A Former Vice-President Explains America’s Foreign-Policy Challenges in the 21st Century

Dick Cheney died yesterday at the age of eighty-four. Besides his eight years in the vice-presidency, Cheney’s distinguished career in public service included terms as White House chief of staff and secretary of defense, along with ten years in Congress. Unjustly reviled by much of the left, he has also become unpopular among many conservatives, often for the same reasons. In reality, he had a sophisticated understanding of the global threats to the United States, and of America’s role in the world. As Elliott Abrams writes in an obituary, “Cheney was a strong, indeed immovable, supporter of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy of peace through strength,” whose “experience, judgment, prudence, and knowledge of government were invaluable to President George W. Bush and to everyone who served in that administration.”