Kirkpatrick, Jeane

(1926–2006)

   United States ambassador to the United Nations under President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989). A political scientist and professor, Kirkpatrick published the controversial article “Dictatorships and Double Standards” in the November 1979 issue of Commentary. The article criticized the human-rights policy of President Jimmy Carter, arguing that it was applied inconsistently and therefore led to hypocrisy. She argued that the policy was directed at right-wing authoritarian allies as opposed to left-wing totalitarian adversaries. In the name of human rights, she said, the policy helped undermine our allies (Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran), replacing them with extremist regimes unfriendly to the United States (the Sandinistas and the Ayatollah Khomeini). She was especially troubled when the authoritarians were replaced with regimes having ties to communism. She argued further that, unlike communist regimes, which never evolve into democracies, right-wing authoritarian regimes sometimes do—under the right circumstances. Kirkpatrick concluded that the United States should be more careful about distinguishing between its friends (Argentina and Chile) and its enemies (the Cuba of Fidel Castro). The article, reflecting Kirkpatrick’s strong anticommunist sentiment, impressed the presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, who in 1980 would appoint Kirkpatrick ambassador to the United Nations.

   The neoconservative ambassador supported the Reagan administration’s policies toward improving U.S. relations with military governments in South America, including the Chilean dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Jaime Castillo Velasco, a lawyer and human-rights activist, noted that after Kirkpatrick commented favorably on the Chilean government during a tour of Latin America in August 1981, Pinochet Ugarte renewed his assault on political dissidents, jailing and exiling members of human-rights organizations. Throughout her term, Kirkpatrick accused the UN of applying a double standard. In 1983, when the General Assembly adopted resolutions against Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala for human-rights violations, Kirkpatrick protested that the criticism was unwarranted because there were other Latin American countries with worse records of human-rights abuse. She noted, for example, that although Chile monitored its trade unions, Cuba did not allow trade unions at all.

   In 1985, the beginning of Reagan’s second term, Kirkpatrick left the UN, replaced by Richard Schifter, a moderate. Jeane Kirkpatrick died on 7 December 2006.