In a conversation with Scott Sagan last week, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed a wide range of international conflicts facing the next president, as well as her experience as a high-powered woman in politics. As Sagan, a professor of political science, and Albright rhetorically toured the globe, pausing at hot spots to probe serious policy issues, Albright delivered her advice with a dose of humor.
In a conversation with Scott Sagan last week, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed a wide range of international conflicts facing the next president, as well as her experience as a high-powered woman in politics.
As Sagan, a professor of political science, and Albright rhetorically toured the globe, pausing at hot spots to probe serious policy issues, Albright delivered her advice with a dose of humor.
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The Stanford in Government and ASSU Speakers Bureau's choice this year for "Big Speaker," Albright addressed a packed audience during the May 27 event in Kresge Auditorium.
Albright attended Wellesley College in the 1950s and was educated during a time when, as she put it, "young women were clearly being groomed for marriage more than anything else." Though she dreamed of working in international affairs, Albright recalled, "I didn't however for a second consider the possibility that one day I might be secretary of state—and it's not that I lacked ambition."
Rather, Albright, who as secretary of state in the Clinton administration was the highest ranking female official in U.S. history, had no role models. "I had never seen a secretary of state in a skirt," she said. She recalled, after being sworn in, walking to her office for the first time. Hanging on the walls were the portraits of former secretaries, differing only "in if they were clean-shaven or had beards and mustaches."
Things have changed significantly since then, Albright noted. Upon returning to see her portrait unveiled last month, she was welcomed by the second woman and second black secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
"It is good that barriers are coming down," Albright said. "But as we all know from listening to the news every night, it doesn't stop international problems from piling up."
Much of Albright's talk focused on challenges facing the incoming president. Now a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, she has recently published a book, Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership, on the topic. She laid out five challenges that, she said, face the new president: how to "fight terrorism without creating more terrorists"; "prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands"; "restore the good name of democracy"; "deal with the negative aspects of globalization"; and "deal with the growing energy crisis and global warming."
"It's a wonder anyone wants to run for president," she quipped. "This is going to be the most difficult presidency we have seen."
Albright acknowledged that when the next president is elected, "a little less than half of us will have voted for somebody else," but hoped that, whoever it is, Americans will "support the next president in restoring America's international reputation and leadership."
Throughout the discussion, Sagan guided Albright around the globe, pressing her for opinions and guidance in confronting the greatest contemporary problems in international affairs. Along the way, they "stopped" in many places around the world, from Beijing to Islamabad.
On China, Albright was both candid and humorous. Asked by Sagan about the issue of Tibet and the 2008 Olympics, Albright responded, "I have only one prediction to make, which is that the Chinese will win most of the medals because nobody else will be able to breathe."
"In the U.S. government, when there is a difficult, complicated relationship, you say it is multi-faceted," Albright said. "So, we have a multi-faceted relationship with China." Because of the countries' codependence—"it's like the relationship with a drug addict and a pusher, but you don't know which is which"—it is important to "not make China an enemy," she advised. At the same time, "It is correct and necessary for an American representative to always raise the human rights issues," she said.
As Sagan fired off dilemma after dilemma, Albright quipped, "These are very easy questions." Yet she delivered thoughtful answers to each. Albright was forthright in her discussion of the most complex problems: When addressing the issue of India's nuclear program, for instance, she said, "The nonproliferation regime is broken, period. The bargain … has been broken by both sides." Asked about the issue of preventing a new Osama bin Laden, Albright noted, "We have to recognize how very, very difficult the situation is. I will someday teach a course on the unintended consequences of foreign policy decisions."
One idea Albright emphasized was the "mistake" of framing the issue as a "war" on terror. Through this characterization, Albright said, "We create out of murderers warriors, and give them a larger mythical status than they deserve."
Albright mixed general political advice with specific policy recommendations. On Iran, among other countries, Albright said, "I believe that it is absolutely essential to talk to your enemies; you don't get anything done if you do not talk to them. … You need to deliver some very tough messages." Arguing that this was not a form of appeasement, she cited the many people she met with during her tenure as secretary, "various people you wouldn't exactly want to have dinner with."
She recommended that the next president steer clear of meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, but advocated for the use of "other levels of diplomacy" to facilitate discussion.
Albright spent a significant amount of time addressing the war in Iraq, which she believes "will go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy."
"There are no good options," she said, "but I do think we have to leave and we have to do it in a responsible way." Albright recommended not putting an end date on withdrawal; if it is not met, she argued, this will damage America's credibility even further. She also said other countries should participate in the solution and drew parallels to U.S. involvement in World Wars I and II. "Instead of a surge of troops, we need a surge of diplomacy," she said. "There is no military solution to Iraq."
Although Albright predicted the Democrats would end up with control of both Congress and the presidency in the next election, she urged the new president to take a bipartisan approach to foreign policy. "I think we confuse the world when we have partisan foreign policy," Albright said, suggesting that members of both major parties be a part of the new Cabinet. "If I can manage to get along with Jesse Helms, I think it's possible to develop a functioning foreign policy that's bipartisan."
Albright, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the election campaign, was asked during the question-and-answer period about the place of women in political leadership. "Americans like to think of ourselves as first, yet we are very far behind" on this issue, Albright said. When Bill Clinton appointed her secretary of state, "there were people who said we can't possibly have a woman secretary of state because the Arab countries will not deal with her," she recalled.
Yet Albright said she did not have a problem with those leaders. Instead, "I had more problems with the men in our own government," she said. Though Albright said she found the state of the primaries "depressing," she remained optimistic about the possibility of a woman president: "It will happen at some point."
Another audience member pressed her on the issue of how to democratize other countries without "Americanizing" them as well. In answering, Albright, chairwoman of the board of the National Democratic Institute—a nonprofit that serves to support the development and strengthening of democracies—argued that conflating these ideas is a mistake: "There is not one model of democracy," she said, adding that the imposition of democracy is an "oxymoron."
What is universal, however, is people's desire "to make decisions about their own lives," she said. To do this, Albright argued, "people want to have a relationship with their rulers. … They want to be able elect them and they want to be able to get rid of them."
"I think democracy is the best form of government," she said, adding, "There are different ways of doing it."
Arielle Lasky is a writing intern at the Stanford News Service.
