EYEWITNESS
In high places
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Madam Secretary is more than the traditional memoirs ... Albright weaves the personal into the details about policy-making at the highest levels in Washington.
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AS the race for the American presidency draws close, decision makers across the world would want to know the kind of changes that John F. Kerry, who has virtually sewn up the nomination of the Democratic Party, would bring to bear on American foreign policy if he manages to wrest the White House from the Republicans. The easiest way of finding out what Democrats might do is to recall their approach when they were in power the last time.
There is no better guide to the worldview of the Democrats than the very readable memoir put out by Madeleine Albright — the Secretary of State during the second term of President Bill Clinton (1997-2001). The Cold War ended during the watch of President George W. Bush, the Senior. Since then, the American establishment has furiously argued with itself about how best to organise the new world order.
George W. Bush, the present Republican incumbent and son of the former President, has come up with a definitive position on how the world ought to be restructured and what role the United States should play in it. The Bush worldview has come under savage attack not just from the adversaries of Washington, but also from some of its oldest partners.
And within the U.S. too the Bush foreign policy has deeply polarised the American public and the establishment. The issues that divide them include tension between American unilateral action and multilateralism, the role of the United Nations, the mechanics of pursuing the war on terrorism, missile defence, and on when and how to intervene in conflicts across the world.
Albright's memoirs give us a profound insight into what animates the Democrats in dealing with the post-Cold War challenges. But it is more than the traditional memoirs which record first hand accounts of contemporary history. Albright weaves the personal into the details about policy making at the highest levels in Washington.
The life of Madeleine Albright, born Marie Jana Korbel in former Czechoslovakia, has all the classical features of an American dream realised — a first generation European immigrant who makes it to the top in the U.S. establishment. A comparison with Henry Kissinger, the American foreign policy guru, is unavoidable. Both were from European Jewish families that fled their homeland to escape Nazi oppression. Both became Secretaries of State. Kissinger also served President Nixon as National Security Adviser.
Although she does not enjoy the same exalted status as Kissinger on the other side of the aisle, Albright is among the top foreign policy thinkers of the Democratic Party. She served President Clinton, first as his representative at the U.N. and then as the top diplomat of the U.S. She was also the first American woman to become Secretary of State.
The comparison between Kissinger and Albright must end there. Their worldviews are poles apart. Kissinger is a conservative and a realist. Albright a liberal who emphasises the importance of projecting American values abroad. The tension between these values is the connecting thread in the history of American foreign policy. The conflict between the two American approaches has become more acute in the years following the Cold War. Amidst the uncertainties of the post-Communist world, it was never easy to come up with a clear national consensus on a new foreign policy in the U.S.
The Republicans accused the Clinton foreign policy as being too flighty, spreading American forces too thin in interventions all around the world, subordinating American interests to those of the U.N., and weakening national resolve against the new enemies. The Democrats have paid back by attacking the Bush Administration for losing friends all around the world with its emphasis on unilateralism, for drawing America into a war in Iraq on false pretexts and stumbling in the war against terrorism.
As she draws lessons from the experience in shaping American foreign policy, Albright underlines the differences that separate the Republicans and Democrats as well as the ambiguities in the real world of policy-making that unite them. Well before President Bush was declaring the special role of the U.S. in reshaping the world with whatever it takes, Clinton and Albright were repeatedly underlining the slogan that America is an "indispensable nation" — a proclamation that had drawn worldwide flak for signalling the new "American arrogance" in the post-Cold War world.
Making light of the ideological divide in the U.S., Albright hopes "never again to hear foreign policy described as a debate between Wilsonian idealists and geopolitical realists. In our era, no President or Secretary of State could manage events without combining the two" (p. 505).
On the debate between unilateralism and multilateralism and that between realism and idealism, Albright says: "We tried to strengthen multilateral institutions but recognised the need for America to take the lead in such areas as the Balkans and the Middle East. We promoted democracy but also worked when necessary with nondemocratic states. We defended human rights but understood that other urgent issues, such as nonproliferation, sometimes had first claim." (ibid.)
Albright's criticism of the Bush Administration is brief but provides a succinct summary of what the Democratic candidate John F. Kerry is likely to say during the elections: "If we attempt to put ourselves above or outside the international system, we invite everyone else to do so as well. Then moral clarity is lost, the foundation of our leadership becomes suspect, the cohesive pull of law is weakened, and those who do not share our values find openings to exploit. I have always believed America to be an exceptional country, but that is because we have led in creating standards that work for everyone, not because we are an exception to the rules" (p. 506).
For those looking for historical detail, Albright's memoir provides a wealth of material on the frenzied but unsuccessful effort by President Clinton to finalise a settlement between Israel and Palestinians in the last months of his presidency. The tortuous course of American intervention in the Balkans is revealed in substantive detail; so is the shaping of the post-Cold War Europe that was personally so central to Albright.
India does not figure much in her recollections. This is not surprising for the political charge of South Asia was with Albright's deputy, Strobe Talbott, who is himself writing a comprehensive story of the Indo-U.S. engagement in the Clinton years, including the management of the nuclear controversy before and after May 1998 when India tested five nuclear weapons. But for any one interested in the broad trends in the recent history of American foreign policy, Albright's account is an indispensable read.
C. RAJA MOHAN
Madam Secretary: A Memoir, Madeleine Albright, Macmillan (London), p. 562, price not stated.
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