President Trump is pursuing the same “sad and dangerous” foreign policy that led to the Holocaust and the Second World War, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Congress as the president conducts a second round of talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam.
“We have seen firsthand the cost of abdication: Holocaust and global war,” Albright said Wednesday in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Today the enemies of freedom smell something in the air that gives them hope — the odor of America’s absence and the impression that our leader shares their disdain for democracy.”
Albright, who served as secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, said that “one has to be careful not to interfere” with Trump’s talks in Hanoi with the North Korean tyrant. But she criticized the president’s handling of his first summit with Kim in Singapore and said that Trump’s “engagement” with Kim “has yielded scant dividends to date.”
She recalled her own October 2000 trip to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to meet then-leader Kim Jong Il, the father of Trump’s negotiating partner. “The father had said it would be fine if we left our forces in South Korea.”
Albright opened her testimony with a note of concession: “Now as you have been told, I am a professor at Georgetown, and if I were grading Mr. Trump, I would begin charitably and mark many of his efforts as incomplete.” She credited Trump with keeping his promise to renegotiate NAFTA and suggested his other trade moves could pay off: “His administration’s heavy-handed approach to China could produce important gains, and there have been signs of progress in recent days.”
She quickly moved on from such “good news,” however, to a comprehensive indictment of Trump’s foreign policy.
“In other areas, the administration’s record is marked by confusion, inconsistency, a lack of diplomacy, and, in some cases, a complete abdication of responsibility,” she said.
She urged lawmakers to use their power to prevent Trump from abandoning international obligations and weakening American standing in the world.
“You did not come to Washington to preside over an abdication,” she said. “And as you know the powers of the legislative branch are set out in Article I of the Constitution. Well, 2019 is Article I time.”
She said she was particularly concerned that the administration wanted to cut spending at the department she headed from 1997 to 2001.
“You can’t do diplomacy without diplomats,” Albright said. “When I left office, I made very clear how jealous I was of those that were able to stay and do diplomacy for a different administration. And, I thought, ‘They get to do foreign policy all the time and I have to leave.’” She added, “We cannot, in fact punish people at the State Department, and I’m very troubled by the number of people that have left.”
