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The Lessons of History
FORMER US SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
Well I think even before we got there - I mean came into office - there were obviously a lot of questions as to whether the UN was taking the whole operation seriously enough and whether the international community was reacting properly to the horrors that were increasingly evident. You know there were questions as to what plan was going to work and when I first got there the Vance-Owen plan was just being discussed and there generally was kind of a sense that things were going very slowly and not very well.
You wrote I think a memo to the President called Why America Must Take the Lead. What was the argument you advanced in that?
Well my sense about this - and let me just kind of do a lot more context on this - and that is that I really did think that there was a huge opportunity in the post Cold War period to try to follow up on actually on what the first President Bush had been talking about, which was an undivided Europe which was free.
And clearly there was the whole problem as to what was happening in the former Yugoslavia that 1) not only prevented that from happening but also was undermining , was creating a sense of instability and danger in Europe.
There were a lot of people generally - as arguments even outside official circles - who didn't see the Balkans as that important - you know as a kind of appendage to Europe rather than seeing it as part of this overall story. And I also had had a lot of background 1) my father had been the Czechoslovak ambassador to Yugoslavia and even though I was a little girl I had grown up, I had spent two years there, at that stage I had spoken Serbo-Croatian, and had also obviously heard a lot from my father in the ensuing years. I also had spent my life studying changes in communist systems and had spent a lot of time looking at what a Yugoslav model . . .so it was just an area of the world that I felt I knew a lot about and that we really had an opportunity to try to resolve a lot of the problems if there were a more active American role and that was where I was coming from.
Now the other part that I think put me in a little bit of a different position was that there were people, as we progressed at the UN, on the Security Council who in fact were pointing out that there needed to be more action and more activity.
And so I was privy to being a part of a much broader discussion than some of the people in Washington.
You were advocating quite a big step though weren't you, both in terms of the idea the intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, of another state and also in the use of American power in a way that wasn't necessarily or obviously acting in the same direction as America's national interest?
Well I wouldn't put it that way.
I mean I . . .my whole theory that I had operated on previously and reflected in many aspects of my life or my history was that if the United States stayed out of things, ie Munich, terrible things happened.
When the United States got involved World War II better things happened. When the US allowed - or whatever word you want to do - when it happened that the Soviets liberated Czechoslovakia terrible things happened and so I believed basically in the goodness of American power and the necessity where possible for us to apply it.
Now I . . the question is whether this had anything to do with US national interests. I believe that it did because I do think that having a undivided and stable Europe is in US national interests and what was going on in the Balkans was making that difficult to accomplish.
So you were in a way a neo conservative before they existed?
No I was not. I mean I am a combination of a, what I have often called either an idealist pragmatist or a pragmatic idealist and a combination of a Wilsonian approach and a realistic approach because I have always believed that the most realistic policy for the United States is one that reflects our ideals.
Now the thing that does make me a neo conservative is that while I had said many times - and this was primaily after, not right at the beginning, a phrase that actually President Clinton used first but I was associated with was that the US was an indispensable nation but I never said alone and that I think is a qualitative and quantitative difference from some of the things that the neo conservatives have said.
Nevertheless when it came to the question of Kosovo and going to war over that you were prepared to do that without the authority, the specific authority of the United Nations. Did you feel uncomfortable about that?
No because again we were operating . . .first of all what happened was that there were a number of United Nations resolutions dealing with the dangers in Kosovo including one - the number of which slips my mind at the moment - that basically did say that what was happening in Kosovo was a threat to peace and security and that was a resolution that set up the issue.
Then the thing that distinguished what we did in Kosovo totally from what has been happening in Iraq is that we had the consensus of Nato so we were going with the consent of a multi-lateral organisation already.
And there were two aspects to this. One is that I do . . . I did and do believe that it is not necessary for Nato to have a UN authorisation to act and we did not want to set up that precedent and second we did have this kind of set up resolution already and I knew after a lot of detailed work and diplomacy that the Russians would veto a resolution so there was no point in walking into that blind alley.
But I thought it was useful to be able to get UN support when we could but I didn't think that it should block us from having action but I felt comfortable because we did have the support of Nato.
But it wasn't, the action in Kosovo wasn't endorsed until after the war was over was it. It was retrospectively endorsed by the United Nations?
No there was a pre . . well specifically endorsed . . .we went to the UN as quickly as possible in order to internationalise the post war situation in order to avoid exactly what is happening now which is to have a UN . . . to be able to have a kind of layered approach where the US was obviously in there as was Nato but so was the EU, the UN, OSCE etc.
So we went to the UN immediately after but there was a resolution previously that had generally outlined the fact that what was happening in Kosovo was a threat to peace and security which is kind of I think it may have mentioned the importance of Chapter 7 but didn't specifically refer to the fact that there should be military action.
But do you think that by taking action without specific and prior authorisation from the United Nations, you may at least have prepared the ground for what happened intellectually over Iraq even if you wouldn't completely compare them.
Well I think that there is ... We had always said that we would act multilaterally where we could and unilaterally if we must. That has been a policy that is not particularly novel.
I think that those who wish to interpret what we did as a precedent for Iraq are wrong because basically it was a completely different situation and it was very important to us to be able to go in with Nato in contrast to Iraq where they specifically Nato was left out.
How serious do you think the damage is that has been done to the United Nations as an institution by the crisis over Iraq?
Well I think it has been very unhelpful to the UN and you know the UN at this moment at kind of a low point but it has gone through other low points in its history and I think that if the United States were to understand the importance of the UN generally in terms of being able to support international action in other places and to not only do its peace keeping activities but also be able to carry through on the World Health Organisation or UNICEF or work on some of the economic issues I think it would be very helpful.
But I think what is important to understand here is the damage done to the UN and the Security Council specifically is not just the fault of the United States.
I was stunned when President Bush said that it didn't matter what the United Nations would do but I was equally stunned when Jacques Chirac said that there was no resolution that they wouldn't veto so I think they both damaged the UN - much more serious for France because France relies on its position as a permanent 5 member to validate its international position, we have on anyway.
But the research done for your own Pew global attitudes project suggests that whoever is to blame the impact on the UN's standing and reputation both in America and indeed more or less everywhere in the world is very grave indeed.
Absolutely, there is no question about that and the question now is to what extent can that be fixed. Because you know that stupid cliché about if the UN didn't, or whatever, if it didn't exist we would have to invent it does happen to be true in this case and while it is going to be important for the UN and the Security Council specifically to revalidate itself it is necessary, it is a useful component of the international system and I think it would be important for the US and others to recognise that.
Now as someone who, you know I have spent a lot of time in my life on the United Nations and have studied the whole period when it was a paralysed by the Cold War and then was privileged to be there at a time when there was a lot of kind of experimenting and looking at what the UN could do.
It was a very exciting time.
There were mistakes that were made and there were also attempts to try to make the peace keeping operations more rational, to try to make sure that there were mandates and budgets but also very inventive in terms of trying to figure out if one thing didn't work what else would.
So for instance in Haiti there was a decision made to first have a US led force and then turn it over to the UN. That became kind of a model so that that was used in a permutation in East Timor when the Australians led it or in Sierra Leone when the British . . you know, so there were ways that people began to look about how to modify the peace keeping operations so that they would suite the particular situation.
Do you think that effort has been destroyed over what has happened in Iraq?
I hope not and I think that there are, I mean if you look at the fact that the French have now taken a leading role in Congo and that there . . .I think what is more serious, or what is a test at the moment is Liberia, to see whether if this administration felt that there was no reason ever that they would use the UN in Iraq, because they saw it was a different kind of problem and the fact that from there perspective the UN had failed with the inspectors and hadn't lived up, the international community had not lived up to its obligations to make sure that Security Council resolutions were obeyed, now there is back to kind of a - if I may put it this way - a classic peace keeping situation, or more classic and one in which the United States does have a direct interest and I think that is one of the things to watch.
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