Download off our `kick-me` sign - The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation

Ronald Reagan and the United Nations: Diplomacy Without Apology
“Mr. President, we’ve taken off our ‘kick me’ sign.”
– Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
The Set-Up
Try to guess what period in modern American history these statements characterize:
“The United Nations did its best … to ‘ignore, deplore, despise, and revile the United
States.’” At the same time, “the State Department extolled the virtues of patience, selfeffacement, and collegiality … patience because diplomacy could be expected to achieve little,
and achieve nothing quickly; self-effacement because boldness made one a standing target;
collegiality because style could be an end in itself.”
This describes:
A. 1968–70
B. 1978–80
C. 1988–90
D. 2010–12
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The answer is B, 1978–80. The quote is from Allan Gerson’s book, Jeane Kirkpatrick:
Diplomacy Without Apology, observing how these two bureaucracies—the United Nations and
the State Department—were “suspicious, embarrassed, and resentful” of the policies advocated
by the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan, and his nominee as the UN ambassador, Jeane
Kirkpatrick.
Drafting policy in response to global aggressors in 1980 prompted Reagan and his
advisers to consider a few key questions: 1) Is aggression unilaterally advocated and part of our
national will? 2) Will this proposed effort increase national security? 3) Will the benefits of
action or aggression outweigh the costs?
“No longer do we apologize to tyrants about the American way of life … We seek no
conflict with anyone. We’ve gone the extra mile and will continue to do so to reach arms
reduction agreements. But from now on, when America negotiates, we’ll negotiate from a
position of strength.”
– President Ronald Reagan, October 10, 1984
The Fix
Finding the right person to represent American interests at the United Nations was critical
as President-elect Reagan intended to let the world know there was new management in the
White House. Richard Allen, tapped to be his national security adviser, recommended Jeane
Kirkpatrick, a professor of government at Georgetown University, and suggested that Reagan
review her influential article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” in Commentary magazine,
published in November 1979. After studying the essay, Reagan, clearly impressed by her ideas,
called Dick Allen, asking:
“Who is he?”
“Who is who?” Allen replied.
“Who is this Jeane Kirkpatrick?” Reagan persisted.
“Well, first, he is a she.”
What interested Reagan was her argument that it was necessary for the United States to
distinguish between friendly “authoritarian” regimes and hostile “totalitarian” regimes. Further,
what made her essay meaningful was how it provided a road map and intellectual foundation for
the argument Reagan had been making on the campaign trail about Jimmy Carter’s policies as
having weakened U.S. strength and influence abroad while at the same time abandoning friends
and allies under the banner of advancing human rights.
Over time what truly distinguished Kirkpatrick and deeply impressed Reagan was her
ability to speak directly and fearlessly as the most unmistakable voice of the Reagan
administration’s stance against Soviet aggression.
To read the entire article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” click here:
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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Throughout the 1980 campaign, Kirkpatrick served as a foreign policy adviser,
commanding the respect of Reagan on a daily basis. After the election, he invited her to dinner
in Washington where guests from all cross sections of politics were invited. “There’s only one
letter’s difference between president and resident,” Reagan said to his assembled guests, among
them, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland to his left and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a rabid antiCommunist, to his right. Reagan’s stories about resisting Communist influence in organized
labor while President of the Screen Actors Guild engaged the professor.
But before they had ever dined together, the president-elect had called Kirkpatrick to ask
her to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations (a position she held for four years).
She said, “How are you, Governor?” He replied, “Well, I’ll be better if you’ll agree to be our
Ambassador to the United Nations.”
Because the president respected her counsel, her position was elevated to cabinet status, a
move unpopular with some Reagan insiders such as the Kitchen Cabinet because, as a Democrat,
she wasn’t considered a Reagan loyalist. Secretary of State Alexander Haig was irritated that
with cabinet ranking Kirkpatrick would have direct access to Reagan and wouldn’t need to
operate exclusively through US State Department channels.
But Kirkpatrick earned and deserved full confidence from the person who counted the
most, President Reagan. Funnily enough, she said she had never been around a Republican
before. On the way to her first meeting with Reagan, she told Allen, “Listen, Dick, I am an AFLCIO Democrat, and I am quite concerned that my meeting Ronald Reagan on any basis will be
misunderstood.” The story goes that she asked Reagan if he minded having a lifelong Democrat
on his team; he replied that he himself had been a Democrat till age 51, and in any event he liked
her way of thinking about American foreign policy.
New Game Plan
“I also tried to send out a signal that the United States intended to support people fighting for
their freedom against Communism wherever they were – a policy some writers later described
as ‘the Reagan doctrine.’ I felt it was time to speak the truth, not platitudes, even though a lot
of liberals and some members of the State Department’s Striped Pants Set sometimes didn’t
like my choice of words.”
– Ronald Reagan, An American Life
“People ask me how I got to this point, to this job, to this achievement. Well, I don’t have the
foggiest notion …. But there is only one reason, one, that I am doing this work. It’s not the
status perks, the prestige perks. I think it’s my duty. I have a demanding conception of
citizenship. I have an obligation to confront serious problems.”
– Jeane Kirkpatrick, July 19, 1981
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Not long after beginning her assignment at the UN in 1981, Kirkpatrick was asked, “How
will the Reagan administration change foreign policy?” She said, “Well, we’ve taken down our
‘kick me’ sign.” And then someone said, “Well, does this mean that if the United States is
kicked it will kick back?” “Not necessarily,” she said. “But it does mean we won’t apologize.”
Her duty, she believed, was to “help strengthen democracy.” According to Allen Gerson,
counsel to Kirkpatrick at the UN, she was “prepared to take the UN very seriously, to view it as a
forum in which the US national interests were affected.”
With his direct support and confidence, President Reagan openly remarked that
Kirkpatrick represented a new realism in foreign policy, and “no longer do we apologize to
tyrants about the American way of life or apologize to those domestic critics who always blame
America first.”
Kirkpatrick was still a fresh face in the UN when she was the recipient of a verbal
bashing: about 27 countries blasted away at America on the floor for a variety of complaints. The
following day, they each submitted their apologies to the ambassador because, by the time the
sun had set, the wise diplomat had written a personal letter to all 27. And the stage was set. “We
seek no conflict with anyone,” Reagan clarified. “We’ve gone the extra mile and will continue to
do so to reach arms reductions agreements. But from now on, when America negotiates, we’ll
negotiate from a position of strength.”
Above all, Kirkpatrick and Reagan agreed that a departure from the decade of détente
was imperative. That period from 1970-1980 had brought about the most massive Soviet buildup
of military power in history, as the USSR increased its defense spending by 40% while American
defense actually declined in the same real terms. While American leadership exercised restraint,
the Soviets continued to build up; by 1980, they possessed nuclear and conventional forces far in
excess of “an adequate deterrent capability.” Even Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the first US
Ambassadors to the United Nations, cautioned against accepting the “high-sounding words of
tyrants which stand in bleak contradiction to their deeds,” and said, “Their promises are in deep
contrast to their performance.”
Believing that tyranny cannot be stopped with words alone, the Reagan administration
embarked on an effort to renew the nation’s military and defense strength, refusing to become
weaker while “potential adversaries remain committed to their imperialist ventures.”
By the end of Kirkpatrick’s first session at the UN, she had given clear signals that she
would not conduct a business-as-usual policy. After the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear
reactor, she stood with the Iraqis and deleted the word “aggression” from the UN Security
Council Resolution on Israel’s strike; she defended the free market economic model at a UN
policy conference; and she was described as “combative” when she refused to be intimidated by
a critical communiqué issued by the Non-Aligned Movement.
“When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the
consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first
crowd” didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first….The American people know better.”
– Jeane Kirkpatrick, RNC, 1984
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Exit Strategy
By 1985, Ambassador Kirkpatrick left her post to return to academia, “tacitly conceding
that President Reagan did not offer her the kind of job she consider[ed] necessary to exert strong
conservative influence on the administration,” reported Lou Cannon. At odds with the more
moderate policies of Secretary of State George Shultz, she left government service so she could
express her views regarding the proper course of American foreign policy.
On the role of the UN, the embattled ambassador stated in 1983, “It is not too late to hope
that in the United Nations we can produce, if not all, then at least some of the constructive
contributions to peace and justice that the founders of the UN system hoped and planned for. It is
just this expectation of possible constructive outcomes, and the prevention of negative,
destructive, extreme, peace-endangering outcomes, that makes the United Nations today worth
our participation.”
She supported President Reagan’s belief that America’s strength must be a force for
“peace, not conquest; for democracy not despotism; for freedom, not tyranny.” From 1982
through 1988, Reagan addressed the UN General Assembly with a consistent message that “life
and the preservation of freedom to live it in dignity is what we are on this earth to do.”
Following her departure from the UN, Kirkpatrick lectured, returned to Georgetown,
wrote a column on international affairs, and wrote about the lessons she learned at the UN, still
believing that:
“Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s
policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to
democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war. … No
idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to
democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances.”
– Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards”
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