Hammer and Chisel

Some advice that Madeleine Albright shares: “Foreign policy is just trying to get some country to do what you want.” Which leads to a question: “So, what are the tools?” The first woman to serve as secretary of state, she spoke with SCM in May. We discussed a course that she’s taught, The National Security Toolbox (perhaps the topic for her next book, “a kind of Foreign Policy 101”); we covered Russia, Putin, and Ukraine; and the Czech lands and Václav Havel. Albright was present for the unveiling of the bust of Havel in the U.S. Capitol last year, and the playwright-turned-president remains a touchstone for her as “a great kind of ethical and moral figure … My parents were part of the first generation of Czechoslovaks and very proud of this democracy. And it was destroyed.”