirkpatrick was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.[3] Harvard Kennedy School created a Kirkpatrick Chair in International Affairs in her honor.[36]
She was given the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Humanitarian Award in 1983.[37]
She received an honorary doctorate degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín in 1985;[38] she also received an honorary doctorate at Central Connecticut State University in 1991.
She was awarded an honorary degree by Brandeis University in 1994, but declined it when her honor was met with protests from some professors and students, whom she described as "ideological zealots".[39] Fifty-three professors opposed the award, with one stating: "We oppose the degree because she was the intellectual architect of Reagan administration policies that supported some of the Latin-American regimes with the most repressive records."[40]
In 1995 she received the Walter Judd Freedom Award[41] from The Fund for American Studies. In 2007, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) honored Kirkpatrick with the creation of the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award. The first recipient was Marine Corps reservist and correspondent Matt Sanchez.[42] Kirkpatrick was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1984.[43]
In popular culture[edit]
Kirkpatrick was portrayed by Lorelei King in the 2002 BBC production of Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play.
In Berkeley Breathed's daily comic strip Bloom County, Kirkpatrick becomes former Meadow Party Presidential candidate Bill the Cat's love interest before he is exposed as using that relationship to perform espionage for the Soviet Union.[44]
She was also editor of a 1963 book titled The Strategy of Deception: A study in world-wide Communist tactics.