https://youtu.be/kPIdRJlzERo
https://time.com/5235199/madeleine-albright-fascism/
time.com/5235199/madeleine-albright-fascism
Madeleine Albright pictured in 1997, the year she became the first woman to hold the office of U.S. Secretary of State.
Wally McNamee—Corbis / Getty Images By Lily Rothman April 11, 2018 2:27 PM EDT
Madeleine Albright has created plenty of history herself
— as the first woman to be U.S. Secretary of State, for example
— but in the last several years, a different slice of the past has caught her eye.
Noticing the rise of a new trend among world leaders, she recalled what she’d learned, through study and personal observation both, about the rise of fascism that started almost exactly a century ago.
Few of today’s forces of power would actually qualify as fascist in her view; more of them fall under the heading of “antidemocratic,” as she dubs President Donald Trump. But Albright knows that fascism doesn’t spread overnight, and she’s troubled enough by what she sees to have titled her new book Fascism: A Warning. On the occasion of the book’s release, she spoke to TIME about how history affects our views of the world, the media’s role in the rise of fascism, her greatest fears about North Korea — and more.
TIME: Your book is called Fascism: A Warning. How did you come to “warning” as the best way to sum up what this book is?
ALBRIGHT: As somebody who was born in Czechoslovakia two years before World War II and then was a refugee during the war as a result of fascism and lost people in my family, I thought that there are certain aspects that need to be warned about. The other thing I thought of as an image is that fascism is a disease and there are symptoms. So I think it’s important to warn about that.
To use the disease metaphor, what was the first symptom you noticed?
The thing that I noticed is that in other countries, where there has been a division among the people, there are leaders who have specifically exacerbated that division and made it worse, and then found somebody else to blame. A perfect example of that is what Viktor Orban did in Hungary. He aligned himself with his own quote national group, made ethnicity a major part of it, and then started blaming everybody that wasn’t, from his consideration, ethnically Hungarian.
You’ve described coming at things in your career with a “Munich mindset,” shaped by awareness of the effects of appeasement, whereas many of your colleagues who grew up in the U.S. might look at them with a mindset shaped by Vietnam. To what extent do you believe we’re bound to act according to our historical contexts?
Foreign policy decisions in so many ways are affected by a number of factors, and one of them is the individuals. Therefore I think it’s always very important to know what the so-called baggage for somebody that you’re dealing with actually is. We all to a certain extent are the product of our background. That doesn’t mean that you can’t shake it off. For instance, my mindset is Munich. It’s basically that you have to stand up to evil. But we have to be open to what other people are saying, to listen and to understand what their mindset is. I have kind of always been ten years older than everybody that I’ve worked with and their experience was Vietnam; a lot of the people who were in the government in the Clinton administration were people who had seen what did become a quagmire. There was a difference. There’s no question about it. When we were dealing with the Balkans, for instance, that was kind of a division line.
Do you have any guesses about how living through this moment in time will affect the way future leaders make decisions?
I’m hoping very much that the young people will be more like the kids who were marching, that felt that they needed to do something. I actually hope that people are affected by what’s happening now and understand that it doesn’t have to be that way.
You write about how radio helped Hitler’s rise to power and then how Joseph McCarthy was also helped by the media coverage he got. How do you see the role of the media in today’s situation?
I have always been fascinated, in an academic as well as a practical way, about the role of media and information in political change. I wrote my dissertation about it. You can’t operate if you don’t have information. It’s the lifeblood of a democracy. So the question is how do you know where the information has come from and how you have gotten it? I do think that is going to be one of the major issues when people go back and look at what this era has been about. It has been about technology and new media, the role of social media in a number of different ways, and the source of information. It’s much more complicated than it’s been.
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There is also a passage in the book where you write about how Vladimir Putin has compared possible Russian interference in U.S. politics to the way the U.S. might have interfered in other nations’ politics, and how he seems not to see a difference between intervening to weaken democracy versus intervening to support democracy. However, in history, we’ve seen well-intended actions that backfired. How can a nation know it’s really supporting democracy in the long run? Is it just a matter of intention?
I think the important part, and in terms of the things that I’ve been involved in, is there’s not an ideological content to it. What it is is providing the nuts and bolts, explaining that in order to have a democracy you have to have elections or you have to have the rule of law. It doesn’t say vote this way or vote that way. It’s completely different. And it is usually something that is welcomed by people in that country.
So it’s the difference between having an influence on the content of the politics versus the mechanism.
Right. Literally, we often talk about it as “nuts and bolts.” Working across the spectrum of people who want to know what the tools are, not what to think. It’s not propaganda.
[Ed. note: Albright called back after the conversation to add this to her answer.] The truth is that democracy assistance has nothing in common with cyber hacking and disinformation, and that’s what we’ve been warning about. And to compare them is I think to commit a dangerous false equivalency. It’s a little bit like saying that a doctor who prescribes a cure and a doctor who administers poison are morally equivalent because they both attended to the patient.
.
You’re one of the rare U.S. politicians to have dealt face-to-face with a North Korean leader. What’s your advice for President Trump going into a summit with Kim Jong Un?
I can tell you from my own experience that Kim Jong Un’s father was very, very smart. We were talking about missile limits and things, and he really knew all the aspects of it. I say that because the main thing is to be prepared. One of the last things that one needs to do is make off-the-top-of-the-head comments. And not to see it as a one-off. Summits either come at the end of a process — especially when you bring the president in to complete the deal, and that’s obviously not what might happen if in fact this meeting happens — or where the leaders meet in order to set the guidelines for it and prepare it, and [one can’t] just decide everything overnight with no preparation and very little discipline. That’s what I think is important. Preparation and discipline.
What are your thoughts about the potential summit?
There’s no way to tell at the moment, because I think that there has been an awful lot of language — “rocket man” and all that kind of stuff — and then there’s some of the things that the South Koreans have been doing, and the whole issue of the Chinese role. Is Xi Jinping where he was before all the tariff and trade stuff came out? And who else are we counting on? Personally I have believed for a long time that it’s important to have talks. It’s certainly better than the military option that was talked about, the fire and fury kind of stuff. But there are an awful lots of ifs here. The thing that worries me the most, frankly, is some kind of a military accident.
A nuclear accident?
Any kind. We don’t have any ambassador in North Korea. Not even in South Korea. So that kind of a thing, something that requires a quick decision to deal with an immediate issue and not having the infrastructure to really make that decision.
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What do you think of Mike Pompeo as a potential next Secretary of State?
I’m waiting for the hearings. I think they will be very important.
A record number of women are running for office this year. From your experience as one of the highest-ranking women ever to have served in the federal government, what do you think the policy effects of a more gender-balanced government could be?
First of all, it’s just a matter of fact that women are the majority of the population. It’s the loss of a very important resource not to have women politically and economically empowered, and it’s true in the United States and it’s true all over the world. Making huge generalizations, I do think women have the capability much more to empathize and to listen and to look for some kind of a middle ground. I also think that women are interested in a whole host of issues, with different experience, and it will be a great advantage to have men and women work together. The thing that I think is really missing at this point, in the gender balance but also in the way that a lot of these discussions are taking place, is that they are not really done in a way that is civil and respectful of other people’s views.
You write that generosity of spirit is the best antidote to the qualities that enable fascism. What are personal your techniques for cultivating that in yourself?
I grew up in a lot of different places, whether it was as a child in England or in Yugoslavia or in boarding school or coming to America. What that taught me was that the variety of people that exist and their views contribute to a richness in life, in listening to them. So my technique really is I like to hear people that have different views, and try to figure out, as I said earlier, what is it that has created their view of life. My attempt is to try to understand those with whom I disagree.
Which issues in the world today aren’t getting enough attention?
Climate change. I really believe that and I think that it is something that is hard to grasp, frankly. That worries me. Fighting over water is going to be much more dangerous than fighting over oil. And then since one of the issues has to do with migration these days, a lot of the people who are coming out of Africa are coming out because of climate change and desertification. They can’t live when there is no water and the climate is terrible. What also I think we haven’t gotten our head around is technology. There’s just no question. It is an incredible gift in so many ways but I do think that some of the issues that we’re dealing with now have to do with the loss of jobs because they’re now done by robots. And this is only moving even faster with artificial intelligence.
On the flip side of that, what’s something in the world that you’re optimistic about?
I am optimistic about young people.
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Putin Is a 'Smart But Truly Evil Man,' Says Madeleine Albright
newsweek.com/putin-smart-truly-evil-man-says-madeleine-albright-450332
April 20, 2016 World By Damien Sharkov On 4/20/16 at 1:22 PM EDT
Updated | Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has incurred the wrath of Russian President Vladimir Putin's allies after calling him a "smart but truly evil man."
In an interview with Austrian newspaper Die Presse, Albright defended the foreign policy of Bill Clinton's administration, in which she was Secretary of State during Clinton's second term. The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were the first former Communist states to join NATO in 1999, in what would become the first step of an eastward expansion which has strongly incensed Moscow.
"I am very proud of the NATO expansion. Then we managed to use the power of Western Europe and help the Balkan states," Albright said. "The United States saw its role as an indispensable nation which should do good all over the world."
Albright took a less positive view of Putin, whom she met during a visit to the Kremlin in 2000, shortly after he succeeded former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. When asked what her lasting impression was of the young president, Albright was critical.
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"He is smart, but a truly evil man," she said, describing him as "a KGB officer, who wants to keep everything under control and believes that everyone conspires against Russia."
"Putin had bad cards, but they were played well," she said. "At least, in the short-term. I think his goal is to undermine and split the EU. He wants to drive NATO from his sphere of influence."
Washington's former top diplomat also warned that the Baltic states should be concerned from Russia's military build-up on its borders, especially because of Russia's method of "asymmetric warfare."
Albright also dismissed Russian criticisms that the U.S. seeks to provoke Russia, saying "the U.S. has no problem with Russia, except when it occupies other countries."
"One always looks for excuses for Russia and I'm fed up with it," Albright said. "Russia is a country that provokes and then feels insulted."
In response, Putin-ally and chairman of Russian parliament's International Relations Committee Alexey Pushkov took to Twitter.
"Whether Albright is fed up or not, is not important," he wrote. "The U.S. and its allies are forced to deal with Russia. The opinion of some forgotten Secretary of State, is of nobody's interest."
The Evil of Madeleine Albright
dissidentvoice.org/2010/10/the-evil-of-madeleine-albright
October 18, 2010
"Could you have one of our U-2s shot down?"
by Gary Leupp / October 18th, 2010
Madeleine Albright is infamous for her reply to the question posed by 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl about the sanctions against Iraq in May 1996.
''-“We have heard that a half million children have died,” stated Stahl. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”-''
''-“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price–we think the price is worth it.” -''
Albright, who served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001, had a cruel disregard for the lives of Iraqis, Serbs, and others. But she apparently had a callous attitude towards the lives of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen too. In his new memoir, General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, writes about a White House breakfast in late 1997. (The account is cited by Justin Elliott in Salon.)
Early on in my days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we had small, weekly White House breakfasts in National Security Advisor Sandy Berger’s office that included me, Sandy, Bill Cohen (Secretary of Defense), Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State), George Tenet (head of the CIA), Leon Firth (VP chief of staff for security), Bill Richardson (ambassador to the U.N.), and a few other senior administration officials. These were informal sessions where we would gather around Berger’s table and talk about concerns over coffee and breakfast served by the White House dining facility. It was a comfortable setting that encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues of the day.
During that time we had U-2 aircraft on reconnaissance sorties over Iraq. These planes were designed to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes (over seventy thousand feet) both for pilot safety and to avoid detection.
At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”
The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can …” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.
“You can?” was the excited reply.
“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”
The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. “I knew I should not have asked that….”
“No, you should not have,” I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. “Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we don’t operate like that here in America.”
Imagine that! A Cabinet official suggesting a deliberate provocation endangering a military pilot’s life in order to justify a war: “…but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world.” Is this mere amoral pragmatism? Machiavellianism? It is in any case evil.
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Imagine that! A Cabinet official suggesting a deliberate provocation endangering a military pilot’s life in order to justify a war: “…but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world.” Is this mere amoral pragmatism? Machiavellianism? It is in any case evil.
(I’m reminded of how the key neocon text “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” authored by Paul Wolfowitz for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) “thinktank” in Sept. 2000, states that the “process of transformation” to the kind of super-militarized aggressive state the neocons hoped for “will be a long one absent some catastrophic event like a new Pearl Harbor.” And as the Deputy Secretary of Defense he warned of another Pearl Harbor in his speech at West Point in June 2001. After 9-11, widely compared in the media to the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941, he immediately set about preparations for war with Iraq.)
On January 31, 2003 President George W. Bush in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair seriously proposed provoking Saddam to shoot down a U.S. aircraft. According to notes taken my Blair advisor David Manning (the accuracy of which has never been challenged), Bush suggested “flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted with UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions. Maybe then the UN, which had refused to endorse the plan to attack Iraq and was sceptical about the justifications given by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, would endorse war. (Perhaps the military brass opposed the plan, which was never carried out.)
At the Clinton White House breakfast described by Gen. Shelton, Berger, Cohen, Tenet and Richardson were involved in separate conversations. The other cabinet members were Robert E. Rubin (Treasury), Janet Reno (Attorney General), Bruce Babbit (Interior), Dan Glickman (Agriculture), Mickey Kantor (Commerce), Alexis Herman (Labor), Donna E. Shalala (Health and Human Services), Andrew M. Cuomo (Housing and Urban Development), Rodney Slater (Transportation), Richard W. Riley (Education), Jesse Brown (Veteran’s Affairs), Federico F. Pena (Energy), and Albright.
Out the 14 members of the Cabinet, there were four women. The fact that Shelton deliberately avoids indicating the gender of his interlocutor may hint that it was one of them. It is hard to believe that Attorney General Reno would suggest sacrificing an airman to the head of the Joint Chiefs at a White House breakfast. Or the Secretary of Labor, or Secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s hard to believe anyone on the above list would so–except Albright.
Albright in her memoirs expresses regret for her “it was worth it” statement in the 1996 interview. And she told Newsweek in 2006, “I’m afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy—worse than Vietnam.” But she bears partial responsibility for the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (“Operation Desert Fox”), a prelude to the 2003 invasion. She helped produce the disaster.
And she helped produce disaster in the former Yugoslavia. As violence rose in the Serbian province of Kosovo, between the Kosovo Liberation Army and security forces, she (and Cohen) deliberately exaggerated the Kosovar Albanian death toll and demanded the U.S. right to intervene. She arranged the de facto alliance with the KLA, earlier labelled “terrorist” by U.S. officials. In March 1999 at the Rambouillet talks between Serbia and the Kosovar rebels, along with the U.S., its European allies and Russia, the U.S. demanded that the whole of Serbia (and other states within what was left of Yugoslavia) submit to virtual occupation by NATO. Yugoslavia had proudly remained outside the Warsaw Pact and had prided itself on participation in the Non-Aligned Movement. No government in Belgrade could have complied with Albright’s demands.
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The so-called Rambouillet Agreement was rejected outright by the Serbs as well as their Russian allies. But Albright immediately stated, “We accept the agreement”–as though there was any agreement. The bullying was conducted in such a smug fashion that the French Foreign minister accused the U.S. of becoming a hyperpuissance–not a mere superpower but a “hyperpower.”
John Pilger wrote, “Anyone scrutinizing the Rambouillet document is left with little doubt that the excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace negotiations were stage managed and the Serbs were told: surrender and be occupied, or don’t surrender and be destroyed.”
This was indeed Albright’s plan (and that of Bill Clinton, egged on by Hillary, who has confessed, “I urged him to bomb”), resulting in the deployment of NATO to bomb a European capital for the first time since 1945, killing at least 500 civilians (Human Rights Watch) and maybe ten times that number.
A Republican official later told a think tank that a certain “top official” had told him: “ We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.” Don’t we see a pattern here?
Throughout the last decade the neoconservatives have been the leading warmongers. But they have no monopoly on imperialist arrogance, contempt for truth and indifference to human life. Madeleine Albright is proof of that.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. Read other articles by Gary.
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