To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  By sending his National Security Advisor, the President, who had been criticized for excessive detachment from Bosnia policy, was saying: this is it—the real, and perhaps last, American push for peace. I had little difficulty with the broad outlines of the initiative, but several specific aspects of the proposals troubled me. I decided to hold off on making my views known until after the completion of Lake’s trip to Europe.

  The “Handoff.”Strobe and Peter had warned me to be prepared to cut my trip short, and on Saturday, August 12, after only a few days in Colorado, I returned to Washington, repacked my bags, and left for London, where Lake and his team were waiting. On August 14, I arrived in London for a “handoff” meeting in the American Embassy. For the first hour we met alone.

  The meeting was quietly emotional. Tony and I had been linked by close personal and professional ties through five Administrations. “This is the kind of thing we dreamed of doing together thirty years ago when we started out in Vietnam,” Tony began in a low, intense voice. “I’m going to be with you all the way. And if this thing fails, it’s my ass more than yours.”

  Tony briefed me on his talks with the allies and the Russians, which had gone well. They were pleased that the President was engaged so deeply. I told him that the framework he had proposed in his tour of Europe was fine, with an important exception: I could support neither his proposal to give the Serbs a wider corridor of land at Posavina nor the suggestion that we abandon Gorazde. Both of these ideas had been part of an attempt to create “more viable borders” for the Federation by trading Muslim enclaves for Serb concessions elsewhere. The Pentagon insisted it would not defend enclaves and slivers of land if called upon later to implement a peace agreement. Nonetheless, I told Tony that the United States could not be party to such a proposal. “This would create another forty thousand or more refugees,” I said, “and we cannot be a party to that, especially after Srebrenica.” Tony asked if it was not true that Izetbegovic had once told me he knew that all three eastern enclaves were not viable and would have to be given up. Izetbegovic had, in fact, made such a statement to me in Sarajevo in January, but that was long before the loss and horrors of Srebrenica and Zepa. “A trade is no longer possible,” I said. “After Srebrenica, we cannot propose such a thing.”

  After a larger meeting with the rest of our team and a call on several senior British officials, we shook hands warmly and parted, Tony and Sandy Vershbow heading west and home to Washington. Our team—General Clark, Rosemarie Pauli, Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel, and Nelson Drew—flew to the Balkans to begin the negotiations that we hoped would end the war.

  * From my notes of the meeting in Munich with Susak: “A grim meeting. Perry told Susak that we continue to feel that his government was making a mistake. Perry suggested that his country was sliding toward war and it might not turn out well for them. General Shali warned him that the JCS assessment of the balance of forces was far more pessimistic than Zagreb’s. My own instinct is that the Croatian gamble might pay off, although the risks are high.”

  * “Dual key” was a system that required both the U.N. and NATO to “turn the key” to authorize NATO air strikes. In practice, the “dual key” was a “dual veto,” used by the U.N. to prevent or minimize NATO action.

  BOOK TWO

  THE SHUTTLE

  (August 22-October 31, 1995)

  Tonight a scrambling decade ends,

  And strangers, enemies and friends

  Stand once more puzzled underneath

  The signpost on the barren heath

  Where the rough mountain track divides

  To silent valleys on all sides,

  Endeavouring to decipher what

  Is written on it but cannot,

  Nor guess in what direction lies

  The overhanging precipice.

  Far down below them whence they came

  Still flickers feebly a red flame,

  A tiny glow in the great void

  Where an existence was destroyed;

  And now and then a nature turns

  To look where her whole system burns

  And with a last defiant groan

  Shudders her future into stone.

  —W. H. AUDEN, New Year Letter

  CHAPTER 6

  Pale’s Challenge

  The inscrutability of history remains the salvation of human freedom and of human responsibility. The failure of prediction permits us to act as if our choices make a difference. For no one can prove that they don’t, and there is no other way that we can vindicate human dignity and contrive a moral existence.

  —ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.1

  AT 10:00 A.M. ON AUGUST 22, the day after our return from Sarajevo, Secretary Christopher convened his senior team to discuss Bosnia. As usual, we met in his working office, a small room directly behind his large, formal office on the seventh floor. When I first visited the State Department during a spring break from college in 1961—a trip that inspired me to join the Foreign Service the following year—Dean Rusk had used the large room as his office. But most recent secretaries of state preferred the more intimate surroundings of the back office, and Christopher used the ornate larger room almost entirely for formal meetings with foreign officials.

  Although the State Department’s unique bureaucratic culture has survived every one of its leaders (and defeated some), the personal style of each secretary deeply affects the way the Department reacts to events. Warren Christopher’s style was methodical and cautious. He was, as the press often said, a lawyer’s lawyer. He rarely talked about himself, but once offered a revealing comment to a journalist about his style: “I always thought that I would do things in a conservative way to maximize the progressiveness of my policy positions…. If you are courteous and prudent, you can advance causes and advance ideas that would be unacceptable for others.”2 Highly successful in his Los Angeles legal practice, he went to Washington in 1977 as Deputy Secretary of State to Cyrus Vance, and carried out a number of key assignments, most famously the complex negotiations over the release of the fifty-two American hostages in Tehran at the end of the Carter Administration. Unfailingly polite, adept at concealing any annoyance or impatience that he might be feeling, Christopher preferred to let others take the lead in recommending a course of action, while he focused on the risks it entailed. As a result, those advising him often divided into two groups: advocates of action, and “doubting Thomases” who argued the dangers of the proposed policy.

  Christopher formed his positions only after careful deliberations, which included not only the substantive officials responsible for the issue, but a core group of trusted senior aides who sat in on almost every discussion. He would listen quietly, ask a few clarifying questions, more in the style of a judge than an advocate, and generally withhold his views until the end of the discussion. When he took a strong stand on an issue, he carried great weight within the government.

  That morning, August 22, Christopher’s core team crowded into the meeting. Peter Tarnoff, Chief of Staff Tom Donilon, and Director of Policy Planning James Steinberg squeezed side by side on the sofa; others, including Strobe Talbott, Wendy Sherman, who held the critical position of Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, and my senior deputy, John Kornblum, took seats on the chairs scattered around the small room. Latecomers sat on a narrow bench under a window that overlooked the Potomac and the Lincoln Memorial. Christopher sat, as always, behind his desk in the corner, sometimes leaning back against the bookcases, but usually taking careful notes on a legal pad. I sat in the chair closest to Christopher’s desk, which was by custom saved for the primary action officer in the meeting.

  The mood was understandably subdued. Our first need was to assemble a new team. I said that Christopher Hill, the brilliant, fearless, and argumentative country director for the Balkans, was ready to take the place of his good friend Bob Frasure, as we had planned before the accident. We left the designation of the NSC and Defense representatives
to Lake and Perry.

  Christopher noted that we lacked the legal expertise that would be essential if the negotiations got serious. He suggested adding to the team Roberts Owen, a distinguished Washington lawyer. Bob Owen, whom I had known since he had served as the Legal Advisor to the State Department during the Carter Administration, was calm, witty, and always cheerfully ready for the most demanding tasks, though he was almost seventy. Everyone marveled at his eternal youthfulness; he looked at least ten years younger than his age. Christopher’s inspired idea gave our team something it was to need continually: an experienced and wise international lawyer.

  Our meeting broke up quickly, and we left for the Fort Myer Memorial Chapel at Arlington National Cemetery to begin the painful ceremonies that would remain engraved on our consciousness for the rest of the Bosnian peace mission.

  The wives of all three men had chosen Arlington for the final resting place of their husbands. The first of the services was for Bob Frasure. Even though all were painful, Bob’s funeral was made particularly heart-wrenching by the eloquent yet unreachable anguish of his sixteen-year-old daughter, Sarah.

  “One question I will always ask myself is ‘Why?’ ” she said, speaking, in a voice breaking with pain, from the altar above her father’s casket. “I took him for granted. I never told him how much I loved him, and I never showed him how much I cared about him. Now I will never wake to hear him making pancakes on a Sunday morning.”

  The mourners in the chapel could hardly breathe. We filed out in silence broken only by the sounds of soft crying, and slowly followed Bob’s casket to a grave site high on the hill above Washington, where, in an eerie and disquieting hush, it was blessed by a priest. I placed a flower on top of Bob’s casket, said good-bye, and turned back toward Washington for another meeting.

  The Principals’ Committee began its meeting an hour after we had left Arlington on August 22. These meetings—somewhat misleadingly named because the real principals, the President and Vice President, rarely attended them—were supposed to be the primary decision-making forum in the Executive Branch. In theory, the views of senior officials, including any disagreements, were then brought to the President for final policy decisions. In fact, if a clear consensus was not reached at these meetings, the decision-making process would often come to a temporary halt, which was followed by a slow, laborious process of telephoning and private deal making. People hated to take their disagreements to the President; it was as though a failure to agree somehow reflected badly on each of them, and consensus, rather than clarity, was often the highest goal of the process.

  During my first ten months as Assistant Secretary, most high-level meetings on Bosnia had a dispirited, inconclusive quality that often left Bob Frasure and me depressed and frustrated. Although no one could ignore the crisis, there was little enthusiasm for any proposal of action, no matter what it was. The result was often inaction or half-measures instead of a clear strategy.

  This was not the case, however, immediately following the tragedy. The loss of three friends infused our meetings with a somber sense that there was no turning back. In addition, the President was now imparting to everyone his own sense of urgency. Not for the first time, I observed the value of—indeed, the necessity for—direct, personal presidential involvement to overcome bureaucratic stalemates or inertia and give policy direction and strategic purpose.

  We met in the Situation Room, the windowless basement room in the West Wing of the White House that has been the scene of so many historic crisis meetings over the last thirty years. First-time visitors were usually surprised at how unimpressive the room was. Movies always made the room seem larger and fancier, but the real thing was small, with low ceilings, three plain wood-paneled walls, and the fourth partially covered with a dreadful gray curtain. The end wall held clocks showing the time in various parts of the world, and above another wall floated a television screen, through which officials could participate on a secure U.S. government network. The table was small, with seats for only about ten people.

  As chairman of the Principals’ Committee, Tony Lake sat at the head of the table, with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense flanking him. The rest of the principals arrayed themselves along the table according to rank, and second-tier personnel took seats along the walls. The room was usually overcrowded, giving a physical sense of intimacy rarely reflected in the tone of the meetings themselves. When she could not get to Washington from New York for the meeting, Ambassador Albright hovered above us on the television screen, a disembodied but effective participant. She told me once that when she attended the meeting by television she had the sense of observing and participating simultaneously, thus affording her a degree of detachment that made her comments seem more perspicacious and convincing.

  Completing the Team. Tony ran through a review of the issues in preparation for the next day, when the President planned to meet with us after a special memorial service at Arlington. As we broke up, Tony pulled me aside and said he wanted to assign Brigadier General Donald Kerrick to our team as Nelson Drew’s replacement. Kerrick, whom I knew slightly, seemed an excellent choice.

  We now lacked only a new civilian Defense Department representative. Perry said he was thinking of letting General Clark represent both the civilian and the uniformed sides of the Pentagon. I disagreed, saying it was vital to have a representative of the civilian side of the Defense Department in whom the Secretary had personal confidence.

  In pressing this seemingly minor point, I was influenced by my experience as a junior member of the American negotiating team that met with the North Vietnamese in Paris in 1968–69. Despite an extraordinary delegation—Averell Harriman as leader, Cyrus Vance as his co-head, and Philip C. Habib, the outstanding career Foreign Service officer of his generation, as number three—the team in Paris never had full backing from Washington. The military representatives on the negotiating team fought with Harriman and Vance, and sent frequent “back-channel” messages to the Pentagon that undermined the negotiators. Although Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach supported Harriman and Vance, they were mistrusted by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, and our Ambassador in Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker.

  Watching that episode in Paris as a twenty-seven-year-old junior Foreign Service officer had been unforgettable, but not enjoyable; I had seen Governor Harriman, a historic figure who had negotiated directly with Stalin and Churchill, reduced to fury and frustration by what he considered the excessive detail of his instructions from Washington, and by internal intrigues with the military and with Bunker. No other experience was more important to me in preparing for the Bosnian mission; I would not tolerate any similar internal divisions within our team, and the negotiating flexibility we needed could come only with the full backing of all the key members of the Principals’ Committee.

  Perry, himself a veteran of the Vietnam era at the Pentagon, was sympathetic to my concern and chose James Pardew, who as director of the Balkan Task Force at the Pentagon had been Joe Kruzel’s closest aide on Bosnia. I did not know Pardew, a retired Army officer, but said we would be delighted with anyone in whom the Secretary of Defense had confidence.

  So our seven-person core team was set: myself, General Wes Clark, Bob Owen, Chris Hill, General Don Kerrick, Jim Pardew, and Rosemarie Pauli. It would remain unchanged through the next six months, although many other people became vital parts of the effort as we gathered momentum—and the support of Washington was at all times critical. As I was soon to discover under conditions of the highest stress, I could not have wished for a stronger team to replace our fallen colleagues.

  The Europeans. The next day, August 23, Peter Tarnoff and I met in the Secretary’s Conference Room with representatives of the European nations who had come to Washington to pay tribute to our three comrades.

  Dealing with the Europeans was delicate and nettlesome throughou
t the Bosnia crisis, and put an unprecedented strain on NATO and the Atlantic Alliance just when the Cold War ties that had held us together had also disappeared. Our steadfast allies, who had looked to the United States for leadership during the Cold War, were ambivalent about the American role in post-Cold War Europe, and especially Bosnia. They had long called for greater American involvement but at the same time, they feared that they would be publicly humiliated if the United States took the lead. Our colleagues in the Contact Group—France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia—were disturbed that we planned to negotiate first and consult them later, reversing the previous procedure, in which the five nations tried to work out a common position before taking it to the parties in the Balkans—a system that was cumbersome and unworkable.

  Alain Dejammet, Political Director at the French Foreign Ministry, mentioned that Izetbegovic would be visiting Paris early the next week, and proposed a Contact Group meeting at that time. The French could be famously difficult, but among the Europeans they now had the strongest, most assertive foreign policy. They had paid for their involvement in Bosnia with the heaviest casualty toll, over fifty killed. We needed French support to succeed, and I was convinced we could handle any problems that might arise if we met in Paris. If we meant our high-minded rhetoric about partnership, we had to find ways to work with the French. So, despite the aversion of some American officials to any event held in France, I agreed immediately to Dejammet’s suggestion.