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Richard C. Holbrooke

Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (January 2009-December 2010)

Why He Mattered

President George H. W. Bush once described Holbrooke as "the most persistent advocate I've ever run into."

Holbrooke, 69, served as a the top liason to the key countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Obama State Department until his abrupt death in December 2010 after a tear in his aorta.

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Background

At a Glance

Position: Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (January 2009-December 2010)
Career History: Vice chairman, Perseus LLC (2001 to 2008); Adviser, President-elect Barack Obama 's 2008 campaign (2008); Ambassador, United Nations (1999 to 2001); Other government positions: Assistant secretary of state, East Asia and the Pacific (1976 to 1980); Foreign service (1962 to 1976)
Birthday: April 24, 1941
Hometown: New York, N.Y.

Alma Mater: Brown University, B.A., 1962
Spouse: Kati Marton
Office: 1325 Avenue of the Americas, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10019; 212-651-6400
Web site

Path to Power

Holbrooke was born on April 24, 1941, in New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1962. Initially, Holbrooke dreamed of being a journalist, but when he couldn't get a job at the New York Times out of college, he joined the Foreign Service instead.

He joined the Foreign Service that year and served in Vietnam with Anthony Lake from 1963 through 1966. He was then transferred to the White House, where he worked with President Lyndon B. Johnson on Vietnam policy. In 1967, Holbrooke drafted a memo arguing that Hanoi was winning on the battlefield and in America.

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He wrote a volume of the Pentagon Papers and attended the Vietnam peace talks in Paris.

Holbrooke moved to Morocco to serve as Peace Corps country director in 1970. From 1972 through 1976, he was the editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Holbrooke assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in 1977. In that job, he helped normalize relations with China in December 1978.

After Carter lost reelection, Holbrooke entered the financial sector. He was a managing director of Lehman Brothers from 1985 through 1993. In 1993, Clinton appointed Holbrooke as U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Dayton Accords

Holbrooke was chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, a notoriously difficult agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. He was able to broker an agreement by earning the trust of Slobodan Milosevic, who said Holbrooke was his favorite American. The achievement earned Holbrooke a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

Holbrooke has described those negotiations as "nail-biting what really drove me more than anything else was a desire not to fail." Clinton passed over Holbrooke for secretary of State in 1996, instead selecting Madeleine Albright. Insulted, Holbrooke returned to the private sector as vice chairman of Credit Suisse First in Boston. He also sat on the board of Refugees International.

In 1998, Clinton nominated Holbrooke to the position of United Nations ambassador, but his confirmation was held up for 14 months by Republican lawmakers who questioned whether Holbrooke had done favors for Credit Suisse while he was still a government employee. The Justice Department launched an official investigation and Holbrooke eventually paid a $5,000 settlement, though he denied any wrongdoing.

In 1999, Holbrooke was confirmed as U.N. ambassador. He was an active and effective advocate, convincing the U.N. to cut U.S. administrative costs while persuading Congress to pay their back dues to the international body. He also arranged for Israel to join the U.N.'s Western European grouping after the Middle East grouping refused to accept the country.

In 2001, after Democrats lost power in the nation's capital, Holbrooke joined Perseus LLC, a private equity firm as vice chairman.

Clinton and Obama Connection

Holbrooke supported Secretary of State Clinton for president in the 2008 Democratic primaries, though he took great pains not to attack her rival, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). When Obama won the nomination, Holbrooke agreed to advise him.

But it was impossible to bring Holbrooke into Obama's inner circle, mainly because of his longtime rivalry with Obama's top foreign policy aid Anthony Lake. Holbrooke was not invited to sit on Obama's 13-person senior working group on national security, a slight that some attributed to his contentious relationship with Lake.

But Obama called to meet with Holbrooke soon after he was elected to ask if he would work on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He told the president-elect he wanted to create a "rump regional bureau" within the State Department.

Clinton appointed Holbrooke to the position of special representative in January 2009, her second day in office as secretary of state. She called him the civilian counterpart to Gen. David Petraeus.

Two months into his job, he was one of the first Americans to have contact with Iranian diplomats.

In December 2010, Holbrooke suddenly became ill during a meeting with Clinton at the State Department. He was rushed to George Washington Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to repair a torn aorta. He died three days later, on December 13, 2010, at the age of 69.

The Issues

Holbrooke said diplomacy and jazz are based on the same principle: improvisation on a theme.

He believed in the power of negotiations to bring peace and prosperity to an increasingly fractured world. But he said diplomacy would only succeed if the U.S. pursued robust relationships with allies as well as with enemies, especially in places like the Middle East. He also opposed unilateral action by U.S. officials.

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In his 1999 book To End a War, Holbrooke outlined the U.S. obligation to act as a peacekeeping force throughout the world. "Early outside involvement can be decisive, and American leadership will be required," he wrote. "The world will look to Washington for more than rhetoric the next time we face a challenge to peace."

He said "the true test of a military action is the peace that follows it."

Afghanistan

Holbrooke inherited one of Obama's top priorities for his first term: the war in Afghanistan. Obama poured additional troops and resources into Afghanistan in order to stabilize the country and empower the Afghan government to govern its territory. Holbrooke tried to convince the country's neighbors (particularly Pakistan) to help transform Afghanistan into a stable democracy.

Obama's Afghan policies owed much to Holbrooke, whose Afghanistan strategy was always to "go big." From the beginning, Holbrooke pushed for an ambitious military presence, a serious Afghanistan troop training effort and focused efforts to root out government corruption and encourage economic development. In order to combat the powerful narcotics trade, development officials under his watch helped farmers develop high-tech tools to yield more legal crops.

Holbrooke believed that security and development are tightly connected. "Without security, you can build a bridge, you can build a school, and one grenade sets it off," Holbrooke said at an August 2009 event. "We are trying to integrate the civilian and military."

Under his watch, hints of success in Afghanistan and Pakistan proved elusive. Holbrooke's efforts to strengthen the local government and police were dealt a setback in fall 2009 after the Afghanistan presidential election was widely declared fraudulent. His relationship with President Hamid Karzai was fraught with tension, with Karzai at one point called Holbrooke "the devil."

Holbrooke was also attacked for his inability to lay out clear goals for the region. He was also unwilling to clearly describe what success would look like, saying only "we'll know it when we see it."

H.I.V. and AIDS

Holbrooke also called the rapid spread of H.I.V. and AIDS "the greatest problem we face today," saying that the disease destabilized governments and economies across the world.

While ambassador to the U.N., Holbrooke organized the Security Council's first session on the disease, a move that helped convince world leaders that AIDS was a security as well as a health problem. He visited ten African countries and served as chief executive officer of the Global Business Council on H.I.V. and AIDS from 2000 until his death in 2010.

United Nations Reform

Holbrooke implored the U.N. to bolster its peace-keeping abilities and increase the number of staff dedicated to that effort. He also called on the U.N. to reduce the size of the Department of Information, the organization's press conference arm.

Genocide Prevention

Holbrooke was a strong proponent of using multilateral military force to stem violence throughout the world. He called the U.S. policy in Rwanda a terrible mistake and believed Americans should have engaged sooner.

He led the U.N. Security Council delegation to Congo in 1999 after fighting broke out in the country. It was one of the riskiest trips ever taken by U.N. officials. He also supported efforts to enforce sanctions on Angolan rebels in 2000.

The Network

Holbrooke was close friends with two prominent Obama supporters -- James Johnson, who ran Obama's vice presidential search team until his ties to Fannie Mae were pilloried; and Samantha Power, the human rights expert who was temporarily exiled from the Obama team after she called Clinton a "monster." He also maintained a close relationship with Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, a relationship that helped him secure his top position in the State Department.

Anthony Lake and Holbrooke were, according to Holbrooke, "best friends" when they served together in the U.S. Foreign Service in Vietnam. Holbrooke even named his son Anthony after his friend. But animosity developed between the ambitious twosome, and tensions were exacerbated during the Clinton years, when Lake earned a top post and Holbrooke was left empty-handed.

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Additional Resources