By Michael F. Duggan
There is a danger in embracing historical firsts for the sake of firstness.
I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but let’s call it like it is: Madeline Albright believed that there are easy military solutions to complex geopolitical situations. She was an architect of the war in Kosovo—which, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was done without consulting the UN Security Council in order to illegally annex a part of a sovereign nation—as well as the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, which is one of the primary historical currents leading to today’s crisis in Eastern Europe.
We should be careful not to celebrate impressive form, the careerism and credentialism of firsts uncritically and in a moral vacuum. Judge Ketanji Jackson (for example) is one of the most qualified judges in the country to be a Supreme Court associate justice. She has also proved herself as a jurist, has a thoughtful and tempered view of the law, and there is no reason why her nomination should not be confirmed. She is a deserving “first” and should be celebrated.
By contrast, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power, Condoleezza Rice, and Susan Rice were or are hawkish interventionists who all supported illegal wars that as an aggregate have killed hundreds of thousands of people and still failed to accomplish the primary US war aims. Albright, Clinton, and Power also helped make it acceptable for progressives to embrace (or else shrug off) undeclared wars as a basis for foreign policy. The fact that they are female and held jobs not previously held by women does nothing to ameliorate this.