Richard Holbrooke
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Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (born April 24, 1941) is a New Yorker who has had a varied career as a professional American diplomat, magazine editor, author, Peace Corps director, and investment banker.
During the 1970's, Holbrooke was US advisor in Indonesia. He is reported to have actively supported in Jakarta's brutal invasion of East Timor which was carried out with US military aid. Some critics accuse Holbrooke of being responsible for 200,000 Timorese deaths and subsequent human rights abuses.
In the 1980's in South Korea, Holbrooke (then the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs) reversed Carter's policy of withdrawing American troops from Korea, and maintained American operational control under the United States-South Korean Combined Forces Command. Some critics argue that this led the U.S. to support the brutal Kwangju or Gwangju Massacre in May 1980, during which almost 5,000 civilians were killed. Many compare the Gwangju Massacre in Korea to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China. Soon afterwards, General Chun Doo Hwan completed his coup d'état begun nearly six months ago, and in Febraury 1981, became the most unpopular and reviled leader in postwar Korean history. Later on, Holbrooke became a well-paid consultant to the South Korean chaebol, Hyundai Corporation.
Holbrooke came to prominence when he brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. He is also the only person to have held the Assistant Secretary of State position for two different regions of the world (Asia and Europe).
He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Economic Club of New York. He is a board member of AIG and the National Endowment for Democracy and is Chairman of International Rescue Committee and Refugees International. He is also the Founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, and Vice Chairman of Perseus LLC. He has written numerous articles and two books, and has received more than a dozen honorary degrees.
Ambassador Holbrooke has two sons.
Life Events
- 1962 graduates from Brown University; enters U.S. Foreign Service
- 1962-6 Vietnam diplomatic service as a provincial representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), then Ambassadors' staff assistant to Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge.
- 1966 White House Vietnam staff of President Lyndon Johnson
- 1967-69 special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas deb. Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson, writes one volume of the Pentagon Papers
- 1967-9 member of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam
- 1969-70 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University
- 1970 Peace Corps Director in Morocco
- 1972 resigns from Foreign Service
- 1972-6 Managing Editor of Foreign Policy magazine
- 1974-5 consultant to the President's Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy
- 1974-5 contributing editor of Newsweek magazine
- 1976 coordinates National Security Affairs for the Carter presidential campaign.
- 1977-81 Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (as the U.S. switches full diplomatic relations to the People's Republic of China from the Republic of China)
- 1981 A consultant at Lehman Brothers, eventually becoming full-time Managing Director
- 1992 member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World
- 1992 chairman and principal author of the bipartisan Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation and the Institute for International Economics
- 1993 U.S. Ambassador to Germany
- 1994-6 Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs
- 1995 Leads the American team negotiating the Bosnian Peace Accords at Dayton
- 1996 Awarded the Manfred Wörner Medall
- 1997 President Clinton's special envoy to Cyprus
- 1997 responsible for business development in Europe and the Far East for Credit Suisse First Boston
- 1999-2001 U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
- 2001 counselor at the Council on Foreign Relations and chairman of its Terrorism Task Force.
- 2001 appointed director of Rockville, MD, company Human Genome Sciences, Inc (Nasdaq: HGSI)
- 2002 Awarded Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany)
- 2002 In October he became Chairman of the Asia Society.
Books
- "Counsel to the President" (with Clark Clifford) ISBN 0394569954
- "To End a War" ISBN 0375753605
External Links
- Richard Holbrooke profile, NNDB (http://www.nndb.com/people/173/000044041/).
- Mother Jones Article on Holbrooke's Involvement in East Timor (http://www.motherjones.com/east_timor/features/holbrooke.html)
| Preceded by: Bill Richardson | U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. 1999 – 2001 | Succeeded by: John D. Negroponte Template:End boxde:Richard Holbrooke nl:Richard Holbrooke no:Richard Holbrooke |