The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

A Man of Many Parts The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World Derek Chollet and Samantha Power, Public Affairs Books, 2011, $30, hardcover, 353 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID C ASAVIS Everyone has a Richard Holbrooke story, for he seems to have crossed nearly everyone’s path: Foreign Service officers, reporters, foreign diplomats, politicians and many others. That is certainly true of this compilation of reminiscences and vignettes, which brilliantly illuminates the life of this feisty, brash and highly successful diplomat. Adding to the already considerable value of these essays by people who knew and worked with “the Bulldozer” (just one of many nicknames he col- lected over the years), editors Derek Chollet and Samantha Power have in- terspersed various articles written by Dick Holbrooke himself over the years, reprinted from major publications. The Unquiet American reminds us that the young Holbrooke had several huge strokes of luck, such as when Averell Harriman took him to Paris for the Vietnam Peace Talks and when Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance named him assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, at the tender age of 36. Yet his trademark combina- tion of brilliance and bluster did not dictate a career of inevitable triumphs. As several of these essayists note, Holbrooke lived “life on the edge.” He barged into meetings and offices on Capitol Hill, and constantly worked the telephone, keeping each call under 10 minutes so he could fit more of them into his already jam-packed days and nights. In the same spirit, he took diplo- matic risks no one else would take. As U.S. ambassador to the United Na- tions, he got Senator Jesse Helms, R- N.C., an implacable foe of diplomacy, an invitation to address the body. That initiative was mainly responsible for settling the contentious issue of Amer- ican dues. And as assistant secretary of State for Europe, he took on the issue of Bosnia and peace in the former Yu- goslavia, famously packing up his bags inDayton to shock the participants into serious negotiations. Such victories were the product of audacity, determi- nation and gambler’s luck. For all these reasons, any history of late 20th-century diplomacy will treat Holbrooke kindly. Yet as the book’s ex- cerpts from his voluminous writings make clear, Holbrooke also deserves to be remembered as a keen journalist. Assessing a centenarian George Kennan, Holbrooke calls him an elo- quent skeptic. Writing in Foreign Pol- icy magazine, he criticizes FSOs as experts not in any specific area or func- tional area, but in “surviving bureau- cracy.” And even during his first posting, in Vietnam, he immediately gravitated to the press corps. Allow me to end this review with my own Holbrooke story. After he’d concluded a speech to Foreign Serv- ice candidates at the New School in New York City, the dean asked him what jobs he had been offered upon graduation. It was the only time I ever witnessed Holbrooke brought up short. He said, “None.” Unlike all his friends, he had not secured a position until he passed the Foreign Service Oral Exam. He confessed to being particularly displeased that he had failed to land the job he most desired at the time: re- porting for the New York Times . For all his successes, that rejection both- ered him for the rest of his life. David Casavis teaches at the State Uni- versity of New York at Old Westbury. He is writing a book about the 1971 murder of Foreign Service officer Don- ald Leahy in Equatorial Guinea. 56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 2 B OOKS This tribute reminds us that any history of late 20th-century diplomacy will treat Holbrooke kindly.