Madeleine Albright's memoir offers a candid account by a capable but sometimes contradictory American secretary of state. The selected passage explains ASEAN's expectation that visiting foreign ministers perform a song, sketch, or dance at the final dinner. Albright first recast an Evita number for the 1997 meeting in Malaysia, then worked with Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov on a West Side Story parody in Manila in 1998. The performance was comic, but Albright wrote that the collaboration helped ease American-Russian relations during a difficult period. The episode shows cultural ritual and personal performance operating alongside formal negotiation as tools of diplomacy.
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Madeleine Albright and musical diplomacy at ASEAN
Albright's memoir uses ASEAN performance rituals and a joint skit with Russia's foreign minister to show informal diplomacy easing difficult relationships.