Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright remembered at funeral as great champion of freedom

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Like almost everything about Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright – the daughter of a professor and ambassador, the scion of a family whose many members perished in the Holocaust, an 11-year-old refugee-turned-immigrant to the United States, a scholar of international relations, a classic Washington insider, above all a pioneer for women in the closed world of American diplomacy – her funeral Wednesday struck universal themes.

In the pews of the soaring cathedral that was her house of worship were presidents she counseled, vice-presidents she advised, prime ministers she supported, envoys she engaged, chargés d’affaires she guided, government ministers she mentored, cabinet members she tutored, lawmakers she enlightened, Washington worthies she interrupted – and international figures she conspired with, lectured, cajoled, co-opted, and, with logic and charm, conquered.

“Just sit on our shoulders,” former president Bill Clinton, who in 1997 appointed her to the highest post in American diplomacy, said at her funeral, “and nag us to death until we do the right thing.”

Ms. Albright died March 23 at the age of 84.

President Joe Biden said that “in the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion,” eulogizing her for having “turned the tide of history” by assuring that the new nations that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet bloc “knew exactly where the United States of America stood, and what we stood for.”

A fervent advocate of the eastern expansion of NATO, Ms. Albright believed the alliance was a bulwark of stability in Europe and a guarantee of peace; the goal, she told a Senate armed services committee hearing in 1997, was “to extend eastward the peace and prosperity that Western Europe has enjoyed for the last 50 years.”

She died amid the gravest challenge to that conviction, with the Russian military action in the easternmost expanse of the European plain designed in part to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. She was not, moreover, reluctant to support military action in Iraq and Serbia. When former general Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued against employing American forces to end the siege of Sarajevo in 1993, Ms. Albright shot back, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

She didn’t invent the notion that the United States was the globe’s “indispensable nation,” but more than anyone else she was identified with the phrase. “People like Madeleine Albright believed that American military and soft power could bring lasting peace,” said Peter Harris, a Colorado State University specialist in international relations.

“To her the phrase was never a statement of arrogance,” Mr. Biden said. “It was about gratitude.”

Just as Chrystia Freeland is a Canadian official shaped by her youth in Ukraine, Ms. Albright was an American diplomat shaped by her early years in Czechoslovakia. In 1998, when Mr. Clinton staged a state dinner for Vaclav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic praised her, saying, “With her fine feeling for European affairs, she represents to me – among other things – a guarantee of the much-needed U.S. presence on the European continent.”

Ms. Albright was followed as secretary of state by Condoleezza Rice – appointed by George W. Bush, and Hillary Rodham Clinton – appointed by Barack Obama.

“She mentored the next generation of women leaders,” Ms. Clinton said, adding that Ms. Albright luxuriated in “what they were going to do in the future.”

Ms. Freeland, among the 1,400 at the Albright rites, responded to a Globe and Mail request by writing that the former secretary of state was “an exceptional champion of democracy and human rights, and a role model for so many women who saw in her their rightful place at the head table of global leadership,” adding in an e-mail, “She understood the stakes in the fight between democracy and authoritarianism – stakes that have only continued to grow in the years since.”

Ms. Albright’s predecessor at the heights of American diplomacy was Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s delegate to the United Nations. She, too, had ambitions to lead the State Department or to be the president’s national security adviser, but her ascension was blocked by some of Nancy Reagan’s allies in the White House and by the bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom who for generations have jealously guarded their prerogatives. Ms. Albright broke through – and, in Mr. Biden’s words, “made sure that women belonged” in international affairs.

“She was a path breaker, clearly shattering the ceiling that Kirkpatrick bumped up against, and she inspired a generation of women diplomats and aspirating diplomats around the world,” said Sylvia Bashevkin, a University of Toronto political scientist who has written about women in international affairs. “She’d want that for her legacy in a time where the world’s problems are so close to her native country.”

Wednesday’s celebration of Ms. Albright’s life affirmed that legacy and more.

“The world is a better place for her remarkable public service and for her clear moral and political vision,” Ms. Freeland said. “I will miss her, Canada will miss her, the world will miss her.”

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