Madeleine Albright, in a cramped plane cabin high above the Pacific Ocean, wrote down a draft for a speech I was going to deliver in Beijing at a United Nations conference about women in 1995. She then fixed me with the firm stare that made fearsome dictators shudder and asked what I was actually trying to accomplish with this speech.
“I want to push the envelope as far as I can,” I replied. “Then do it,” she said. She proceeded to tell me how I could sharpen the speech’s argument that women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.
Madeleine was that woman, always able to get right to the core of the matter with clarity. She pushed the boundaries all her life. She did it for women and girls. She broke the glass ceiling of diplomacy by becoming the first woman secretary of state. She did it in support of the country that she fled from as a child to escape tyranny and oppression in Europe. She was relentless in pushing the envelope for freedom, democracy, and even persuading sometimes skeptical diplomats to recognize human rights as a national security necessity.
For Bill and I and her many friends all over the world, Madeleine’s passing is a painful personal loss. She was irrepressible. She was wickedly funny, stylish, and always open to adventure and fun. I’ll never forget how excited she was to walk me through the streets of her native Prague and show me the yellow house where she lived as a girl. We couldn’t stop laughing when an unexpected rainstorm blew our umbrellas inside out, and couldn’t stop smiling when the captivating playwright and dissident turned president Václav Havel charmed us over dinner. Madeleine was 10 years ahead of me at Wellesley, and for decades we used to address and sign our notes to each other “Dear ’59” and “Love, ’69.”
Madeleine’s death is also a great loss for our country and for the cause of democracy at a time when it is under serious and sustained threat around the world and here at home. Now more than ever we could use Madeleine’s vital voice, her cleareyed view of a dangerous world and her unstinting faith in both the unique power of the American idea and the universal appeal of freedom and democracy. We can pay tribute to her memory by listening to her wisdom.
Don’t be afraid to stand up to dictators and bullies
In the 1990s, my husband Madeleine U.N.A ambassador and then secretary to state was named Madeleine. She went toe-toe in the 1990s with the blood-soaked Slobodan Miloevic. She helped to marshal American power, the NATO alliance, and end the horrific war in Bosnia and ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. She saw the chronically underestimated Russian president Vladimir Putin for what he is: a vicious autocrat intent on reclaiming Russia’s lost empire and a committed foe of democracy everywhere. In a prescient column in The Times published Feb. 23, she warned that an invasion of Ukraine would be “a historic error” that would leave Russia “diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.” As happened so often, the man with the guns was wrong and Madeleine was right.
She was a woman who took action, especially when faced with injustice. Madeleine knew that American power was the only thing that could stop the rules-based global order from being overthrown by the rule of the blade. This did not mean that she was not willing to use force for the right causes. Madeleine was a diplomat’s diplomat, ready to talk to even the most odious adversary to advance the prospects of peace. She was the first secretary to go to North Korea in 2000. There she spent 12 hours with Kim Jong-il. She often stated that her historical reference was Munich, and not Vietnam. This gave her a deep understanding of the dangers of inaction. Today, with an increasing tide of authoritarianism that threatens democracy in Ukraine and around the world, this is a lesson to be remembered.
NATO and U.S. allies are the cornerstones of world peace
Madeleine, as secretary of state, helped my husband to welcome Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO following the end of World War II. Years later, I asked her to head up an international commission for the Obama administration to redefine NATO’s mission for the 21st century. Having experienced Europe’s historic traumas firsthand, she understood that the security provided by NATO was the key to keeping the continent free, peaceful and undivided. She saw it as a political alliance and not just a military pact. It was a way to cement democracy in countries that have only recently escaped authoritarianism.
Madeleine rejected the criticism, renewed recently, that NATO’s expansion needlessly provoked Russia and is to blame for its invasion of Ukraine. As the Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin has noted, that argument ignores Russia’s centuries-long efforts to dominate its neighbors. Madeleine would add that it also erases autonomy and aspirations of the former Soviet bloc nations that tore off their chains, created fragile democracies, and are rightly worried about Russian revanchism. She would encourage us to listen to the insights of leaders like our friend Mr. Havel, who said the message of NATO expansion is that “Europe is no longer, and must never again be, divided over the heads of its people and against their will into any spheres of interest or influence.”
Do not mistake that Putin would be a menace to not only Ukraine, but also the Baltic States and most likely all of Eastern Europe if NATO hadn’t expanded. Anne Applebaum, a historian and journalist, recently stated that Putin would be a menace to Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe if NATO had not expanded. argued, “The expansion of NATO was the most successful, if not the only truly successful, piece of American foreign policy of the last 30 years.”
Madeleine also strongly disagreed with Donald Trump’s approach of treating America’s alliances as a protection racket where our partners must pay tribute or fend for themselves. She knew that U.S. alliances — especially with other democracies — are a military, diplomatic and economic asset that neither Russia nor China can match, despite their best efforts, and are crucial for our own national security.
Dictators abroad use attacks on democracy at home to gain access to it
They make it difficult for the United States to support human rights and the rule law, as well as our allies. In her searing 2018 book, “Fascism: A Warning,” Madeleine described Mr. Trump as the first U.S. president in the modern era “whose statements and actions are so at odds with democratic ideals.” She observed that his assault on democratic norms and institutions was “catnip” for autocrats like Mr. Putin. After the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a free and fair election, Madeleine imagined Abraham Lincoln weeping. “My family came to America after fleeing a coup, so I know that freedom is fragile,” she wrote. “But I never thought I would see such an assault on democracy be cheered on from the Oval Office.” With the Republican Party recently declaring the insurrection and events that led to it to be “legitimate political discourse,” and some of the party’s most powerful media allies pushing Kremlin talking points on Fox News and elsewhere, it’s clear that the threat to our democracy that so alarmed Madeleine remains an urgent crisis.
The fundamental truth that Madeleine understood and that informed her views on all these challenges is that America’s strength flows not just from our military or economic might but from our core values. Madeleine shared a story with me in 1995 that still inspires. She visited the Czech Republic, which had been liberated in 1945 by American troops, to mark the 50th anniversary of World War II’s end. As she passed, many people waved American flags. Some had only 48 stars, which surprised her. They were decades old. It turned out that American G.I.s had given the flags out half a century before. Czech families claimed they kept the flags secret throughout Soviet domination and passed them down from generation one to generation as a symbol for their hope for better, more free futures.
Madeleine knew exactly how that meant. Even at the end of her days, she still treasured the sight of the Statue of Liberty. Madeleine, an 11-year old refugee aboard the S.S. America, sailed into New York Harbor in 1948. She would have been thrilled by President Biden’s announcement on Thursday that the United States will welcome up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, and she would encourage us to do more to respond to this unfolding humanitarian nightmare. She would warn, as she did in her book, about the “self-centered moral numbness that allows Fascism to thrive,” and urge us to keep pushing the envelope for freedom, human rights and democracy. We should listen.
From 2009 to 2013, Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary-of-state.
Source: NY Times