Though former American Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick died over five years ago, the legacy she left still resonates, argues Peter Collier, author of the new biography “Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick.”
“‘Dictatorships and Double Standards’ will always be an arguing point in the dialogue about totalitarian governments,” Collier, author and founding publisher of Encounter Books, told The Daily Caller, referring to Kirkpatrick’s marquis 1979 essay.
“It got a new lease on life during the discussion about how the U.S. should react to authoritarians like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring, and will continue to be relevant now that winter has arrived with the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations.”
“I think that her denunciation of the ‘blame America first’ Democrats will always echo in our politics,” he added.
“And, finally, that her independence, bravery and intellectually muscular defense of our national enterprise while at the U.N. will always measure that organization and measure her as well.”
A Democrat who went to work for Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration, Kirkpatrick later became a Republican and was aligned with the so-called “neoconservatives.” Nonetheless, she was not a big proponent of the Iraq War.
“[E]ven though she tried to be a good soldier in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, she always had deep doubts about that war, and toward the end of her life became less reluctant to express them,” Collier said.
“She had contempt for those who opposed the war on what she saw as anti-American grounds and ‘got’ what the Bush administration was trying to do by changing the environment in the Middle East that produced terrorism, but she simply did not believe that the war was in the interests of the U.S.”
Read the full interview with Collier below about his new book:
Why did you decide to write the book?
When I founded Encounter Books in 1998, the first thing I did was approach Jeane to write a memoir. I knew from a prior conversation with her that she had tried to do this shortly after leaving the Reagan administration in 1985. But the effort had failed, probably because she was one of those people who feel that the first person singular pronoun is an enemy. So to help convince her to try again, I said I’d do a series of interviews with her and put together a draft, written in her voice, which she could then work from. We talked for many hours and eventually I did distill this material into a sample chapter that she liked. But she couldn’t make herself enthusiastic about the book and it went nowhere. Shortly before she died, Jeane apologized for this, saying that she was sorry that this project of ours would not get done. I glibly replied that maybe I’d just do the book myself. After she died, I decided that I would — as a way of telling about a unique life and keeping her memory green.
What shaped Jeane Kirkpatrick and her worldview?
Jeane was shaped by having grown up in the middle of America (Oklahoma for the first 10 years and then Illinois); by coming from a family that deeply believed in American values and American exceptionalism; and by coming of age during the Depression and World War II. She told me, “I have always been passionately in love with my country.” Coming from someone else, it would have sounded corny; coming from Jeane it was obviously a testament of faith.
She was further shaped by the subject that obsessed her in her early days at Barnard and Columbia: totalitarianism. Through professors and mentors who saw her promise, she was given access to government papers giving an intimate view of life under Nazism, in the gulag, and in the “politically re-educated” villages of China following the Cultural Revolution. The picture of unmitigated evil (she called it “a political hell”) never left her.
What originally attracted her to the Democratic Party?
Jeane grew up as a visceral Democrat in Oklahoma. Her parents were “yellow dog Democrats,” although her mother, at least, was too genteel to use the term. They viewed Franklin D. Roosevelt as the savior of their world and formed an allegiance to his New Deal coalition that Jeane inherited and never questioned until centrist Democrats like herself — committed to a compassionate domestic agenda but hard core anti-communists — came under attack in the late 1960s. Even then, appalled though she was by what she acidly referred to as “McGovernism,” she remained a committed Democrat, occasionally saying that it was a primal identification like “the father of my children.” She tried until the middle of the Carter presidency to reform the party from within. But by 1979, she saw it was hopeless and that a “cultural revolution” had taken place in the Democratic Party there was no reversing.
Was it difficult for her to shift to the GOP? What did she see in Ronald Reagan that appealed to her?
Jeane was initially suspicious of Ronald Reagan when he began to court her early in 1980. She still thought of Republicans as being “country clubbers” not concerned about their fellow citizens and not fully committed to the common weal. But in these first meetings with Reagan, she saw someone who reminded her of the tough minded Oklahoma men of her early years — committed to core ideals without being gabby about these commitments; comfortable enough in his own skin not to feel constantly that he must explain himself. As a “Reaganaut” she became more comfortable with conservative ideas, or, rather, neoconservative ideas. Even so, she did not formally become a Republican until 1985 when she left her position as ambassador to the U.N.
What was the ideological divergence that emerged between Kirkpatrick and the so-called “neoconservatives” at the end of the Cold War?
Jeane was one of the early neoconservatives — a friend of Irving Kristol’s and much influenced by the intellectual synthesis that he brokered in creating what he himself always refused to call a “movement.” In foreign policy, neoconservatism represented for her a tough-minded way of morally rearming America after the appeasement of the Carter presidency, of reversing Soviet gains made after Vietnam, and of fighting the Cold War to victory.
There were minor disagreements among the neocons about how much emphasis to put on democracy promotion, etc., but a general agreement about ultimate ends. After the Cold War, as a “multipolar” world emerged, that consensus became more fragile. Jeane was under no illusions about there having been an “end of history.” She was also not anxious for the U.S. to extend itself into conflicts around the world where its military would be exposed but its interests not clear (Haiti, Somalia, etc.)
She never broke with the neocons, but she was increasingly chary toward the end of her life about what became the deep commitment about neoconservatism 2.0 to try to forcefully build democracy in societies around the world which had neither the foundations nor civic experience to accept such an transplant.
What did Kirkpatrick think of America’s attempt during the Bush II administration to push for democratic elections in the Middle East before the proper liberal institutions were in place in Arab societies?
In this vein, even though she tried to be a good soldier in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, she always had deep doubts about that war, and toward the end of her life became less reluctant to express them. She had contempt for those who opposed the war on what she saw as anti-American grounds and “got” what the Bush administration was trying to do by changing the environment in the Middle East that produced terrorism, but she simply did not believe that the war was in the interests of the U.S.
What do you think Kirkpatrick’s legacy is?
I think her essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards” will always be an arguing point in the dialogue about totalitarian governments. (It got a new lease on life during the discussion about how the U.S. should react to authoritarians like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring, and will continue to be relevant now that winter has arrived with the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations.) I think that her denunciation of the “blame America first” Democrats will always echo in our politics. And, finally, that her independence, bravery and intellectually muscular defense of our national enterprise while at the U.N. will always measure that organization and measure her as well.