Richard Holbrooke dead died yesterday at the age of 69

[British_Rover]

A sad day for modern diplomacy and foreign policy.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11991949

Richard Holbrooke was the secretary of state who never was.

He was perhaps too much the professional diplomat and not enough the politician to get the top job.

He had a fault - he was more interested in actually resolving disputes and conflicts than in turning the results into personal political advantage. The determined and sometimes abrasive methods that brought him success in negotiations are not necessarily the qualities needed for achieving the highest office.

He was pipped by Madeleine Albright under President Bill Clinton and by Hillary Clinton under President Barack Obama, who wanted to keep his defeated rival inside the tent.

Problem solving was Mr Holbrooke's thing. Maybe he had memories of his early days when his parents, though Jewish by origin, took him to Quaker meetings.

These were his main challenges.

Format doesn't take well to C&P read the rest at the link.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/11/richard_holbrookes_tribute_to_foreign_policy

As it turned out, I was the last person to have lunch with Richard Holbrooke. We ate last Thursday in the State Department cafeteria -- sushi that, frankly, looked a bit green around the edges; his idea, not mine -- and the ambassador was in his element. There were hands to shake, aides scurrying about with details of the last-minute trip he had to make that afternoon to Capitol Hill, an interesting new backdoor conduit to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to consider. Lunch with his successor at Foreign Policy was an unnecessary gesture in his packed schedule but he had overruled his staff to keep our date that morning.

And the only purpose of it was to say thank you in person.




Just a few days earlier, Foreign Policy celebrated its 40th anniversary with an event at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art. The honoree we chose that night to mark the occasion was Holbrooke, a contributor to the very first issue of Foreign Policy in the winter of 1970 who went on to become our editor for five years in the 1970s. Holbrooke's moving speech that night took him back four decades, to the intellectual turmoil of Washington in the Vietnam era, when the new journal was born in reaction to the dangerous conformity of the establishment that had helped allow the disaster of Vietnam to unfold.


But Holbrooke forgot the award (after closing out the party talking to the young foreign policy types for whom he was a legend). When I emailed that we had found it, he insisted I return it in person. And over our cafeteria sushi, he couldn't have been more generous. Aside from reminiscing about Foreign Policy's considerably more luxe early days -- co-founder Warren Demian Manshel was not only bankrolling the venture, but liked to do the winter issue in Palm Beach and the summer one in Cap d'Antibes, Holbrooke told me -- he asked sharp and serious questions about FP's future in a fast-changing media landscape. And volunteered, unasked, to do whatever he could to help us in the future. He told me repeatedly in the several times I saw him over the last couple weeks how much the award meant to him. In short, he was kind, classy, and generous to a fault.

And here are his remarks, his own last word on a long-ago time in his life. -- Susan Glasser

*****

The five years I spent as an editor at FP were among the most important in my life and my career, and we don't really get a chance to talk about why this great magazine was founded, but I think it's directly relevant to the situation today.

In 1969, [the war in] Vietnam was at its height. Senator [John] Kerry, then, was back from Vietnam and about to make his historic appearance in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Families didn't talk to each other, friendships were destroyed, this city was seething in a way that is unimaginable today, even in a time when we talk about the partisan divisions that evidently divide our city -- but not like they did in 1969, Richard Nixon's first year, a year when millions of people descended on this city to protest the war, and [national security advisor Henry] Kissinger was engaged, but people didn't know it yet, in secret talks.

In that year of 1969, Foreign Affairs was the only magazine in the game. There were no others; the magazines you see around today did not exist. And the magazine Foreign Affairs was sliding into irrelevance; it may be hard for you to believe this now, but Foreign Affairs did not run articles on Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam debate. Their quintessential article, as we used to joke, was an article called "Mexico Looks North and South," or, "Whither Spain." They were very academic; their past was behind them. And two friends, Warren Manshel and [Samuel] Huntington -- very close friends who passionately disagreed about the course of American foreign policy, and particularly Vietnam -- decided to form a new magazine, and that's how FP was conceived. Warren was a wealthy investor; Sam as you all know was a distinguished professor at Harvard.

They believed in promoting dialogue even among people who disagreed violently. They decided to create this new magazine to debate the big issues; Vietnam and beyond, and they called it Foreign Policy because they wanted to emphasize it was about our policies, not simply these articles I mentioned earlier. This magazine would have a new shape, literally and figuratively. They chose an American designer from New York [who] designed the very slim, elegant initial magazine, with that curious long shape, the concept being that you could fit it into your breast pocket, though if you did you were going to ruin your suit because it got pretty thick.

That fall, in 1969, Sam Huntington called me; I didn't know him, but he called and said he wanted me to consider being the first editor of this new magazine. I was at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, long before my dear friend Anne-Marie Slaughter took over as dean. I was at Princeton, on an assignment from the Foreign Service, a one-year assignment at the Wilson School, and it was an intriguing offer, but I had already made a commitment to the government to go to Morocco as Peace Corps director, so I recommended a very dear friend of mine named John Campbell, as their first editor. He had entered the Foreign Service with me, a brilliant man. He took over, and the article Don quoted from was in his first issue.

Life rarely offers you an opportunity to do the same thing twice, but a tragic series of events led to my becoming the editor. In 1970 and [1971], John Campbell set out to create this magazine with Warren Manshel and Sam Huntington, and you go back and look at those issues and you'll see lots of names of people who became very prominent. The first article of the first issue was co-authored by Les Gelb, and we printed other famous people subsequently. John Campbell, at the age of 31, suddenly died of thyroid cancer that was undiagnosed. I remember that day so vividly because I was in Nepal visiting the Peace Corps operations there, as part of my learning about the Peace Corps; I was in Morocco at the time. I got a call from his widow and she asked if I could come back, and I came back to New York and spoke at the funeral and then Sam and Warren asked me to reconsider the magazine.

This time, having almost completed my tour in Morocco, I said yes and that led to five incredible years at the magazine and with Warren and Sam. We printed long investigative articles on Vietnam and the Middle East; we aggravated people enormously although not the way WikiLeaks has caused problems in the last few days, although people like Henry Kissinger were incredibly angry at the magazine for what we published. We published people from Paul Nitze to Albert Wohlstetter to Francis Fitzgerald. The first piece in the first issue I edited was the 25th anniversary of [the famous "X" article], and very symbolically George Kennan chose to revisit that article in our magazine. So the magazine was launched.

After I left the magazine, editors and owners, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, made a critical decision to change the shape. While it was an elegant shape, it simply was too confining. The new shape allowed the magazine to breathe.

Today, after two superb editors, Mois?s [Na?m] and Susan [Glasser], you have what you have today -- a magazine that has outgrown any of the dreams that we had 40 years ago, a magazine which has become a benchmark with a website and a visionary new leader in Don Graham, who was so farsighted to acquire it. I congratulate them, Susan and Don, and all the people from Sam and Warren to today. I'm honored to be here Susan, Don; I'm honored to be a small part of this terrific evening. Thank you very much.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/14/richard.holbrooke/?hpt=T1

From CNN international

(CNN) -- Leaders around the world Tuesday mourned the death of the diplomat who spearheaded the end of the Bosnian war on the 15th anniversary of the peace deal he helped design.

Richard C. Holbrooke, 69, died Monday after doctors performed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. He most recently served as the Obama administration's point man in the volatile Afghan-Pakistani war zone.

He was well known for his role as the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords -- signed December 14, 1995 -- which ended the deadly ethnic conflict that erupted during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

"I had the honor and privilege of working with Richard through many international crises over several decades, most particularly the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo," former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said. "He could always be counted on for his imagination, dedication and forcefulness."

After President Barack Obama took office in 2008, Holbrooke took one of the toughest diplomatic assignments -- U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the region Obama regards as critical to the fight against terrorism.


Holbrooke's assertive style worked in the Balkans, but it brought perils for diplomats in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where long stretches of chatting and tea-drinking are the norm.

He was frank in his assessments about the region and officials in both countries regarded him as abrasive, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In April 2009, there were reports of a heated argument between Holbrooke and Karzai after alleged fraud in the Afghan presidential election.

Karzai's office issued a brief statement Tuesday, describing Holbrooke as "a veteran and seasoned diplomat who had served greatly to the government and the people of the United States."

"Achieving peace and stabilization of a country with complex realities on the ground, as well as in the region, is not an overnight task, but there was no doubt that he was pursuing his mission not only objectively, professionally and patriotically as an American, but at the same time as a friend of Afghanistan," said Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's former foreign minister. "That was what we admired most."

In an interview with CNN, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called Holbrooke an "extremely hard-working man" who can "get things done which would otherwise take weeks to get through."

One of the world's most recognizable diplomats, Holbrooke's career spanned from the Vietnam War era to the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, coinciding with presidencies of the past five decades, from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama.

He also worked as a journalist and an investment banker. But as a diplomat, he was plain-speaking, accessible, and known for his tough-mindedness.

Obama called Holbrooke "a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the nation had lost "one of its fiercest champions and most dedicated public servants."

"He was the consummate diplomat, able to stare down dictators and stand up for America's interests and values even under the most difficult circumstances," Clinton's statement said. "Few people have ever left a larger mark on the State Department or our country."

The Obama administration swiftly appointed Holbrooke to the special representative job and Holbrooke dove in headfirst to tackle the challenges.

In an October interview with CNN, Holbrooke cautioned patience in the struggle against the militants and for democracy in the so-called AfPak region, a mission that he said was of the "most vital importance to our national security interests."

"We are determined to see it through," he said, and he made reference to the Vietnam War and the Dayton Accords in his insights.

He noted that dealing with so many foes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border made the process difficult.

"A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies," he said.

Holbrooke mentioned a range of militant groups, such as the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e Tayyiba and noted that "an expert could add another 30."

"There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority. There is a widely dispersed group of -- of people that we roughly call the enemy. There's al Qaeda, with which there's no possibility of any discussion at all."

"There is no clear single address that you go to," Holbrooke said.

Even as he was being sedated for surgery, Holbrooke had the region's problems on his mind, a senior administration official who was with the diplomat at the hospital told CNN.

With a touch of humor, the official said Holbrooke had a conversation with his Pakistani surgeon at George Washington University Hospital that had nothing to do with his health condition.

"You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan," he said.

That was one of Holbrooke's final comments, the official said.

 

[tigger]

The first line of the article says it all. He was a diplomat, first and foremost. Not a political hack. He's left some very big shoes to fill.