His life is a slice of 20th century history. We remember his diplomatic grip, his martial or prankish outings, his fights with Saddam Hussein…
L’Express had met Madeleine Albright in 2003 for the release of her Memoirs. She there recounted her exceptional itinerary with this mixture of touching modesty and determination which she also showed in front of the little girls of Georgetown University by signing their notebooks with “Be whatever you want!”
Aware of the image she sent back, Madeleine Albright had confided to our correspondent in the United States Philippe Coste: “I think I was perceived as tougher, more frightening even, than I am.”
His childhood marked by exile
Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana (aka “Madlenka”) Korbel in Prague, two years before the 1939 Nazi invasion and her family’s first exile.
“My life, and that of my family, is a reflection of the best and the worst of the 20th century. Foreign policy has always been at the forefront of my daily life, it represented a strong bond that brought me closer to my father, a Czechoslovakian diplomat very serious and very strict. As a child, I saw him, without understanding, pacing in our little garden in London with members of the Czechoslovak government in exile. This continued later, when he was at the UN , then when we arrived in Denver, where he was a professor after the Communists took over our country, in the middle of the Cold War.
Our lives as exiles, as immigrants, have been determined by acts of American power. The fact that America did not have a hand in Munich, that it went to war against Germany, that instead of liberating us it let the Russians take over our country, all this changed our exist forever. But, in the end, I lived a dream, an unlikely return of fate when, having become Secretary of State at the time when Eastern Europe was liberating itself, I contributed to the accession of these countries to NATO, an organization born out of the communist coup in Prague!”
These years of exile engendered in Madeleine Albright a fundamental need to integrate without fear of taking the risk of unpopularity:
“I admit it: I really like being liked. I am a total extrovert, able to make friends in the blink of an eye. But later, in my life, I fought this instinct, remaining firmly committed to even unpopular positions when matters of principle were at stake. The transformation took place when I joined the UN. Previously, my natural tendency was to please my father, my husband, to my bosses. My priority was to stay in the game.”
His first steps as a diplomat at the UN
Spotted by Bill Clinton after being elected best professor at Georgetown University four years in a row, Madeleine Albright was appointed United States Ambassador to the UN in 1993.
“At the beginning, it was very intimidating. I had never been a diplomat. Moreover, I was the only woman, the only skirt in the middle of the 14 suits of the representatives on the Security Council. But I represented the United States , and I had to say something. It was only later that I was able to break away from my prepared texts and find my own voice and my own style. I remember the outcry caused by my comments on the Cuban pilots who had shot down an activist plane. The famous “It’s not about cojones, but pure cowardice”.
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Washington, May 19, 2014
afp.com/Jim WATSON
“Even my brooches were messages. The first time I wore a little snake in response to Saddam Hussein’s insults. of State, I negotiated with the Soviets the treaty on anti-ballistic missiles.
In this exposed position, Madeleine Albright gradually asserts herself to the rhythm of successive crises.
“I was fascinated by the UN while being aware of its failings and its difficulty in fulfilling the enormous tasks entrusted to it by member states since the success of the coalition against Iraq in 1991. I recognize, for example , that it is unfair to lay the blame for the failure of the Somali operation on the United Nations. Similarly, I sincerely suffered on the question of Rwanda, but we had already experienced a disaster in Mogadishu, and we “We couldn’t get involved easily in Africa. We have to remember the context: a hostile Congress that refused to pay the American dues to the United Nations, but mocked their inefficiency and also demanded their immediate reform”.
Her position as first female secretary of state
Madeleine Albright was appointed Secretary of State by Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996. She left her mark on American diplomacy.
The American offensive in Kosovo has been dubbed the “Magdalen War”…
“At first it wasn’t a compliment. Everything was a mess. I had very hard personal moments, learning that a bomb had missed its target and killed innocent people, and that one of our pilots had been carried However, I did not waver in my convictions: I had seen the faces of these refugees, and the despicable suffering they were subjected to, these raped people… In the end, Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, had a kind word when talking about the “Magdalen war” and the “Magdalen victory”. It was not a victory, just a huge responsibility…”
A pioneer in a male universe, Madeleine Albright paved the way for many diplomats who followed her example.
“I voluntarily forbade myself from showing any signs of weakness. I never cried, for example, whereas men today have the right to do so. I stood on the stands in the middle of a heat wave , with, in my stomach, the fear of fainting and reinforcing prejudices about the weaker sex. But, deep down, it didn’t matter to my foreign interlocutors that I was a woman. I arrived in a large plane on which was written “United States of America”, and that was what mattered most. Curiously, I experienced my greatest disappointments with American male colleagues, people who knew me, who had dined at my house and did not arrive not to understand how I could have had this job and how History could have left them like this.