Kirkpatrick, Jeane

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(b. November 19, 1926) Political scientist and foreign policy adviser, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1981–1985).

Jeane Kirkpatrick is known as an ardent conservative who became famous in the 1980s for the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, which advocated support of governments around the world that stood in opposition to communism. She served as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign for the presidency and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1981–1985) during his administration. Kirkpatrick's stated philosophy is to "aid your friends, not your enemies."

Jeane Duane Jordan was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, on November 19, 1926, and graduated from Barnard College in New York City in 1948. She earned a master's degree in political science from Columbia University. Her main adviser at Columbia was Franz Neumann, a Marxist, and Kirkpatrick was for a time a member of the youth section of the Socialist Party.

In 1952 she began work for the State Department in an intelligence and research bureau. The bureau was headed by Evron Kirkpatrick, whom she married in 1955. For the next several years, she stayed at home to raise the couple's three sons and studied for a doctoral degree, which she earned from Columbia in 1968. She soon joined the faculty of Georgetown University, becoming a full professor of political science.

Kirkpatrick took an active interest in politics in the 1970s as a member of the Democratic Party. She wrote a number of articles in political science journals and published her first book, Leader and Vanguard in Mass Society, in 1971. But by the end of the decade, she had become disillusioned with the party's foreign policy tenets. She was especially critical of Democrat Jimmy Carter's foreign policy after he became president in 1977.

In the late 1970s Kirkpatrick joined the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which was originally formed in 1950 as a "citizen's lobby" to keep the nation aware of dangers posed by the Soviet Union. Interest in the group had waned after the end of the Vietnam War, but it was revitalized in the late 1970s. Many of Kirk-patrick's fellow conservative Democrats joined CPD II, as it was called, as well. CPD II is a nonprofit organization that fosters discussion of U.S. national security policies relating to peace and freedom. It is in opposition to the so-called Trilateralists, who advocate keeping power through military strength.

In 1980 Kirkpatrick switched loyalties and became the foreign policy adviser for the campaign of the Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was impressed by an article she had written stating that the United States had to be willing to support authoritarian governments that were allies against communism, lest they be overthrown and replaced by pro-communist regimes. Kirkpatrick formally became a Republican in 1985.

Once elected, Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick as ambassador to the United Nations (UN). With no practical experience in international politics, Kirkpatrick learned on the job. She became the administration's forceful spokesperson against Soviet expansionism. In 1982 she openly supported Argentina in its fight against Great Britain for control of the Falkland Islands, off the coast of Argentina. The Falklands War ended with the surrender of Argentinian troops and Britain's retention of the islands. In 1983 she defended U.S. military intervention in Grenada after the island fell into chaos. Reagan sent troops to Grenada following an internal coup. The troops were gradually withdrawn after a democratic self-government was established in 1984.

Kirkpatrick also served as a member of Reagan's national security team, allowing her more access to the White House than was typical for a UN ambassador. She was a key figure in the dispute over the shooting down of a South Korean jetliner by the Soviets in 1983. As the main speaker for the government before the UN Security Council, Kirpatrick offered a videotape displaying communications between Soviet ground control and the Soviet pilots who hit the South Korean plane. The Soviets accused her and State Department officials of doctoring the tapes. Kirkpatrick vigorously denied the charge.

Kirkpatrick has served as a senior fellow of the Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. In 1993 she became a cofounder of Empower America, along with former Housing and Urban Development secretary Jack Kemp, former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, and former Secretary of Education William Bennett. This political advocacy organization claims thousands of grass-roots members and is dedicated to what it calls progressive conservative policies. Along with the other cofounders, after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, Kirkpatrick called on the U.S. Congress to issue a formal declaration of war against the "entire fundamentalist Islamic terrorist network."

9-11; Reagan, Ronald.

Gerson, Allan. The Kirkpatrick Mission: Diplomacy Without Apology—America at the United Nations, 1981–1985. New York: Free Press, 1991.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane. Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane. Legitimacy and Force. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988.

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