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The Current Crisis
Who Was Fred Iklé?
America has lost a great hero of the Cold War.
WASHINGTON — The death of Fred Iklé last week inspires me to prophesy. Thus far only the redoubtable Wall Street Journal has remarked on Fred’s passing. That he was a formidable mind during the Cold War and important to the peaceful settlement of that decades-long struggle is remembered thanks to the Journal. Yet to the rest of the media he is a minor figure, perhaps a menacing figure. We shall see what they say, but I am not holding my breath. This is the way Liberalism creates the Kultursmog, which is to say the politicized culture that surrounds us.
Now for my prediction — I can foresee the day, decades hence, when some professor of history will come down to the faculty lounge and notify his trusted colleagues of an astonishing discovery. Perhaps he will begin with this: “They weren’t all idiots and racists and dunderheads.” The prof will, of course, be speaking of the members of the conservative movement, the people who began to revive America around their leader President Ronald Reagan. He will have discovered that those conservatives who resolved the Cold War and got the economy growing again knew just what they were doing. What the professor will use for research I cannot say. There is plenty of evidence lying around contemporary America, but it is ignored in the standard commentary and history of our times.
That is how the Kultursmog works. It deletes the persona it does not approve of and renders the facts agreeable to moribund Liberals. Thus the other day on the Washington Post’s “Style” page some Kultursmogist reported on a soirée at the Motion Picture Association of America convened to mull over how President “Reagan’s movie career affected his presidency.” Presumably the discussion was serious. In years gone by it would have been sneering and risible. But now President Reagan has become domesticated. He is presented as being almost a Liberal, defending polite society from the bad guys, people like Iklé.
No conservative known to me was present at the Motion Picture Association of America presentation, which was presided over by a Democrat, its chairman Chris Dodd. There was Mr. Dodd and Andrea Mitchell and Colin Powell and someone by the name of Jeff Bewkes. Oh, yes, and John Harris was there from Politico. He is the objective journalist who in his book, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House, assessed the Clintons “the two most important political figures of their generation.” Ken Duberstein was also there. He accompanied President Reagan to my home for dinner in 1988, but I really would not call him a conservative. Fred Iklé was a conservative.
Fred was undersecretary for defense policy from 1981 to 1987. Born in Switzerland, he came to America in 1946, and in time joined the Reagan Revolution. He was a uniquely gifted defense strategist but also very competent across a wide area of intellectual life. With the illustrious Albert Wohlstetter he devised U.S. nuclear defense strategy during some of the most dangerous days of the Cold War. At some time in the 1970s Bob Bartley, the great editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, introduced us during a policy seminar, I believe, in Geneva. From that time on Fred always made time for me and for my writers to be briefed on threats to the free world. He sat down with us at editorial lunches and kept us apprised of strategic developments almost to the very end. In July 2010 he appeared in The American Spectator’s pages for the last time. He was 86 years old.
In the 1970s he opposed arms-control as imprudent and shortsighted and favored a credible deterrent as a safer strategy. While at the Pentagon he was instrumental in getting the strategic defense initiative going and deploying midrange nuclear missiles in Europe, to the anger of the Soviet bloc. He was a proponent of Reagan’s arms buildup that bankrupted the Soviet Union and of sending Stinger missiles to Afghanistan where the Red Army began to doubt its invincibility.
Through all his public life he was a cheerful advocate of intellect in behalf of national security and personal liberty. Into his early 80s he was on scientific boards planning strategy and warning of threats to America. Americans owe him a lot.
About the Author
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn’t Work: Social Democracy’s Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; The Clinton Crack-Up; and After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
More Articles by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
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Zbigniew Mazurak | 11.17.11 @ 7:16AM
I am deeply saddened by the death of Fred Ikle. His passing means that there's one fewer of us defense conservatives, and is a great loss to the conservative movement.
As Mr Tyrrell has stated, he was one of the chief opponents of pro-Soviet arms reduction treaties in the 1970s, one of the chief architects of the SDI and the Reagan defense buildup, and one of the advocates of installing IRBMs in Europe in 1983. But he didn't stop working on defense issues even after 1989. He served, until his death, on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the SECDEF, and opposed the New START treaty, co-authoring an article calling for its rejection last year, while the Senate was still considering the treaty.
In sum, few Americans of the last 66 years have made contributions to national defense, the cause of national security, and to conservative politics as big as the ones made by Fred Ikle. He will be badly missed.
Ken (Old Texican)| 11.17.11 @ 9:40AM
Emmett,
thank you for the memoriam.
Margie| 11.17.11 @ 1:53PM
Hey slanderer Ken:
How's that "deal" going that you told me you had with God?
Ya know~ the one where you're supposedly allowed to use His Name in vain?
How's your conscience today, liar and false accuser?
First, you claimed you had the "e mails to PROVE" I asked you to marry me.
Then, you changed your story, and said I didn't ask you that, but I "inquired how your marriage was going" and that you don't have the "PROOF" because "I asked you to delete them!"
So, which is it, you lying reprobate, hmm?
"The LORD has made Himself known, He has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands." Ps. 9:16.
FlaJim| 11.18.11 @ 8:32AM
Ken, I'm going to play Judge Judy here. Send Margie a buck for emotional distress and maybe she'll lay off.
grant1863| 11.17.11 @ 11:15AM
Thank you for telling us more about someone of such importance but little known.
Howard| 11.17.11 @ 12:02PM
I remember reading of Mr. Ikle during the 1970's. I believe he was part of the famous "B Team" which challenged the CIA conventional wisdom, that the Soviet Union was benign. The New York Times and other liberal outlets treated him like a knuckle dragging cave man. Of course, there was much truth to the "Team B" analysis. The Soviets were rapidly expanding their military might during that period. Finally when Reagan came to office, did we ramp up the military. Ikle was a great thinker.
Russell| 11.17.11 @ 3:55PM
RET can best honor the memory of the thankfully thoughtful Fred by suffering dunderheads less lightly in the future.
NJP| 11.17.11 @ 4:50PM
I did research and writing for Albert Wohlstetter in the late 1970s. He apparently like me because I was one of his few students that he called by their first name. I probably could have stay working with Wohlstetter and eventually come to know Ickle.
But I decided to go to law school instead. I am one schmuck.
Peter McGrath| 11.17.11 @ 5:12PM
I remember well the Nuclear Freeze Movement of the 1980's and mass demonstrations, right here in the USA, against deploying medium range Pershing Missiles in Central Europe to counter the Soviet's deployment of SS-20 Missiles in Eastern Europe.
Denmark actually banned Pershings, there, and the infiltration of Soviet spies into American "peace" organizations was well underway.
Men like Mr Ikle had the moral courage to stand up to, and face down, such perilous threats, here and abroad. We are a more free people, today, because of him. All Americans owe him a debt of gratitude.
Margie| 11.17.11 @ 8:57PM
Mr. Tyrrell,
You may be required to present evidence in a court of law.
See above.
FlaJim| 11.18.11 @ 8:22AM
Thank you for putting a spotlight on one of the true heroes of our recent past. It is too seldom that proper recognition is given to the men behind the scenes who made possible the triumph of Reagan's vision.
Bob Turner| 2.6.12 @ 8:26PM
This is an excellent piece, Bob. I had the great pleasure of knowing Fred when he was ACDA Director and I was working with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in 1981 he hired me as his first Special Assistant. He deserves a lot of credit for what later became known as the "Reagan Doctrine," looking for ways to provide disincentives to Moscow for their adventurism in Central America, Angola, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. Exceptionally able, he didn't suffer fools gladly. It was an honor to work for him.