Holbrooke, Richard Charles Albert

▪ 1999

      June 1998 was an eventful month for American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. His book To End a War, an account of the 1995 Balkan peace negotiations, was published. Then, six days after his name was announced as Pres. Bill Clinton's choice for the U.S. ambassadorship to the UN, Holbrooke undertook a diplomatic mission to the Serbian province of Kosovo to attempt to negotiate a cease-fire between Serbs and the ethnic Albanian majority seeking autonomy.

      Described by many in Washington as an ambitious self-promoter, Holbrooke had enjoyed a number of careers, including magazine editing, investment banking, and writing. He was born April 24, 1941, in New York City to a European Jewish couple who had fled the Nazis in the 1930s. After receiving a bachelor's degree from Brown University, Providence, R.I., in 1962, he joined the Foreign Service and was posted to Vietnam until 1966. His experience there and in Washington on Pres. Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam staff led to his being named a junior member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks in 1968-69. After serving as Peace Corps director in Morocco from 1970 to 1972, he edited the controversial quarterly magazine Foreign Policy (1972-76). He returned to the government in 1977 when Pres. Jimmy Carter appointed him assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. From 1981 to 1985 Holbrooke was both vice president of Public Strategies, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, and senior adviser to the New York investment firm Lehman Brothers; he then served as managing director of Lehman Brothers from 1985 until 1993. In 1996 he became vice chairman of Crédit Suisse First Boston.

      Holbrooke served the Clinton administration as ambassador to Germany (1993-94) and assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs (1994-95). The 1995 Dayton accords, achieved through his unorthodox mix of diplomacy, bluffing, and bullying, gained what continued to be a fragile peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Considered briefly in late 1996 as a possible candidate for secretary of state, Hobrooke lost the position to Madeleine Albright but in 1997 was appointed special envoy to Cyprus, where he attempted to broker a settlement of the two-decade-old dispute over that island between Greece and Turkey

      From June through August, Holbrooke's shuttle diplomacy did little toward achieving a cease-fire in Kosovo, where both sides continued fighting. In September Congress postponed discussing Holbrooke's nomination to the UN post until the new year because of allegations of conflict of interest. Despite some progress made in October with Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, disunity between rebel factions, NATO's failure to use force against the Serbs, and a shifting U.S. policy in the region hampered negotiations. It remained to be seen whether Holbrooke, if appointed to the UN, would effect a peaceful settlement.

REBECCA RUNDALL

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