Madeleine Albright died just as the murderous historic forces that she had spent her career trying to quell are raging in Europe again, unleashed by a nemesis, Vladimir Putin, who she had consistently warned was a grave threat to peace.
The first female secretary of state was exiled twice as a child refugee from the country of her birth, the former Czechoslovakia, by fascist and communist tyranny. That experience, and the impact it had on her family, forged her destiny as an academic, a diplomat and an American patriot. It also informed her approach to post-Cold War Europe and the shattering conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo during her State Department tenure, as well as her support for NATO expansion into former Warsaw Pact nations.
Albright's passing on Wednesday comes at a moment when Europe is again being swept by fears of a belligerent Russia, mass refugee flows, civilian carnage and the fear of nuclear war as Putin's invasion of Ukraine unsettles 30 years of strategic stability.
Until the end of her life, Albright was sounding the alarm about Putin's intentions and character, and she predicted the strategic disaster and bloody resistance that he would face if he invaded Ukraine.
"Instead of paving Russia's path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin's infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance," Albright wrote in an essay in The New York Times on the eve of the war last month. "Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin."
Albright had an early chance to examine Putin's character, and she was the first senior US official to meet the new Russian President, early in 2000, soon after he had taken over from Boris Yeltsin. She revealed in The New York Times last month that she had written in her notes on the flight home that Putin was "so cold as to be almost reptilian" and was embarrassed at Russia's decline.
Albright, a Georgetown University professor, had spent decades studying communist and fascist autocracy before she was plucked from relative obscurity to be then-President Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations. Her expertise also shaped her view of another self-styled strongman — ex-President Donald Trump, who she warned was a threat to American democracy long before his denials of his 2020 election loss and incitement of the US Capitol insurrection.
"I am not calling him a fascist -- I am saying he has undemocratic instincts that trouble me a lot," she told CNN in 2018. Trump's anti-immigrant demagoguery and hostility to refugees troubled her, especially as someone who had sought a haven from tyranny in the US.
At the end of her life, Albright made no secret of her fear that vicious political forces of extremism, which had defined her destiny and caused so much carnage across the decades in Europe, were stirring again.
"I am in my 80s and I have seen an awful lot. It took me a long time to find my voice," Albright told CNN in 2018. "I did not have a high-level job until I was 55 years old. And I'm not going to shut up, frankly. I do think it's important for those who have seen these kind of things to put out a warning."
