The Pakistani Spectator

Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (born April 24, 1941), Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration, is a top-ranking American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker. He is also the only person to have held the Assistant Secretary of State position for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977–1981, and Europe from 1994–1996).

From 1993–1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Although long well-known in diplomatic and journalistic circles, Holbrooke achieved great public prominence only when he brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1995. Holbrooke was a contender in the replacement of Warren Christopher but ultimately lost to Madeleine Albright in 1997 when Bill Clinton chose a replacement for the Secretary of State. From 1999–2001, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

He was an advisor to the Presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. Holbrooke then joined the Presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and became a top foreign policy adviser; Holbrooke was considered a candidate for Secretary of State in a Clinton or Obama administration.

On January 22, 2009, Holbrooke was appointed as a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[1]
Vietnam (1962–1969)

In 1962, Holbrooke graduated from Brown University, where he was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s call to service to enter government work.[2]. He was also influenced by the guidance of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, whose son, David, was Holbrooke’s closest friend at Scarsdale High School, from which he graduated in 1958. [3] A few weeks after college graduation, Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service. A year later, after Vietnamese language training, he began six years of service in and on Vietnam. He served first in the Mekong Delta, as a civilian representative for the Agency for International Development working on the rural Pacification Program. This involved supporting the South Vietnam government with economic development and enacting local political reforms. Holbrooke then moved to the embassy in Saigon where he became a staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. [3] During this time he served with many other young diplomats who would play a major role in American foreign policy in the decades ahead, including John Negroponte, Anthony Lake, Frank G. Wisner, Les Aspin, and Peter Tarnoff. As the conflict in Vietnam escalated, President Lyndon Johnson formed a team of Vietnam experts to work in the White House under R.W. Komer, separate from the National Security Council. As a rising young diplomat with significant experience in the country, Holbrooke was asked to join the group when he was only twenty-four years old.

Following his time in the White House, Holbrooke served as a special assistant to Under Secretaries of State (then the number-two position in the State Department) Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson. In 1968, Holbrooke was asked to be part of the American delegation to the 1968 Paris peace talks, which was led by former New York Governor Averell Harriman and Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance. He also drafted a volume of the now famous Pentagon Papers, a top-secret report on the government’s decision-making in Vietnam. Following these assignments, Holbrooke spent a year as a mid-career fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

[edit] Morocco and foreign policy (1970–1976)

In 1970, at his own request, Holbrooke was assigned to be the Peace Corps Director in Morocco. After two years, he left the Foreign Service to become the managing editor of the magazine Foreign Policy from 1972–1976. [4] At the same time, from 1974-1975, he was a consultant to the President’s Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy and was a contributing editor to Newsweek International. [4]

[edit] Carter Administration (1977–1981)

In the summer of 1976, Holbrooke left Foreign Policy to serve as campaign coordinator for national security affairs to Goveror Jimmy Carter (D-GA) in his bid for the White House. During the campaign, Holbrooke helped Carter prepare for his foreign policy debates with President Ford. After Carter’s victory, Holbrooke followed in the footsteps of such diplomatic mentors as Philip Habib, Dean Rusk, and Averell Harriman and, on March 31, 1977, became Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, making him the youngest person ever to hold that position, a post he held until 1981. [5] While at State he was a top adviser to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. During his service, he oversaw a warming with Cold War adversaries in the region, culminating in the normalization of relations with China in December 1978. [6] He was also deeply involved in bringing hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees to the United States, thus beginning a lifelong involvement with the refugee issue. (He served as Chairman of Refugees International, Board Member of the International Rescue Committee, and has visited refugee camps on four continents)[citation needed].

[edit] U.S. Ambassador to Germany

In 1992, after Bill Clinton became President, Holbrooke was initially slated to be Ambassador to Japan due to his depth of knowledge and long experience in Asian affairs. However, this appointment eventually went to former Vice President Walter Mondale, and Holbrooke unexpectedly was appointed Ambassador to Germany.[7] In 1992, Holbrooke was also a member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World and Chairman and principal author of the bipartisan Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and the Peterson Institute. He was Chairman and principal author of the “Memo to the President-Elect: Harnessing Process to Purpose,” a blue-ribbon Commission report sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Institute for International Economics. [8] Holbrooke served in Germany during a dramatic moment: only a few years after German reunification, he helped shape U.S. relations with a new Germany. A highlight of his tenure was President Bill Clinton’s visit to Berlin in July 1994, when thousands of Germans crammed the streets to welcome the American leader. [9] While in Germany, Holbrooke also was a key figure in shaping the U.S. policy to promote NATO enlargement, as well as its approach to the war in Bosnia.

In 1994, while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, he conceived the idea of a cultural exchange center between the people of Berlin and Americans. With Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of Germany, and Henry A. Kissinger as co-Chairman, this institution – The American Academy in Berlin – was announced on September 9, 1994, the day after the famous U.S. Army Berlin Brigade left Berlin. The American Academy in Berlin opened three years later in a villa on the Wannsee once owned by the German-Jewish banker Hans Arnhold. When Holbrooke left the U.S. government in 2001, he became Chairman of The American Academy in Berlin. It is now one of the most important links between Germany and the United States. [10] Its Fellows have included writers (from Pulitzer Prize winners Arthur Miller to Jeffrey Eugenides), economists, government officials, and public policy experts such as Dennis Ross and J. Stapleton Roy(former U.S. Ambassador to China). [11] In 2008, The American Academy in Berlin awarded its annual Henry A. Kissinger Award for Transatlantic Relations to George H.W. Bush. In 2007, the Award’s first recipient was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

[edit] Balkan envoy

In 1994, Holbrooke returned to Washington to become the assistant secretary for European and Canadian Affairs, a position he held until 1996, when he resigned for personal reasons (he had recently married the author Kati Marton and wished to return to New York). While assistant secretary, Holbrooke led the effort to implement the policy to enlarge NATO and had the distinction of leading the negotiation team charged with resolving the Balkans crisis. In 1995, he was the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords. In 1996, he was awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal, awarded by the German Ministry of Defense for public figures who have rendered “special meritorious service to peace and freedom in Europe.”

Upon leaving the State Department, Holbrooke was asked by President Clinton to become, as a private citizen, a special envoy to the Balkans given his distinguished service in the region. Holbrooke left his post as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs and joined Credit Suisse First Boston, eventually taking the position of Vice Chairman. In 1997, Holbrooke became a special envoy to Cyprus and the Balkans on a pro-bono basis as a private citizen. In his capacity as special presidential envoy Holbrooke also worked to end Serbia violent repression of Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, and in March 1999 he traveled to Belgrade to deliver the final ultimatum to Serb leader Slobodan Milošević before the NATO bombing campaign began. [12] Holbrooke has written numerous articles about his experiences in the Balkans, and in 1998, published the widely-acclaimed book, “To End a War,” a memoir of his time as the chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, ending the Bosnian civil war. The New York Times ranked the book as one of the eleven best books of the year in 1998. [13]

[edit] U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

In August 1999, Holbrooke was sworn-in as the 22nd U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, replacing Bill Richardson. During his tenure, Holbrooke was known for innovation and for achieving diplomatic breakthroughs that settled a series of longstanding tensions in the United States’ relationship with the UN. His highest-profile accomplishment was negotiating a historic deal between the United States and the UN’s then 188-Member States to settle the bulk of arrears owed by the United States to the United Nations. The deal, achieved with the agreement of the UN’s entire membership in late December 2000, lowered the rate of UN dues paid by the United States to the UN, fulfilling the terms of a US law championed by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Joseph Biden (D-DE). In return for the reduction, the US paid the UN over $900 million in back dues. [14] Holbrooke secured a reduction in US dues to the UN despite a booming American economy by enfolding the US position within a broad push to update the UN’s long-outdated financial system. As negotiations reached a critical phase in the fall of 2000, Holbrooke bridged a gap between what the US was legally permitted to pay and the amounts the rest of the UN membership were willing to shoulder by securing an unprecedented contribution by billionaire Ted Turner, founder of the UN Foundation. Holbrooke and his team received a standing ovation in the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the terms of the deal were presented.

Holbrooke’s other achievements as UN Ambassador included getting the United Nations Security Council to debate and pass a resolution on HIV/AIDS, the first time that body had treated public health as a matter of global security. In January 2000, Holbrooke used the United States’ presidency of the UN Security Council to spotlight a series of crises in Africa, holding six consecutive UN debates that brought together leaders from the region and the across the globe, including former South African President Nelson Mandela and then U.S. Vice President Al Gore, to catalyze more effective UN interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and elsewhere. Holbrooke decried a “double standard” whereby African conflicts received insufficient global attention. [15] In 2000, Holbrooke led a UN Security Council delegation in a series of diplomatic negotiations throughout Africa, including to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Uganda. Holbrooke also secured membership for Israel in the UN’s Western European and Others regional group, ending Israel’s historic exclusion from regional group deliberations and allowing it to, for the first time, stand for election to leadership positions in UN sub-bodies. [16] During the final weeks of his term, Holbrooke secured consultative status at the United Nations for Hadassah, the Jewish women’s service organization, overcoming strenuous objections from certain Arab delegations. [17]

[edit] Business career, humanitarian work, and other activities

[edit] Wall Street years (1981–1993)

In January 1981, Holbrooke left government and became both senior advisor to Lehman Brothers and vice president of Public Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, which he formed with a former top aide to Walter Mondale, James A. Johnson. From 1985 until 1993, he served as managing director of Lehman Brothers. During this time, he co-authored “Counsel to the President,” the New York Times best-selling memoirs of legendary Democratic wise man and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, published in 1991. In 1988 he served as a top policy adviser to then-Senator Al Gore (D-TN) during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. And four years later he advised another southern governor, Bill Clinton, in his quest for the White House.

Holbrooke also remained deeply engaged in prominent foreign policy issues. He visited Bosnia twice in 1992 as a private citizen and a member of the board of Refugees International, witnessing firsthand the damage and devastating human costs of the conflict. This experience committed Holbrooke to pursuing a more aggressive policy in Balkans, and drafting a memo to his colleagues, he urged that “Bosnia will be the key test of American policy in Europe. We must therefore succeed in whatever we attempt.” [18]

[edit] Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

In January 2000 when the United States was in the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Holbrooke held an unprecedented meeting of the Security Council to discuss AIDS in Africa [19]. No Security Council session in the history of the UN had ever been devoted to a health issue prior to this historic meeting. Vice President Al Gore presided over the Security Council and declared that AIDS was a security threat to all nations [20].

Upon leaving the UN a year later, Holbrooke took over a nearly moribund NGO that was intended to mobilize businesses and corporations in the fight against AIDS. At the time, it had 17 members. Over the next six years, Holbrooke turned this organization – originally called the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS – into a worldwide organization with over 225 members [21]. It expanded to include malaria and tuberculosis and is now known as the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is now the official focal point for mobilizing the business community in support of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and has grown into an important part of the ongoing war against these three diseases [22].

[edit] Other activities

Holbrooke is currently vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a leading private equity firm. Until resigning in July, 2008, he was a board member of American International Group. He is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and serves on the Advisory Board of the National Security Network. He is also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Economic Club of New York. He is the Founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin; President and CEO of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, the business alliance against HIV/AIDS; and Chairman of the Asia Society. Other board memberships include the American Museum of Natural History, Malaria No More (a New York-based nonprofit that was launched at the 2006 White House Summit with the goal of ending all deaths caused by malaria), Partnership for a Secure America, and the National Endowment for Democracy. He is also an honorary trustee of the Dayton International Peace Museum, as well as professor-at-large at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, his alma mater. Additionally, Holbrooke is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy.

He has also served as vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, managing director of Lehman Brothers [23], managing editor of Foreign Policy, and director of the Peace Corps in Morocco.

He has written numerous articles and two books: To End A War, and the co-author of Counsel to the President, and one volume of The Pentagon Papers. He has received more than a dozen honorary degrees, including a LL.D. from Bates College in 1999. As of 2005, he writes a monthly column for The Washington Post.

On March 20, 2007 he appeared on The Colbert Report to mediate in what Stephen Colbert (or rather, his television alter-ego) saw as Willie Nelson infringing on his ice cream flavor time. Holbrooke was the ‘ambassador on call’ and after a short mediation process the two parties agreed to taste each other’s Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to make amends. He subsequently sang “On the Road Again” in a trio with Colbert and Nelson.

[edit] Position on Iraq

Holbrooke spoke about Iraq during his farewell press conference as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on January 11, 2001. There he said, “Iraq will be one of the major issues facing the incoming Bush administration at the United Nations.” Further, “Saddam Hussein’s activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world, not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times.”[24]

On February 24, 2007 Holbrooke delivered the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address and called for “a new strategy in Iraq”, involving “a careful, phased redeployment of U.S. troops” and a “new diplomatic offensive in the Gulf region to help stabilize Iraq.” [25]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] East Timor controversy

In August 1977, then Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke traveled to Indonesia to meet with Suharto in the midst of one of the Indonesian military’s brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in East Timor in which tens of thousands of East Timorese were being slaughtered. Holbrooke visited officially to press for human rights reform, however once Suharto was met by Holbrooke, he was praised for Indonesia’s human rights improvements and was told that he in fact welcomed the steps that Indonesia had taken to open East Timor to the West, allowing a delegation of congressmen to enter the territory under strict military guard, where they were greeted by staged celebrations, welcoming the Indonesian armed forces.

Behind the scenes, Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski played point in trying to frustrate the efforts of congressional human rights activists to condition or stop US military assistance to Indonesia and in fact accelerated the flow of weapons to Indonesia at the height of the genocide.[26] [27]

Source: Wikipedia

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