Richard Nixon Writes Reagan Foreign Policy Advisor Jeane Kirkpatrick Concerning Their Mutual Distrust of the Soviet Union

“To receive praise from a real heavyweight made my day! I hope our warnings do not fall on deaf ears.”

We obtained this letter from the Kirkpatrick family, and it has never before been offered for sale

In early 1988, Richard Nixon’s book, “1999: Victory Without War” was published. In it, he offered his comprehensive strategy for the West—a vital plan of action that would help ensure peace, prosperity, and freedom in the next century. He provided commentary and suggestions in the area of his great expertise, foreign policy. He began by arguing that the United States should continue to play a central international role. He contended that world peace is inseparable from world power and that real peace is not absence of conflict but living with unending conflict the natural state of world affairs. He sought to tamp down the popularity of Gorbachev, whom he saw as seeking change that would permit the Soviet Union to find hegemony. Still, he cogently argued for a realistic policy toward the Soviets, involving a mix of deterrence, competition, and negotiation. His hard-line views are on display in other areas. On nuclear armaments, he endorsed Reagan’s plan for laser-based weapons in space (“Star Wars”) and urged “no first-strike vulnerability.” He advocated continued support of Nicaragua’s contras, covert CIA actions overseas, build-up of nuclear power, more U.S. cruise missiles in Europe, the establishment of U.S. air bases in Saudi Arabia. He blamed Africa’s poverty on the terrible governments there. He strongly opposed the adoption of protectionist trade measures against Japan.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a lifelong Democrat, working in both state and national campaigns including Hubert Humphrey’s 1972 presidential campaign. She grew increasingly dissatisfied, however, with the Democratic Party’s liberal faction and in 1972 cofounded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Her conservative writings regarding U.S. foreign policy impressed Ronald Reagan, and during his 1980 presidential campaign she was selected as his foreign policy advisor. Under President Reagan, she became the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1981 to 1985. She was also given cabinet rank and was also a member of Reagan’s national security team. She remained active in politics, but as a Republican. Nixon sent Kirkpatrick an advance copy of his book.

On March 21, 1988, an Op-Ed by Kirkpatrick reviewing the book appeared in the Washington Post. Kirkpatrick praised Nixon, writing: “…His analysis of our situation and his advice concerning how best to manage our affairs communicate a sense of grave concern that we are making and may continue to make serious – possibly irremediable – errors about the nature of the world and how best to deal with it. Nixon’s perspective in the new book is independent and probing, and not likely to please completely any political party or group, especially members of the Reagan administration. While he does not criticize them harshly, he speaks frequently of ‘some observers’ who closely resemble leading figures in the administration and who do not understand that ‘we are in a war called peace,’ that ‘in this conflict, not only our own freedom but that of the rest of the world is at stake. Some observers,’ he says, do not understand that the Gorbachev era represents a ‘dangerous, challenging new stage of the struggle between the superpowers.’ Nixon is as impressed as most with Mikhail Gorbachev’s intelligence, his ‘supreme self-confidence,’ his seriousness, his communications skills. And Nixon worries about the tendency of ‘some observers’ to take Gorbachev’s sophistication and breezy style as evidence that he is ‘like us’ – rather than dangerous to our freedom. Gorbachev is a world-class leader, he notes, and ‘only a heavyweight should get in the ring with him.’…”In this book, Nixon demonstrates more clearly than ever that in the domain of foreign affairs he is himself a heavyweight who, though driven from power, still understands the way the world works better than almost all of his countrymen. The book not only analyzes the problems but proposes a comprehensive strategy for the United States and the West. Nixon’s analysis and his prescription are supremely realistic, more realistic than those offered by candidates of either party in the current campaign…”

That very day Nixon shot back an answer, writing Kirkpatrick directly. Autograph letter signed, on his letterhead, New York, March 21, 1988, to Kirkpatrick, thanking her and using some of her own terminology about him to describe her, while commiserating with her about the gullibility of Americans to the danger posed by the Soviets. “To receive praise from a real heavyweight made my day! I hope our warnings do not fall on deaf ears.”

Nixon’s distrust of Gorbachev proved baseless. Under Gorbachev’s leadership, the next year the Berlin Wall came down, in 1990 six republics left the Soviet Union, and in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved altogether. But now we see he was right in the sense that Russia under a despot could be a dangerous foe.

We obtained this directly from the Kirkpatrick family, and it has never before been offered for sale.