The United States lost one of its leading foreign policy voices with the passing on Wednesday of Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state. During her tenure, she helped redefine the United States’ role in the world in the wake of the Cold War—a conflict that had profoundly shaped her own life, as her family had fled Czechoslovakia for the United States in 1948 after a Soviet-backed Communist takeover. Half a century later, as Washington’s top diplomat, she made the case for sustained U.S. engagement with the world in a 1998 essay for Foreign Affairs. The challenges were different than those of the Cold War, “but the stakes have not changed,” she argued. “It would be unforgivable if America’s commitment to democratic principles were now to wane because there is no superpower rival to spur us.”
After leaving the State Department, Albright continued to make the case that support for democracy should be at the center of American foreign policy. She wrote a final essay for Foreign Affairs in 2021, “The Coming Democratic Revival.” Despite the battles authoritarianism had won in recent years, Albright remained optimistic about the outcome of the war. “Democracy is not a dying cause,” she wrote. “In fact, it is poised for a comeback.”
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— Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Editor
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