Word: albright
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
People generally come out of such experiences in one of two ways. Some, like Albright, develop an aggressive moralism and idealism, pledging "never again" to let the world turn a blind eye to atrocities. Others--Henry Kissinger, another refugee from the Nazis, is an example--become hardened realists with a fingertip feel for the nuances of power, a vision of how interests clash on the world stage and a disdain for what they view as sentimental impulses and ideological fervor...
...Albright does not have Kissinger's ability (or desire) to conceptualize overarching strategic frameworks and analyze how an action in one corner can ripple around the world as through a spider web. Nor does she excel at the cautious contingency planning that marked, and sometimes paralyzed, many of the corporate lawyers--Cyrus Vance, James Baker, Warren Christopher--who once held her job. Consequently, she urged intervention in Kosovo without worrying too much about either the geostrategic ramifications (how it would affect Russia, China, Macedonia, Greece, et al.) or about game planning all the contingencies (how to cope with a horrific...
More broadly, Krogh accused Albright and her colleagues of conducting a policy based on scolding other nations. "They instruct the Russians and the Japanese on their economics, the Chinese on their politics, the Iraqis on their military, the Serbs on their provinces, the Latin Americans on drugs and the U.N. on reform...It is a foreign policy of sermons and sanctimony accompanied by the brandishing of Tomahawks." The article, which Krogh had passed around in advance to fellow members of the foreign policy elite, set Washington buzzing. Albright, brittle about her image, was furious...
...Albright is particularly defensive--she brings it up in conversation--about charges that her ill-fated peace conference in Rambouillet last February was a mistake. She threw herself into the conference personally, hiking up and down the French chateau's drafty stairs with proposals. But it ended in close to humiliation. She never forced Milosevic to attend personally, and the Serbs yielded little. The Kosovars were also initially recalcitrant. The U.S. and NATO found themselves committed to an unwieldy committee-directed bombing campaign with no good contingencies for using ground troops or coping with a brutal refugee crisis...
...Albright, standing aside in the face of atrocities was not an option. The Rambouillet meeting, she feels, was necessary to persuade the Europeans, who had never been comfortable aiding the Albanian Muslims, to use force to stop Serbia. By that criterion, Rambouillet succeeded: it enabled Albright to compel the Europeans (and her Washington colleagues...