US foreign policy

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Blinken: growing evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine a ‘punch to the gut’

      by

      Blinken: growing evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine a ‘punch to the gut’Secretary of state promises US will join allies in documenting atrocities and hold perpetrators accountable Growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine are “a punch to the gut”, the US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Sunday, promising that America would join its allies in documenting the atrocities to hold the perpetrators accountable.A retreat of Russian forces around Kyiv has revealed evidence of atrocities against civilians as Ukrainian troops and journalists have moved back into a broad swathe of suburbs and towns around the capital.“We can’t become numb to this. We can’t normalize this. This is the reality of what’s going on every single day as long as Russia’s brutality against Ukraine continues,” Blinken said on CNN’s State of the Union.“You can’t help but see these images as a punch to the gut. We said before Russia’s aggression we thought it was likely that they would commit atrocities. Since the aggression we’ve come out and said we believe that Russian forces have committed war crimes, and we’ve been working to document that to provide the information that we have to relevant institutions and organizations that will put all of this together.“There needs to be accountability for it,” he added.Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, echoed Blinken’s stance on the same program, saying the international community was sickened by the horrific images emerging from Ukraine, including the apparent execution-style killings of unarmed citizens.“It is a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades and it’s horrific, and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed,” Stoltenberg said.“It just underlines the importance that war must end, and it is [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s responsibility to stop the war.”Asked about holding Putin and Russia’s military leaders accountable, Stoltenberg said: “It is extremely important that the international criminal court has opened an investigation into potential war crimes, that all facts are on the table, and that those responsible are held accountable. So I strongly welcome the investigation.”Blinken said it appeared Russia was withdrawing forces from the Kyiv region, but he warned its military was likely preparing to strike elsewhere in Ukraine, or even planning to return to the capital at a later date.“It’s too early to say what that actually means because they could be regrouping and restocking and replenishing, and then coming back to Kyiv. It’s also very possible that what we’re seeing is what it seems to be, a focus to the east and the south,” he said.“[But] the will of Ukrainian people is clear. They will not be subjected to a Russian occupation, whether that’s in and around Kyiv or whether that’s in the east and the south.“Here’s the problem. In the meantime, the terrible death and destruction that you started with is going to continue and that’s why it is so urgent that Russia end this war of aggression, and we do everything that we can to support the Ukrainians.”Blinken would not be drawn on the details of US military aid being sent to Ukraine, but said the aim was “to make sure they have the systems they need”.“That includes many different weapons systems,” he said. “Let me give one example, between the United States and our allies and partners, for every Russian tank, there are or soon will be, more than 10 anti-tank systems.“That’s what’s been happening. It’s been incredibly effective because of the courage and bravery of Ukrainian forces.”In a later interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Blinken said Russia was regrouping after having “been dealt a devastating setback” by Ukraine’s resistance.“Russia had three goals going into this: to subjugate Ukraine to its will, to deny its sovereignty and its independence; to assert Russian power; and to divide the west, divide the alliance,” he said. “And on all three fronts, it’s failed. Ukraine is now more united. A sovereign, independent Ukraine is going to be there a lot longer than Vladimir Putin’s on the scene.“Russian power has actually vastly diminished, its military has greatly under-performed, its economy is reeling. And, of course, Nato, the west, are more united than in any time in recent memory.”Asked about the prospect of easing sanctions as part of peace negotiations, Blinken said the issue was in Russia’s hands.“The purpose of the sanctions is not to be there indefinitely. It’s to change Russia’s conduct. And if as a result of negotiations, the sanctions, the pressure, the support for Ukraine, we achieve just that, then at some point the sanctions will go away. But that is profoundly up to Russia and what it does going forward.”TopicsAntony BlinkenUS foreign policyUS politicsRussiaUkraineEuropenewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of history

      by

      The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of history Julian Zelizer of Princeton has assembled a cast of historians to consider every aspect of four years that shook AmericaAfter thousands of articles and scores of books about Donald Trump’s mostly catastrophic presidency, it’s difficult for anyone to break dramatic new ground. But this new volume, with contributions from 18 American academics, is broader and deeper than all its predecessors, with essays covering everything from Militant Whiteness to the legacy of Trump’s Middle East policies, under the title Arms, Autocrats and Annexations.The result is a great deal of information that is familiar to those who have already plowed through dozens of volumes, enlivened by a few new facts and a number of original insights.One of the best essays, about the Republican party Trump inherited, is written by the book’s editor, Julian Zelizer. The Princeton historian reminds us that the “smashmouth partisanship” perfected by Trump actually began when Newt Gingrich snared the House speakership nearly 30 years ago. In 1992, Pat Buchanan’s speech to the Republic convention featured all of the gay-bashing Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, (and may other Republicans) have revived with so much gusto in 2022.Trump swooped in to profit from White House photographer’s book deal – reportRead moreWith major contributions from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the rightwing media machine, most of the GOP moved so far right it didn’t become Trump’s party because he “seized control” but rather because “he fit so perfectly” with it. Most Republicans were “all in” for Trump, from Mitt Romney, the ex-never Trumper who voted with his former nemesis more than 80% of the time, to “moderate” Chris Christie, who gave Trump an “A” four months after his four years of scorched-earth governance were over.Nicole Hemmer, from Columbia, offers an excellent primer on the irresistible rise of rightwing media, reminding us that in the last year of the first George Bush presidency, Limbaugh was spending the night at the White House. By 2009, the shock jock “topped polls asking who led the Republican party”.By the time Trump started his run for the presidency, in 2015, he had “grown far more powerful than the political media ecosystem that had boosted his rightwing bona fides”. This became clear after his dust-up with Megyn Kelly. Moderating a primary debate, the Fox anchor challenged his long history of sexist statements. Trump declared afterwards: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”The Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, “stayed silent”, Hemmer writes. Another executive, Bill Shine, “told on-air anchors not to come to Kelly’s defense”.By the spring of 2016, Fox was becoming less important than Breitbart, an extreme-right website which researchers at Harvard and MIT declared the new anchor of a “rightwing media network”. It was Steve Bannon of Breitbart who “armed Trump with something like a cohesive political platform … built on anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal politics – the same agenda Breitbart.com was promoting”.“Sure enough”, Trump’s Twitter feed “during the campaign linked to Breitbart more than any other news site”.Eventually, just about everyone on the right became a Trump disciple. Glenn Beck compared him to Hitler in 2016. By 2018, Beck was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat, though he blamed the media’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for “forcing him to become a Trump supporter”. As a former rightwing radio host, Charlie Sykes, explained: “There’s really not a business model for conservative media to be anti-Trump.”A Brown historian, Bathsheba Demuth, demonstrates that Trump was also a perfect fit for a party that endorsed a propaganda initiative of the American Petroleum Institute that portrayed environmental protection as “a dangerous slide toward communist authoritarianism”. Among loyal constituents were evangelicals, who either saw human dominion over nature as “a doctrinal requirement” or just thought the whole debate was irrelevant because of “Christ’s imminent resurrection”.The most surprising fact in this chapter is that the fossil fuel industry was so sure Trump was a loser in 2016, it gave the bulk of its contributions to Hillary Clinton.Margaret O’Mara, of the University of Washington, describes big tech’s key role in our national meltdown. She reminds us of a key, mostly forgotten moment 10 years ago, when “Google and Facebook successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission for exemptions from disclaimer requirements” that required political ads to say who paid for them and who was responsible for their messages.The companies argued the requirements would “undermine other, much larger parts of their businesses”. Disastrously, the FEC went along with that pathetic argument. After that, no one ever knew exactly where online attack ads were coming from.O’Mara also recalls that Facebook provided the 2016 Trump campaign with “dedicated staff and resources” to help it purchase more ads on the platform. O’Mara mistakenly reports that the Clinton campaign received the same kind of largesse. Actually, in what may have been the campaign’s single worst decision, it refused Facebook’s offer to install staffers in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters.Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRead moreAnother chapter, by Daniel C Kurtzer of Princeton, analyses what Trump supporters consider their president’s greatest foreign policy achievement: the initiation of diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco.A conservative journal summarized the accomplishment this way: “Washington is strengthening repression in Bahrain, underwriting aggression by UAE, sacrificing the Sahrawi people [of Western Sahara, to Morocco], undermining reform in Sudan and even abandoning justice for Americans harmed by Sudan. The administration calls this an ‘American first’ policy.”The last chapter focuses on the two failed attempts to convict Trump in impeachment trials. Those outcomes may be Trump’s worst legacy of all. Gregory Downs, from the University of California, Davis, writes that the failures to convict “in the face of incontrovertible proof” may convince all Trump’s successors “that they have almost complete impunity as long as they retain the support of their base, no matter what the constitution says”.
      The Presidency of Donald Trump is published in the US by Princeton University Press
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansUS domestic policyreviewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognition

      by

      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognitionJoint event had been planned ahead of Doha Forum that would have set process in motion to grant group diplomatic recognition The US was poised to set the Taliban on the path to diplomatic recognition before the plan was derailed by the Afghan rulers’ sudden U-turn on a promise to allow girls’ education, the Guardian understands.The group prompted international outrage and confusion on Wednesday when it reneged on a deal to allow teenage girls to go to secondary school, just a week after the education ministry announced that schools would open for all students.Taliban decide against opening schools to girls in Afghanistan beyond age of 11Read moreUS diplomats had been so optimistic that the Taliban would make good on the promise that a joint event had been planned ahead of this weekend’s Doha Forum in Qatar that would have set the process in motion to grant diplomatic recognition to the group.A seat had been reserved for the Taliban at a panel at the forum dedicated to girls’ education in which a Taliban representative would have addressed the role of women with Afghan female activists.The sudden reversal undermined the argument that a more “moderate” leadership now dominates the Taliban, and such optimism was further clouded this weekend when the group ordered Afghanistan television stations to remove BBC news bulletins in Pashto, Persian and Uzbek.In a statement on Sunday the BBC said “This is a worrying development at a time of uncertainty and turbulence for the people of Afghanistan. More than 6 million Afghans consume the BBC’s independent and impartial journalism on TV every weekWestern officials made it clear that diplomatic recognition will be impossible unless the decision on girls’ education is reversed. The move will also make it harder the international community to raise money for an international pledging conference next week, and require tighter handling of any cash raised so that it does notThomas West, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, said: “I was surprised by the turnaround this last Wednesday and the world has reacted to it by condemning this move. It is a breach first and foremost of the Afghan people’s trust.“I believe hope is not all lost. I am hopeful we will see a reversal of that decision in the coming days.”But West defended the US engagement with the Taliban saying that a complete diplomatic rupture would mean abandoning 40 million Afghans amid growing concerns over a possible famine in the country.“We are talking about the modalities of an urgent humanitarian response, the need for more than a humanitarian response, a policy not just an admire the problem of a broken banking sector but find ways to fix it, a professionalisation of the Central Bank so that the international financial community can begin to have confidence in it, we are talking about terrorism and we are talking about women’s rights.“One of the first times we sat down in October in a formal setting they had a request of us ‘please put our civil servants – 500,000 – back to work’. We thought a logical place to start given the sector resonated so much in the international community was education. We had requests of them, as well. Number one, women and girls could attend at all levels across large swathes of Afghanistan. Number two we wanted to see a monitoring mechanism and third there be a serious and rigorous curriculum. Over the following the months the international community receive the necessary assurances, and more importantly the Afghan people were told on March 23 we would see girls attend secondary education and that did not occur.”Hosna Jalil, a former interior minister was one of many Afghan women at Doha to claim the Taliban will not be able to keep a lid on the demand for education. She said the last 20 years had not been a waste but left a positive legacy. “We facilitated a generation, two thirds of the population, that knows what a better life looks like. That is why we will not give up. They are loud, they believe in freedom and democracy.”Malala Yousafzai, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for all children’s right to education, told the Forum that times had changed since the Taliban first banned girls’ education in 1996. Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership divisionsRead more“It is much harder this time – that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls’ education. They are learning in the hide-outs. They are protesting on the streets. This ban will not last forever. They were waiting outside the school gates in their uniforms and they were crying. Seeking education is a duty of every Muslim,” she said.Dalia Fahmhy, an Afghan professor of political science said in 1999 no girls were in secondary schools. “Within 15 years later there were 3.7 million girls. Over that period a thousand women became business owners. This cannot be curtailed. We live in a digital age and 68 % have cellphones and 22 % are connected to each other and to the world. This cannot be curtailed. 27 % of the parliament were women.”TopicsTalibanAfghanistanUS foreign policyUS politicsSouth and Central AsianewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden seeks to reassure Europe as he walks tightrope over Ukraine crisis

      by

      Biden seeks to reassure Europe as he walks tightrope over Ukraine crisisPresident reiterated his message to Brussels that America is back, while he promises to impose sanctions on 300 members of the Russian parliament He did not shove the prime minister of Montenegro at a photo-op, he did not call the British prime minister and German chancellor “losers” and he did not deride Nato as a bunch of grifters looking for a free lunch.So low was the bar set by former US president Donald Trump that, merely by condemning Russia’s Vladimir Putin rather than gushing over his biceps, Joe Biden earned good will on his unity and resolve tour of Europe.The president came to Brussels on Thursday with promises to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the month-long Russian invasion, give $1bn in new humanitarian aid and impose sanctions on 300 members of the Russian parliament.It was an attempt to project reassurance that Biden, born during the second world war, can emulate President Franklin Roosevelt’s “great arsenal of democracy” without stumbling into a third.US expands Russian sanctions and plans to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugeesRead moreBut the 79-year-old’s handshakes and whispers with France’s Emmanuel Macron and others at the Nato, G7 and European Council summits may put the seal on the Obama paradox: an American president more popular abroad than at home.Gallup surveys conducted before Russia invaded Ukraine showed the image of US leadership making a significant recovery from the Trump era. “Between 2020 and 2021, American leadership saw double-digit gains in 20 of the 27 Nato members surveyed both years,” the polling firm said.That stands in vivid contrast with Biden’s approval rating within the US, which this week fell to a new low of 40%, according to a Reuters/ Ipsos opinion poll. The survey found that 54% of Americans disapprove of his job performance as the country struggles with high inflation.Biden’s approval rating matched Trump’s at this point in his presidency: both stood at 40% in mid-March in their second year in office. The relief of western allies at having America back at the table is unlikely to be reflected by domestic voters in the midterm elections in November.That is why Republicans are hammering away at Biden by urging him to do more for Ukraine though with few specific details and, more loudly and convincingly to the electorate, by blaming him for soaring gas prices at home. They intend to prove the old adage that all politics is local.The point was illustrated on prime time cable news television on Wednesday night. CNN’s Anderson Cooper opened his show with coverage of the war in Ukraine; Tucker Carlson, on the conservative Fox News channel, talked instead about supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson declining to offer a definition of “woman” during her Senate confirmation hearing.CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter noted: “As Cooper showed horrifying drone footage of the widespread devastation in Mariupol, Carlson showed his audience a sex-ed type graphic of the female reproductive system.”It observed: “Four weeks after the war commenced, there are signs that fatigue is setting in. TV news ratings, for instance, have started to fall back to reality after ballooning early on. And perhaps another sign is the return of culture idiocy that is once again saturating channels like Fox and social media feeds.”It is a further reminder to be grateful that Trump no longer has his finger on the Twitter button – or the nuclear one. The man who once posed the biggest threat to global democracy has been replaced in that role by Putin. Biden beat one and must now thwart the other.So far that has meant a “Goldilocks” approach – not too hot, not too cold, not too weak, not too provocative. This received a boost on Thursday when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivered a video address to Nato from Kyiv that did not, according to White House officials, include calls for a no-fly zone or Nato membership, giving Biden some breathing room.Still, Zelinskiy naturally urged Nato to stiffen its spine and do more, and it remains unclear how Biden will respond if an increasingly desperate Putin resorts to biological, chemical or even nuclear weapons. Western unity will be tested as the costs of war bite into the global economy.The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, dismissed calls to follow the US by boycotting Russian energy supplies, warning: “To do so from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and all of Europe into recession.”The president who made a contest between democracy and autocracy the guiding principle of his foreign policy will also be aware that Thursday’s meetings are being watched closely by China, which has sent mixed signals about the invasion and may yet give Putin military support.China’s decisive turning point: will it side with Russia and divide the world?Read moreNato’s determined response, and the underperformance of the bogged down Russian army, may serve as a warning to Chinese president Xi Jinping and scramble his calculus for an assault on Taiwan. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Palo Alto, California, told reporters this week: “Xi is pissed as hell because it completely changes the timeline and the dynamics of the situation.“The most fascinating dimension of this crisis right now is to watch Xi Jinping be completely tied up in knots over what to do about this. He and the senior Chinese leadership are clearly struggling for a narrative and a response.”Standing against a blue backdrop dotted with Nato logos, Biden addressed the issue of Chinese intervention at a press conference. He recalled that, in a recent call with Xi, he pointed out that many US and foreign corporations have left Russia. “I indicated that he would be putting himself in significant jeopardy. I think that China understands that its economic futures are much more closely tied to the west than it is to Russia. So I’m hopeful that he does not get engaged.”He reiterated his message to Brussels that America is back. But towards the end of the question and answer session, someone raised European concerns that Trump might get re-elected in 2024 – raising the spectre of a return to the uncertainty, insults and Putin-praise singing.The president replied: “One of the things I take some solace from is I don’t think you’ll find any European leader who thinks that I am not up to the job… I don’t criticise anybody for asking that question. But the next election, I’d be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me.”Steeped in foreign policy after decades as a senator and vice-president, Biden is likely to be thinking about geopolitical questions in terms of decades. Unfortunately for him, his political legacy could be decided by Tucker Carlson and viewers’ demand for instant gratification.TopicsNatoJoe BidenUS foreign policyUS politicsVladimir PutinRussiaUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Madeleine Albright hailed as a 'trailblazer' by colleagues – video

      by

      Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia and rose to become the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, her family said. Colleagues across the US state department and the UN have remembered Albright as a ‘trailblazer’ whose impact is felt ‘every single day’

      Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies aged 84
      Madeleine Albright obituary
      Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’ More

    • 38 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Madeleine Albright obituary

      by

      Madeleine Albright obituaryDiplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who has died of cancer aged 84, was the first woman to hold the office of secretary of state of the United States. It fell to her to cope with the painful dilemmas presented for the US by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the rise of Islamic opposition in the Middle East.While she fulfilled the role in the administration of President Bill Clinton, she could not take the place that office usually confers as third in succession to the president because she was not a “natural born citizen” of the US. Like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, secretaries of state in the Nixon and Carter administrations, she had been a refugee from Europe. Like them also, Albright came to the job not via business or politics but through an academic background in the study of international relations.Like Brzezinski, her professor at Columbia University, she was the daughter of a diplomat. Her father, Josef Korbel, took refuge from the communist government of his native Czechoslovakia, becoming a professor at the University of Denver. She was brought up a Roman Catholic and became an Anglican after her marriage, but when Albright became secretary of state, she received letters telling her that her parents were Jewish, and a Washington Post journalist, Michael Dobbs, after painstaking research, convinced her that this might be true. This caused a good deal of comment, some of it critical of her having concealed her ancestry. The truth seems to be that she was genuinely ignorant of her Jewish heritage.She concluded that in the Czechoslovakia of the 1930s, where Jews were often seen by Czechs as part of the German minority, her parents, Josef and his wife, Anna (nee Spieglová), thought she would have a safer life if she were seen to be Czech. Three of her grandparents subsequently died in Nazi concentration camps.Eldest of three children, she was born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague. Her family took refuge from the Nazis in Switzerland, where she was educated at the Préalpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles on Lake Geneva. Madeleine was a French version of her Czech name.During the second world war, her family moved to London, which became the headquarters of the Czech government in exile, and Madeleine was brought up first in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, then in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Later, the Korbels returned to Prague, but in 1948, when the communists took over there, they moved to the US.In 1957 she went to Wellesley College, near Boston, one of the elite women’s colleges. There she became an American citizen. When working a summer vacation shift at the Denver Post, she met a scion of one of the most powerful American newspaper dynasties of the time, Joseph Albright, descendant of the founder of the Chicago Tribune. They married in 1959.If Madeleine had been born with a silver spoon, Joe Albright’s spoons were of the rarest platinum. His family was at the heart of American business, political and social life. At different times his relatives owned the Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, and they traded properties with William Randolph Hearst. Madeleine Albright took a master’s degree, then a doctorate in international relations at Columbia University, New York, where Brzezinski was one of her teachers. From 1976 to 1978 she worked as a legislative assistant to Senator Ed Muskie, a Democrat, of Maine. In 1978 she was recruited by Brzezinski to do congressional liaison on the national security staff at the Carter White House. After Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980, she went to the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, where she undertook a study of the new politics of eastern Europe.In 1981, when her husband left her, Albright threw herself into the academic, political, social and fundraising worlds in Washington. In 1982 she began to teach at Georgetown University, and she worked on the election campaign staffs of Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, and of Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate in 1988.Albright, with her considerable expertise in both domestic and international politics, and her ability to speak several foreign languages, was a natural choice for Clinton, when he was elected president in 1992, to choose as US ambassador at the United Nations. There she soon demonstrated charm and competence, occasionally tarnished by a certain proneness to accident. She miscalculated badly when she advised that Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian nationalist leader, would cave in after brief bombing during the Kosovo crisis.More seriously for her reputation, when she was asked on NBC television by the journalist Lesley Stahl about the alleged death of half a million children as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq, Albright responded that “we think the price is worth it”. The remark portrayed her as hardbitten, which was far from the case. The sanctions policy had been in place long before the Clinton administration, but the comment was not forgotten.By the time of the Clinton administration, a female secretary of state was, if not exactly an idea whose time had come, at least not unthinkable, if the woman were well known and well liked in the Washington Democratic establishment. It is said that Clinton asked Albright if she was happy as ambassador to the UN; she replied that she was, but that she would rather be secretary of state. Clinton appointed her in 1997, at the beginning of his second term.When George W Bush was elected president in 2000, Albright slipped back comfortably into her role as a popular member of the establishment, greatly in demand as a speaker at conferences. She founded the Albright Group, to give political advice to corporate giants such as Coca-Cola, Merck and the insurance behemoth Marsh and McLennan, as well as a private equity firm, Albright Capital Management. In 2003 she joined the board of the New York Stock Exchange, and twice in 2006 she was invited to the White House to advise Bush. In the 2008 election she was in the Democratic camp as an adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign for the presidency, and again in 2016 – she told the Guardian: “I think she would have been a remarkable president”.In 2012, when she published Prague Winter, partly an account of the politics of central Europe in the run-up to the second world war, partly an account of her discovery that she was Jewish, reviewers and readers seemed much more interested in how she could not have known that she was Jewish than in her political thought or career. She was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama later that year.She is survived by her three daughters, Anne, Alice and Katherine, and six grandchildren. Madeleine Albright, diplomat and political adviser, born 15 May 1937; died 23 March 2022 TopicsUS politicsUS foreign policyBill ClintonHillary ClintonobituariesReuse this content More