Richard Holbrooke

Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (April 24, 1941 – December 13, 2010) was an American diplomat and author. He was the only person to have held the position of Assistant Secretary of State for two different regions of the world, (Asia from 1977 to 1981 and Europe from 1994 to 1996) assisting in brokering a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia leading to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords. Holbrooke was a prime contender to succeed Warren Christopher as Secretary of State but was passed over in 1996 as President Bill Clinton chose Madeleine Albright instead.

From 1999 to 2001, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He was an adviser to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. Holbrooke then joined the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton and became a top foreign policy adviser. Holbrooke was considered a likely candidate for Secretary of State had Kerry or Hillary Clinton been elected president. In January 2009, Holbrooke was appointed as a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During his career, Holbrooke worked to improve the lives of refugees, particularly the Hmong of Indochina. On December 13, 2010, Holbrooke died from complications of an aortic dissection.

Holbrooke's unfulfilled ambition was to become Secretary of State; he, along with George Kennan and Chip Bohlen, were considered among the most influential U.S. diplomats who never achieved that position. Several considered Holbrooke's role in the Dayton Accords to merit the Nobel Peace Prize.

Holbrooke was born on April 24, 1941, in New York City, to Dan Holbrooke (né Goldbrajch), a doctor, and Trudi Kearl (née Moos), a potter; brother, Andrew, survives him. Holbrooke's mother, whose Jewish family fled Hamburg in 1933 for Buenos Aires before coming to New York, took him to Quaker meetings on Sundays. She stated: "I was an atheist, his father was an atheist... We never thought of giving Richard a Jewish upbringing. The Quaker meetings seemed interesting."

Holbrooke's father, who died of colon cancer when Richard was 15 years old, was born of Polish Jewish parents in Warsaw and took the name Holbrooke after migrating to the United States in 1939. The original family name was Goldbrajch. During his teens, Holbrooke spent more time at the house of his friend David Rusk than his own home. David's father was Dean Rusk who became President Kennedy's Secretary of State in 1960. Rusk inspired Holbrooke; however, he did not give him any special treatment during his career.

After Scarsdale High School, Holbrooke earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from Brown University in 1962, attending on a full-tuition scholarship. He was later a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, leaving in 1970. At Brown, Holbrooke was the Editor-in-Chief of the Brown Daily Herald in his senior year (1961–62).

President John F. Kennedy's call to service inspired Holbrooke to enter government work. A few weeks after college graduation, Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service where he underwent Vietnamese language training. He served for six years in Vietnam, first in the Mekong Delta, as a civilian representative for the Agency for International Development working on the rural Pacification Program, a program supporting the South Vietnam government with economic development and enacting local political reforms. Holbrooke later became a staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., by securing the position from his best friend, Anthony Lake.

During this time, he served with many other young diplomats who would play a major role in American foreign policy in the decades ahead, including John Negroponte, Frank G. Wisner, Les Aspin and Peter Tarnoff. When Holbrooke was 24, he joined a team of experts, formed by President Lyndon Johnson that was separate from the National Security Council.