Jeane Kirkpatrick

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Jeane Kirkpatrick

Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick (* 19th November 1926 in Duncan , Stephens County , Oklahoma , †  7. December 2006 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an US -American political scientist . She was a cabinet member under US President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985 . Reagan also proposed her as ambassador to the UN . She also held this office from 1981 to 1985.

Political classification

Kirkpatrick was seen as a strictly anti-communist conservative . The Kirkpatrick Doctrine named after her advocated a resolute policy of containment against socialist and communist governments worldwide, even if - as in the so-called Third World , especially in Latin America - right-wing military dictatorships (such as Alfredo Stroessner's in Paraguay , Augusto Pinochet's in Chile or Jorge Rafael Videlas in Argentina ) and supported by the USA . Together with William Bennett and Jack Kemp , joint directors of the Empower America initiative , after the attacks on September 11, 2001 , she appealed to the US Congress to make a formal declaration of war on the “entire fundamentalist Islamic terrorist network”.

Professional career and political development

Jeane Kirkpatrick became politically active during her studies in the mid-1940s, initially in the Young People's Socialist League , the youth association of the Socialist Party of America , and in the early 1970s she became involved with the Democrats. Among other things, she worked as an election campaigner for Hubert H. Humphrey - the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party - but then, as evidenced by magazine and newspaper articles, took an increasingly critical stance on the positions of the Democrats and particularly opposed Jimmy Carter's foreign policy from.

Observers suspect that Kirkpatrick's political turnaround also has to do with a turn to the religious . She explained her disillusionment with international organizations, especially the UN , with an admission that almost equates to a political creed :

“As I observed the behavior of the nations of the UN - ours included - I found no reasonable reason to expect any of these governments [ever] to permanently override their own national interests in favor of another country ... - I infer it is a The fundamental mistake is to think that salvation, justice or virtue can only arise from human institutions ... - Democracy not only needs equality, but also the unshakable conviction of the value of every person, who is then equal. Intercultural experiences do not just teach us that people have different beliefs, but that they seek meaning and, in a certain sense, see themselves as members of a God-ruled cosmos. "

- Jeane Kirkpatrick : Translation of the quote in the English language Wikipedia

Or in a statement that summarizes their ideological and political skepticism : "History is a better guide than good intentions" ('History is a better guide than good intentions').

Before she was appointed US ambassador to the United Nations by Ronald Reagan, she was his foreign policy advisor during the 1980 presidential election campaign.

After some quarrels because of some serious accusations (corruption, involvement in the forgery of tapes which were supposed to prove the Soviet sole guilt for the shooting down of a South Korean airliner off the island of Sakhalin in 1983), Kirkpatrick , who had only joined the Republican Party in 1985, went to Georgetown (Washington, DC) back to teach there at the university where she had been since 1967 and held a professorship since 1973. After leaving the Reagan administration, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom . At that time she was also fellow at the American Enterprise Institute , an influential neoconservative think tank (think tank) . There she was counted among the most prominent hardliners .

Between 1985 and 1998 she wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times, among others . She was a committee member of the pro-Israel lobby organization UN Watch .

In culture

  • She was interviewed for the documentary The Other Side of the Coin - The Falklands (1987), which deals with the Falklands War .
  • She was portrayed by Lorelei King in the BBC film The Falklands Play (2002), which deals with the Falklands War .

literature

  • Jeane J. Kirkpatrick: The United States and the World. Setting limits . The AEI Press, Washington, DC 1987, ISBN 0-8447-1379-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. "Former ambassador Kirkpatrick dies" , Associated Press , 8 December 2006