Trailblazing diplomat and politician Madeleine Albright, an immigrant who rose to become the the first female secretary of state, died on Wednesday of cancer, her family said. She was 84.
“She was surrounded by family and friends,” the statement said. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.”
Albright, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Czechoslovakia, got into politics working as an aide to the late Sen. Edmund Munskie (D-ME), who served as secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter. She worked on the National Security Council under Carter and again under President Bill Clinton until Clinton appointed her U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and then secretary of state in 1997.
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As secretary of state, she steered the U.S.’s post-Cold War diplomatic strategy of “assertive multilateralism.” She advocated for the expansion of NATO and pushed for U.S. intervention to bring peace to the Balkans, infamously telling a reluctant Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
But her tenure was not without controversy. She participated in failed talks to negotiate peace between Israelis and Palestinians and was accused by some of going too soft on al-Qaeda following the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a precursor for 9/11. She called the Clinton administration’s reluctance to intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide her “greatest regret from that time.”
Just last month, Albright penned a New York Times essay warning Putin that an invasion of Ukraine would leave his country “diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.” It was titled, “Putin Is Making a Historic Mistake.”
When President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, he made sure to highlight her refugee past.
“And as an immigrant herself—the granddaughter of Holocaust victims who fled her native Czechoslovakia as a child—Madeleine brought a unique perspective to the job,” he said.
“This is one of my favorite stories. Once, at a naturalization ceremony, an Ethiopian man came up to her and said, ‘Only in America can a refugee meet the Secretary of State.’ And she replied, ‘Only in America can a refugee become the Secretary of State.’”
After serving in public office, Albright founded and chaired a private business strategy firm called Albright Stonebridge Group, chaired several think tanks and policy groups, and worked as a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
“She was a tireless champion of democracy and human rights,” her family said.
