[Peace-discuss] Holbrooke

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There was a discussion of this reprobate at this meeting tonight. Holbrooke has 
a pretty awful record, not so much Yugoslavia, but earlier. For example, in the 
Indonesian atrocities in eastern Timor, where he was the official in charge, and 
evaded his responsibility to stop the US support for them. --CGE]

	Published on Friday, January 30, 2009 by Foreign Policy in Focus
	Holbrooke: Insensitive Choice for a Sensitive Region
	by Stephen Zunes

Obama's choice for special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arguably the most 
critical area of U.S. foreign policy, is a man with perhaps the most sordid 
history of any of the largely disappointing set of foreign policy and national 
security appointments.

Richard 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 U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. This was an inauspicious start in the 
career of someone Obama hopes to help curb the insurgency against the 
U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

In Asia

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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 
U.S. 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 OK to General 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.

At the UN

Holbrooke, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the late 1990s, 
criticized the UN for taking leadership in conflict resolution efforts involving 
U.S. 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 counter-insurgency war in its Kurdish region, and other 
human rights abuses.

In the Former Yugoslavia

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 allows 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 U.S. officials regarding their relations with Iraq's Saddam 
Hussein and Panama's Manuel Noriega, Holbrooke epitomizes the failed U.S. 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. In response to increased Serbian oppression in 
Kosovo just a couple years later, however, Holbrooke became a vociferous 
advocate of the 1999 U.S.-led bombing campaign, creating a nationalist reaction 
that set back the reconstituted pro-democracy 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 U.S. invasion, observes that "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 adds: "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 others 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.

It's unclear, then, why Obama would choose someone like Holbrooke for such a 
sensitive post. Indeed, it's unclear as to why - having been elected on part for 
his anti-war credentials - Obama's foreign policy and national security 
appointments have consisted primarily of such unreconstructed hawks. Advocates 
of a more enlightened and rational foreign policy still have a long row to hoe.

© 2009 Foreign Policy in Focus

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a 
professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of 
Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage 
Press, 2003.)