Beyond Politics

New York, NY
Season 1, Episode 3

GUEST: Richard Holbrooke, Former Ambassador and Under-Secretary of State for Asia and Europe
HOST: Stan Pottinger

STAN POTTINGER: What did you want to be when you were a child?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I don't know. A fireman, I think. I can't remember. Certainly not a diplomat-- I didn't even know what they did.

POTTINGER: Isn't there a lot in common between a fireman and a diplomat?

HOLBROOKE: Yes. That's good Stan. I hadn't thought of that. Very good.

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POTTINGER: Richard, thanks for coming here and giving us some time to talk to you. We're here on the 3rd floor of the Asia Society, of which you are the chairman. How did that happen?

HOLBROOKE: Well, I've always been interested in Asia. That's where I began my public career when I came right out of college and was sent to Vietnam. I've worked with the Asia Society since the '70s, and about three years ago they asked me to become chairman. I was thrilled. This is the great institution linking the U.S. and Asia. It was founded 50 years ago exactly by John D. Rockefeller III, and it is unique because it combines culture, policy and educational programs, and I just love Asia. And I love to have this relationship with this great institution.

POTTINGER: You went to Brown as an undergraduate. What did you major in?

HOLBROOKE: History.

POTTINGER: Now at some point when you were there you decided that the Foreign Service was of interest to you. Right? What were you looking for?

HOLBROOKE: I joined the Foreign Service because while I was at Brown Kennedy became president. And by one of those great accidents, my best friend in high school was David Rusk the son of Dean Rusk who became Kennedy's secretary of state. And I'd never heard of the Foreign Service, but-- I wanted to be a journalist-- but Rusk talked about the Foreign Service, said, "It's something you ought to think about." So I took the exam, passed it, joined the Foreign Service one month after I graduated-- and less than a year later I was in Vietnam.

POTTINGER: Well, you were in Vietnam in '63. That had to be a life-changing experience, especially then. What did you learn that we still haven't learned?

HOLBROOKE: You know, when I got to Vietnam there were about ten or fifteen thousand troops; about 40 Americans had been killed. These numbers seemed enormous to me. By the time I left my involvement with Vietnam, there were over 550,000 troops in Vietnam. American casualties ultimately went up to 55,000 killed. And I was fortunate enough as a very young Foreign Service officer to see-- to first serve in the Mekong Delta then in Saigon then in the White House under Lyndon Johnson when I was still very young. I wrote a volume of the Pentagon Papers; I went to Paris for the negotiations. So I saw it at every level. And to the extent that you learn more from failures than successes-- and I think that's a reasonable proposition-- I learned a great deal about negotiating, about matching resources to the mission-- something we're not doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, with disastrous consequences. And it's stood me for the rest of my life. I did not come out of Vietnam traumatized by it, but I came out deeply informed by it.

POTTINGER: Let me ask you a couple of questions about diplomacy. You've done a lot of things in a very distinguished career, but probably the one thing you are best known for to the public is being a diplomat. What's the difference between diplomacy and politics?

HOLBROOKE: Politics-- individuals put themselves out on the line. They ask the voters to reject them or elect them. It's an all or nothing kind of operation. So it takes a certain degree of drive and ego, a willingness to endure rejection and ridicule-- and 50 percent of all the candidates lose-- actually, more than 50 percent when you count the primaries. Diplomacy-- if you're in the government-- it's an appointed job; you have much more protection. Usually you're flying under the radar screen. It's not that kind of out there pressure. But there are many other differences. Diplomacy is working toward fixed objectives; elections are working-- politics is working toward your own political advancement through the electoral process.

POTTINGER: You talk about the objectives of the two. What is the chief objective of diplomacy? Is it peace, security, trade-- what is it?

HOLBROOKE: It's all of the above Stan. It depends on the specifics. A lot of what diplomats do is just representation. That's not-- it's not heavy lifting and-- but then every once in a while you run into a very specific objective, which can be a big one or a small one. It can be a fisheries agreement or a trade agreement, an aviation agreement-- but it can be something of war and peace dimensions.

POTTINGER: Bosnia.

HOLBROOKE: Bosnia we-- by the time I was brought into negotiate over the war in Bosnia that war was out of control. Three hundred thousand people had been killed; two-and-a-half million homeless-- and in August of 1995 President Clinton asked me to take over the negotiations. I was Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, and in the next 14 weeks we had a rather intense negotiation, which ended the war. And now 11 years later the war is still over, the country is at peace-- not perfect-- a lot of tensions, but the war is over. No Americans, no NATO troops have been killed or wounded. It's kind of the opposite of Iraq. We went in with a lot of muscle, going back to your earlier point about General Powell, we went in with a lot of troops and gave ourselves the authority to shoot first and ask questions later. And the result is a peace.

POTTINGER: At one time when you were face-to-face with Milosevic, he supposedly asked you this, "Are you crazy enough to bomb us over these issues we're talking about in that little lousy Kosovo?" And you're reported to have replied, "You bet. We're just crazy enough to do it." Now--

HOLBROOKE: That's true.

POTTINGER: I love the statement. What kind of craziness does it take to be effective with a threat of that kind? You can't go too far or too little.

HOLBROOKE: Well, I mean he-- by asking me the question, he'd given me an opening. And it was clear to me that he was worried and he couldn't believe we'd bomb again. We'd bombed in 1995 over Bosnia, and now we were-- for 15, 16 days-- and we were going to bomb over Kosovo. It was rhetoric, but it gave me a chance to say, "You bet."

POTTINGER: Now, if you had-- but that turned out not to be an empty threat.

HOLBROOKE: I don't know.

POTTINGER: Let me ask you about empty threats too, because it's a little bit of a poker game. Do-- can you ever bluff? And if you do bluff and get called on it, what are the consequences?

HOLBROOKE: Well, you know your son is joining the Marines, and the first thing they're going to do is show him a rifle. And then they're going to say to him, "This is your friend, but never pick it up unless you're prepared to use it." That's the first thing they tell the Marines. And I think you-- if you're going to bluff and your bluff is called and you-- the bluff is empty-- you have really weakened yourself.

POTTINGER: You sat across from Milosevic. You know that he is mass murderer; you know he's an egomaniac; you know he's a tyrant-- yet, you have to try to reason with him. How do you deal with that?

HOLBROOKE: Milosevic enjoyed the theater of negotiations. He was, as you say, quite smart. He had charmed a generation of European and American negotiators because he was quite skillful. Larry Eagleburger, as ambassador to-- and Deputy Secretary and Secretary of State-- Eagleburger had described him as a Yugoslav Gorbachev. He had negotiated with important bankers in New York, and he was very confident of himself. But I felt it was just essential to show him that we were not going to get pushed around and this time it was for real.

POTTINGER: Did he understand English?

HOLBROOKE: Perfectly.

POTTINGER: The trial that he underwent, I guess not to a conclusion, was it prosecuted correctly in your view, timely and in content?

HOLBROOKE: No. It was much too slow. I never understood why it was so slow. But you know, after he died in his cell, the journalists all called me up and did interviews with me. And they were all saying he cheated justice. I don't know. It didn't seem to me that dying alone in your cell was cheating justice. What an ignominious end for a man who had caused four wars and-- no I don't have any-- I don't mourn Slobodan Milosevic. I mourn the 300,000 people who were killed.

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POTTINGER: There's probably some form of tyranny, oppression and genocide going on someplace in the world all the time. What part of the world is faced with that kind of a problem right now, and yet, we are not hearing about it, it's under reported?

HOLBROOKE: Well, there are a tremendous number of places where people are being butchered and killed. About two thirds of them are in Africa. But still, one third are not-- Sri Lanka and parts of Latin America. It is not possible for the outside world, the international community, to fix every one of these. Sri Lanka-- the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers-- is not something the outside world can stop. What's happening Nepal can't be stopped by outside people. But there are other areas where it should be or could be. And right now the-- obviously, the highest on the list is Darfur. There's no question about that. You have a clear case of the leaders of Northern Sudan, who are Arabs from a couple of tribes, trying to depopulate Southwestern Sudan, an area the size of France, to take it over and drive them out-- kill, rape, make them homeless. It's a terrible situation. The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution saying the U.N. should send a peacekeeping force. The African Union has a force in there now. The Sudanese government has said if the African Union leaves to be replaced by the U.N., they're going to throw everyone out. That is a direct challenge to the international community. Now, President Bush has said that's a challenge to the U.N. I respectfully disagree with his characterization. The U.N. is just a building a few blocks from here where that vote took place. That vote was a 14 to nothing vote, China dissenting. And four of the five permanent members, France, Great Britain, Russia and the United States voted to send that force in. It's the four of us that are being tested. And to lay it off on Kofi Annan and the U.N., as President Bush is doing, is just an evasion.

POTTINGER: That raises the question of American perception of the U.N. It's mixed. Everybody loves the United Nations ability in the field of health and welfare and education. People are less clear about the U.N.'s effectiveness when it comes to preventing wars with use of force. You're a former ambassador to the United Nations. What should the U.N.'s role be, can it be, in prevention through the use of force?

HOLBROOKE: In the 44 years since I joined the State Department, there's been no issue on which public perceptions are more wrong than they are about the U.N. The U.N.-- and I repeat-- is just a building on the East River where ambassadors from 192 countries gather to vote according to instructions from their capitols. The U.N. is no stronger, no weaker, than what its leading nations-- particularly the permanent five members of the Security Council-- want it to be. And to blame the failures on the U.N. is like blaming Madison Square Garden for the New York Nicks. And that isn't why the Nicks are doing so badly.

POTTINGER: That's too bad. We could deal with that.

HOLBROOKE: Yeah. And it's really-- it's a building. That's where they meet. If we didn't have the U.N., we would have to try to invent it. It might look differently than it looks today, because it was a creature of the circumstances the world confronted in 1945, and the permanent five members might be different. Instead of Britain and France, for example, you'd almost certainly have one European Union seat, which would make a very big difference in the way the European Union conducted policy. It is a flawed institution, but it's indispensable-- indispensable.

POTTINGER: Is the American public as well informed about foreign affairs as other democracies-- say France, Great Britain, Italy? And are we well enough informed regardless?

HOLBROOKE: Well, it's a very tough question to answer Stan. Because the Europeans are so focused on European relations within the EU. There are some things we pay more attention to than the Europeans, like HIV/AIDS, which I worked on a lot. And there are other things, which Europe pays more attention to-- like whether Turkey should join the EU. But in the end people pay attention to those parts of foreign policy which affect them most. For us right now, that's Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Those three countries-- two wars-- and in between them a country which poses us the most enormous strategic challenge. I think the American public is very aware of-- probably more than the Europeans. Darfur-- I think there's been more activity on Darfur in the U.S. than there has been in Europe.

POTTINGER: Some parts of the world have a pretty low opinion of America. Some parts don't. The parts of the world that do have a low opinion of America-- is it-- do we deserve it?

HOLBROOKE: This is a very tough question. There is no question in my mind that the United States has suffered the most grievous decline in its international standing in modern times-- by which I start with Woodrow Wilson in 1917-- in the last five years. It's been a disaster. Now-- is that anti-Americanism or is it opposition to the administration? On the day Bill Clinton left office, for example, 65 percent of the Turks thought we were their best friend, and they had a positive view of us. And Turkey's a critical country-- NATO ally, borders on Iraq. Today the number's in the low 20s. I think if Bill Clinton, hypothetically, were president again tomorrow, it would go back up. There is something about the way this administration presents itself that alienates people. This is doubly ironic since all you ever hear them talk about is democracy, freedom, liberty, the fundamental values of American society-- which most presidents since Wilson have been trying to export. So what is it that caused us to go into this massive decline, even while articulating traditional values? I think the answer is basically Iraq.

POTTINGER: What is the best outcome you can imagine and the worst outcome you can imagine with regard to our policy in Iraq?

HOLBROOKE: The best outcome, obviously, would be success.

POTTINGER: And how would you define it?

HOLBROOKE: Well, that's a very good question. I define success now as the ability to get out and leave behind a country that doesn't spiral completely out of control. This debate, however, about whether we're in a civil war is ridiculous. It is a civil war. The administration just avoids that phrase because of the political implications of it. And lately even senators like Senator McCain and this new commission headed by Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton have all been talking about the criticality of the next few months. So you have a sense that 2007 is going to be rather critical, but Bush is dug in on Iraq. So the best case, as I said, is to be able to withdraw and leave behind an Iraqi government and security structure that can protect itself.

POTTINGER: Can that be done?

HOLBROOKE: The chances of that are going down steadily. I'm not prepared to say it's completely hopeless now, but we have to be frank. We entered this war in the early spring of 2003. That's almost 3 1/2 years ago. At every cycle in those 3 1/2 years the situation has been worse. At every cycle the administration's predictions have been wrong. It's always gotten worse. So we're in a very bad situation. And finally, Stan, the president is clearly going to pass this war and Afghanistan on to his successor.

POTTINGER: Well, I want to talk about that because this isn't just interesting. This is more impactful. It's now 2008, the end of November; a democrat has been elected to the presidency. The phone rings, "Richard, you've got to get down here right away. You're my choice to be Secretary of State. And we have this problem that we've inherited called Iraq." What do you do?

HOLBROOKE: We have to look at the whole region from Beirut to Bombay and from the Mediterranean to the Himalayan Mountains as a region-- not as a single problem. And all along that area everything is in flux. There are two major wars, Afghanistan and Iraq; there's a strategic challenge from the Iranians. There is Syria; there's the Kurdish/Turkish issue. Uzbekistan has got a dictatorship and the people trying to overthrow it are Jihadists. Pakistan and Afghanistan don't like each other, as we've seen. And there's Kashmir-- and all along that area, plus Lebanon, Southern Lebanon, Gaza the situation is explosive. And how it will look in 28 months I don't know, but one thing is clear-- we have to deal with this region, this arc of crisis, as a coherent whole.

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POTTINGER: Richard, you've written about and spoken about ideological warfare in Vietnam. You've compared it to ethnic warfare in Bosnia. Give us a little bit about that, and how does it apply to the Middle East?

HOLBROOKE: Well, in Vietnam, of course, it was the North Vietnamese trying unify the country under Communist rule. And they ultimately succeeded. It was a very different kind of war than Iraq. Now, what's driving Iraq, actually, is not a religious struggle primarily, although there are the insurgents, Al Zarqawi and company, who do want to promote an Islamic revolution. But the real thing is a power struggle for power that is not-- that's not that clearly related. That's the Sunnis. There are two different kinds of adversaries the United States and Europe are facing in the region-- the ideological, religious ones and the ones who just want power. And they've gotten all mixed up. Let's take Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran are both causing the United States immense problems. But Syria is a secular state that doesn't want Muslim fundamentalism because it would be a direct threat to their government. And Iran is the exact opposite. Yet, they're both supporting Hezbollah. This makes it unbelievably difficult for the administration, for the United States to deal with it.

POTTINGER: Are we in a war against radical Islam that's comparable to the cold war of 50, 70 years?

HOLBROOKE: Yeah, I think we are. I think we're up against a very determined group of people. And to call it a war on terror is very misleading. They use terror as a tactic, and they have some deluded wannabe martyrs who go out and blow themselves up, but the people running this things themselves aren't martyrs. They're running a propaganda war. And the amazing thing Stan, is that we seem to be losing the propaganda war to man in a cave who may or may not even be alive and to Nasrullah [ph?] of Hezbollah and to Ahmadinejad [ph?] of Iran, who comes to the United Nations and gets more attention than President Bush with the willful complicity of the major television stations. It's astonishing. After 9/11, the world was completely sympathetic to the U.S. How did that all get thrown away? In World War II and in the cold war, presidents from Roosevelt through Bush Sr. all knew it was an ideological struggle. We were selling our way of life and our values, and pretty damned successfully. That's not happening right now.

POTTINGER: Beyond this administration, or any particular administration, are we headed culturally and socially and politically in the right direction, or do we really have a values crisis?

HOLBROOKE: I'm a total optimist about the United States, our diversity, our strength, our size, our vitality, the contribution of all our immigrant groups. The Asian Society is a living testimony to Asian Americans-- one of the most important and fastest-growing contributors to America. But right now, under this leadership, yes I think that country is heading in the wrong direction. But this is a fixable thing, and that's what we have elections about.

POTTINGER: To what extent does American diplomacy depend upon good intelligence, and how do you rate American intelligence today?

HOLBROOKE: Intelligence is a very important part of what we do, but it may be overrated a little bit. In any case, its performance has been pretty terrible on a lot of major issues in recent times, not just Iraq where they discovered weapons of mass destruction which weren't there-- but going back to Vietnam, the Tet offensive, the Bay of Pigs. They never foresaw the overthrow of the Shaw in Iran from the religious right. They always thought the threat was from the communist left. Let's not overstate the mysticism of intelligence. They do the best they can. I've worked with the intelligence community for 40 years, and there are a lot of people I admire in it. But an individual of insight can sometimes out predict the entire community.

POTTINGER: How could you ever really get inside the dynamics of the conflict in another society? Or do you need to in order to formulate a good American policy? Is being an outsider a help or a hindrance?

HOLBROOKE: It's just the facts Stan. I mean look at the United States. Here we have the most open society in the world and people argue violently about what's going on in our own country. You can't just look at another country, Turkey or Congo or Iran or China and just understand it. You just-- you deal with it in terms of your own interests. And you deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Of course, the more you know about the country the better. But in the case of Yugoslavia, the biggest experts were the most wrong, because the saw the country as Serb-dominated. And they couldn't envisage the fact that Yugoslavia was destined to break up and that, therefore, the issue was to try to manage the break-up peacefully. So by trying to keep the country together, they accelerated the fighting.

POTTINGER: You managed a very peaceful break-up of Yugoslavia. Why couldn't you have managed a peaceful break-up of Iraq?

HOLBROOKE: Well, it wasn't so peaceful. We came in after 300,000 dead. It would be lovely to be able to do in Iraq what we did in Bosnia, but it'll-- it gets harder and harder to do. And you know, I don't know if it's doable anymore.

POTTINGER: What keeps you awake at night?

HOLBROOKE: I don't know. I try not to stay awake at night. I think you spend the day worrying about it, but I think the thing that really upsets me is the unbelievable damage that's been done to our national standing worldwide. The next president, in addition to figuring out a deal with Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran, is going to have to figure out how to rebuild America's position in the world. It's going to be a tough thing, and it won't be done overnight.

POTTINGER: Richard, thank you so much for this time.

HOLBROOKE: It's my pleasure Stan. A real pleasure, my pleasure.