Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to hold the post, between 1997 and 2001, in the second administration of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, died on Wednesday (23).
She was 84 years old and died of cancer, family members said on social media. “We are heartbroken to announce that Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, the 64th US Secretary of State and the first woman to hold this position, passed away earlier today. The cause was cancer,” the family wrote on Twitter.
Born in former Czechoslovakia in 1937, Albright fled the Nazis as a child during World War II and fled to the United States.
When she became US Ambassador to the United Nations in 1993, she pushed for a tougher line against the Serbs during the Bosnian war, but faced resistance during Bill Clinton’s first term, when government foreign policy experts recalled the difficulties of United States in Vietnam and were determined not to repeat that mistake in the Balkans. Only after three years did the country respond, through NATO, with air strikes that forced an end to the war.
An advocate of “muscular internationalism,” says James O’Brien, Albright’s senior adviser during the Bosnian war, once angered a Pentagon member by questioning why the country had more than 1 million military personnel if it never used them.
Early in the Clinton administration, he supported a United Nations war crimes tribunal that ended up putting Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian leaders in prison.
An episode from 1996 has become known that exemplifies his hard-line ways, when Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed American planes. He said at the time: “That’s not cojones [colhões, em espanhol]that’s cowardice”.
During efforts to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, without success, Albright traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, becoming the highest-ranking official in the North. USA until then visiting the communist country.
After stepping down at the end of the Clinton administration, Albright became an icon for a generation of young women who sought inspiration in their struggle for opportunity and respect in the workplace. Albright liked to say, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help themselves.”
