Madeleine Albright: U.S. should be a 'force for good'
Speaking at The Aspen Institute and Mastercard Global Inclusive Growth Summit in Washington, Albright spoke about American foreign policy.
By OMRI NAHMIASFormer U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivers her speech during the 20th anniversary of the Deployment of NATO Troops in Kosovo in Pristina, Kosovo(photo credit: REUTERS/FLORION GOGA)
WASHINGTON – Former secretary of state and US ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright said on Monday that America’s role on the world stage is to be “a force for good” and to “figure out how to help countries where there may be prejudice and ethnic cleansing and natural disasters.”Speaking at The Aspen Institute and Mastercard Global Inclusive Growth Summit in Washington, Albright – who served as secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s administration – spoke about American foreign policy and implied criticism of the Trump administration without naming it.“I do think that one of the issues here is that the United States is not looking at our role in which we can help global inclusiveness,” she said. “And we are, in fact, just looking at what we’re interested in. We see ourselves as victims instead of the most powerful country in the world. And we are not helping to solve the problems.“I think that the part that has to happen is to make it very real for people in order to understand that we’re all human beings, and that certain things happen in certain places, and that we don’t want to see people killing each other for who they are – not for anything that they did,” Albright said.She also addressed the Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria.“The tragedy is that Turkey, which has been a strong country, sees Turkish citizenship in a way that they don’t accept the Kurds,” Albright said. “And then, that in fact translates into saying that they’re all terrorists and that they are really hurting Turkey. But a lot of the issue in Turkey has to do with immigration because all of a sudden, they have a lot of immigrants from other parts of the Middle East.”Albright then shared her own experiences as an immigrant from Czechoslovakia.“I’m an immigrant, and nothing made more difference in my life than to become an American,” she said. “I think that all of a sudden [because of] the way that we view immigrants, the Statue of Liberty is weeping.”When asked how many of the issues at stake depend on the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections, and how much on the long-term future of the US, Albright replied: “I think it’s in 2020, because we can’t deal with more of this.”“Democracies don’t work if people don’t vote,” she added. “I think [these] are crucial elections.”
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