The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2019

70 JULY-AUGUST 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A Relentless Quest for History Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century George Packer, Knopf, 2019, $30/hardcover, 608 pages. Reviewed by Matthew Asada Let me tell you a story, George Packer begins, about a diplomat whose rise was facilitated by restless ambition, whose fall coincided with the end of an era and who, in between, ended one war and laid the groundwork for the end of another. That man is Richard Holbrooke— Our Man in Vietnam, Bosnia and Afghan- istan; or, as Packer put it in a May 13 reading at the New York Public Library, Richard Holbrooke the man: young, middle-aged and old. In Our Man Packer takes us through Holbrooke’s origin story (Jewish, not WASP); his service to, and relationship with, three presidents (some better and closer than others, although both types spoke at his funeral); and his relentless pursuit of the office on the seventh floor from which to rule the building. As Packer tells it, Holbrooke’s story was not about the pursuit of power for its own sake, but rather the motivation to apply power toward a greater good, whether to alleviate suffering, end violent conflict or recognize the universal dignity of human life. Neither hagiographic nor damning, the book occupies—or rather defines— the space of a biography written about a man who imagined being the subject of a biography, though maybe not in the unvarnished colors Packer has used. Yet without the affairs (there were plenty) and without the foibles (there were many), we would never have a true picture of the man whose accomplishments helped to write a chapter of his- tory, and whose blueprint for Afghanistan may yet help write another. As one of Ambassador Holbrooke’s special assistants in 2010, I had a front-row seat to Our Man ’s final chapter. Benefiting from unfet- tered access to Holbrooke’s personal papers and exten- sive interviews with more than 250 people around the world, Packer tells us about the subject’s experience with his Shake- spearean frenemy Anthony Lake and the story of that fateful day on Mount Igman outside Sarajevo. He also tells us about moments of personal self-reflection that may, just may, reveal Holbrooke in a raw, natural and unembellished state (when no one was around to see or hear him). Holbrooke loved history, as Packer writes, “so much that he wanted to make it.” But as Packer said to me after his talk in New York City, sometimes Holbrooke’s history wasn’t exactly history. Even when reading the personal papers, Packer said he had to remind himself that this was Holbrooke’s telling of Holbrooke’s tale (and Holbrooke wasn’t beyond attempting to cor- rect the record, even when the record was the record— e.g., his remarks at the State Department on Vietnam or Embassy Kabul’s reporting of Holbrooke’s conversation with Presi- dent Hamid Karzai). The interviews and other documenta- tion Packer includes in the book—from the State Department’s Office of Inspec- tor General, the Department of Justice and the United Nations Protection Force Military Police Report—help augment Holbrooke’s story. BOOKS In 1963, Richard Holbrooke wrote in a letter: “I enjoy the drama of the helicopter.” Half a century later in Afghanistan, he continued to enjoy the drama of the ride. From left, Matthew Asada, LTG Caldwell and Ambassador Holbrooke. NATOTRAININGMISSION-AFGHANISTAN