U.S. Diplomat Holbrooke Dies After Tearing Aorta
Richard Holbrooke, a veteran U.S. diplomat who was the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has died, NBC News reported, citing a U.S. official. He was 69.
Officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because the family had yet to make a formal announcement of Holbrooke's death Monday in Washington.
Holbrooke's forceful style earned him nicknames such as "The Bulldozer" or "Raging Bull." He was admitted to George Washington University Hospital on Friday after he became ill. He had surgery on Saturday to repair a torn aorta.
The hospital was referring all inquiries to the State Department, which was expected to make an announcement.
His death came just hours after Obama had called Holbrooke "a towering figure in American foreign policy" who was a critical player in developing the administration's policy on Afghanistan.
'One of the Giants'
"He is simply one of the giants of American foreign policy," Obama said Monday during a holiday reception at the State Department. Obama met briefly with Holbrooke's family before his remarks.
Earlier Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Holbrooke's long service.
"He has given nearly 50 years of his life to serving the United States," Clinton said during a meeting in Canada.
Holbrooke was stricken Friday while at the State Department and was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent more than 20 hours of surgery to repair the tear and bleeding in his aorta.
A torn aorta is a condition in which a rip develops in the inner wall of the body's largest artery, allowing blood to enter the vessel wall and weaken it. The problem can lead to rapid death if not corrected. It causes serious internal bleeding, a loss of normal blood flow and possible complications in organs affected by the resulting lack of blood, according to medical experts.
It’s a rare condition, with cases estimated at between 5 and 30 per 1 million people each year. About 2,000 new cases occur in the U.S. annually. It’s more common in men than women, and in those between 60 and 70.
Holbrooke served under every Democratic president from John F. Kennedy to Obama in a lengthy career that began with a foreign service posting in Vietnam in 1962 after graduating from Brown University, and included time as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam.
His sizable ego, tenacity and willingness to push hard for diplomatic results won him both admiration and animosity.
"If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said. "If you say no, you'll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful."
He learned to become extremely informed about whatever country he was in, push for an exit strategy and look for ways to get those who live in a country to take increasing responsibility for their own security.
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'Bulldog for the Globe'
"He's a bulldog for the globe," Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, once said.
The bearish Holbrooke said he has no qualms about "negotiating with people who do immoral things."
"If you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you're not doing a disservice to those already killed by trying to do so," he said in 1999.
Born in New York City on April 24, 1941, Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke had an interest in public service from his early years. He was good friends in high school with a son of Dean Rusk and he grew close to the family of the man who would become a secretary of state for presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Holbrooke was a young provincial representative for the U.S. Agency for International Development in South Vietnam and then an aide to two U.S. ambassadors in Saigon. At the Johnson White House, he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers, an internal government study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam that was completed in 1967.
The study, leaked in 1971 by a former Defense Department aide, had many damaging revelations, including a memo that stated the reason for fighting in Vietnam was based far more on preserving U.S. prestige than preventing communism or helping the Vietnamese.
After stints in and out of government — including as Peace Corps director in Morocco, editing positions at Foreign Policy and Newsweek magazines and adviser to Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign — Holbrooke became assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs from 1977-81. He then shifted back to private life — and the financial world, at Lehman Brothers.
A lifelong Democrat, he returned to public service when Bill Clinton took the White House in 1993. Holbrooke was U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1993 to 1994 and then assistant secretary of state for European affairs.
One of his signature achievements was brokering the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. He detailed the experience of negotiating the deal at an Air Force base near the Ohio city in his 1998 memoir, "To End a War."
James Dobbins, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan who worked closely with Holbrooke early in their careers, called him a brilliant diplomat and said his success at the Dayton peace talks "was the turning point in the Clinton administration's foreign policy."
Holbrooke's efforts surrounding Dayton would later lead to controversy when wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told a war crimes tribunal in 2009 that Holbrooke had promised him immunity in return for leaving politics. Holbrooke denied the claim.
'No apologies' to Milosevic
Holbrooke left the State Department in 1996 to take a Wall Street job with Credit Suisse First Boston, but was never far from the international diplomatic fray, serving as a private citizen as a special envoy to Cyprus and then the Balkans.
In 1998, he negotiated an agreement with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo where they were accused of conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign and allow international observers into the province.
"I make no apologies for negotiating with Milosevic and even worse people, provided one doesn't lose one's point of view," he said later.
When the deal fell apart, Holbrooke went to Belgrade to deliver the final ultimatum to Milosevic to leave Kosovo or face NATO airstrikes, which ultimately rained down on the capital.
"This isn't fun," he said of his Kosovo experience. "This isn't bridge or tennis. This is tough slogging."
Holbrooke returned to public service in 1999, when he became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after a lengthy confirmation battle, stalled at first by ethics investigations into his business dealings and then unrelated Republican objections.
At the U.N., Holbrooke tried to broker peace in wartorn African nations. He led efforts to help refugees and fight AIDS in Africa. He also confronted U.N. anger over unpaid U.S. dues to the world body and persuaded 188 countries to overhaul the United Nations' financing and reduce U.S. payments.
"What's the point of being in the government if you don't try to make things better, which means trying to change things," Holbrooke told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview, reflecting on his time at the United Nations.
Holbrooke, with his long-standing ties to Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, was a strong supporter of her 2008 bid for the White House. He had been considered a favorite to become secretary of state if she had won. When she dropped out, he began reaching out to the campaign of Obama.
Reflecting on his role as Obama's special envoy, Holbrooke wrote in The Washington Post in March 2008 that "the conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than Americans realize. This war, already in its seventh year, will eventually become the longest in American history, surpassing even Vietnam."
Strained relations with Karzai
Holbrooke's relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was strained after their heated meeting in 2009 over the fraud-tainted Afghan presidential election. Karzai brushed it off, saying he had "no problem at all with Mr. Holbrooke." But the U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan, not Holbrooke, were the ones who ended up developed the closest relations with the mercurial Afghan leader.
With his decades of service and long list of accomplishments in U.S. diplomacy, Holbrooke missed out on a tour as America's top diplomat, a job he was known to covet. As U.N. ambassador, he was a member of the Clinton Cabinet but his sometimes brash and combative style contrasted with that of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
At a ceremony to mark the fifth anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords, Holbrooke bristled when was asked by a reporter if his views on the future of Kosovo — that it would eventually become independent — matched those of his boss.
"You mean, Madeleine?" he replied with a derisive snort, referring to Albright, who with others in the administration were publicly neutral on the question.
Holbrooke rejected direct comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam, but acknowledged similarities and repeatedly pressed the administration to do more to win the hearts and minds of both the Afghan and Pakistani people.
At the State Department ceremony in January 2009 when he was introduced as the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Holbrooke spotted an old friend in the audience, John Negroponte, his one-time roommate in Saigon (the former South Vietnamese capital now called Ho Chi Minh City) who later was the first director of national intelligence and a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
"We remember those days well, and I hope we will produce a better outcome this time," Holbrooke said.
Holbrooke is survived by his wife, author Kati Marton, and two sons, David Dan Holbrooke and Anthony Andrew Holbrooke.
Sources: CNN, MSNBC
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