The many accolades coming out following the sudden death on Monday of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and his death bed conversion in opposing the Afghanistan war have overshadowed his rather sordid history of supporting dictators, war criminals and military solutions to complex political problems.
Holbrooke got his start in the Foreign Service during the 1960s in the notorious pacification programs in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. This ambitious joint civilian-military effort not only included horrific human rights abuses, but also proved to be a notorious failure in curbing the insurgency against the US-backed regime in Saigon. This was an inauspicious start in the career of someone Obama appointed as his special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan to help curb the insurgency against those US-backed governments.
In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. In this position, he played a major role in formulating the Carter administration's support for Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and the bloody counterinsurgency campaign responsible for up to a quarter-million civilian deaths. Having successfully pushed for a dramatic increase in US military aid to the Suharto dictatorship, he then engaged in a cover-up of the Indonesian atrocities. He testified before Congress in 1979 that the mass starvation wasn't the fault of the scorched-earth campaign by Indonesian forces in the island nation's richest agricultural areas, but simply a legacy of Portuguese colonial neglect.
Later, in reference to his friend Paul Wolfowitz, then the US ambassador to Indonesia, Holbrooke described how "Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
In a particularly notorious episode while heading the State Department's East Asia division, Holbrooke convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under US command in order to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju. Holbrooke was among the Carter administration officials who reportedly gave the O.K. to Gen. Chun Doo-Hwan, who had recently seized control of the South Korean government in a military coup to wipe out the pro-democracy rebels. Hundreds were killed.
He also convinced President Jimmy Carter to continue its military and economic support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.
In the late 1990s, as the US ambassador to the United Nations, Holbrooke criticized the UN for taking leadership in conflict resolution efforts involving US allies, particularly in the area of human rights. For example, in October 2000 he insisted that a UN Security Council resolution criticizing the excessive use of force by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian demonstrators revealed an unacceptable bias that put the UN "out of the running" in terms of any contributions to the peace process.
As special representative to Cyprus in 1997, Holbrooke unsuccessfully pushed the European Union to admit Turkey, despite its imprisonment of journalists, its ongoing use of the death penalty, its widespread killing of civilians in the course of its bloody counterinsurgency war in its Kurdish region, and other human rights abuses.
Holbrooke is perhaps best known for his leadership in putting together the 1995 Dayton Accords, which formally ended the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though widely praised in some circles for his efforts, Holbrooke remains quite controversial for his role. For instance, the agreement allowed Bosnian Serbs to hold on to virtually all of the land they had seized and ethnically cleansed in the course of that bloody conflict. Indeed, rather than accept the secular concept of national citizenship that has held sway in Europe for generations, Holbrooke helped impose sectarian divisions that have made the country - unlike most of its gradually liberalizing Balkan neighbors - unstable, fractious and dominated by illiberal ultra-nationalists.
As with previous US officials regarding their relations with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Panama's Manuel Noriega, Holbrooke epitomizes the failed US policy toward autocratic rulers that swings between the extremes of appeasement and war. For example, during the 1996 pro-democracy uprising in Serbia, Holbrooke successfully argued that the Clinton administration should back Milosevic, in recognition of his role in the successful peace deal over Bosnia, and not risk the instability that might result from a victory by Serb democrats. Milosevic initially crushed the movement. Holbrooke also failed to back the nonviolent resistance campaign for independence in Kosovo, then led by the moderate Ibrahim Rugova.
In response to increased Serbian oppression in Kosovo just a couple years later, however, Holbrooke became a vociferous advocate of the 1999 US-led bombing campaign, leading to victory of the hard-line KLA in Kosovo. Meanwhile, in Serbia, the bombing creating a nationalist reaction that set back the reconstituted pro-democracy in Serbia movement once again. The pro-democracy movement finally succeeded in the nonviolent overthrow of the regime, following Milosevic's attempt to steal the parliamentary elections in October 2000, but the young leaders of that movement remain bitterly angry at Holbrooke to this day.
Scott Ritter, the former chief UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector, who correctly assessed the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and predicted a disastrous outcome for the US invasion, observed, "not only has he demonstrated a lack of comprehension when it comes to the complex reality of Afghanistan (not to mention Pakistan), Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy." Noting how the Dayton Accords were built on the assumption of a major and indefinite NATO military presence, which would obviously be far more problematic in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Europe, Ritter added: "This does not bode well for the Obama administration."
Ironically, back in 2002-2003, when the United States had temporarily succeeded in marginalizing Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, Holbrooke was a strong supporter of redirecting American military and intelligence assets away from the region in order to invade and occupy Iraq. Obama and many other Democrats presciently criticized this reallocation of resources at that time as likely to lead to the deterioration of the security situation in the country and the resurgence of these extremist groups, but Holbrooke instead sided with the Bush administration in supporting the disastrous invasion and occupation.
It was unclear, then, why Obama chose someone like Holbrooke for such a sensitive post. Indeed, as the past two years have shown, Holbrooke's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan appear to have little show for them. Perhaps more than any other appointment, Holbrooke epitomized the tragedy of Obama's foreign policy: instead of bringing hope and change, he brought in some of the most notorious figures of the foreign policy establishment to continue to pursue failed and immoral policies.
There is an error in the article. The author condemns the Dayton Agreements on the basis that the Krajina was returned to the Serbs. This is unfair. The Krajina had long been populated by Serbs until Yugoslavia broke up. Egged on by the Germans, the Croats waged a enocidal war agains the Serbs and ran them out, a much larger bloodbath than happened in Kossovo later on.
The same mistake is made about the Soviet -German treaty of 1939, condemning the Soviets. The land occupied under that treaty had never been Polish, and Never part of the Polish Kingdom after about 1600. Probably no a single pole lived in those regions. But at Versailles they grabbed the land with no justification except greed, and could do so becasue Russia was undgoing civil war.
I'm no fan of R. Holbrooke, but I don't fault him for discharging his duties as directed by the Presidents whom he served. He made countless compromises, but that is the nature of the beast.
The author has the luxury of time and distance--and with it he has polishe a crystal clear rear-view mirror. Too bad, Mr. Holbrooke was busy working in the field, when the choices and "perfected" solution weren't nearly so apparant.
Holbrooke is not alone in the hack job that he has done with vicious and deadly policy - like supporting the massacre of one third of the East Timorese population with US armaments. But some of the nonsense we are expected to swallow is pretty extreme. When he was assigned with destroying Yugoslavia, and met with Milosevic, Milosevic agreed to remarkably forceful demands. Holbrooke wouldn't take "Yes" for an answer and formulated appendix B to the Rambouille Accord which required among other things that all media be turned over to occupying forces, and that occupying forces be given free transportation at all times... stipulations no sovereign state would agree to. When Milosevic finally said "No" everything became his fault. Bombing, which was the goal all along, could commence. Yes, Holbrooke can most assuredly be faulted for the bloody trail he has left in the world that our grandchildren must inhabit.
For all the venom directed at Mr. Holbrooke, both personal and professional, there is plenty more hagiography. Like in most things, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
Again, sometimes you have to 'get in bed' with some pretty shady customers to advance policy initiatives. In a circumstance where there are bad actors on all sides, and lives hang in the balance, you pick your partners with reluctance--but pick partners, you must.
The Dayton Agreement was preceded by a NATO air campaign against the Bosnian Serb army which was simultaneous with a Croatian Army--BH Army assault on the ground.
The Dayton Agreement codified the results on the ground. There was no U.S. consensus to send ground troops or to end the U.N. embargo.
At the heart of the Dayton Agreement were provisions to reverse the ethnic cleansing via returning displaced persons and refugees to their pre-war homes and allowing these DPREs to vote where they used to live.
The Dayton Agreement is flawed. It was the best we could achieve at the time. But, it put the U.S., NATO, SFOR, OHR, the U.N., and the International Community on a direct collision course with all ethnic nationalist political parties who sought to maintain their war gains in the post-war era.
Reversing the gains of ethnic cleansing--genocide--is no small feat. Holbrooke deserves great credit for crafting an agreement that rejected the dominant apologists' view of "ancient ethnic hatreds" as the war's cause and committed us to reversing the effects of genocide.
That side of the Dayton Agreement is much less visible, except for the violent opposition ethnic nationalists and their rhetorical apologists put up.
Holbrooke didn't "impose sectarian divisions" in Bosnia. He accepted reality as it existed, and he accepted the limits of U.S. power to change that reality. The Bosnian Serbs didn't want to live in a Bosnian state that conformed to Zunes' vision; if US policy were constrained at the time by conformity to Zunes' vision of a democratic secular Bosnian state, the war would have continued.
If you apply the logic of Zunes' criticism of Holbrooke on Bosnia to the current Afghanistan case, Holbrooke couldn't have supported a deal that would accept the reality of Taliban power. That would mean you can't end the war and bring the troops home.
Also, Holbrooke's "deathbed conversion" was on Afghanistan, not Iraq. And it wasn't a "deathbed conversion" - it was well known that he was a skeptic on military escalation and an advocate of a political solution.
None of that erases Holbrooke's involvement in other US crimes, of course. But given that the issue of the hour is Afghanistan - today the President is going to claim "progress" based on the say-so of Petraeus, in contradiction to the assessment of the 16 intelligence agencies - it's important to get this part right.
BTW, remember the so called Bush "dream team" in 2001? How about Bush's judgement in picking that crack pot crew to make national decisions? We are STILL paying a steep price for all that "expertise."