Jeane Kirkpatrick

Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration.

Though she ultimately became a conservative, as a college freshman in 1945 she joined the Young People's Socialist League, the youth wing of the Socialist Party of America, influenced by her grandfather who was a founder of the Populist and Socialist parties in Oklahoma.

In 1948, she graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University after she received her associate degree from Stephens College (then only a two-year institution) in Columbia, Missouri.

In 1967, she joined the faculty of Georgetown University and became a full professor of government in 1973.

In 1968, Kirkpatrick earned a PhD in political science from Columbia.

She spent a year of postgraduate study at Sciences Po at the University of Paris, which helped her learn French.

She was fluent in Spanish.

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.

Along with Humphrey, she was close to Henry Jackson, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972 and in 1976.

Like many in Jackson's circle she became identified with neoconservatism.

She was opposed to the candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 and that year she joined with Richard V. Allen and others to found the Committee on the Present Danger for the purpose of warning Americans against the Soviet Union's growing military power and the dangers of the SALT II treaty.

She also served on the Platform Committee for the Democratic Party in 1976.

Kirkpatrick published a number of 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 piece was "Dictatorships and Double Standards", published in Commentary in November 1979.

In that piece, 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: "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."

The piece came to the attention of Ronald Reagan through his National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen.

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.

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."

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.

Kirkpatrick then became a foreign policy adviser throughout Reagan's 1980 campaign and presidency and, after his election to the presidency, Ambassador to the United Nations, which she held for four years.

The Economist writes that until then, "she had never spent time with a Republican before."

On the way to her first meeting with Reagan, she told Allen, "Listen, Dick, I am an AFL–CIO Democrat and I am quite concerned that my meeting Ronald Reagan on any basis will be misunderstood."

She asked Reagan if he minded having a lifelong Democrat on his team; he replied that he himself had been a Democrat until he was 51, and in any event, he liked her way of thinking about American foreign policy.

Kirkpatrick was a vocal advocate of US support for the military regime in El Salvador during the early years of the Reagan Administration.

When four US churchwomen were murdered by Salvadorean soldiers in 1980, Kirkpatrick declared her 'unequivocal' belief that the Salvadorean army was not responsible, adding that 'the nuns were not just nuns.

They were political activists.

She was one of the strongest supporters of Argentina's military dictatorship following the March 1982 Argentine invasion of the United Kingdom's Falkland Islands, which triggered the Falklands War.

An ardent anticommunist, she was a longtime Democrat who became a neoconservative and switched to the Republican Party in 1985.

She wrote a syndicated newspaper column after leaving government service in 1985, specializing in analysis of the activities of the United Nations.

Kirkpatrick was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the daughter of an oilfield wildcatter, Welcher F. Jordan, and his wife, Leona (née Kile).

She attended Emerson Elementary School there and was known to her classmates as "Duane Jordan."

She had a younger sibling, Jerry.

At 12, her father moved the family to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where she graduated from Mt. Vernon Township High School.

We ought to be a little more clear about this than we actually are.' After the release of declassified documents in the 1990s, New Jersey congressman Robert Torricelli stated that it was 'now clear that while the Reagan Administration was certifying human rights progress in El Salvador they knew the terrible truth that the Salvadoran military was engaged in a widespread campaign of terror and torture'.

As Kirkpatrick recalled at a symposium in 2002:

"It wasn't easy to find the YPSL in Columbia, Missouri. But I had read about it and I wanted to be one. We had a very limited number of activities in Columbia, Missouri. We had an anti-Franco rally, which was a worthy cause. You could raise a question about how relevant it was likely to be in Columbia, Missouri, but it was in any case a worthy cause. We also planned a socialist picnic, which we spent quite a lot of time organizing. Eventually, I regret to say, the YPSL chapter, after much discussion, many debates and some downright quarrels, broke up over the socialist picnic. I thought that was rather discouraging."

At Columbia University, her principal adviser was Franz Leopold Neumann, a revisionist Marxist.