Aida 203 Albright ………
I remember a time - admittedly, it was a long time ago - when a "newspaper" was just that: sheets of paper with news printed on them. Just how far we have drifted from that was again proved, not only in the media gush about Bill Clinton's re-election victory but equally in the fulsome praise heaped on Madeleine Albright, Clinton's choice as America's 64th Secretary of State.
As such, she is not only the highest ranking woman in the history of the US government, but conceivably the most politically important woman in the world today. She would be fourth in line of succession should Clinton be disabled, after the Vice President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate.
As such, this appointment surely deserved minute and critical attention. Instead, it was almost all mendacious hype. We have seen little serious analysis of Albright's potential foreign policies.
"The Lady Is a Hawk," said a Newsweek headline. Most assessments asserted she would be a "tough-minded practitioner of realpolitik." Main basis for such assumptions seems to rest with her reaction to Cuba's downing of two civilian planes, terming this "cowardice, not cojones," a Spanish vulgarity meaning testicles.
Also that, as US Ambassador to the UN, she made life a misery for Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former UN Secretary General. Certainly, she did work long and hard to block Boutros from a second term: to the point where it appeared she was conducting a personal vendetta against him. Too true. She was. Boutros, who can recognise self-promotion when he sees it, signed his career death warrant when he referred to her as "an East European peasant with American crassness."
The British papers, on the whole, did a much more candid wrap-up on her. The Sunday Telegraph, 8.12.96, headed a piece on her: "Age 59. Battle Axe and First Woman Secretary of State … a woman unlikely to bring a new golden age in UK/US relations." It added that she "clearly knew how to make enemies." The London Times editorialised that with her whiplash tongue and highly abrasive manner, she would be regarded as "a political creation of the President."
One of the few US writers to express disbelief in her professed toughness was Richard Grenier of The Washington Times: "If she's such a hawk, why does she throw her political lot in with America's doves?" Sensible question. Very much like Albright herself, her "hawkishness" is a media invention. Her record is proof enough.
After gaining a doctorate at Columbia University, she went to Washington to work for Senator Edmund Muskie, later Secretary of State. She was a foreign policy adviser in the Presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, two of the biggest wimps in creation. In 1978 she went to the White House as national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, later helping him write his memoirs.
If, like her boss, Bill Clinton, Albright ("not-so-bright" to her enemies) suffers from the New World Order vapours, that too is readily explained. She was accepted by the New York-based, NWO-promoting Council on Foreign Relations sometime around 1975. She later earned her stripes by nominating then Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas for CFR membership.
Born Maria Jana Kobelova in Prague on May 15, 1937, she spent the war years with her family in London. Moving to the US, she married, then divorced, wealthy newspaper heir Jasper Albright. Because of her Central European family background, she is the first US Secretary of State in memory to speak Russian, not to mention French, Polish and Czech. She may indeed be well versed in European and East European politics, but her knowledge of Asia, the Middle East and Africa is said to be thin.
Despite her so-called "muscular instincts" and "combativeness" she supported the nuclear freeze; opposed the Gulf War; is, with Clinton, an ardent advocate of deep cuts in US defence spending. She strongly defended US intervention in Bosnia and Haiti. Unlike many of her political countrymen, she is also a keen advocate of the UN, which she sees as representing "the good guys," the "peacemakers, freedom fighters, the people who believe in human rights." She is said to have pressured Clinton on repayment of the first $1 billion of the $1,5 billion the US owed the world body.
The reshaping of the UN and America's role with it was the subject of many of her official speeches when she became chief US delegate to the UN in January, 1993. During her confirmation hearing, on January 21, 1993, Albright declared: "History will record that the end of the Cold War has marked a new beginning for the UN … I am firmly convinced that, today, we are witnessing the best chances for fulfilling the United Nation's original mission."
The UN's "original mission" was to serve as the seed bed from which a collectivist, socialist NWO would sprout and flourish.
Summing up: It is reported that, with heavy backing from women and feminist groups, Albright besieged Hillary Clinton with almost daily calls, reminding her that she was available for the most senior post in American international relations. It does seem that her appointment is more related to US domestic politics than the wider world. Clinton could well have decided that loyalty to him personally was the supreme requirement of his surrogates. But, for the world in general, it means continued uncertainty and anxiety about what the next four years will bring.