A eulogy to Madeleine Albright (1937–2022)

I best remember Madeleine Korbel Albright, née Körbelová, from her commencement address to GWU students on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2000. I was among the gowned graduates standing on the picturesque lawn that day. I don't recall if she was wearing an event-appropriate brooch of the kind she was known for, but I like to think that she was.

As Dr. Albright explained to us, she had never dreamed of becoming Secretary of State; not out of modesty, but because she had never seen one in a skirt. Hers was an unlikely trajectory, considering she had emigrated to the US as an 11-year-old refugee fleeing post-War communism in Czechoslovakia. She would eventually be appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in 1993, and Secretary of State four years later. Perhaps did her exceptional success story as an immigrant cement her view of America as "the indispensable nation".

“I was taught to strive, not because there were any guarantees of success,
but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.” (2003)

Her tenure coincided with a post-Cold War era of hubristic optimism, best embodied by "The End of History and the Last Man"; a liminal space in time, bookended by the fall of the Berlin wall and the sobering September 11, 2001 reminder that History is less Fukuyama, and more Huntington. The events in Bosnia in 1992 and Kosovo in 1998 were, especially with today's hindsight, further indicators that the post-Soviet world order was nowhere near settled. In a premonitory 1998 speech at NATO headquarters, Dr. Albright declared, "it's very important for the Europeans to carry a fair share and have a sense of their own defense identity". Despite being made in Brussels, that address took "only" 24 years, until earlier this month, to finally be heard by the EU. There truly are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.

Farewell, Dr. Albright, may you find the peace that this world is lacking right now.