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The Atlantic Interview: Madeleine Albright
00:40:25
The former Secretary of State warns about a rise of fascism.
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Health and Human Services. Welcome to the Atlantic Interview. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic. On this week's show, we have Madeleine Albright. As I'm sure you all know, she was the first woman to serve as Secretary of State, acting as America's leading diplomat from 1997 to 2001. Before that, she served as America's Ambassador to the United Nations. She has a new book out called A Warning. As a Czech refugee from both Nazi and Communist occupation, Albright can tell the story of fascism from personal experience and from her experience as a secretary of state dealing with actual fascists. Our conversation was presented by the Atlantic and by Politics and Prose, and was recorded live at the 6th and I historic synagogue in downtown Washington, D.C. it's clearly going to be a tough crowd for you here. I just want you to prepare yourself for that. I have to tell you before we start, when I got here about a half hour ago, I walked into the green room. Madeline was signing books, and I said, because I have a tendency to joke around. I said, what is this book called, anyway? And she said, it's called Fashion. A warning. Sort of an ultimate Gilda Radner moment or something like that. But we'll skip the fashion and go right to the fascism. Let's start with definitions, if we may. Define for us the characteristics of fascism. Give us a thumbnail sketch of what you mean when you use the word fascism.
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B
Well, first of all, let me just say how happy I am to be here and that I actually paid homage to you by writing about the Atlantic Ocean.
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A
And then we're a fisheries magazine. Actually, people don't know that.
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B
And Hugo Chavez talked about the fact that he enjoyed politics and Prose. So that's my way of thanking all of you. So thank you. I do think that one of the issues actually are what the definitions are. And fascism is not easy to define. It is basically a plot or a plan where in fact, there is an identification with a tribe or hyper nationalism. It is where, in fact, you decide that it is. You identify with that group, but you already discriminate against those that are not part of the group and don't care about their civil rights or liberties of any kind. It is a way to really deprecate and not pay any attention to any kind of democratic institutions. It is how to use propaganda and information to put your message out and having rallies where in fact, you say terrible things about your opponent. And you then also even encourage violence. You do also try to get all control of power, authority, and a certain amount of security or military around you. And you never listen to anybody who disagrees with you. But it is not an easy definite thing to define, frankly.
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A
We will get to the person a lot of us think you're talking about in a. And by that I mean Vladimir Putin, obviously. We'll get to that in a minute, and we want to work through these definitions with you. But I thought it would be interesting to start at the beginning, which is to say your own life and your own story didn't have an average childhood. You bumped up right against fascism in its purest form. I want you to talk a little bit about your experiences as a child, your experiences through the prism of your parents. And what makes you think, based on what you saw then, that what we're seeing now around the world suggests that it's having a resurgence?
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B
Well, first of all, I was a very smart child, but at 2, I didn't understand much what happened.
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A
I was not even written Your first.
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B
Book yet, 1937, and the Munich Agreement happened in 1938, and the Nazis marched into Prague in March 1939. My father was a Czechoslovak diplomat, and the government in exile was moving and they went to London. And so my parents escaped with me at that time and lived in London. And I knew very little about my family in many different ways. I have pictures of me with my grandparents, but I don't actually remember any of that. And then being in England all through the war. And then when we came back to Czechoslovakia, I was eight years old, and I didn't know what grandparents were. I didn't remember anybody. And nobody was around. There was no family. And then my father became ambassador to Yugoslavia, and what happened is he had to leave again because the Communists took over Czechoslovakia. So that's twice the story. But I later found out, and I think there are a number of people here who know about this. I didn't know. I was raised a Catholic, married an Episcopalian and found out I was Jewish. And so I have interfaith dialogues by myself.
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Welcome home, by the way.
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B
Yeah, but what I found out also, and my brother and sister are here, because at the time, I had just been made Secretary of State when I found all this out and I couldn't leave my job. And so they went to Czech Republic and found an awful lot of things out about my family. And it does turn out, after a lot of research, that 26 members of our family were murdered in the Holocaust and so facing fascism directly. But I learned all that later. And so basically, I think that it is a story where a country was sold down the river and Hitler always needed a scapegoat. And that is the kind of thing that. That we're looking at. What is it that's happening? What kind of forces are there that makes this kind of thing happen?
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A
So before we come back to the American part of this story, let's talk about. Much of your book is a tour of countries, many of which you know very well, in which democracy is either on its back foot or has been completely obliterated. And the question is, and this is where I want to be very careful, do you see an analogous situation between the conditions in the world I'm not just talking about here or in certain countries of Europe, but across the world, conditions analogous to the conditions that you studied of the 30s?
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B
Well, particularly a lot of this book is history, and it really goes back to looking at Mussolini and Hitler, but then spends time looking at what is going on now in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Philippines, and in Venezuela and several other countries as we kind of go around. And what one does see are some similarities, and that is an unhappiness among people over something to do with their economic condition or the fact that there's a minority in their country that they feel is, in fact, undermining the system. But mostly it is just kind of trying to figure out how to run countries that are going through a lot of changes. That was true with Mussolini and what was happening in Italy. The part that truly blows my mind is that most of the countries that I've been studying, the people were either elected or their power was transferred constitutionally, and that the leaders that emerge take advantage of. Of that kind of pressure from below. That's the part about fascism that's so interesting and so dangerous, is that it does come bottom up, because there are people who feel that they've been discriminated against and technology has made them lose their jobs or something like that. And then there is a leader from above who takes advantage of that disquiet and makes it worse by, in fact, exacerbating the divisions in society and then says, I've got a solution for it. And. And we do see that in the countries that I've been looking at.
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A
So the obvious question for you is this Secretary of State, in a period in which America and the democratic idea were clearly ascendant. I mean, we don't even have to go into Fukuyama and the end of history to understand that the Soviet Union had collapsed on itself. There felt like there was a democratic wave. I'll ask you this in the context of a question that we often asked President Obama. President Obama had a fundamentally optimistic view of the nature of history, that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. To quote from King, has your thinking over the past couple of years shifted about inevitability of democracy?
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Well, no, but I do think it shows. Has shown me how difficult democracy is. And to go back a little bit in what you said, I do think that the story of my life was basically that Americans weren't there during Munich and terrible things happened. Then during the war, when the Yanks showed up, I was a little girl and it was amazing. And that's when I fell in love with Americans in uniform. Then what happened was that the war ended and Europe was divided as a result of agreements made between the Soviet Union and the United States and the part of the world and east of it was behind the Iron Curtain. And so for me, it was the question of what is America's role when America is not present, Terrible things happen, and when we somehow help, then better things happen. I could go through all that. So what I am. So when the wall came down and it was so interesting, Jeff, because I was able to do surveys all over Europe at the time and focus groups and attitude surveys, and people were literally euphoric about what had happened, and they just wanted to be Europeans. And it was. I had a great time because I was vice chair of the National Democratic Institute. I went to Prague with John McCain as he was head of the International Republican Institute. And. And there was this sense America could help in providing kind of the nuts and bolts of democracy. And they all seemed really ready to do it. I think now we keep. I've just had a discussion with some of my Czech friends. How did this happen? And I think some of it happened was because there were divisions in society, and a lot of people were really desirous of being free and being able to. To think and do what they wanted to. But the bottom line is a lot of people were not gaining from what was going on. There was a lot of corruption going on. And so they in many ways wanted to go back to a safety net. And then they were, in fact, kind of promoted by people like Viktor Orban, who wanted to seize power for himself. But I think the issues are similar in terms of problems that were there, in terms of divisions caused by economic necessity and by certain aspects of the democratic systems being still too new and slow to deal with the problems.
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A
I want to come to America's role in the world, and we can talk about that in the context of a particular dictator, Bashar Al Assad, and some of the events of the past week. But let me stay on this for one minute and come back to your optimism, your seemingly innate optimism. I think a lot of people, maybe even in this room, believed five or 10 years ago that history was an arrow flying forward. The conditions you're describing in country after country resemble more conditions in the 1930s in Italy and Germany than they resemble the United States or Western Europe in the 90s. So I want to press you on your optimism a little bit. I mean, are we in an endless cycle? Where are we move democratic and then move anti democratic? What is the role of technology in accelerating a democratic decline?
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B
Let me just say I went to college, to Wellesley, sometime between the invention of the iPad and the discovery of fire. But the bottom line is that because one of the professors had done a trans, Made a play out of Candide, we all had the motto, everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. And there really was this kind of sense that things were going to get better. That is how I grew. I am an optimist who worries a lot. And I am worried about the fact. Exactly what you're saying is that there are conditions out there that in fact provide the petri dish for something terrible to happen, where in fact, some of the definitions that I gave of fascism would take hold. And that's why I worry a lot that. And by the way, there's this saying that we all know now, see something, say something. I've added to it, do something. And that's what I'm trying to do by writing the book.
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Well, let's go right at it. The conditions that you've studied across Europe, Asia, elsewhere places from Hungary to the Philippines, do you see those conditions right now in America, the preconditions for fascism?
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I do see some of the divisions that I think were evident in terms of a lot of people feeling that they have been disenfranchised or have lost their jobs as a result of technology, that they haven't had the opportunity of an education that would teach them the new skills. And there is kind of this sense that is true in all the countries that we've been talking about. They need somebody to Blame. And so that was certainly true in Europe. There's always the scapegoat. And I think the thing that's happening here, there are people that have been left out. And so the idea is to blame the foreigners, the immigrants. And we're operating on the fear factor, which is another aspect of it which is engendered by this kind of sense that worse things are going to happen instead of having an optimistic view of things. But I do see some conditions, and by the way, I was planning to write this book no matter who'd gotten elected, because I really do think that there's certain aspects not so some of the 30s where. And the 30s were difficult, obviously. But the interesting part, and FDR was attacked from the right and the left, but he was able to develop some kind of common ideas, centrist. And what I don't see now is this search for common ground. It is more like, you know, real divisions on the right and the left and the exacerbation of the differences.
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A
You do something very clever in this book repeatedly in your history of the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. Every so often you'll drop in a little bit of an Easter egg. You'll tell the reader, for instance, that Mussolini's motto, one of his mottos was drain the swamp in Italian. It sounds better in Italian, but there's a kind of indirection to what you do in there. It's not that indirect, but it's somewhat indirect. But let's go. Let's just go at the question. Is the president, the current president of the United States, a fascist or is he someone with fascistic tendencies?
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B
He is not a fascist. I'm not calling him a fascist. I do think he's the least democratic president of modern history.
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A
What's the difference between the least democratic president and a president with fascistic tendencies?
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B
Well, I think that I'm trying to be really careful about it because there are certain of these tendencies that are out there, but a lot of it is based on the fact that his instincts are not democratic in terms of what he's been saying about people like you, the press, and then also how he treats the judiciary, that he does in fact, try to divide us versus them. And I think that there are various parts of it, but I don't think that he is a fascist. I think that he is, however, got tendencies that make me very nervous. And so I prefer to call it undemocratic.
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A
Okay, so let's treat you. We're all going to treat you as a canary in the coal mine or a Bellwether, what would he have to do for you to say, you know what, this guy's a fascist? I mean, how far away are we? I mean, you must have to borrow an expression, a red line.
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B
Some of it is, I think the willingness, how much violence is involved in it, the willingness to do anything to stay in power and really much more. I don't want to give any advice here. No, I think that basically that's the part that. And then kind of subjugating all the various institutions that have to do with democracy and undermining them. But mostly it's this kind of sense that not allowing any part of the institutional democratic issues to work and then a certain level of kind of a bully with an army. And I think that's the part that I'm worried about.
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A
Can you be, and I'm not asking this with snark, but can you be a fascist if you are incompetent at working the levers of government and power? Should I do the snarky version?
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I mean, that may be very hopeful.
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Well, go talk about this.
- [18:58]
B
I think that there is a question about that. I think the decision making process doesn't seem to work. And so. But I am trying really here not to be crazy alarmist though what I am doing is this book is titled the Way I Wanted it to be a Warning. And I think that that is where we need to figure out what we can do. I kind of have my to do list, which is that there needs to be an awful lot more public participation. I think we cannot allow the way that the press is being treated and I have made a big point of that. We can't allow the things that are happening to the judicial branch. We cannot allow this kind of sense that we can find people, that we can't operate on the basis of fear all the time. But the thing that we all have to do, those of us who care actually have to do positive things, which is to run for office, to support those who are. And not to care just about the federal government, but also mayors and local councils and state and really push on. And then the other part, I have to say, we have to learn to listen to people we disagree with. Now I would like to warn you all that as I drive to work every morning, I do listen to right wing radio and I yell and give people the finger. And so you know what you should do?
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A
You should call in. That would be surprising.
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B
That would freak them out. But I do think one has to listen and also try to listen to people you disagree with I think that part is very important. And then I have been so moved by literally the children who marched and who want gun sanity so that they don't have to wear flak jackets to school. And so I think more activism is what we need to do. And that is we have to guard against this happening. And then the other part is we cannot have scapegoats. That is one of the aspects. The Hungarian Viktor Orban doesn't like immigrants. The polls don't either. And just generally we can't blame others for issues that have something to do with the fact that the social contract in many ways is broken down and people are left out.
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A
I want to come back to the question that you've cleverly alighted so far, which is the red line, the red line issue. Let me make it easier. If the president fires Mueller or Rosenstein, would that cause you to think, you know what this guy has? I don't want to use the word fascist, but that he has actual fascistic tendencies?
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B
Well, one of the things that I haven't really mentioned specifically on purpose, which is that one of the real signs symptoms is contempt for thinking that you're above the law. And I think that is something that if that happens, that that is something very much to worry about. But the bottom line is if he does that, I think in many ways that will make people realize that he's gone too far. But I do think that that then energizes people and should energize all of us to actually be much more forthright in pushing people to run. And there are elections coming up. And one of the things that I think is really important and by the way, in my role as chairman of the National Democratic Institute, I go to countries to observe elections and people stand in lines in the rain and the heat for the privilege of voting and we are doing something that is unacceptable, is normalizing what is going on now and not thinking that we have any power and our power is through voting and running for office.
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A
The there's an interesting aspect to the phenomenon of Trump that I don't think we talk about enough, which is that this wouldn't be possible without the acquiescence and support of the structures of one of the two major political parties. You are a well known centrist. Centrist suggests that you had an easy time or is at least a goal of working with moderates from the other side. And so my question, obviously you have a close relationship with John McCain and others. My question for you is this. And this I'm asking You is almost to analyze, what do you think happened in the Republican Party that weakened the immune system to the point where this person became the flag bearer for a major American political party?
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B
I think nobody believed that this could happen. I think any of us that watched when there were all those Republican candidates up there that they would let this happen. And I think that what is going on, which I find very troubling, is the fact that there is not a pushback by what I call decent Republicans. Senator McCain is certainly doing everything he can, and a few others are, but that they are seeing their party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, really destroyed. And some of it is because they're afraid about their own election prospects. But what is fascinating are the number of members that have decided not to run, which is interesting but not particularly helpful. What needs to happen is somebody has to run in their place and not in fact, some far right Freedom Party person. But I do think, you know, I do believe in bipartisanship. I had to in order to work with Jesse Helms. But the bottom line is we actually managed to do some things together. And I do believe that that's important. And frankly, you know what's so interesting? There's really been a problem with the State Department budget and support for democracy. And I've spent a lot of time on the Hill and there are Republicans that want to help. And I have said Also Constitution Article 1 is about the power of Congress. It's Article 1 time. And they have to stand up and do something.
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A
Have you ever met Donald Trump?
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B
Pardon?
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A
Have you ever met Donald Trump?
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B
No.
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A
Would you like to meet Donald Trump?
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B
I really would not.
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A
Why?
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B
Because I have nothing to say to him.
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A
Do you think that he has the capacity to learn? Do you think that he has the capacity to understand?
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B
I do not, frankly. And that's the sad part, because I have worked for a lot of political people, starting with Ed Muskie and a lot of different people, and they all had the capacity to learn and to understand that there are things that are a little bit different than they thought and listen to others. And I don't get that feeling at all about Trump.
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A
You write about a large range, and I want to come to the North Korean and the Syrian situation. But you write about a large range of foreign despots you've met over the years, foreign leaders you've met. I'm curious if you can we all do this in our minds. We compare people to people we've met. Who in the panoply of leaders you've met, did Donald Trump Remind you of?
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B
Well, that nobody particularly, I mean, not.
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A
A Viktor Orban, not a populist, European populist.
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B
What I find very interesting, actually, Viktor Orban was a very interesting character that I met in 1986.
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A
You met him when he was a good guy.
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B
When he was a good guy, by the way, George Soros funded his education at Oxford. And he also was really. Orban started a party of youth, Fidesz. As he got older, it got to be an old party. But the bottom line is he was an interesting guy that was trying to sort out what to do in Hungary after all that time in communism. The question is, what happened to him? But he's very smart and educated in a number of different ways and I think not kind of off the top of his head, something fluky that happens. And I truly can't think of anybody of these particular leaders that is as undisciplined as Trump. I think that is his major issue, by the way, today was Alyssa was very kind to introduce me about all these firsts. So I was the first woman secretary of state, and I was the first secretary of state to go and visit Kim Jong Il in North Korea today. I had another first. I was with Jake Tapper on cnn, and we were talking about sanctions against Russia and various things. And all of a sudden he said, thank you very much. And they do breaking news. And it's the first time that I have been interrupted by a porn.
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A
Mazel tov. It's a rare achievement. You've introduced a new subject, which is the way I'd feel less abashed if we weren't sitting immediately in front of the Torah, by the way, I was.
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B
Thinking whether that was appropriate in the setting.
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A
No, but everything that's going on is not necessarily appropriate. We have to still talk about it, talk about America's role in the world right now. You've had problems with Barack Obama's foreign policy. You had problems with George W. Bush's foreign policy. You have problems with foreign policies across the spectrum. We all sense that something is different right now. Talk about this in the frame of American indispensability. Have we ceased to be, or are we ceasing to be the indispensable nation that you've talked about?
- [29:32]
B
Well, let me just say, my whole life, as I've said, has been based on America being present and doing something. And when I went to the United nations in 93 and President Clinton had a different view of what we needed to do. But the thing that was happening, a lot of things that had to be done domestically because he felt that not enough had been done by the previous administration. So it was the economy, stupid. And there was really a question about what our role was going to be international. And he's the one that first used the term indispensable. I just used it so often, it became identified with me. But there's nothing about the word indispensable that says alone. It means that we need to be engaged, and we need to be engaged because it's good for America. And so what happened, by the way? Americans don't like the word multilateralism. It has too many syllables, and it ends in an ism, but it only means partnership. And so what we saw during the Clinton administration was American engagement with others in order to try to deal with the kinds of issues that had plagued the world during World War II. Deliberately. One could say I certainly wouldn't anymore, that we didn't know what was happening during World War II. But all of a sudden we knew everything that was happening in the Balkans, for instance, and how to figure out, in partnership with others, to do something about it. And that's now the question, what is America's role in the world? And the hardest part, Jeff, is the following, is that it used to be that American presidents and American secretaries of state would go to a country even where we disagreed with the leader and talked about human rights and democracy and made our points clear, and now we don't do that. And therefore some of these people feel that they have the liberty to go ahead and undermine democracy.
- [31:30]
A
Does the fact that so many Americans apparently have ceased to believe in indispensability as a project or America's presence in the world as a positive, ameliorative aspect of global affairs, does that reflect poorly on the establishment, the foreign policy establishment here in Washington, the establishments of the two parties?
- [31:52]
B
Well, I think that there's a reason for different things, and partially, I do think the war in Iraq was one of the biggest mistakes the United States had made, and President Obama was elected to get us out of that. And I think there is kind of a sense of why are we involved in a variety of places. And I talk about something called the Karzai effect. President Karzai of Afghanistan not only did not thank us or be grateful for the fact that people died and that we spent a lot of money there, he actually said it was all our fault that things were screwed up. So why would we want to help places that Americans are the most generous people in the world with the shortest attention span, and also Want to have somebody say thank you. And so I can understand what has happened here and that we have to worry about ourselves because the infrastructure doesn't work. But what you need is a president that can explain the relationship between our position in the world and our health at home.
- [32:54]
A
But I think you're saying that some of Trump's instincts might actually be correct or at least rooted in some kind of reality, a reality that Americans feel that they're not thanked for all of the sacrifices that Americans have made. Is that fair?
- [33:07]
B
I do. I mean, I think he has. That's why I said some of it is bottom up, that then there's a leader who can take advantage of it. And what you need to do is have people that can explain why we need to. We don't have to be everywhere and we don't have to do everything alone. But I think the world can't function without American leadership. And the thing that drives me crazy is Trump making us seem like victims. You know, America has just been taken advantage of all the time. All these foreigners are coming, dreadful things are happening. The scapegoat part and not that leadership that understands that America does need to be engaged.
- [33:49]
A
Let's talk about the events, the very dramatic events of the weekend, and I don't mean Michael Cohen, I mean something that's much more important, which is the destruction of Syria. You are, you'll probably not cotton to this word necessarily, but you are known as a bit of an interventionist Bosnia forward. You disagreed with President Obama's decision not to bomb the Syrian chemical munitions factories and sites when that was an issue in that administration. Do you have words of praise for Donald Trump for enforcing a red line established by President Obama?
- [34:33]
B
I am very, I think it was right to respond. But the bottom line is there's no strategy. We have no idea where this is going and kind of one offs are not a good idea. And I think that the complete disarray of the decision making process has been shown over this weekend where, according to what I've read, they couldn't make up their mind in terms of what option to take. And a number of different things. John Bolton was there for three days and various problems to do with that. Then trying to figure out what to do about Russia. What happened today on Russia and the sanctions is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen where the president has undermined his United nations ambassador who has really been doing a very kind of stalwart job in talking about what Russia.
- [35:25]
A
She's an old fashioned McCain style Republican from your perspective, was that fair to say?
- [35:29]
B
Nikki Haley, I'm not sure I can categorize her, but I really do think I didn't like some of the things she said when she first went to the UN and said we're taking names about who's on our side or not. But I have been in those councils where the Russians are pushing us around, and I think she's been very strong about what needs to be done and about the sanctions. And all of a sudden she says they're going to be sanctioned. Then all of a sudden the president says, I don't think so. I mean, aside from making her look bad and undercutting the highest level at the moment, person in diplomacy, she's a cabinet member and an ambassador. And then also one of the problems is that the signals that Trump gives generally abroad. I travel abroad and many of us do, but as a former diplomat, you're not supposed to criticize your own country. It's impossible to explain what Trump is doing and trying to explain to allies and adversaries.
- [36:31]
A
Maybe this is just the crazy Nixon approach.
- [36:33]
B
No, there's too. I mean, you can be crazy a little bit, the crazy Nixon approach, but not permanently crazy. And I think that it truly undermines what is going on and we need allies and friends. But if you're constantly mixing signals, you're in trouble. And then if for some reason he is really gives Putin a very wide berth and he's kind of apologetic for how many diplomats were kicked out and now he changes his mind on something, it does give kind of sustenance to the idea that the Russians do have something on him.
- [37:11]
A
Let me ask you this one final question. I mean, I have a. There's a million questions, and I hope some people will get to them. You have a really good finger feel, a good sense of people with non democratic values, non democratic tendencies. And you have a very good. After years of diplomacy, you have a very good sense of motivation. Can you explain or tell us what you think is going on in the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?
- [37:44]
B
I. No, I mean, I.
- [37:47]
A
Let me rephrase it in a way that brings us to.
- [37:49]
B
Yes, I would say the following thing. I met Putin the first time when he was still acting president at an APEC summit where he was trying to be very ingratiating with everybody. Then we had the summit in Moscow. And what was very clear to me was that he was very smart and tough in so many different ways. He is a KGB agent. That is what we have to remember. And he has played a weak hand very well. I think that I cannot understand what it is that Trump sees in him, which makes me think that there are some other things going on in terms of what is being investigated and the fact that Trump is not capable of looking into what the Russians did during the elections here and what they clearly have done in Europe, because he's concerned about the legitimacy of his election, is definitely thinking that he's above the law. And that's what worries me, because. And that's why we have to be very vigilant about the elections, the midterm elections and then the presidential elections, because Putin is capable. He has really militarized information and is using asymmetrical warfare now. And I think somebody needs to make clearer to Trump what is going on and that this does not have to do with his legitimacy. This has to do with undermining democracy, which is why I've said the things I did about not having democratic instincts.
- [39:23]
A
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for listening to the Atlantic interview. This episode was produced by Kevin Townsend, with productions of work from Matt Thompson, Kim Lau, and Katherine Wells. If you like the show, give us a rating. And by that, I mean a positive rating. Thank you very much for listening. See you next week.