United States to seize assets owned by Russian elites

In a far-flung conflict where Joe Biden has pledged to refrain from military intervention, the United States has largely turned to financial sanctions to exact punishment on Russia. 

Those efforts have been centered on some of the wealthiest Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin — a group whose connections have led to fortune and an opulent lifestyle directly targeted by Biden.

As the nation’s intelligence leaders gathered before lawmakers earlier this month to offer grim assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was one topic that sparked both impatience and excitement.

“Are we going to seize some yachts?” Patrick Maloney asked FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“I mean, that sounds great. Are we going to see some of the stuff taken out of their hands?”

“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” Biden said during his State of the Union address.

The Department of Justice the next day announced its KleptoCapture task force to do just that.

But experts say the task force may not be able to immediately deliver the wins — and the seizures — lawmakers are eager for. 

“It's a bit of the fascination with the luxury of asset recovery, and what are in essence sort of the shiny exemplars of corruption, excess, that can be symbols of sort of poetic justice or rightful retribution,” said Juan Zarate, the first-ever assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes under the George W. Bush administration.

“But asset recovery is more than just the luxury items, and it gets quite complicated,” added Zarate, who helped seize Saddam Hussein's fleet of private jets and return them to Iraq.

Investigators are coming up against what’s designed to be a complex labyrinth.

“These people are extremely savvy when it comes to protecting their ill-gotten gains,” Dennis Lormel, a former special agent with the FBI who served as chief of its financial crimes program, told The Hill. 

“They're going to circumvent controls, they're going to circumvent the system, they are going to be as non-transparent as possible.”

Russia’s uber wealthy seldom directly own their vast holdings, instead creating layers and layers of shell companies.

“Think of these situations as kind of an asset version of Russian nesting dolls,” said David Laufman, who oversaw the enforcement of sanctions at the Department of Justice during the Obama and Trump administrations.

The result means lots of tracking down records from across the globe and sifting through piles of paperwork to determine ownership.

Adding to the complication is that many holdings may be owned by a trusted ally of the person being targeted.

“Russian oligarchs and elites have not openly held their assets. They've held them through shell companies or nominees or proxies,” said Sharon Cohen Levin, a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell who led the money laundering and asset forfeiture unit of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for two decades.

The combination makes it particularly difficult — not impossible, but challenging — to unwind and understand the true owners of the property.

“The first challenge that KleptoCapture task force is going to face is to be able to not just identify the yacht, but answer the question who actually owns it? The fact that you’ve seen an oligarch on it doesn't necessarily mean that it's their property,” she said — even if the oligarch “named the yacht after their mother.”

While the wealth of oligarchs affords a number of luxuries — high-rise penthouse apartments, private jets, even football clubs — yachts have remained a top focus.

A Twitter account charting the movement of oligarch-affiliated yachts created earlier this month has already climbed to nearly 30,000 followers, while several news outlets have mapped the ports where they are parked.

“Yachts are fancy playthings for very rich people,” Laufman said, “They are symbolically representative of the kinds of vast wealth of these oligarchs and create kind of a feel good ‘we got you’ moment for governments that are participating in this coalition to counter Russia's aggression.”

Some countries have already managed to commandeer yachts. France earlier this month seized Amore Vero, a yacht believed to belong to Igor Sechin, the head of oil giant Rosneft. Italian authorities have also seized at least three such vessels.

But there are only so many oligarchs and so many yachts to seize. 

The number of those sanctioned by the US ballooned Thursday, when the White House announced it would sanction another 400 individuals, including 328 members of the Duma.

Of the smaller group of those initially sanctioned, however, The Associated Press compiled a list of some 56 superyachts believed to be owned by Russian oligarchs. Maps from a number of outlets show the vessels scattered across the globe — with very few in US waters. 

Laufman said the yacht fixation overlooks the vast amount of wealth otherwise held by Russian elites.

“I’m not dumping on seizing yachts,” he said. “I’m a fan of seizing yachts, but that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. That’s just two or three snowflakes on the iceberg compared to the wealth that has likely been squirreled away in accounts that may currently be evading the visibility of US law enforcement or intelligence agencies.”

Once the task force identifies assets belonging to sanctioned oligarchs it can freeze them, but to formally seize them they will need to go to court.

The distinction may matter little to the public. Freezing an asset — whether a bank account or boat — blocks its use, cutting off access to a certain lifestyle.

US law also allows such a status in perpetuity, the reason some Iranian assets have been frozen since the late 1970s.

But the formal seizure requires proving that the assets were used in furtherance of a crime or gained through some form of corruption.

For Zarate, even attempting to seize those assets on the basis of corruption is itself a mind shift.

“We are now judging all of this to be illegitimate or at least worthy of seizure and investigation in a way that we haven't before, right? It's not new that these oligarchs all owned yachts. Everyone knew this. What's different is not just the invasion, but this conversion of an attitude toward what those assets represent. And they represent the proceeds of illicit or corrupt activity tied to the Russian economy and tied to the Kremlin,” he said. 

“That's the shift here that's happened both intentionally and unintentionally.”

To make a case in court, however, Cohen Levin said DOJ’s task force will need not just prosecutors and investigators but data analysts and others that can do the hard work to help demonstrate that an asset is indeed owned by an oligarch.

It’s a case that may have to be built on circumstantial evidence.

“It's absolutely super complex for them,” Cohen Levin said. 

 “What the government's going to have to do is they're going to have to show — they're going to have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, that it's more likely than not — that this person owns it. So they're going to have to say, ‘This Company is really owned by this company, which is owned by this company, which is owned by this company, and then this person that runs it really works for this Russian oligarch,’ ” she said.

Experts warned the process will ultimately take months. But law enforcement officials did not seem deterred when questioned by lawmakers watching with anticipation.

“Whatever we can lawfully seize,” Wray told Maloney, “we’re gonna go after."

 

United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, says US Ambassador to NATO

Over the years, the US presidents have got so addicted to playing ‘regime change mantra’ that Joe Biden uttered the same for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After having realized the potential repercussions, efforts are being made to twist the statement. 

It appears gone are the days, when United States was able to do ‘anything’ it likes; now the President can face resentment against such statements even from Senate as well as Congress.

United States Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith on Sunday made an effort to walk back President Biden’s comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not remain in power, asserting that America does not have a policy of regime change in Russia.

“The US does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, full stop,” Smith told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Biden turned heads on Saturday when, during a speech in Warsaw, he said Putin cannot remain in power. The ad-libbed comment came at the end of the president’s speech.

The White House attempted to walk back the comment on Saturday, with an official saying that the remark was referring to Putin exercising power outside of Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday also said the US has no plans for regime change in Russia.

Asked by Bash if Biden’s comment was a mistake, Smith said the remark was “a principal human reaction” to the stories he heard from Ukrainian refugees earlier that day.

“The president had spent the day visiting with Ukrainian refugees; he went to the National Stadium in Warsaw and literally met with hundreds of Ukrainians. He heard their heroic stories as they were fleeing Ukraine in the wake of Russia's brutal war in Ukraine. In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day,” Smith said.

Pressed on if the US not having a policy of regime change in Russia means officials think Putin should remain in power, Smith said the administration, including Biden, does not believe American can empower the Russian president to wage a war in Ukraine.

“I think what it means is that we are not pursuing a policy of regime change. But I think the full administration, the president included, believes that we cannot empower Putin right now to wage war in Ukraine or pursue these acts of aggression,” Smith said.

 

United States and allies have declared hybrid war on Russia: says Kremlin

The United States and its Western allies have declared a hybrid ‘total war’ against Russia said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Today a real hybrid war, a ‘total war’ has been declared against us. This term, which was used by Nazi Germany, is now used by many European politicians when they explain what they want to do to the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, according to state-run media.

He claimed, “And their goals are not hidden, they want to destroy, to break, to strangle the Russian economy, and Russia as a whole.”

“The desire by the West to maintain its dominance in international affairs, to subjugate everything and everyone and return to a unipolar world … these are, of course, illusions,” Lavrov also remarked, adding, “In fact, we are witnessing the culmination of the policy of containment of Russia, which the West has pursued for a long time.”

Lavrov’s comments appear to be an escalation in rhetoric from Russia’s leadership against the United States and NATO allies.

Since February 24, the start of the conflict, the United States, Europe, Japan, and other like-minded nations have placed heavy sanctions on Russian economy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lavrov, and other top Kremlin officials.

On Thursday, the White House announced even more sanctions against hundreds of Russian lawmakers, defense companies, and other entities.

The United States also placed a ban on Russian oil imports, although European Union countries have not done so, citing the bloc’s heavy dependence on Russian energy products.

On Thursday, about three-fourths of the United Nations General Assembly voted to demand aid access and civilian protection in Ukraine and claimed Russia was creating what they said is a dire humanitarian situation in Ukraine. 

Ukraine and Western allies have claimed Moscow is attacking civilians indiscriminately, which the Kremlin has denied.

But Russian ex-President and Deputy Head of Security Council Dmitry Medvedev claimed Friday that the sanctions won’t sway the Kremlin. 

The sanctions will only consolidate the Russian society and not cause popular discontent with the authorities, Medvedev told Russia’s RIA news agency in an interview.

“Let us ask ourselves, can any of these major businessmen have even the tiniest quantum of influence of the position of the country’s leadership?” Medvedev said. “I openly tell you: no, no way.”

 

War in Ukraine to wipe out 15 years of Russian economic growth

In today’s time media plays a more lethal role, as compared to weapons. The conventional media, controlled by the West, spreads disinformation by portraying bleaker outlook for the country under the US sanctions.  One such example is the details about Russia released by Institute of International Finance.

According to Institute of International Finance (IIF), Russia is likely to erase 15 years of economic gains by the end of 2023 after its invasion of Ukraine spurred a multitude of sanctions and prompted companies to pull out of the country.

The economy is expected to contract 15% in 2022, followed by a decline of 3% in 2023, leaving gross domestic product where it was about fifteen years ago. This was written by economists Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova in a preliminary assessment of the impact of the war, noting that further sanctions may change their view.

“Sharply lower domestic demand is likely to play a crucial role, while a collapse in imports should offset lower exports, leading to a marginally-positive contribution from net foreign demand,” the economists wrote.

“However, should further sanctions in the form of trade embargos be implemented, exports might fall more than we currently forecast.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 spurred a collapse of its currency (ruble) and threw global supply chains and commodities prices into chaos. This also sparked mass departure of companies from the country. French automaker Renault SA is among the latest firms to pull out, announcing that it will halt operations at its Moscow plant. It is also considering the future of a longstanding Russian venture called AvtoVaz.

Even after the immediate hit to Russia’s economy, the economy will suffer for years to come from a “brain drain” the exodus of educated, middle class Russians with the financial means to leave the country.

Sanctions from United States and European Union, which control export of technology, including microelectronics, will also hinder technological development in Russia for years, according to the IIF.

At the same time, “self-sanctioning” by foreign companies which no longer want to do business with Russia will lead to a weakening of important sectors of the Russian economy, the report said.

 “The negative effect on medium- and long-term economic prospects could be even more important,” the IIF economists wrote.

 

Ukraine war marks beginning of a new world order

Joe Biden, President of United States believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a ‘new world order’. In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a ‘great reset’.

Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten the governments on taxes, diversity, and green policies.

When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.

In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.

We saw that last year, fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.

These ‘new orders’ and ‘resets’ always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.

They preach, common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.

Hunter Biden’s lost laptop will be declared, by fiat, not news. In contrast, the fake Alfa Bank ‘collusion’ narrative will be national headline news for weeks.

Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as they are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.

In truth, the world is about to see a radical reset—of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.

The world and the United States are furious over hyperinflation that may soon exceed 10% per year. Ordinary people will be lucky if it ends only in recession or stagflation, rather than a global depression.

The mess was created by those who propagated modern monetary theory. That silly university idea claimed prosperity would follow vastly expanding the money supply, keeping interest rates at de facto zero levels, running huge annual deficits, piling up unsustainable national debt, and subsidizing workers to stay home.

Natural gas and oil costs are now soaring to unsustainable levels—and to the point where the middle class simply will not be able to travel, keep warm in winter, or cool in summer.

Both in Europe and the United States left-wing governments deliberately curbed drilling and non-Russian pipelines. They shut down nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects.

They ended up not with utopia, but with fuel shortages, high prices, and energy dependency on the world’s most repressive regimes.

The woke revolution in the West was supposed to teach us that the white male-dominated Western world is toxic. Its origins, ascendance, and current leisure and affluence were supposedly due only to systemic exploitation, racism, and sexism.

Few asked how a supposedly noxious West of some 2,500 years duration became the number one destination of millions of global non-Western migrants and offered the greatest degree of global prosperity and freedom for its citizens.

So a reset reckoning is coming—in reaction to the ‘new orders’ championed by Biden and the Davos set.

In the November 2022 midterms, Americans are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies. What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the ‘color of our skin’.

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre ‘mainstream’ media. They will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

Courtesy: The Epoch Times

 

US oil and gas industry demands increasing local production over easing sanctions on Iran and Venezuela

Many decades ago I had read that United States wishes to keep global sources of energy under its control, directly or indirectly. This became crystal clear after impositions of economic sanction on Iran and Venezuela and invasion on Iraq and Libya. The latest attempt is imposition of sanctions on global energy giant, Russia.

Till yesteryear global supply of energy was controlled by ‘Seven Sisters’. Since other players, particularly OPEC Plus still enjoy substantial leverage, the new name of the game is ‘Shale Oil’. To keep shale oil producers economically viable, oil price has to be kept around US$70/barrel in the global markets.

Under the strategy of cutting supplies from major producers, the first casualty was Iran, then came Iraq and Libya and now the target is Russia. To achieve the success, two pronged strategy is being followed, containing oil supply from OPEC Plus members and boosting indigenous production. To achieve the target the US administration is already in touch with exploration and production (E&P) companies which have already started soliciting ‘incentives’, the latest news is:

The oil and gas industry of United States is positioning domestic crude production as the lesser of environmental evils, as it attempts to dissuade the administration of US president Joe Biden from easing sanctions on Iran and Venezuela.

A US ban on Russian crude imports earlier this month reframed talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and rekindled diplomatic ties between Washington and Caracas, with market participants watching keenly for any developments that might offer incremental supply.

The US oil and gas stakeholders claim a move toward Iranian or Venezuelan barrels would signal a step back from the kind of environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards consumers, politicians and investors have called for in recent years.

"If you really care about ESG, compare the United States to other jurisdictions," Hunter Hunt, Chief Executive of Dallas-based oil and gas company Hunt Consolidated, told Argus earlier this month.

"We will have a higher commitment to the environment, a higher commitment to safety, and I think you will see a stronger understanding of all social concerns here in the US than you would see in Iran or Venezuela or other countries that potentially could fill the gap left by Russian oil."

Hunt's comments echo those heard elsewhere in the industry. AFPM President Chet Thompson on March 14, 2022 called against relying on countries with "less stringent environmental and safety standards" like Iran or Venezuela for energy.

ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods earlier this month said "production will shift to somebody else with potentially higher emissions" if climate hawks push US companies into decreasing production.

Seven Sisters

The Seven Sisters (oil companies) is a classification named by the Enrico Mattei who is an Italian politician for the seven giant oil companies that managed the oil industry worldwide until the 1970s. The company names of seven sisters are: Anglo-Persian Oil Company worked between 1908-1954 after that they became BP, Gulf Oil run within these years 1901-1985 after this year purchased by Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Exxon later joined with Mobil, Texaco (1901-2000) acquired by Chevron in 2001.

The traditional period starts with the Seven Sisters giant oil firms as the authoritative strength in world petroleum businesses for the decades after World War II. Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Gulf, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Chevron, the cartel operated authorizations to oil in sovereign nations with plentiful petroleum sources.

This adjustment proffered the Sister’s attribute powers over oil in Venezuela and newly named OPECs countries, and end of 1950, the Sister’s cartel maintained a 98.3% exchange portion of world petroleum production. BP, Chevron, Mobil, and Shell are remaining today, and we can say that they are the big four for the oil industry of today’s world. As for why this description is accepted.

After the 1940s, these seven big companies built a cartel that provided more than 83% of world oil production and became an oligopoly for the oil industry. They are in steadfast competition with each other, but when the rise of another company comes together, they blend and threaten that company. These companies could be termed a stop at least partially with the later OPEC countries.

According to the freshest statement of the Financial Times, cartels of this century; Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, as well as four major oil giants, as well as Total and ENI. However, especially in recent years, non-OECD countries have included China National Petroleum Co. (CNPC), Gazprom Russia, ConocoPhillips, Petrobras Brazil, Petronas Malaysia, and Saudi Aramco.

However, the share and support of the four major oil giants among these companies, which have achieved significant progress in recent years, is not known. Some energy experts claimed that new companies’ growth occurred with the help of seven sisters.

These seven sisters, who established the international oil industry for nearly a century, developed them through incorporations, takeovers, and incorporations and brought them to the present day, have a higher income than the gross national product of many other countries, and the tonnage of the tankers they possess is higher than the naval forces of many nations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tribute to Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State and a ‘Grande Dame’ of foreign policy for the Democratic Party. She wrote books, served on think tank boards and warned of the risk of fascism in the Donald Trump era. 

She died on March 23, 2022 at the age of 84; the cause of death was cancer.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, halfway through his two-term presidency, Albright became the highest-ranking woman in the US government at the time. As the top US diplomat, she called for the use of force as the conflict in Kosovo descended into ethnic cleansing. That was consistent with the hard line she had pressed during the Bosnian War, when she was Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. She later described the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the failure to achieve a Mideast peace accord as among her biggest regrets.

“Madeleine’s courage and toughness helped bring peace to the Balkans and paved the way for progress in some of the most unstable corners of the world,” President Barack Obama said upon awarding Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2012.

Responding to news of her death, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, “The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day. She was a trailblazer as the first female Secretary of State and quite literally opened doors for a large element of our workforce.”

In a statement, Clinton called Albright “an extraordinary human being” and “a passionate force for freedom, democracy and human rights.”

Albright was famous for well-tailored suits adorned with pins or brooches, ranging from balloons to carnivorous animals and chosen to reflect a mood or an opinion. After learning that the Russians had bugged a conference room near her office at the State Department, for example, she wore a pin shaped like a huge bug.

Albright’s stature and style belied a commanding negotiating skill. When Yasser Arafat walked out of Paris talks in 2000, Albright told guards at the US ambassador’s residence to “Shut the gates!” As UN ambassador, she responded to Cuba’s 1996 downing of two unarmed Cessna aircraft: “This is cowardice.”

In an opinion column published February 23, 2022 in the New York Times, just before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Albright took direct aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin. She disclosed that while flying back to Washington after her first meeting with Putin in 2000, she recorded her observations of him, “Putin is small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian.”

“Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness,” she wrote in the column, “invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.”

In an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Close,” Leon Panetta, a White House Chief of Staff under Clinton, recalled Albright as “a Cold War warrior” who had been “raised to understand what communism was about and what the threat from Russia was all about.”

Thomas Pickering, who served under Albright as Under Secretary for political affairs, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio’s “Sound On”, “She had little love, I would say, for Russia, and that skepticism and indeed suspicion about Russia has proven to be more true than I think any of us had reason to believe when I worked for her.”

An emigrant who fled Czechoslovakia at the dawn of World War II only to discover her own Jewish heritage more than a half-century later, Albright witnessed firsthand the displacement of those deemed undesirable.

“In the end, no one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948 was a stranger to profound sadness,” Albright wrote in “Prague Winter,” her personal account of the period. “Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten.”

Albright was born Marie Jana Korbel on May 15, 1937, in Prague, one of three children of Josef Korbel, a diplomat, and the former Anna Spieglova. The family statement on her death gave her surname at birth as Korbelova. When the German army arrived in 1939, the family went into exile in London. 

At war’s end, they returned to Prague, relocating several months later to Belgrade where her father served as ambassador. At the age of 10, Albright was sent to boarding school in Switzerland.

When the Communist Party took control in Czechoslovakia in 1948, her father accepted a post on a UN commission on Kashmir. The Korbels stayed in New York. By then, Albright spoke four languages: Czech, Serbo-Croatian, English and French.

Gaining political asylum in 1949, they moved to Denver, where her father became a professor at the University of Denver. She met her future husband, Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, during a summer job at the Denver Post. They married in 1959, the same year she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They had three daughters -- Anne, Alice and Katharine -- before the marriage ended in divorce

A Catholic who became an Episcopalian in marriage, Albright learned of her Jewish ancestry ‑ along with the death of more than a dozen relatives, including three grandparents in the Holocaust ‑ in 1997 at age 59.

In her 2003 autobiography, “Madam Secretary,” she said of her own parents, “My guess is that they associated our heritage with suffering and wanted to protect us. They had come to America to start a new life.”

Albright obtained a Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University where she studied under Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s future National Security Adviser. She also earned a certificate in Russian studies.

In 1976, Albright became the chief legislative aide to Democratic US Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. Two years later, Brzezinski recruited his former student as the National Security Council’s congressional liaison.

When Republicans came to power, she taught at Georgetown University and advised Democrats on foreign policy, including presidential candidates Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. In 1989, she became president of the public policy think tank Center for National Policy.

With Clinton’s victory in 1992, she became US Permanent Representative to the UN. In 1995, when as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered in Srebrenica at the hands of Bosnian Serbs, Albright presented evidence of mass graves to the Security Council. 

With the lessons of Rwanda fresh in mind, she argued for the use of force. Following the shelling of a Sarajevo market in August, the largest North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission ever got under way, leading to the Dayton Accords that ended the war.

When Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first Secretary of State, announced his plan to return to the private sector, Albright was nominated as his successor. The US Senate unanimously confirmed her appointment.

Albright sought the use of force again in Kosovo, where in 1998 a civil war had ensued. Dubbed “Madeleine’s War,” NATO engaged in combat for the second time in its history, launching air strikes in March 1999 without the approval of the Security Council.

“Madeleine Albright is somebody who grew up learning the lessons of Munich, the danger of appeasing dictators, and she feels we need this more-assertive foreign policy not to back down in the face of people like Milosevic,” historian Walter Isaacson told CNN in a May 1999 interview. By June, Slobodan Milosevic’s troops began to withdraw from Kosovo.

Her efforts toward an Israel-Palestinian peace weren’t as successful. “People ask about my greatest disappointment as Secretary. This was it,” she said in her memoir.

Albright also supported the expansion of NATO and pressured Iraq to end its blockade of UN weapons inspectors. When Iraq didn’t comply, the US and Britain launched a series of air strikes known as Operation Desert Fox.

In October 2000, she became the highest-ranking US representative ever to make an official visit to North Korea, meeting with President Kim Jong Il. “I am sad to say that the Bush administration didn’t pick up the hand of cards that we left on the table there,” Albright said on MSNBC in 2013.

Following her government career, Albright returned to Georgetown as a professor. In 2005, she founded emerging markets investment adviser Albright Capital Management LLC within her Albright Group consultancy. She combined the firm with Stonebridge International in 2009 to form the Washington-based Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.

In addition to her autobiography and “Prague Winter,” Albright wrote best-selling books, including 2009’s “Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.”

Even into her 80s, Albright’s defense of the ideals of democracy remained strong. The ascendency of authoritarian leaders was “a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II,” she wrote in a 2018 essay in the Times that coincided with the publication of her book “Fascism: A Warning.” She added, “The possibility that fascism will be accorded a fresh chance to strut around the world stage is enhanced by the volatile presidency of Donald Trump.”

She led the nongovernmental organization National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project. She also served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the boards of the Aspen Institute, Center for American Progress and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Albright never lost sight of the way her career broke through glass ceilings and made a point of promoting the careers of women throughout her professional life. In fact, she made famous a mantra: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”