Making War to Keep Peace

[12], 367, [5] pages. Postscript by Allan Gerson. Appendix. Notes. Index. Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926 - December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a longtime Democrat who became a neoconservative and switched to the Republican Party in 1985. 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, while Reagan took the other side 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. She wrote a syndicated newspaper column after leaving government service in 1985, specializing in analysis of United Nations activities. When Jeane J. Kirkpatrick died in December 2006, she left behind more than her legacy as a "heroine of conservatives." She had just completed work on this extraordinary survey of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War age: a bold and revisionist assessment of two decades of American interventions abroadâ"a troubled period of small successes, tragic failures, and important lessons for our future. Since the end of the Cold War, Kirkpatrick argues, America's relationship with the world has been especially compromised by its mutual distrust with the United Nations, and by continuing uncertainty over U.S. involvement in conflicts among rogue nations overseas. In Making War to Keep Peace, Kirkpatrick offers a tightly observed chronicle of the result: a period in which the United States has increasingly used force around the worldâ"to mixed and often challenging results. Tracing the course of diplomatic initiatives and armed conflict in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, she illuminates the shift from the first Bush administration's ambitious vision of a New World Order to the overambitious nation-building efforts of the Clinton administration. Kirkpatrick offers a strong critique of Clinton's foreign policy, arguing that his administration went beyond Bush's interest in building international consensus and turned it into a risky reliance on the United Nations. But she also questions when, how, and why the United States should resort to military solutionsâ"especially in light of the challenging war in Iraq, about which Kirkpatrick shares her "grave reservations" here for the first time. With the powerful words that have marked her long and distinguished career, Kirkpatrick explores where we have gone wrongâ"and raises lingering questions about what perils tomorrow might hold. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing.…