Albright, Madeleine 1937-

Madeleine Albright
1937-

U.s. representative to the unitednations (1993-1997); secretary ofstate (1997-)

European Roots

Madeleine Korbel was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on 15 May 1937, only a little more than a year before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Her Father was a Czech diplomat and was forced to move his family to England after the German invasion of their country. They went back after the war and her father was accredited as a Czech diplomat to the United Nations in New York. She came to the United States in 1948, and in the wake of the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia that year, her father asked for political asylum for himself and his family. It was granted and Madeleine ultimately became a naturalized citizen. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science; earned her Master of Arts in international affairs, with an emphasis on Soviet studies, from Columbia University in 1968; and was awarded a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1976. She married, was divorced, and raised three daughters.

Early Public Career

Achieving high office in the United States, whether elected or appointed, is never merely a matter of having merit. It requires that one meet the right people, impress them, and be in a position to take advantage of an opportunity should it arise. Albright began working for a series of Democrats who had the potential of reaching the White House: she coordinated the failed 1980 presidential campaign of Senator Edmund Sixtus Muskie (D-Maine); and was a foreign policy advisor to both 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Senator Walter Frederick Mondale (D-Minnesota) and vice-presidential nominee Representative Geraldine Anne Ferraro (D-New York). She also advised Democratic nominee Massachusetts governor Michael Stanley Dukakis in 1988, as well as Arkansas governor Bill Clinton in 1992. In addition to these political responsibilities, she pursued a career in government and academia. President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski prevailed on her to join the National Security Council (NSC) staff as a legislative liaison in 1978, and she stayed in that position until the end of the Carter administration in 1981. She then turned her considerable energies to scholarship and spent 1981-1982 writing a book, Poland: The Role of the Press in Political Change (1983). She accomplished this task while on fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1982 she joined the faculty at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., teaching courses in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, and Soviet foreign policy. In 1989 she combined her role as a policy analyst with her political interests, taking over as president of the Center for National Policy, a Democratic policy-oriented think tank. All of these activities kept her in touch with the U.S. foreign policy establishment and with Democratic presidential hopefuls waiting out the Reagan and Bush years in academic institutions and think tanks in the Washington, D.C., area.

United Nations

In 1993 she was made U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (U.N.). The United States was, of course, a major presence at the U.N., as one of only five permanent members of the Security Council, along with France, United Kingdom, Russia, and China. The United States is also, as Albright liked to say, "the indispensable nation." Its great power, democratic traditions, and wealth all gave it an edge in resolving international disputes. Her fluency in French and Czech in addition to English, and her reading and speaking skills in Russian and Polish, served her well in the U.N. councils. She aggressively pursued reform in the U.N. administration and budget, arguing that it was trying to do too much, that its many administrative offices were too independent, and that there was little account-ability. It was a heady time at the U.N., as it seemed to be moving toward a more-active role denied it for forty-five years while it was caught in the crossfire between the two Cold War superpowers. Albright recognized that the U.N. was not really ready to take on all the new tasks effectively and urged attention to careful determination of its future role. Albright understood that while the U.N. was essential for American national interests, U.S. influence there was limited by the refusal of Congress to pay its dues to the organization, partly because of objections to U.N. family-planning initiatives. Albright was active in educating Americans that an effective and strong U.N. is in U.S. national interests.

Toughness and Charm

President Clinton's announcement in 1996 that he was nominating Albright to be his Secretary of State met with wide approval, partly because of her reputation as a plain-spoken and aggressive defender of U.S. interests in the U.N. Americans who paid attention to such things, the press, and, most important, influential members of Congress liked her tough style and her unwillingness to quietly allow the "America bashing" that was sometimes a staple of U.N. discourse to go unchallenged. Yet, she was also well known for her ability to talk to many different people with varying political agendas and to get them to agree on issues. Most dramatically, her willingness to find common ground with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), the powerful and querulous chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a relentless critic of both the U.N. and the foreign policy of the Clinton administration, attests to her political and diplomatic skills.

Cabinet Officer

The office of Secretary of State is considered the highest-ranking cabinet position. Albright was confirmed by the Senate in 1997, making her the sixty-fourth Secretary of State, the first woman to hold the post, and the highest-ranking woman ever in the executive branch. From the beginning of her tenure, she showed her political acumen by courting Senator Helms, who had the ability to smooth the way in Congress for Clinton administration foreign-affairs appointments and initiatives, or to make it rough sledding indeed. While the administration and Helms continued to disagree on many issues, Albright's overtures lessened the public conflicts and helped resolve such issues as U.N. reform and payment of arrears. As Secretary of State, Albright is a member of the NSC and is responsible for advising the president on foreign affairs. In addition, in the last twenty to thirty years secretaries of state have increasingly taken personal charge of high-profile negotiations that were once left to local ambassadors, special emissaries, or even lower-ranking diplomats. Accordingly, she is heavily involved in attempting to solve a variety of intractable international issues. At the end of the decade the issues of peace in the Middle East and of national self-determination in the Balkans have been especially troublesome.

Challenges

There has always been a significant strain of isolationism in the United States. Many Americans have maintained that the country should stay out of inter-national conflicts and problems in order to concentrate on domestic issues. After the end of World War II, however, Americans were convinced of the necessity to forego isolationist impulses to combat communism. With the fall of communist regimes in Europe, many Americans again felt comfortable resorting to isolationism, a trend reflected in Congress. Albright is an internationalist, putting her in conflict with many legislators from both major parties who want to cut back on foreign-aid commitments and end U.S. participation in peacekeeping operations in favor of greater emphasis on domestic interests. This sentiment has been her greatest challenge as secretary of state. Whether it be in reference to development efforts in Africa, support for economic reform in Latin America, ending human-rights abuses in the Balkans and peace-keeping operations there, or commitments to extending free trade, she faces stiff opposition from Congress and domestic constituencies that are suspicious of international involvement. Her efforts in public education may be as important in this regard as her negotiating skills.

Sources:

Madeleine Albright, "Remarks to the Business Council of the United Nations," 28 September 1998, US State Department, Internet website.

Ann Blackman, Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright (New York: Scribner, 1998).

Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey (New York: Holt, 1999).