Watch former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discuss her new book The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God & World Affairs.

Watch former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discuss her new book The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God & World Affairs.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaks on her new book The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs as part of the Council’s Religion and Foreign Policy Series.

A Council-sponsored Task Force argues that the United States should support the evolutionary development of democracy consistently throughout the Middle East. It points out that a strategy to promote democracy entails inherent risks, but that "the denial of freedom carries much more significant long-term dangers." This report is also available in Arabic.

Democratic governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations have responded poorly and often at cross purposes when democracies are threatened by coups or erosions of the democratic process, concludes an independent Task Force led by two of the world’s leading pro-democracy advocates, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former Foreign Minister of Poland Bronislaw Geremek. Yet support for democracy is consistent not only with the ideals of the world’s democracies but also with their interests and security. Democratic states are “less likely to breed terrorists or to be state sponsors of terrorism,” the report concludes, and more likely to be “active participants in the global economy.”