Albright's record shrouded in misperceptions

Madeleine Albright's eloquent case for the progress of women in the society appealed to her recent Penn audience, and justifiably so. Her strong endorsement of democracy as a system of government and equality among nations also sounded correct -- a noble goal for the contemporary world. However, with respect to the latter -- political systems and international relations -- many of her actions as the secretary of state were actually far from the ideals she presented. In many ways, her legacy was a major setback for international relations and for the role our country assumed under the Clinton/Albright leadership. As time passes and facts about recent U.S. actions and policies are uncovered, it is becoming increasingly clear that Albright's policies did serious damage to the United Nations, created a disaster in the Balkans and revived some aspects of the Cold War with Russia and China. As U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Albright had a reputation of strongly imposing U.S. policies and demands on the organization. In his memoirs, former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali describes a discussion with her in which he said that he was looking forward to cooperation and compromise on issues where U.S. policies differ from those of U.N. Albright was surprised because her stand was that U.N. should follow U.S. policies, rather than question or dispute them. Boutros-Ghali had strong support from a majority of U.N. members for his reappointment to a second 5-year term. However, because of his independence, the U.S. strongly opposed Boutros-Ghali and prevented his reelection. Then, Albright maneuvered to get a person who would be more in-line with U.S. policies. Thus, the support of the majority was not sufficient to get him reappointed for the second term. Our media did not pay much attention to these events, nor did they highlight the fact that in recent years, the U.S. was often in minority in the Security Council. At least once we were outvoted by all Security Council members, including Great Britain and France. This imperial attitude has earned us many enemies around the world. Albright's description of her actions against Yugoslavia was a total misrepresentation of the entire tragedy which she created. She organized negotiations about Kosovo in Rambouillet, near Paris, at which the Yugoslav government and the Albanians were given a U.S. solution: they were told to sign an agreement, with the warning that one side -- Yugoslavia -- will be bombed if they didn't. The solution was a setup; it included an unpublicized clause that NATO would have the right to occupy not only Kosovo, but the entire country -- which no president could sign. Albright proclaimed the Kosovo Liberation Army, formerly recognized as a terrorist organization, as "liberators" and started bombing the entire country. Albright led Bill Clinton to believe that the bombing would "stabilize" the region, topple Milosevic and strengthen NATO. But the result was total chaos -- because the U.S. supported the terrorist Albanian extremists. The bombing of civilian targets, predictably, strengthened Milosevic. It also weakened NATO, leading to the European Union's founding of its own military force. In recent months, the facts about Albright's policies have uncovered the deceptions they were based on. An international team of experts found that the "massacre of Albanians" used to trigger the Rambouillet ultimatum could not be confirmed by evidence: it was a setup. Albright also invented the oxymoronic concept of "humanitarian bombing." In her speech at Penn, she did not mention the use of depleted uranium arms widely criticized in Europe, nor horrendous environmental damage from pollution of Danube, the most important international waterway in Europe. Thus, what Time magazine called "Madelleine's War" was a historic tragedy not only for Kosovo and Yugoslavia, but for Europe and for the reputation of our country. The war led to the serious deterioration of our relations with Russia and China, as recent events show. Albright's speech gave a nice but deceptive cover on her truly tragic legacy in international relations and on our country's international reputation. Vukan Vuchic is the UPS Foundation professor of Transportation in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

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