In the last tweet that Madeleine Albright sent out into the world, everything she had championed throughout her life came back. “From Kabul to Kyiv, women and girls are on the front lines of the fight for freedom and dignity,” she wrote on March 8, International Women’s Day. “My heart is with those who fight for a more peaceful and fair future.”
Peace, freedom and women’s rights. These three values determined the course of Albright, who died on Wednesday at the age of 84 from the effects of cancer. As the first female Secretary of State of the United States, appointed by President Bill Clinton, she leaves a mark in politics worldwide, but also in the minds of many women.
1. Feminist Icon
After news of Albright’s death was announced, American women, who were still girls when she was a minister, shared photos of her on Instagram with one of her statements: “Women who don’t help other women have a special place in hell.” .’ The same famous words are printed on T-shirts and Starbucks mugs. Albright responded with that statement to all those women who used to look down on her because she was a mother with a job.
After the major MeToo scandals broke out, many women sought role models. Like Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who passed away in 2020, Albright was given a second life as a feminist icon at a later age: as a woman who survived in a man’s world at a time when this was still rare. †The kids love Madeleine Albright,” said Stephen Colbert of the The Late Show four years ago, about the new crowd of young fans she gained.
When Albright supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, she lost some of that support. “We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder,” she said in a speech, “but a lot of you younger women think we’re already there.” There is a special place in hell for all those women, she repeated.
It was a sneer at young female voters who did not intend to vote for Clinton, but for her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders. Albright’s comment provoked much outrage. As if someone’s gender was reason enough for a vote, was the criticism she received.
2. Fighter Against Authoritarian Leadership
It is not common for a former secretary to criticize a president, but Albright has never managed to hide her disgust for Donald Trump. “If we think of fascism as a wound from the past that has almost healed,” she wrote in the book in 2018 Fascism, a warning“Then putting Trump in the White House is like tearing the bandages off and scratching the crust.”
Her concerns about the success of authoritarian figures cannot be separated from her own life: twice she was driven out by dictators. Albright was born in 1937 to a Jewish-Czech family in Prague. Just before Adolf Hitler entered her country with his tanks, her family managed to flee to London. Albright was 2 years old at the time. In 1948, her family fled for the second time – this time from Stalin. She arrived in the United States as an 11-year-old girl.
In recent years, the former minister has closely followed the success of authoritarian leaders such as Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary and closer to home, that of Trump. According to her father, Americans had become so accustomed to their freedom that they were able to take democracy for granted.
Even towards the end of her life, Albright continued to insist that American democracy cannot be taken for granted and should be protected. “While democracy is the most stable form of government in the long run,” Albright said, “it is one of the most fragile in the short run.”
3. Advocate of International Cooperation
As UN ambassador to the United States, between 1993 and 1997, Albright was already a strong advocate of international cooperation – with military intervention where necessary. Because if the French had not made concessions to Hitler, she often said, her own life would have turned out differently.
Even after the end of the Cold War, Albright liked to see the United States as leading on the world stage. When thousands of Bosnian Muslims were massacred by Serb militias in the former Yugoslavia, Clinton was hesitant to intervene, with the failed Vietnam War on his mind.
Under much pressure from Albright, NATO invaded the area and ended the fighting in Kosovo in 1999. This is what she was most proud of, Albright said in interviews. In Kosovo, many women are said to be walking around with the name ‘Madeleine’.
Long after she retired as a minister, she continued to focus on major international issues. Something that has haunted Albright for a long time: that the United States did not intervene during the genocide in Rwanda.
On Wednesday, Antony Blinken, the current US Secretary of State, issued a press release about the death of his distant predecessor, which he concluded with an anecdote. After Albright left the ministry in 2001, she was asked if she wasn’t happy to be rid of all those great worldly conflicts. “I miss it every day,” she replied. “She loved this department and we loved her,” said Blinken. ‘Our very first Madam Secretary. Thank you.’