The next president will inherit a foreign policy disaster, with the nation's moral authority in tatters and its reputation tarnished, according to former secretary of state Madeleine Albright.

"I don't think the U.S. has ever been in a worse position internationally in terms of our reputation; and our military is over-stretched, and our budget is out of kilter," Albright said in a meeting with Monitor editors this week. "I don't think people should think this is going to be easy."

Albright served as secretary of state under President Clinton. She traveled to New Hampshire this week to campaign for Clinton's wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Bush's predecessor will enter office with one advantage, Albright said: Many international leaders will be rooting for the restoration of America's credibility.

"It isn't that people don't want the United States to lead," she said. "My friends, who are mostly former foreign ministers, would say something like: 'We need you back. We need America back. We need America leading.' I think that there will be this moment where it's possible to reintroduce America."

That reintroduction, however, wouldn't create an immediate turnaround. The Bush administration's foreign policy blunders will linger, Albright said.

"In many ways, the way we're fighting terrorism is creating additional terrorists," she said.

"There is no quick fix," she warned later in the interview.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had far-reaching consequences in the region, with Iran's power mounting and an increase in tension between the United States and Turkey, said Albright, who was the nation's first female secretary of state.

"Seeing the world makes me want to go back to bed," she said, after relating her pre-dawn routine of reading the newspaper.

Of all the region's anxiety-inducing nations, Albright now considers Pakistan the most dangerous. It is, she said, "a combination of all the things that give you an international migraine: terrorism, nuclear capabilities, poverty, extremism, a government imposed by coup."

Combating terrorism demands that leaders acknowledge its threat, Albright said. "There are groups of people specifically dedicated to killing Americans," she said.

But there are smarter, subtler ways of contending with terrorism, such as promoting education for girls throughout the world, addressing poverty and working to rid textbooks of inflammatory language, she said.

And while terrorism remains a threat, Albright warned against using it to create a climate of fear. "We cannot have an American president who is bound and determined to traumatize the American people, constantly living in a state of fear and doing things to undermine our civil liberties," she said. "I dread the campaign where, depending on who the Republican candidate is, every day we'll have some new fear."

In addition to terrorism, the next president will have to contend with climate change, poverty, nuclear proliferation and the potential for pandemics, she said. And to rehabilitate the nation's international image, U.S. leaders will need to demonstrate an interest in collaborating with other countries. "America in the last seven years has kind of opted out of an international system. We are now treaty-allergic," Albright said.

Single page