Richard Holbrooke

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Richard Holbrooke (2009)

Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (born April 24, 1941 in New York City , † December 13, 2010 in Washington, DC ) was a top American diplomat , businessman, publicist and newspaper publisher .

He became internationally known as the US special envoy for the Balkans in the 1990s. He is considered the "architect" of the Dayton Agreement , with which the Bosnian War was settled. From 2009 until his death he was the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan .

Live and act

Holbrooke was born in New York in 1941 as the older of the two sons of doctor Dan Holbrooke and his wife Trudi, née Moos. Holbrooke's parents, both Jews , came from Europe and immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. The father, who changed his name in the US, was from Poland and died when his older son was 15 years old. The mother was from Germany, who left her family for Argentina immediately after the National Socialists came to power . Holbrooke attended high school in Scarsdale, New York , where David Rusk, son of future Secretary of State Dean Rusk , became his best friend, and then studied history, international politics and German at Brown University . After graduating in 1962, he applied to the New York Times , but joined the Foreign Service after the New York Times rejected his application.

Holbrooke was married three times. First marriage from 1964 to 1972 to lawyer Larrine Sullivan. Holbrooke's second marriage was in 1977 with TV producer Blythe Babyak. The marriage ended in divorce after a year. In 1995 he married Kati Marton in his third marriage . Richard Holbrooke has two sons - David Dan and Anthony Andrew - from their first marriage to Larrine Sullivan. The wedding with Kati Marton added Elizabeth and Christopher, children from Kati Marton's marriage to ABC anchorman Peter Jennings .

From 1962 to 1966 he worked in Vietnam , first as the regional representative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Mekong Delta , and later at the US Embassy in Saigon as staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell D. Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge junior . His friendship with John Negroponte dates from this time . In 1966, Holbrooke to the bar of the White House by President Lyndon B. Johnson . Between 1967 and 1969 he worked as an assistant for special tasks to Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson and wrote a volume of the so-called Pentagon Papers . He also took part in the 1968/69 Paris peace talks as a member of the American delegation. After a year at Princeton, he became head of the Peace Corps in Morocco in 1970 . The following year he visited the Peace Corps in Afghanistan. He later said: "I saw this romantic, exotic, harmonious, multi-ethnic society just before it was destroyed."

Between 1972 and 1976 Holbrooke was editor of Foreign Policy magazine and from 1974 to 1975 he was co-editor of Newsweek news magazine . Since 1992 he has been a member of the Carnegie Commission on America and the Changing World . Sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation , he published a study in 1992 as Chairman of the Government and Renewal Commission . He also published numerous articles and two books.

From 1977 to 1981 Holbrooke was department manager for East Asia and the Pacific ( Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs ) in the State Department under President Jimmy Carter . He reversed the Korean policy of the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea by President Carter and restored the operational American leadership under the combined US-South Korean command. Critics argue that this led to the US supporting the massacre of students and citizens in the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980, in which, depending on the source, between 154 and 2,300 civilians were killed (see main article Gwangju Uprising ). In the same time, conducted with American support brutal invasion falls of Indonesia in East Timor . Critics accuse Holbrooke of complicity in human rights violations and the deaths of 200,000 Timorese.

Holbrooke became known to a broad international public when he brought rival factions to one table in the Bosnian War . He traveled to Belgrade to see Slobodan Milošević , accompanied by selected high-ranking US military personnel, whom he introduced to his interlocutor with the remark, "These soldiers command the American air force, which is ready to bomb you if we do not come to an agreement". Through this pressure he forced the signatures of Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Tuđman under the Dayton Agreement of November 21, 1995, which also formed the basis for the stationing of NATO SFOR troops in Bosnia ( see also: Yugoslav Wars ). Holbrooke's efforts to prevent military clashes in Kosovo , however, were unsuccessful.

He was a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London , the Citizens Committee for New York City and the Economic Club of New York. He was also a member of the leadership of the American International Group (AIG) and the National Endowment for Democracy , Chairman of the International Rescue Committee and Refugees International, and Vice President of Perseus LLC. In 1993, Holbrooke was the US ambassador to Germany for nine months . In 1998 he was the founding chairman of the American Academy in Berlin , a privately financed foundation for cultural and intellectual German-American contacts; until his appointment as special envoy, Holbrooke served as chairman of the board of trustees of the academy. From 1999 to 2001 he was ambassador to the UN.

In the 2008 US presidential campaign, Holbrooke supported the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton . On January 22, 2009, he was appointed Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan by the newly elected President Barack Obama . Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter thought he was the wrong choice. Holbrooke repeatedly criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy, which he saw as being too military and public opinion; In 2014, tapes were published on which he put his thoughts on government policy on a daily basis from summer 2010.

On December 10, 2010, Holbrooke was admitted to the George Washington University Hospital in Washington. On December 13, 2010, he died there of the consequences of an aortic dissection after many hours of emergency surgery. In his honor on the occasion of Holbrooke's death, President Obama called him “a true giant of American foreign policy”, whose work saved and enriched the lives of millions of people on earth.

After his death in February 2011, the former United States Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman became the new US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Life stations

  • 1969-1970: Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University
  • 1970: Director of the Peace Corps in Morocco
  • 1972: Withdrawal from the Foreign Service
  • 1974–1975: Adviser to the Presidential Commission for the government organization for the implementation of foreign policy
  • 1976: National Security Coordinator in Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign
  • 1977–1981: Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific at the US Department of State (when the US switched its full diplomatic relations from the Taiwanese Republic of China to the People's Republic of China)
  • 1981: Consultant at Lehman Brothers , later managing director there
  • 1993: US ambassador to Germany
  • 1994–1996: US State Secretary for Europe and Canada
  • 1995: Negotiator in Dayton peace negotiations
  • 1997: President Bill Clinton's Special Envoy for Cyprus
  • 1997: Responsible for business development in Europe and the Far East at Credit Suisse
  • 1999–2001: Permanent Representative of the USA to the United Nations (see also Kosovo War )
  • 2001–2008: Member of the AIG Board of Directors
  • 2001: Adviser to the Council on Foreign Relations ; there he was chairman of the terrorism working group
  • 2001: Appointed director of Human Genome Sciences, Inc (Nasdaq: HGSI), a society for the study of the human genome in Rockville , Maryland
  • 2001: Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Perseus LLC
  • 2002: From October chairman of the Asia Society to promote relations between the USA and Asia.
  • 2009: Appointment as special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan

Prizes and awards

reception

In November 2015, the HBO documentary The Diplomat aired, in which Holbrooke's son David describes his father's life.

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Richard Holbrooke  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. Obituaries: Trudi Kearl ( Memento of July 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). The Easthampton Star, November 12, 2009 (English). Retrieved December 15, 2010
  2. ^ A b c Robert D. McFadden: Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis . The New York Times, December 13, 2010 (English). Retrieved December 15, 2010
  3. http://marriage.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=marriage&cdn=people&tm=265&gps=326_86_1268_815&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=11&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http: /www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20101432,00.html (link not available)
  4. Christopher Marquis: Veteran Diplomat Is Bush's Pick for UN Post , The New York Times, February 18, 2001. Retrieved December 15, 2010
  5. Josh Rogin: Holbrooke: I helped write the Pentagon Papers (English) , Foreign Policy. July 29, 2010. Retrieved December 14, 2010. " In fact, as an author of one of the volumes of the Pentagon Papers, I lived through something similar before ." 
  6. "I saw this romantic, exotic, harmonious, multi-ethnic society, just a few years before it was destroyed." Quoted in: George Packer: The Last Mission. Richard Holbrooke's plan to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam in Afghanistan . The New Yorker, September 28, 2009. Retrieved December 15, 2010
  7. Stephen Zunes: Holbrooke: Insensitive Choice for a Sensitive Region . The Huffington Post, January 30, 2009 (English). Retrieved December 15, 2010
  8. ^ Jodi Kantor: Back on World Stage, a Larger-Than-Life Holbrooke . The New York Times, February 7, 2009 (English). Retrieved December 15, 2010
  9. http://www.americanacademy.de/uploads/media/090212_KissingerHeyden_DEU.pdf (link not available)
  10. Mark Landler: Appointing Emissaries, Obama and Clinton Stress Diplomacy . The New York Times, January 23, 2009 (English). Retrieved December 15, 2010.
  11. Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy . Quoted in: The Wrong man for the job ( Memento of January 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). Truth Dig, January 23, 2009. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
  12. ^ Matthew Rosenberg: Richard C. Holbrooke's Diary of Disagreement With Obama Administration. In: The New York Times , April 22, 2015.
  13. sda / dpa / afp / Reuters: Richard Holbrooke died . Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 14, 2010. Accessed December 15, 2010
  14. US diplomat Holbrooke dies after tearing aorta , msnbc.com, message dated December 14, 2010
  15. Obama: Holbrooke 'a true giant' of foreign policy . The Oval, December 14, 2010. Retrieved December 28, 2010
  16. Marc Grossman new US special envoy for Afghaistan and Pakistan ( Memento of February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  17. Why He Matters (whorunsgov.com) ( Memento of October 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  18. Lietuvos Respublikos Prezidentė. Retrieved August 12, 2019 .
  19. MP 2002 no 51 poz. 731 - item 4. Retrieved December 15, 2010
  20. ENTIDADES ESTRANGEIRAS AGRACIADAS COM ORDENS PORTUGUESAS - Página Oficial the Order of Honoríficas Portuguesas. Retrieved August 12, 2019 .
  21. ^ Augsburg honors peacemaker Richard Holbrooke . Augsburger Allgemeine from December 8, 2009, accessed December 15, 2010
  22. Manuel Roig-Franzia: Searching for Richard Holbrooke. In: The Washington Post , October 20, 2015; Neil Genzlinger: Review: 'The Diplomat,' on HBO, Traces the Global Life of Richard C. Holbrooke. In: The New York Times , October 30, 2015.
  23. Our Man by George Packer review - Richard Holbrooke and American power , May 2, 2019, The Guardian , accessed August 26, 2019
  24. ^ The Incompleat Diplomat , Literary Review, accessed August 26, 2019
predecessor Office successor
Robert M. Kimmitt US Ambassador to Germany
October 19, 1993 to September 12, 1994
Charles E. Redman