Madeleine Albright And The New American Diplomacy [Hardcover]

Thomas Lippman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2000

Selected by President Clinton as the first woman to be Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright rode into office on a wave of popularity. She was an instant celebrity in Washington and around the world, recognized everywhere and widely admired for her blunt style and dramatic personal history. Facing a Congress controlled by the opposition and an unruly world where the rules of the Cold War no longer applied, this tough-talking grandmother and Democratic political insider adopted the highest profile of any Cabinet official since Henry Kissinger as she struggled to convert her personal stature into foreign policy success. Inside the State Department, she grappled with an entrenched bureaucracy to force new issues such as women’s rights and international crime onto the foreign policy agenda.As a reporter for the Washington Post, Thomas Lippman spent two and a half years travelling with Albright around the world, from crisis to crisis, to compile this inside account of her campaign to reshape American diplomacy for the new century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With the exception of Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright has quite possibly had more biographies written about her than any other secretary of state, and the titles keep coming. Unlike earlier biographies, which focused more attention on her personal history and the years leading up to her appointment as secretary of state (Seasons of Her Life, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey), Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy goes in depth into Albright's performance as the nation's chief diplomat. Written by a former bureau chief of the Washington Post who traveled with Albright for two and a half years, it discloses her every move, from her own campaigning for the post to her frustrations with the Middle East peace process during Netanyahu's rule to her attempts to shore up the floundering Russian democracy. Thomas Lippman gives us a bird's-eye view of negotiations, public appearances, and private confidences. He also reveals where and why Albright's hands were tied (in Kosovo and Rwanda, for example) and why she was forced to make evasive statements that frustrated the rest of the world. This makes for a fascinating review of recent foreign policy, and clarifies not only Albright's personal style but the workings of diplomacy.

Both Bill Clinton and Albright have had to redefine foreign policy in an era no longer defined by the black-and-white lines of the cold war, but overwhelmed by "a world of growing complexity and murkiness, where the arguments for or against any particular decision seemed always to multiply." Lippman shows how Albright struggled to develop a sensible foreign policy while also interjecting a new concern for women and the environment into foreign-policy considerations. While Lippman has no trouble critiquing Albright for her belief that the United States' take on an issue is always right as well as her lack of compassion for Palestinians, she is ultimately painted as a success. Albright, according to Lippman, has been "a secretary of state like no other, [who] has tried to renovate diplomacy in theory and practice ... [with] boundless enthusiasm, an immense capacity for work, and an absolute confidence in the special talents of women." This is a rare and valuable report of an extraordinary person and time. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

Lippman, a journalist with considerable foreign policy credentials, packs his account of Albright's life into the first of his ten chapters, then moves on to his real concerns: Albright's relations with the media and with the Clinton administration's foreign policy. This is not a hatchet job, but Lippman does not pull his punches. Secretary of State Albright comes across as deftly disguising the possibility that she might be in over her head by speaking out forcefully, as she did in advocating the use of military force in central Europe. As she has faded from the limelight as the Clinton administration's primary spokesperson on foreign policy, however, we are left wondering if there are good reasons why successful diplomats have traditionally been colorless, behind-the-scenes players rather than media stars-as Lippman claims Albright was when first appointed. The author portrays Albright as engaging in obsessive efforts to control the flow of information relating to her performanceAfor instance, regarding the work of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs where Albright "conducted a virtual reign of terror to silence officials she suspected of talking to reporters"Aand this image leads the author to the blunt conclusion that Albright is "a control freak." Lippman recognizes the unique difficulties faced by the Clinton administration in the post-Soviet era; his overview of Clinton foreign policy in the final chapter provides little reason to believe that Albright's post-WWII view of international politics as a struggle between good (the U.S.) and evil (the U.S.'s opponents) could have remained influential in a more complex world for an extended period of time. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813397677
• ISBN-13: 978-0813397672
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #844,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas W. Lippman is a Washington-based author and journalist who has specialized in Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than three decades, and is an experienced analyst of Saudi Arabian affairs, U.S.- Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post, and also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Throughout the 1990s, he covered foreign policy and national security for the Post, traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. As an independent writer, he has visited Saudi Arabia every year but one in the past decade.

Lippman is the author of numerous magazine articles, book reviews and op-ed columns about Mideast affairs, and of five books: Understanding Islam (1982, 3d revised edition 2002); Egypt After Nasser (1989); Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (2000); Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (2004) , and Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East, honored as the best biography of 2008 by the Independent Publishers Association. He is also the author of the essay on Saudi Arabia's defense strategy and nuclear weapons policy published in 2004 by the Brookings Institution Press in The Nuclear Tipping Point, a book on global nuclear proliferation. His latest book, Saudi Arabia on the Edge, was published in January 2012.

A frequent television and radio commentator on Mideast developments, Lippman has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, CNBC, ABC and Fox News, and on radio stations in New York, Boston, Phoenix and San Francisco, as well as on television stations overseas. Several of his lectures on Saudi Arabia have been televised nationally by C-SPAN. He has also been a consultant on Middle East affairs to several U.S. government agencies, including the Air Force.

He is currently an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he serves as the principal media contact on Saudi Arabia and U.S. - Saudi relations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was formerly an adjunct senior fellow there.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balanced & Insightful, May 8, 2002

By 

Bradley K. Stilwell (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Madeleine Albright And The New American Diplomacy (Hardcover)

Lippman's biography is balanced, fair and an enjoyable read. You'll come away with a clear sense of Albright's strengths and special qualities as well as her weaknesses as a leader. You'll learn how her style differs from that of Christopher and Powell. I would have liked a little more clarity and depth on how she justified women's issues as a foreign policy imperative. Her comments about enslavement of women and the likelihood of war under women political leaders hinted at her views. I suspect, however, there's more to her arguments than the book covered. Albright's perspective and the national security establishment's reaction to it may color our relations with Arab allies, the Chinese and other important global players. I also would have liked to explore more how her personal history influenced her views on the Middle East. Lippman kept mentioning that Albright showed unusually little compassion for Palestinians yet I never learned why.

12 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lippmanese Nutshell of Albright's Diplomatic Challenges, June 15, 2000

By 

Maria St. Catherine De Grace Sharpe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Madeleine Albright And The New American Diplomacy (Hardcover)

"Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy" is a seasoned reporter's lensview of "classic Albright" and the political, cultural and diverse complexities involved in the politiking of American diplomacy at the beginning of the 21st century. This book is the first up-front and up-close skillfully crafted exposé of the unyielding and seemingly overwhelming intricacies of the first Information Age secretary of state's practice of diplomacy. This book details from an American reporter's point of view the articulation of, and the simultaneous architecturing of Albright's personal and public political art and science of what I call "real-time" international human relations. This highly timely and acutely valuable book, which is an engaging read on American diplomatic practice in the Information Age, commences what will be a long series of critical evaluations of this period. This book merits an attentive reading for a variety of reasons. First, it provides a multi-dimensional insider's view of the behind the scenes collaborative (and at times coercive) "maneuvering" from all the respective domains, i.e., State Department, press, White House, Congress, foreign diplomats etc., which induced the outcomes of this new diplomacy. Second, it is the first book on the new diplomacy to provide a discerning profile of Madeleine Albright, the diplomat, as the reengineering diplomatic practitioner she has had to become in assuming the role of an information age secretary of state-a position the job description of which is just beginning to formulate its definition. Notwithstanding, it would have chartered its own course, Lippman in a lucid and vivid writing style demonstrates how Secretary Albright decisively sets Post-Cold War diplomacy on a new course. Third, this book educates us to some degree on the extreme difficulty in selling real-time civic-humanitarian (RTC) diplomacy convincingly to the American people-even though this era will demand more of global citizens than has traditional diplomacy. Fourth, Lippman details the critical relationship-building skills which are, and will continue to be, crucial as this revolution in American diplomatic affairs continues to chart its course. Fifth, Lippman does not foreclose, but aptly demonstrates, the intensity of plural flexibility which is required of new civic and governmental diplomats. Sixth, in as much as Madeleine Albright is the central figure around whom this book is written, this book is as much about the inevitable funeral of traditional diplomacy the world once knew and the birth of a civic revolution in American diplomatic affairs, as it is the inevitability of the emergence of creative and diverse meanings of the term "diplomacy' bringing new and diverse forms of diplomatic practice, i.e., website/Internet diplomacy, OP-Ed diplomacy, NGO-host diplomacy, public forum diplomacy, red-eye diplomacy, media diplomacy, etc. In the end Lippman's book demonstrates the unpredictable nature of RTC diplomacy in our new world even when you have the best resources, a steel will, the strategic means and noble motives as well as the most highly skilled and well intentioned of diplomats. Seventh, this book gives us a realistic look at who Madeleine Albright is and what she is about while at the same time demanding that diplomacy be broadly redefined "as whatever it takes in the context of ethical international human relations to reach the high ground of the, or some, moral excellence of peace." Eighth, this book provides one American male journalist's story of how an American diplomat has courageously role modeled for American citizens their own respective ownership of the American diplomatic process. Ninth, Lippman allows us to learn from Secretary Albright that American diplomacy for the cause of peace is something we must fight for-it is not a passive American past time in which American citizens have no investment-but that American diplomacy is an enterprise which the American people have an intimate role and responsibility to direct the future of, and to support-this message could not have come at a more appropriate time than during this UN proclaimed International Year of the Culture of Peace; Ten, this book is as much about the coming of [information] age of the press and the field of journalism as it is of the diplomats and diplomatic correspondents who are the moves and shakers of this RTC diplomacy. This book reflects the adjustment the media has had to make in reaction to, and commensurate with, the new demands of RTC diplomatic practice. Notwithstanding these commendable accomplishments the book is not without its flaws. The book being the first of many diplomatic affairs Information Age-time piece publications is understandably more concerned with recording the multitudinous diplomatic actions Madeleine Albright executed during her term rather than focusing on an academic impact study of the high technology information age revolution on her practice of diplomacy-- this comes through only as a backdrop to her diplomatic maneuvers. In other words, those criteria which make "the new diplomacy" new are so intricately woven into the fabric of Albright's "management of world affairs" that any study of the impact of her diplomacy on their outcome is expectedly obscured by the diplomatic war to overcome them. Third, being the fresh, first book of its kind this book subjects itself to the very scrutiny to which its main character is also subject-that of being a trail blazer with no previous model on which to depend-this is both a positive and negative factor. For the most part, this factor makes it more difficult to measure the merit of this type of book. If this book, through the active parlance of diplomacy of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is designed to speak to and warn the diplomats of today and tomorrow, man or woman, governmental or nongovernmental of the intensity of, as well as the types of battles, confrontations, frustrations, criticisms and crises, both at home and abroad, they will continue to face in an unpredictable world of real-time civic humanitarian diplomacy of the 21st century it does just that. Finaly, Lippman accomplishes this while emphasizing the necessity to fully engage Americans in the role of incorporating "America" into the public enterprise and the international domains of American diplomacy.

2 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars MUST READ, September 18, 2003

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Madeleine Albright And The New American Diplomacy (Hardcover)

we need to bring back Albright as soon as possible and this book helps us learn why. Why do we need albright? Because Albright will help Islam conquer the west. Albright will help the albanians topple most of their neighboors and we will bomb the civilians to stop these people from defending themselves. Albright is the greatest secretary of state in modern memory(the last 2 years are an exeption) and this book details every exploit, every inch Jihad came closer to our shores, every helping hand we gave to communism and terrorism and fascism. Albrights book is just a wonderful necceary aaccount of americas foreign policy.

She details how an foreign policy of invading countries that support terror is viscous. She shows how a better foriegn policy is supporting terrorists because if we support them enough they will become wealthy and then hopefully they wont have time to waste blowing themselves up because they can hire someone to do it for them. Albright explains in this book how she helped the PLO build airports and schools and day care centers so that the terrorists could mor easily get his bombs from Iran(the airport) teach his children the art of bomb making(schools) and then put his kids in day care while he went to become the next martyr. This policy was well on the way to achieving her goal(the destruction of israel) when viscious right wing neo conservatives stole the 2000 election.

A must read to understand americas morasss.