Hawkish liberal behind US policy
Ann Eveleth
The most senior woman ever in the United States Cabinet and the first foreign-born American to represent the US in the United Nations, Albright’s personal history is the stuff of the American nationalist dream.
A childhood Czech immigrant twice displaced from the land of her birth – first by the Nazis and then the communists -Madeleine Albright’s “rags to riches” persona and hawkish reputation make her a prototype of that dream.
Born Madeleine Korbal to Josef – a former diplomat of feudal Czechoslovakia – and Mandula Korbal, her family escaped Germany’s World War II invasion temporarily to England, and later fled the Soviet takeover to the US. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Albright discovered only recently that her grandparents and several other relatives were Jewish holocaust victims who died in the German concentration camps, Auschwitz and Terezin.
It is this humble beginning as a beleaguered refugee (albeit the daughter of a diplomat) that knits comfortably into the American mythology of a nation built by European proletarians seeking freedom in the land of milk and honey. This ensured Albright would stand “unflinchingly for America’s interests and values”, in the words of President Bill Clinton.
Speaking at her January 1997 swearing-in as secretary of state, Clinton was referring to Albright’s tenure as the country’s UN ambassador between 1993 and 1997. It was during the tail end of that tenure that Albright raised the furore of many Muslims during a CBS News 60 Minutes interview in May 1996.
Asked whether continuing sanctions against Iraq were worth the resulting deaths of half a million Iraqi children, Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price … We think the price was worth it.”
Salvoes like these – together with colourful quotes like the widely reported question to US Army Chief of Staff Colin Powell: “What’s the point of having this great military if we can’t use it?” – saw Albright’s opposition-era reputation as a liberal replaced with that of a hawk. (In the Ronald Reagan and George Bush years she opposed aid to the US-backed Nicaraguan Contras, supported a nuclear freeze and opposed the Gulf War.)
Her standing as a hawk soared when Clinton praised her for her one-liner after the Cuban downing of two “civilian” US planes alleged by Cuba to have dropped biological warfare on Cuban soil. Albright said the Cuban action was “cowardice, not cojones [balls]”.
Albright’s hard line against Libya has not hurt her political career; nor has her decision in October to ban US financial or material assistance – on pain of a 10-year prison term – to 30 organisations she defined as “terrorist”. Nearly a third of these organisations – whose funds in US financial institutions are to be frozen and whose representatives are banned from the US – are Muslim groupings.
Presiding over the Middle East peace process has been the primary task of Albright’s first year on the job. Although she has recently earned the ire of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, her earlier interventions were aimed primarily at forcing Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat to crack down on his internal opponents, particularly Hamas.
That said, Albright is probably the most liberal secretary of state the US will field in the foreseeable future.
Punting democracy and human rights – and the free market – as an integral part of US interests abroad, she castigated the Burmese dictatorship at a regional conference in July and is credited with fitting Africa into her itinerary far earlier than her predecessor, Warren Christopher.
Visiting Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe in a whistle-stop tour last week to “advance US interests in the Great Lakes region”, among other things, she spoke of a “new chapter” in US-Africa relations. Joking and posing for photographs with President Nelson Mandela last Saturday, she appears to have charmed South African journalists.
Already the darling of the US media, Albright is, however, the subject of growing consternation among American isolationists, who believe the country “gives” too much to the rest of the world – in spite of continuing American net profits from Africa and other recipients of US “gifts”.
But the secretary of state is not oblivious to the cries of her conservative counterparts to put America first. Delivering the “Jesse Helms lecture” to Wingate University students in March, she insisted that other countries cough up “a fair share of the costs of what we do together. America is a champ, not a chump.”
Vital Statistics
Born: May 15 1937, in Czechoslovakia Passion: Protecting American interests Hobbies: Gardening, knitting Political home: The Democratic Party, but has time for right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who backed her appointment in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Most likely to say: “I am an immigrant too” Least likely to say: “We made a mistake” Favourite African: President Nelson Mandela