Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack Matlock was an American career diplomat who was posted in Moscow during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War. He is currently an author and scholar of the Cold War and Russian history and culture.

Jack Foust Matlock, Jr. (b. 1929, Florida) is a former American Foreign Service officer and linguist. Matlock graduated from Duke University in 1952. He became a career diplomat in 1956. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983 and to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.

Matlock was US President Ronald Reagan's choice for the position of ambassador to the Soviet Union. His first posting to Moscow was in 1961.

He now divides his time between Princeton, New Jersey and his wife's farm in Booneville, Tennessee.

Contents 1 Politics 2 On the end of the Cold War 2.1 Published works 3 References

[edit] Politics

As a life-long Republican, Jack Matlock drew the ire of many of his fellow Republicans in the 2004 election when he stumped for the John Kerry campaign.

[edit] On the end of the Cold War

Matlock takes the position that the military build-up by Ronald Reagan in the early-1980s has contributed to the inaccurate characterization of Reagan as a war hawk. The quote atop the first page of Reagan and Gorbachev is by Ronald Reagan, speaking in 1981 during the beginnings of a one trillion dollar defence spending surge, that states "I've always recognized that ultimately there's got to a settlement, a solution."^[1]

Reagan, according to Matlock, never altered from his goals as annunciated at his first press conference as President when he stated that, appearances to the contrary, he was in favour of "an actual reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons."^[2] This would fly in the face of the claims of Reagan-victory-school proponents such as Peter Schweitzer.^[3]

[edit] Published works

• Autopsy of an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995).
• Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2004).

[edit] References

1. ^ Jack F Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, (New York: Random House, 2004) 3.
2. ^ Jack F Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, (New York: Random House, 2004) 4.
3. ^ Peter Schweitzer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), 281.

]]