On December 5, 1996, President Bill Clinton wrote a chapter in United States history by appointing Madeleine Korbel Albright as head of the State Department. After being confirmed in this position by a unanimous vote in the Senate, she was sworn in on January 23, 1997 and became the 64and Secretary of State of the United States of America, the first woman to hold this post.
Professor and diplomat, Madeleine Albright (who died this week, March 23) was strongly inspired by her roots and, through her exceptional career, marked her time. She had to deal with a world in full redefinition, having to work towards the construction of a post-Cold War “new world order”, a concept evoked by the previous administration, but lacking a definition and the means to operationalize it. Throughout her term, she worked tirelessly to promote the values of democracy, but above all, she broke the glass ceiling that history has too often imposed on women wishing to contribute to the construction of the world.
Give women their voices
From the 1980s, from her position as professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, she asserted herself in a tangible way in favor of a greater role for women in the world of foreign policy. She then took over the management of the Women in Foreign Service Program, intended to facilitate women’s access to a career in international administration.
As Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright continued her work to make a place of choice for women in the American governmental administration. In this last respect, she wants her immediate professional entourage to include a significant representation of women; she wants to demonstrate concretely that, from the position of private adviser to that of secretary general, passing through that of adviser to the State Department, women can aspire to a career in the American federal government: the Krsitie Kenney, Wendy Sherman, Bonnie Cohen and Elaine Shocas lead the way.
President Clinton is sensitive to this dimension, since around the Cabinet table, Madeleine Albright rubs shoulders with other women in whom he has placed his trust: Janet Reno as Attorney General; Donna Shalala, as Secretary of Health and Human Services; Alexis Herman, as Secretary of Labor; Carol Browner, as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Charlene Barshefsky, as Trade Representative and Chief Negotiator for the United States of America.
The result was that “the president’s endorsement of the advancement of women as a foreign policy goal was well received in the administrative high places of international affairs,” said Albright biographer Thomas Lippman. .
work for democracy
For Madeleine Albright, economic development and the establishment of a better life for women everywhere in the world also go through the establishment of democratic bodies. Just as much as the cause of women, the defense of democracy animates it. This theme therefore becomes another hobbyhorse, because Madeleine Albright believes deeply in her power to liberate peoples and in the ability of the United States to promote its emergence everywhere in the world.
The preservation of American interests and values, which are democracy and respect for human rights, therefore becomes the trump card of all State Department interventions. The means that Madeleine Albright uses to achieve this depend on the countries with which she negotiates. But in return, the Secretary of State will seek to contribute constantly to the debate on democratization in foreign policy. For some, this means fostering the emergence of democracy more broadly on the planet. For others, it means rather opening up the process of foreign policy formulation to the population and breaking down the walls that traditionally close this environment to the population in general. Madeleine Albright works on both aspects.
Thus, in the face of popular apathy towards foreign policy, she invests many hours with several groups of citizens to try to explain how American international relations concern them directly. From the start of her mandate, the Secretary of State went directly to people. She crisscrosses the entire territory to explain her position on the threat that still hangs over the country and any decisions that her administration intends to implement to deal with it.
The result is strong ties now forged with the American population. Madeleine Albright has set herself the goal of recreating a political consensus around crucial goals in terms of security policy, at a time when the disappearance of a common enemy, communism, made any attempt in this direction difficult. This initiative was characterized by Washington Post journalist Michael Dobbs as an innovation that no one had undertaken since Henry Kissinger.
For Madeleine Albright, foreign policy “is about influencing the actions of countries in a direction that serves your interests. [certes, mais aussi qui] respects your values,” she said in her memoir. It is clear that his legacy is richer than this observation, yet already carrying a whole program.