Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (April 24, 1941 – December 13, 2010)
Long time diplomat and current Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke passed away on December 13th from an aortic aneurism. Holbrooke will be remembered for securing the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnia-Serb conflict. If anyone could have brokered a similar peace deal between the Karzai government and the Taliban, Holbrooke was the guy.
In trying to make sense of the effects Holbrooke’s passing has had on Afghan policy, just review the New Yorker article by George Packer written this past September.
Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service in 1962 and his first post was in Vietnam. For those young Foreign Service officials who cut their teeth in Vietnam—my father was one of them—Holbrooke cast a heavy shadow. But it was the Vietnam War, which would cast a shadow over Holbrooke’s career. He and close colleagues—a group which included Anthony Lake, Leslie Gelb, and Les Aspin—were all sharply critical of the Vietnam War and doubted that a surge in troops would solve the fundamental problems of U.S. policy in South East Asia.
In many ways, Holbrooke’s career came full circle. Like Afghanistan, Vietnam was a messy conflict in the developing world that required diplomats to work with a corrupt and undemocratic political system. Holbrooke was one of the men selected to take part in the Paris peace talks in 1968, and so he understood the importance of reaching an equitable agreement, which resolved the conflict for all parties in Afghanistan. The Paris negotiations also taught him how devastating the consequences could be when governments fail to take advantage of diplomatic openings.
In 2008 Holbrooke described Afghanistan as “Vietnam circa 1965”. This was the year that Lyndon Johnson decided to increase the U.S. military presence in Vietnam; the first counter-insurgency “surge” in U.S. history. Just as Johnson relied heavily on the advice of military personnel who believed in a military solution, Obama seemed to do the same. In Afghanistan, Holbrooke recognized that the war would not be won with force of arms, but with tools of diplomacy: foreign aid, regional cooperation, and mutual concessions. He described the three things that could lose the war for the Americans: sanctuaries for terrorists, civilian casualties, and corruption. Following the corruption marred presidential elections in 2009, Holbrooke compared the situation to “the political chaos in South Vietnam that followed the 1963 overthrow of President Diem”.
He understood instinctively that Pakistan was the key to solving the Afghan war; and he recognized that addressing grievances dating back to the India-Pakistan partition was an absolute necessity. In a PBS interview Holbrooke discussed the state of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, and emphasized the prospects and challenges of working with Pakistan. He viewed the complex history between the two countries as delicate and filled with potential hazards. Wikileaks provided further evidence that Holbrooke was working hard, not simply to engage the Afghans and Pakistanis, but to begin to address India-Packistan relationship at the heart of Pakistan’s foreign policy towards extremist groups.
Holbrooke believed the problems of governance in Afghanistan were crucial to a successful U.S. military strategy. He was often critical of the Karzai regime, sometimes at the expense of diplomatic relations. Following the infamous “Rolling Stones” article for which General McChristal was fired, Holbrooke appeared at his weakest. As a man who had seemingly burned too many bridges and who could not even secure face-time with Karzai.
In the last four months however, Holbrooke fortunes had seemed to have reversed. His relationship with General Petraeus, was by all accounts very strong. His criticisms of the Karzai government increasingly gained more credibility. Indeed, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry began to voice similar doubts about the corruption-riddled government in cables released by Wikileaks and reports from Bob Woodward new book.
Open questions remain about the man even after his death. In Vietnam, he came in time to see the folly of the war and reportedly called senior people in the Johnson administration “delusional”. Had he reached the same conclusion about Afghanistan? In Vietnam, Holbrooke recognized that time was not on the U.S.’s side. He wrote, Hanoi hopes that for us it will be the mounting dissension, impatience, and frustration caused by a protracted war without fronts or other visible signs of success. Substitute Hanoi for the Taliban, and you get a pretty accurate picture of the insurgents’ tactics. During the Vietnam War, Holbrooke came to believe that a negotiated settlement was the only way to end the war and protect U.S. interests. He may have reached the same conclusion in Afghanistan
Holbrooke leaves us with these questions but his final words spoken to his Pakistani doctor suggest that ending the war in Afghanistan was never far from his mind. According to sources he asked his doctor to “stop this war in Afghanistan”. This comment may or may not have been delivered in jest, but it demonstrates his desire to end the Afghanistan War.
