Obnoxious for Peace
Richard Holbrooke is a
person many people can't stand. Though he may be no more ambitious or
egotistical than a lot of career-minded Washingtonians, he is exceedingly
transparent about it. Physically large, he can be seen in photographs towering
over his rivals--and sometimes elbowing them out of the picture frame. A
courtier worthy of Shakespeare, Holbrooke is legendary for his flattery and
back stabbing, and even for buttering someone up and sticking the knife in at
the same time.
Those who
tend to roll their eyes at the mention of Holbrooke's name will find much
eye-rolling material in his book To End a War: From Sarajevo to Dayton and
Beyond , which is about his role in negotiating a peace settlement in
Bosnia. In places, Holbrooke's account reads like a self-nominating speech for
secretary of state or the Nobel Peace Prize, distinctions for which his stomach
audibly growls. Holbrooke seldom declines the chance to fluff up someone who
might be useful to him in the future, especially if that someone is a
journalist. Roger Cohen of the New York Times is "astute." Stephen
Engelberg, also of the Times , is "impressive." William Pfaff of the
International Herald Tribune is "insightful." Holbrooke suffers from a
strain of narcissism that impels him to quote himself, frequently and at
length, including from diaries, articles, TV interviews, faxes, and private
letters to the president. His name-dropping is out of control. At one point, he
offers the odd boast that it was his idea to send Ron Brown on a trade mission
to Bosnia--the mission that led to the death of the commerce secretary and 34
others.
But those who fixate on Holbrooke's insufferability do him
a serious injustice. Holbrooke lacks subtlety, modesty, and discretion. He can
be vain, pompous, and ridiculous. We know this. But he also managed to carry
off, almost by sheer force of personality, an accomplishment that eluded
governments, world leaders, and multilateral organizations for four years: He
ended the war in Bosnia. The story he tells is really about performing a kind
of jujitsu with his own personality, channeling his dubious personal
qualities--his bullying, his egomania, and his impatient ambition--toward the
noble (and perhaps Nobel) end of peace in the Balkans. One of the lessons his
book teaches is that in politics, self-interest isn't the opposite of public
interest. To the contrary, ego can be the engine that makes political and
diplomatic accomplishments possible. By the end of the book, I couldn't help
liking and admiring Holbrooke--not despite his evident flaws but in a curious
way because of them.
Holbrooke's intervention in the Balkans is a rejoinder to the social
historians' conceit that individual actors don't really matter. In the summer
of 1992, Holbrooke went to Bosnia as a private citizen, with a refugee aid
organization, and saw horrors such as Muslims being driven out of the town of
Banja Luka, where their families had lived for four centuries. He resolved to
try to do something about it. As part of candidate Clinton's foreign policy
brain trust, Holbrooke prodded him to take an interventionist stand, which
Clinton did. After the election, Holbrooke wrote a memo to Warren Christopher
and Anthony Lake advocating the strategy known as "lift and strike"--lifting
the arms embargo that prevented the Muslims from defending themselves, and
bombing the Bosnian Serbs. He also asked for the job of special negotiator on
Bosnia. Holbrooke's rival Lake made sure none of this happened. The Bosnia job
went to someone else. Holbrooke was kept away from the issue and on the
periphery of foreign policy-making in general. Eventually he was named
ambassador to Germany. Clinton's tough talk stopped.
But Holbrooke still cherished hopes of
involving the United States. Offered the post of assistant secretary of state
for European affairs, a job he considered beneath his dignity, he took it for
the sake of directing American diplomatic efforts in the Balkans. As he pushed
and prodded, wheedled and connived, the crusade became more personal. Early in
his shuttle diplomacy, three colleagues, including his top deputy, were killed
in a gruesome road accident for which the Bosnian Serb warlords were indirectly
to blame. This tragedy spurred him in his hazardous ricocheting between
Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo and helped bring about better-late-than-never
NATO airstrikes in 1995. When he was dissatisfied with official policy,
Holbrooke undermined it. For instance, he was supposed to take advantage of the
bombing to demand a cease-fire by all sides. In fact, he encouraged the
Croatian-Muslim Federation to keep fighting, since it was making territorial
gains that he thought would make a territorial settlement easier.
Holbrooke
does not waste a lot of time on the question of whether intervening in Bosnia
was in our national "interest." In answer to former Secretary of State James
Baker's view that we didn't have a dog in that fight, he asserts the United
States had a Samaritan's obligation to stop ethnic cleansing. The Europeans
having failed, we were the only ones who could do anything about it. Inside the
administration, he fought off objections from the military. Spooked by anything
that smacked of "mission creep" or "nation building," the Pentagon resisted
sending American troops to Bosnia and has refused to allow them to become
involved with refugees, elections, or human rights. Holbrooke continues to
argue for what he calls a "maximalist" interpretation of our military role. He
views it as a scandal that the Bosnian Serb war criminals Ratko Mladic and
Radovan Karadzic have yet to be captured and brought to justice.
The narrative climaxes in Dayton, Ohio, where the
combatants sat around an Air Force base for three weeks and reached a peace
accord. Holbrooke is a proponent of the intuitive, improvisational school of
negotiation. He played tennis with Franjo Tudjman, drank shots of plum brandy
with Slobodan Milosevic before lunch, enacted hysterical scenes of feigned and
real anger, and essentially sat on the heads of the various participants until
they cried uncle. Here the story becomes especially gripping and takes an
unexpected turn. It is the president of the Bosnian Muslims, Alia Izetbegovic,
who turns out to be the biggest obstacle to peace, unwilling to make even
meaningless concessions. On the other hand, the brutal but undeniably charming
Milosevic, the man most responsible for starting the Yugoslav civil war, saves
the accord with territorial concessions at the last moment.
Surely Holbrooke pursued
peace in the Balkans in part for the glory involved. And as one not afflicted
with false modesty--or any other kind--he clearly enjoys his plaudits
immensely. But by the end of the book, the issue of Holbrooke's motivation no
longer looms very large. From an early stage, he found himself drawn into
something larger than himself, something more compelling than his own career.
As the object elevates him, his pettiness melts away.
