Madeleine Albright, a child refugee from Nazi and then Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe who rose to become the first female U.S. secretary of state and a mentor to many current and former U.S. statesmen and women, died of cancer Wednesday, she said. Family. She was 84.
A lifelong Democrat who nevertheless worked to bring Republicans into orbit, Albright was elected in 1996 by US President Bill Clinton to be America’s top diplomat, and was promoted by the US Ambassador to the United Nations, where she only the second wife was to keep it. Work.
As Secretary of State, Albright was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the US government. However, she was not in the succession of the presidency, as she was a native of Prague, in what is today the Czech Republic. The glass ceiling she broke was universally admired, even by her political defenders.
Below is a statement from the family of pic.twitter.com/C7Xt0EN5c9
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“We have lost a dear mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend,” her family said in a statement.
Expressions of condolence came quickly.
‘Champion of Democracy’
US President Joe Biden said: “America has had no more committed champion of democracy and human rights than Secretary Albright, who knew personally and wrote powerfully about the dangers of autocracy.”
“When I think of the Madeleines,” Biden added, “I will always remember their fervent belief that ‘America is the indispensable nation.’
Clinton called her “one of the most beautiful Secretary of State, an excellent UN ambassador, a brilliant professor and an extraordinary man.”
“Because she knew first-hand that America’s political decisions have the power to make a difference in the lives of people around the world, she saw her work as a commitment and an opportunity,” Clinton said. written. “And through it all, even until our last conversation just two weeks ago, she never lost her great sense of humor or her determination to go out with her boots on, support Ukraine in its fight for freedom and freedom.” They will achieve democracy. “
‘She served with distinction’
Former US President George W. Bush has said that Albright “lived out the American dream and helped others realize it … She served with distinction as a foreign-born Secretary of State who emphasized the importance of free societies for peace in our world first hand. “
Albright emigrated to the United States as a child. She was Clinton’s secretary of state, the 64th in the nation’s history, until the end of Clinton’s second term.
Albright is the successor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, having previously served the Clinton administration as US Ambassador to the United Nations.
In one of her most recent public appearances, Albright was among those to judge the man who succeeded her as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
“His virtues were Homeric – honesty, loyalty, dignity and an incredible commitment to his reputation and his word,” Albright said at a ceremony for Powell on November 5 in Washington.
Years ago, she once called out to Powell, then president of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, “What’s the point of having this great military that you always talk about when we can not use it?”
Powell recalls in a memoir that Albright’s comments almost made an “aneurysm”.
Russian invasion called a “historic mistake.”
More recently, she wrote an opinion piece published in the New York Times last month, calling Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine a “historic mistake”, recalling her first impression of Russian President Vladimir Putin after meeting him in 2000 as “as cold as almost reptilian.”
“Mr Putin has set his course by promoting democratic development [Joseph] Stalin’s playbook, “Albright wrote.
She has often appeared as a guest to comment on world events, including CBC News.
“When I was in office, we had no better relationship than that with Canada,” she told CBC Power & Politics in 2018.
“We are close in every way and I especially enjoyed working with the Canadian Secretary of State at the time, Lloyd Axworthy.”
She has also written several books related to her life and career as well as geopolitical developments, most recently with 2020s Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st-Century Memoir.
Mixed record in Middle East diplomacy
Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 when the Nazis took over the country, and she spent the war years in London. After the war, when the Soviet Union took over large parts of Europe, her father, a Czech diplomat, brought his family to the United States.
As Secretary of State, she played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war with Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovo Albanians in 1999. She called on her UN post for a tough US Foreign policy, especially in the case of Milosevic’s treatment of Bosnia and NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, was eventually called “Madeleine’s war”.
Reaction of Linda Greenfield-Thomas, US Ambassador to the United Nations:
Secretary Albright has been a mentor, colleague, and friend for several decades. She was a forerunner in light.
She was the first woman to serve as Secretary of State. And she left an incomprehensible sign in the world and the
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“My thought is Munich,” she often said, referring to the German city where the Western allies had given up their homeland to the Nazis.
Albright helped win Senate ratification of NATO expansion and a treaty that imposed international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful struggle to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations. He accused her of deception and posed as a friend.
“I am an eternal optimist,” Albright said in 1998, as part of an effort as secretary of state to promote peace in the Middle East, but said Israel was withdrawing to the West Bank and the Palestinians from terrorists. ‘raise, poses serious problems.
As America’s top diplomat, Albright initially made limited progress in expanding the 1993 Oslo Accords, which established the principle of self-government for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But in 1998, it played a key role in formulating the Wye Accords, which transferred control of about 40 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
It also spearheaded a poor effort to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and Syria in 2000.
President Barack Obama said she did not shrink from the world’s strongmen while she was awarded the highest civilian honor in the United States in 2012, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“When Saddam Hussein called her a ‘snake’, she carried a snake on her lapel the next time she visited Baghdad,” Obama said.
“When Slobodan Milosevic described her as a ‘goat,’ a new pin appeared in her collection.”
Childhood in the shadow of war
Albright’s family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was five. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.
Albright later said she became aware of her Jewish background after becoming Secretary of State. After spending the war years in London, the family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II, but in 1948 fled again, this time to the United States, after the Communists came to power.
They settled in Denver, where their father got an academic job. One of Josef Korbel’s students, Condoleezza Rice, would be the 66th US Secretary of State.
Among current officials who have worked closely with Albright are Biden’s domestic policy adviser and former UN ambassador Susan Rice, as well as Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and a host of others.
Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in 1968 and a doctorate in 1976.
She served during Jimmy Carter’s presidency of the U.S. National Security Council, and in 1984 she was an adviser to Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to hold a major U.S. presidency ticket.
After serving in the Clinton administration, she led a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was president of an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets.
Albright married journalist Joseph Albright in 1959. They had three daughters and divorced in 1983.
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