President Clinton visited Seattle a couple of years ago after leaving the White House, and he addressed an overflow lunch crowd jamming the Westin Ballroom. As he surveyed the world's troubles and how America should respond, the contrast between his approach and that of the new Bush administration could not have been more stark. Reading former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's just-published memoirs, "Madam Secretary" (Miramax, $27.95), brings much the same thought to mind - how far we've traveled from working with NATO and the U.N. to address Bosnia and Kosovo, to working around our closest NATO allies and the U.N. to address Iraq.
Madeleine Albright's life could hardly have been more interesting. Her father was a Czech diplomat and, when the Nazis invaded, Albright's family escaped on a night train out of Prague. Her father worked in London with exiled Czech President Edvard Bene{scaron}, and then in Prague after the war, until the Communists ousted the democratically-elected leadership. Albright's father secured a posting to the United Nations in New York, representing Czechoslovakia, but worked behind the scenes to secure refugee status.
After leaving government service, Albright's father took up teaching, and the family resettled into suburban American life. Madeleine met her future husband, Joe Albright, at Wellesley College, and her marriage brought her wealth (his uncle was Harry Guggenheim) and powerful family connections. Albright became an American citizen, raised three children and simultaneously secured her Ph.D. from Columbia University's prestigious Russian Institute.
With her degree, Albright worked for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and was later invited to join the staff of the National Security Council by her former college professor Zbigniew Brzezinski (who had been selected to be President Carter's national security adviser). With President Carter's defeat in 1980, Albright returned to academia and worked on successive presidential campaigns.
When President Clinton was elected, Albright served first as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and, in the second term, as secretary of state. Shortly after her confirmation, news stories surfaced revealing Albright's Jewish ancestry. Albright achingly writes of her heartbreak at discovering the fate of three of her grandparents in Nazi concentration camps, their names etched in the wall of a synagogue in Prague that she had visited.
Albright's writing is smooth, captivating and thoughtful. The book provides a sweeping overview of foreign crises during the entire eight-year term of the Clinton presidency, with fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses into personal encounters with world leaders from across the globe. From Iraq to Bosnia, the tangle of Middle East politics, the slaughter in Kosovo, her management of the relationships with NATO allies, and her visit to North Korea, her story is a short course in near-term world history. Much of it is familiar, but it's refreshing to review how differently America responded to international challenges just a few short years ago: Albright sought to contain the Iraqi threat with international sanctions and inspections rather than outright war. She responded to North Korea's nuclear ambitions with containment and engagement. And she used NATO air strikes - working with then-NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark - to bring Slobodan Milosevic to justice when many said that air strikes alone would never resolve the issue.
But far more interesting are Albright's personal reflections on her appointment as the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the U.S. government. Her insights into the unique challenges posed to a woman serving in a largely male environment are entertaining. At the end of one dinner, for example, she realized that she had spilled some salad dressing on her skirt - a spill that would never have been noticed on a man's dark suit. For the after-dinner group photo, she turned the skirt around to conceal the stain. She dryly comments: "Not a move with which Henry Kissinger could have gotten away."
But, for all its thoughtful discussion of foreign relations and international intrigue, the book is surprisingly silent about the single most defining event of the Clinton presidency: his impeachment and trial before the Senate. Albright devotes a handful of paragraphs to the scandal and mentions in passing the president's apology to his cabinet for misleading them. But future historians will be left wondering about the impact of the impeachment and trial of a sitting president on the foreign relations of the country.
Even with this rather dramatic omission, Albright's memoirs are a fascinating review of recent American history, a compelling insight into foreign relations up close and personal, and a stirring reminder of the power of diplomacy in achieving peace in a troubled world.
