Richard Holbrooke was best known for forging the 1995 peace accords that ended the Bosnian war, but in a career spanning five decades he worked hard to resolve some of the world’s toughest conflicts.
President Barack Obama paid tribute to the 69-year-old veteran diplomat calling him “a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected”.
Mr Obama had tapped Mr Holbrooke as his special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan shortly after his January 2009 inauguration, tasking him with one of the most difficult challenges confronting the US today.
A hard-nosed trouble-shooter, Mr Holbrooke, then assistant secretary of state for European affairs, won accolades for brokering the 1995 Dayton peace accords hammering out a treaty which many privately thought would be impossible.
Dubbed “the bulldozer” for his impatient, hard-charging style, Mr Holbrooke alternately browbeat and cajoled the nationalist leaders of former Yugoslavia until the deal was struck between the belligerent parties in November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, following a round of Nato air strikes against Serb forces.
Mr Holbrooke put his stamp on history, as “his brilliance, determination and sheer force of will helped bend the curve of history in the direction of progress,” Vice President Joe Biden said during a tribute on Monday.
He helped normalise ties with China after then President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing; as then ambassador to Germany he aided Europe as it emerged from the Cold War and as US envoy to the United Nations he boosted America’s ties to the world body and championed the cause of AIDS and the role of Africa.
Mr Holbrooke faced perhaps his toughest challenge – pushing Kabul and Islamabad to work together against resurgent Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants – as Mr Obama’s special US envoy in the current Afghan conflict.
The task may have been impossible.
As he was sedated and going in for his final surgery, Mr Holbrooke had some stark words: “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan,” he told his Pakistani surgeon, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing unnamed family members. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid tribute to Mr Holbrooke late Monday in an emotional statement saying he “helped shape our history, manage our perilous present, and secure our future.
“He was the consummate diplomat, able to stare down dictators and stand up for America’s interests and values even under the most difficult circumstances,” she said.
And other top officials said tens of thousands of people, if not millions, owed their lives to the work Mr Holbrooke had done as a “warrior of peace”.
Born in April 24, 1941 in New York, Mr Holbrooke began his diplomatic career at the age of 21 in Vietnam – another long, seemingly intractable conflict in which US troops were bogged down.
He rose quickly to key posts in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Administration during the trauma of that war.
When the Democrats took back the White House in 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs at age 35.
It was not until July 1994, when he was named assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs under President Bill Clinton, that the outspoken Mr Holbrooke emerged as a prominent public figure as he took on the conflict in former Yugoslavia.
After the signing of the peace agreement, Mr Holbrooke re-counted the roller-coaster ne-gotiations in a well-received book, To End a War, in which he argued the case for a robust US foreign policy that includes a readiness for military action to prevent possible genocide.
While considered a heavyweight with a first-class intellect, Mr Holbrooke’s intense, blunt personality made him few friends at the State Department. Mr Holbrooke reportedly clashed at times with Clinton’s inner circle, including then secretary of state Madeleine Albright. Mr Holbrooke has also had a lucrative career in the private sector.
During the 1980s Mr Holbrooke earned more than a million dollars a year at the now defunct Lehman Brothers brokerage house and served at Credit Suisse First Boston as vice chairman of the US unit, even as he continued to serve as consultant to the White House and the State Department.
His links with the Swiss bank raised concerns in Congress, where the Senate first blocked his app-ointment in 1999 as ambassador to the UN.
The nomination was stalled for more than a year as Mr Holbrooke faced a federal ethics probe. But despite his career highlights there was one coveted post that eluded him – that of secretary of state.
He had long been tipped as a possible candidate for the top diplomat’s job, and was expected to be named if Democrat Al Gore won the presidency in 2000. He was again the front-runner for the post when Democrat John Kerry made his failed bid for the presidency in 2004.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton praised Mr Holbrooke as a champion of peace who played a historic role in ending war in the Balkans. “Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke was a remarkable man, a true diplomat and a champion of peace and reconciliation, not just in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but throughout the world in nearly half a century of service to his country and the international community,” Ms Ashton said.