Coronavirus Report: The Hill’s Steve Clemons interviews Madeleine Albright

The Hill’s Steve Clemons interviews former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Read excerpts from the interview below: 

Steve Clemons: The timing and the titling of the book couldn’t be more appropriate. “Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st-Century Memoir.” So, describe for us the import, the characteristics of this tough time as you see it right now.

{mosads}Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I do think that when I wrote the book, it was before the virus. And the statement Hell came from one of my most famous sayings, “That there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” But it never occurred to me how relevant the title is for today, because we are exactly the way you described it in the introduction in terms of a lot of confusion and decisionmaking in this country, and how it relates to other countries, and how we deal with something that really does know no borders, and what our institutional structures are that can deal with this. And you referred to something out of my past, which is, I believe, that as my parents had no control over where the bombs fell in London, their behavior made all the difference. They had control only over their behavior. I think now, as individuals, we ourselves cannot figure out about the virus. All we have is control over our behavior and how we approach this and how we figure out how to solve it — to be problem solvers.

Clemons: One of the things that occurs to me is that Donald Trump’s America First policy is something where you know the consequences of that may be coming to roost. And I’d love to get your thoughts on it. I remember hearing you one time saying America will have its dark days. It will need its neighbors. It will need support. What are your thoughts?

Albright: Well, I think that the current policy of America First or America alone, or America thinking that it’s a victim, is totally wrong and counterproductive when especially we do know that there’s nothing about this virus that says it stays in one country or that we’re not interconnected in terms of supply lines. And so I do think that President Trump’s policy has hurt us in terms of how we’re supposed to resolve this now, when we have to work with other countries, when we have to make sure that we are dealing with a virus that, as I said, knows no borders, but also needs to be dealt with by countries working together, sharing intelligence information, and not trying to take advantage of each other, but to understand that the only resolution to this is cooperation.

Clemons: I’d love to hear a bit more about your book and why you wrote it.

Albright: I have recently had to describe myself in six words — worried optimist, problem solver and grateful American. And what I really do think is all of them are relevant. But I think the way that the issue is taking hold is very, very complicated, which is that there clearly are economic problems — just the numbers of people that are unemployed and what it has done to not only our economy but other economies. At the same time, there are the disease issues and the humanitarian aspect and the number of people that are not employed because they are helping on the front lines. They are needed in order to make sure that the social distancing takes place and so the analysis of this is important. But then I think we need to understand that we have two issues that are almost in conflict with each other — that you have to be able to solve both and not decide that the most important thing is getting everybody re-employed and that the business and the economy is important and it doesn’t matter whether more people get infected. And the other way around that we can’t just decide that we can’t open up at any point and what the rules are. So the problem solving part of this is to understand the issue itself and then recognize that the institutional structures that we have in the United States need to be looked at more carefully in terms of the coordination and the planning. And then that even though Americans don’t like the word multilateralism because it has too many syllables and ends in an -ism but basically it will require international cooperation through the institutional organizations that exist and those have to be modified and fixed to deal with issues. So I’m in no way underestimating how difficult this is. This is very difficult and requires leadership that doesn’t flip-flop around, that is not providing any kind of I think predictable guidance for this, and that’s what worries me.

Clemons: How do you look at the World Health Organization and the early days with China and what rolled out because there’s a lot of blame-gaming going on right now?

Albright: Well, I do think that it needs some fixing. I’ve said that people and institutions in their 70s need refurbishing. The U.N. is 75 years old, and it really does need some help. And the WHO is tasked with a very difficult set of issues, and it does need looking at. This is where I’ve decided, though, that America’s approach is totally counterproductive and dangerous. I know from my own experience when we decide not to pay an organization, we don’t have the leverage that we need in order to make changes. And there is no other set up like the WHO, one can rethink and decide to create something totally new — we don’t have time for that.

Clemons: When you were secretary of state in the Clinton administration, I can imagine if you had been hit with the same kind of challenge at that time, you would have called world leaders together, you would have called other global secretaries together, you might have put together an international platform. Do you worry that that doesn’t seem to be happening today? I don’t see a global platform of coordinated effort around the coronavirus.

Albright: I don’t either. And I think you point out that we can’t do this alone and those relationships, because they have the same problems. And let me just tell you, when you call together a group of foreign ministers, everybody is conscious of national sovereignty, but also conscious of the issues that you’re trying to solve. And so I think that it’s unfortunate. And in fact it’s worse than that, because, as I understand it, the U.N. Security Council is trying to follow something that the secretary general has suggested, a cease-fire and working to solve this issue and not criticize the WHO, and the U.S. is blocking that Security Council resolution. So, we are not only not cooperating, not reaching out, we’re doing the opposite. And I find it stunning that the secretary of state of the United States would be taking that kind of a position.

Clemons: As we approach November, what should we be on the alert for?

Albright: What I am worried about is that we do know that the Russians were involved in the 2016 election. We also know that there already have been criticisms about mailing in ballots and all the various aspects, and there is a sense of trying to undermine the credibility of this election before we ever begin. And so, I think we know that a lot of it goes through the states. We have time. We have to prepare. We have to make clear to people that the election will happen, has to happen.

Clemons: I want to ask you just about women right now — women and this virus, women in America, women in politics. Are you heartened? Are you happy where this is, or do you feel like yet again, the interests and the leadership of women are being shuttled to the side?

Albright: Well, I do think that there were, the primaries and everything in the Democratic Party were fair and went well. I think [former] Vice President [Joe] Biden has made clear that he’s going to have a woman vice president. I do think that we can’t forget about the various problems that are out there that often are carried at the expense of women and that some of the things that are happening in the U.S. and also in other countries, it brings domestic violence and the variety of issues that we have always been concerned about. What I find interesting is that there were articles about the fact that the countries in which they have been able to deal with the virus are those that are run by women: New Zealand, Taiwan, Norway, Germany. And the question is why? And some of it has to do, I think, with women’s capabilities in multitasking and having peripheral vision, understanding that one of our main jobs as officials is to take care of people.