President Joe Biden said the world was at a crossroads during a eulogy for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, drawing a parallel between the generational upheaval of the Cold War and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“When the Iron Curtain fell, and the Berlin Wall came down, our world faced … a once in a generation moment of upheaval,” Biden said in remarks at Albright’s funeral at the Washington National Cathedral on Wednesday. “People in nations around the world were deciding the future they wanted to make for themselves.”
Now, as Russia wages a bloody military assault against Ukraine, the president said the United States should carry on Albright’s legacy, telling the crowd of former presidents and officials that had gathered to remember her that “freedom … is under assault by the forces of autocracy and oppression.”
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“We’re at another inflection point in world history,” Biden said.
The president said he learned of Albright’s passing in March while traveling to Brussels to marshal European and trans-Atlantic resolve against Russian aggression.
“It was not lost on me that Madeleine was a big part of the reason NATO is still strong and galvanized as it is today,” Biden said.
He recalled how “a deafening cheer” broke out when he mentioned Albright’s name during a fiery address at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.
Biden said that when the Cold War ended, Albright had “made sure those nations and those people knew exactly where the United States of America stood and what we stood for.”
A veteran of the Carter and Clinton administrations, Albright was the first woman to rise to the State Department’s most senior post, leading the institution with the belief that America should play a dominant role in global affairs.
Albright had “learned diplomacy at the dinner table,” Biden said. Her father, Josef Korbel, was a Czechoslovakian diplomat who sought U.S. asylum as the Soviet Communist regime rose to power in 1948 and was later a mentor to Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s secretary of state.
As secretary of state to former President Bill Clinton, Albright pressed for NATO expansion, a cornerstone of the Cold War security order in Europe and a feat Russia blames for stoking the conflict with Ukraine.
“Madeleine said once that we can’t just be actors — we have to be authors of our own history,” Clinton said in remarks after Biden. “She was a great author, but will people read?”
Albright “knew war,” said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and “never wavered” in her belief that “democracy must be defended” and “peace must be won.”
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Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, Rice, world leaders, and members of Congress were also in attendance.
Albright was 84 years old when she died on March 23, 2022.
