Madeleine Albright: Her Impact, Triumphs, & Failures

Her Triumphs: 

Madeleine Albright, born May 15,1937, in Prague, Czech Republic, recently passed away on Mar. 23, 2022, from cancer. Albright is most famously known for being the first woman U.S. secretary of state under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. Her story is one to be told: as the daughter of a Czech diplomat, her family was forced to flee to Europe after the Nazi’s occupied Czechoslovakia. She would later discover that they had to flee because they were in fact Jewish and three of her grandparents died in concentration camps. They eventually made their way to the United States, where she would graduate from Wellesley College in 1959 and Columbia University in 1968.  

Albright’s life was filled with monumentous milestones that made her a key player in the political world. By the 1980s she had earned her Ph.D. from Columbia and had been U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. Then by the early 1980s she worked for many nonprofit organizations and taught international affairs at Georgetown University.  

However, by the time PresidentClinton became president in 1993, her political journey began to flourish. Clinton had named her ambassador to the United Nations in 1993, there she gained a reputation for tough-mindedness as a fierce advocate for American interests, and she promoted an increased role for the United States in UN operations, particularly those with a military component. She then became the first woman secretary of state 1997. This was a giant step, not only for women but also for an immigrant woman. 

“Being a woman was obviously a big breakthrough, and [I’m] very proud of that. But the fact that I could be secretary of state as a refugee and a naturalized American was a really big deal,” Albright stated.

Her other many achievements include, the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and progress toward stability in Eastern and Central Europe. As recognition for this work she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2012. 

Her Failures:

Unfortunately, like most politicians, Albright had her downfalls. In 1994 when she was U.S. ambassador to the UN, Albright blocked military intervention in Rwanda. This lead to 632,900 Tutsi deaths (a minority ethinic group), a loss of about 80.8% of the Tutsi population in 1994.

Then, just two years after the Rwanda genocide, Albright was famously critizied during an 60 Minutes segment for stating that the half million Iraqi children who had died as a result of U.S. sanctions against Iraq was “worth it”. Lastly, in 2007 she attempted to block Congressional legislation regarding the recognition of the Armenian genocide because of concerns over the timing of the bill even though 1 million Armenians died. 

Her Impact: 

These faults, while need to be recognized and hopefully ratified, should not be a measure of the great impact that Albright had on international relations today. 

One of Albright’s closest friends from her time as a professor at Georgetown University, Melanne Verveer, now the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, described her as “Indefatigable” and a “trailblazer diplomat”. 

From taking monumental strives for women as the first woman secretary of state, working with the UN, her work with chemical weapons, and the impact she made in national security, shows that Albright’s life shall be remembered with greatness and nobility. 

• HCAU
• HCAU American
• Madeline Albright