Madeleine Albright was an international affairs professor at Georgetown University when she joined the Clinton administration in 1993 as ambassador to the United Nations. In 1997, she became the first woman to be U.S. secretary of state. A refugee from both the Nazis and communists in Europe, she brought to American diplomacy a pugnacious, values-based style rooted in her view of America as “the indispensable nation” and a belief in the duty of democracies to intervene forcibly against dictators and oppression. Albright came to Chicago last week for her last major speech as secretary of state. She plans now to write a book and to head the National Democratic Institute, which works to expand democracy worldwide.
Q: At what point can we step back from the Balkans, leaving it to the Europeans or to the Balkan people themselves?
A: President Bush the First talked about the importance of a Europe whole and free. He did a great deal. But the Balkans were left in a state of dissolution. Now, democratic elections have been held in every country in the Balkans. But it’s only the end of the beginning. Already the Europeans are doing the lion’s share–there’s a complete misunderstanding of this–they have 80 percent of forces in Bosnia and Kosovo and are paying 80 percent of reconstruction assistance. But we need to stay there. We made a mistake when we set the one-year limit on withdrawal of our forces from Bosnia. Nobody thinks our forces will have to be there forever. But during the campaign, Condoleezza Rice said a Bush administration would want to withdraw. I think it would be a mistake before there’s a more self-sustaining aspect to the democracies that are being developed there.
Q: Colin Powell’s first stop at the State Department was the Africa desk. What advice do you have for him to make the continent more of a national interest for the United States?
A: No administration has done more to put Africa on the map than the Clinton administration. What I want to see happen is for the Bush administration and Colin Powell to do at least as much as we did. They have to change their attitude about UN peacekeeping operations. Dealing with humanitarian issues is in the American national interest. I believe that fully. While we can’t be everywhere, we do have to choose between doing everything and doing nothing.
Q: Russia now is not where we had hoped in 1992 that it would be. Could we have done more, or done it differently, to promote market democracy there?
A: People need to understand what we were faced with. We were dealing with the devolution of a 50-year enemy, a major empire with nuclear weapons, and we had to figure out how to help this major empire devolve. I think we managed that, to the extent that it’s ours to manage, quite well. Americans and the West have this tendency to be euphoric about everything, to feel that, with the end of communism, everybody will be just like us, all these issues would be solved. It takes longer. It’s an immense country. The people were completely disoriented. Toward the end of President Boris Yeltsin, there was a sense of chaos. President Vladimir Putin has managed to provide order. My question is whether it’s order with a small “o” or with a capital “O.” I’m very disturbed when I see the capital “O” aspects of it creeping it. The way he is handling the media, for instance, what they are doing with Chechnya, some of the recentralization. My advice to the next administration is, don’t re-create the enemy. It’s very easy to do that. There are elements in both countries that are very used to a zero-sum game, and it’s a much more complicated relationship than that.
Q: What do you think of Putin personally? Does he have the capability to be a leader?
A: I met Putin several times. He listened carefully to what I had to say and took notes, and then responded without notes. He is very determined to put Russia back on the map. He wanted to be a KGB officer from the time he was 16 or 17 years old. The people he trusts the most are former KGB officers. I don’t think he is a democrat, not by instinct. He may use some democratic methods to make Russia strong again. I would rather see a strong Russia than a weak Russia. There was the threat of the dissolution of the whole place, so the question is how you get a Russia that is a responsible global player.
Q: If we go through with plans to install a nuclear missile defense, will Russia just grin and bear it?
A: I don’t know. The threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a legitimate threat. The question is how to make sure that the U.S. stays protected. For the nuclear missile system, we had four criteria–the threat, whether the technology is available, the cost, and how it affects the arms control regime and our national security generally, which means how does the rest of the world, including our allies, see it. I think the next administration should keep these four criteria. They are non-ideological analytical tools. I believe the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a keystone of the arms-control regime. But the Russians were not persuaded of the fact that the nuclear missile defense is not directed against them. The problem now is how the Bush administration assesses the four criteria and how they persuade the Russians that it’s not against them.
Q: Is there enough left of the peace process in the Middle East for the new administration to pick up the ball there?
A: We’re very concerned that we haven’t been able to accomplish what we wanted to. The Oslo process has ground to a halt. It was set up to take small steps, to enable these two people to learn to work with each other. It turned out to do the opposite, it became not a lubricant but sandpaper. At Camp David, what we did was to finally begin to talk about the unmentionable subjects. My belief is that when there is a peace, and there will be a peace at some point, it will be based on the ideas that we came up with at Camp David, because they’re the rational ideas. Ultimately, there has to be a Palestinian state that is of a decent size, contiguous with international boundaries. There has to be some resolution of the refugee issue. Israel’s security and Palestinian security and sovereignty need to be dealt with, and Jerusalem needs to be dealt with. We hope that the next administration will put its shoulder to the wheel and see what it can do.
Q: What’s still missing right now?
A: What’s missing right now is something we cannot do, and that is that the leaders themselves have to make the hard decisions. We can have ideas but unless they make the hard decisions, that’s what’s missing.
Q: What do you foresee for the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba?
A: First of all, biology works. Someday Castro will be gone. In Central and Eastern Europe, the former leaders weren’t creators of the communist history of their countries. In Cuba, the original leader is still there. That part made it harder. We hoped the Clinton administration could change things. We have to prepare for a post-Castro Cuba because, while the Cuban-Americans think it looks like it did when they left, it doesn’t.
Q: The Bush foreign policy people are often accused of having a taste for unilateralism. Rice has said her policy will be based on U.S. national interests, not on the interests of some “illusory international community.” Is this realistic or a recipe for trouble?
A: There is no way there can be a foreign policy that represents American national interests that is not somehow based on our values. I think it is in our national interest to deal with humanitarian disasters in Africa. That doesn’t mean we sent in 500,000 troops, but we must support peacekeeping operations and look at all the tools that are available. We must understand that our prosperity and security are based on our relationships with other countries. We depend on a functioning international economy. That requires stability in other countries.
Q: The people who left Saddam Hussein in place in Iraq are about to inherit him again. Is it time to acknowledge that our sanctions on Iraq haven’t worked?
A: We got him, and we’re passing him on. I worked very hard to make the sanctions work, because they are the way to contain him, and we’ve managed to do that. He talks a lot, but at the moment he is contained. Colin Powell said they want to strengthen the sanctions. I met with him, and I said good luck. If the Bush Administration can persuade our allies that sanctions should be tougher, I will be the first one to support them. Saddam Hussein has to understand that the key is on the table. The key is to let the inspectors in, to see whether he is not trying to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction. I’m sorry we’re we turning this back over to them. They left him for us.
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An edited transcript
