My Amazon Review of George Packer's "Our Man:Richard Holbrooke and The End of the American Century"

A Man in Full

George Packer knows how to write. His 600 page (in print edition) biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke kept my full attention throughout my reading, no mean feat. Packer fully benefited from Holbrooke’s papers given to him by Katie Marton, Holbrooke’s third wife and more than 200 interviews that put you into the room of a host of very important conversations that affected American foreign policy in every Democratic administration from Kennedy to Obama. Needless to say watching the sausage being made is very messy where personality too often dominates over policy.

Holbrooke was blessed by having met Dean Rusk as a college student through a friendship with his son and had the Harrimans, both Averell and Pamela Harriman as a patron early in his career and Hillary Clinton later on. His goal was to become secretary of state; he never achieved it, but you can find his foot prints on American policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

We see Holbrooke in the bush taking fire in 1960’s Vietnam as a young Foreign Service officer, where he realizes early on that the war was unwinnable and again see him taking fire in the Balkans in the 1990s and Afghanistan in 2010. He certainly had raw physical courage. He also knew how to dominate a room. Through the force of his personality he basically brokers the end of the Bosnian civil war with what became known as the Dayton Accords.

Holbrooke’s problem was that many of the coalitions he built were against him. Simply put, all too many people couldn’t stand him. Too be sure they respected his intellect and insights, but he had a way of annoying his best of friends. President Obama made him our Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009, yet after appointing him he refused to meet with him or even be in the same room with him. Even Hillary Clinton, his principal sponsor, grew tired of him. In fact he suffers a fatal heart attack in Clinton’s office while he was arguing for a negotiated solution to with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke’s life was focused on foreign policy to the exclusion of practically everything else. Packer makes it clear that it was no easy task to be one of his spouses, where he had numerous affairs including with his best friend’s wife. That best friend was Tony Lake, who became national security adviser to Bill Clinton and a lifelong bureaucratic adversary.

His personal faults aside Holbrooke cared about our country and wanted our foreign policy to reflect the best of our ideals. He became a full-throated supporter of humanitarian intervention in Bosnia and he understood coercive diplomacy had a role in formulating foreign policy. Holbrooke was tough on our enemies and too often he was tough on his friends. He was truly a man in full and Packer’s writing brings that out.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/RQG5BWHYE8NK3/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv