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On the evening of December 5, 1985, the former United States Ambassador to the UN, the Honorable Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, delivered a notable address that nevertheless appears to have gone quite unnoticed by the public commentators. Addressing her audience, assembled in Washington under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute, on the subject of “The United States and the World: Setting Limits,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick made the following statements:

I believe the United States has no unique rivalry whatsoever [with the Soviet Union] and that the United States has no unique interest in countering Soviet expansion. We and all of our friends and all of our adversaries ought to be clear that in no sense is the United States involved in a contest with the Soviet Union for world dominance. Our disagreements with the Soviet Union, then, are no different from those with any other country that seeks to maintain its own independence and hopes for a world of independent nations. … The notion of superpower rivalry and the talk of East- West struggle that uniquely involves the United States and the Soviet Union confuse us about our responsibilities and confuse many other nations about who we are and what we are doing in the world today. I think we should make it clear that all nations who seek to maintain their own independence have a primary responsibility for doing so.

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On the evening of December 5, 1985, the former United States Ambassador to the UN, the Honorable Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, delivered a notable address that nevertheless appears to have gone quite unnoticed by the public commentators. Addressing her audience, assembled in Washington under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute, on the subject of “The United States and the World: Setting Limits,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick made the following statements:

I believe the United States has no unique rivalry whatsoever [with the Soviet Union] and that the United States has no unique interest in countering Soviet expansion. We and all of our friends and all of our adversaries ought to be clear that in no sense is the United States involved in a contest with the Soviet Union for world dominance. Our disagreements with the Soviet Union, then, are no different from those with any other country that seeks to maintain its own independence and hopes for a world of independent nations. … The notion of superpower rivalry and the talk of East- West struggle that uniquely involves the United States and the Soviet Union confuse us about our responsibilities and confuse many other nations about who we are and what we are doing in the world today. I think we should make it clear that all nations who seek to maintain their own independence have a primary responsibility for doing so.