Customer Reviews

To End a War (Modern Library Paperbacks)

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Holbrooke's book is a must-read for anyone closely interested in the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia. It is a chronology with, at its core, a blow-by-blow and sometimes hour-by-hour description of the summer and autumn of 1995 when the Dayton accords took shape. The book is oft-criticized as Holbrooke's attempts to win back the swarms of people he alienated with his abrasive personality during his return to public service. If that was his intent, he probably failed, because his much-publicized anti-social behavior continues unabated to this day. In the unlikely event that any of his enemies were gullible enough to be flattered by the book, Holbrooke has no doubt subsequently given them fresh reason to dislike him. However, the book is still important, and, while self-aggrandizing, Holbrooke is possessed of a certain clarity of vision regarding the balkan wars. His list of five reasons, in chapter 2, for the West's failure to intervene in Yugoslavia is perceptive, especially his remarks about "Bad History, or the Rebecca West factor". The depiction of Milosevic is consistently interesting. Milosevic's own sorry history of losing four wars in the space of nine years, and the undeniable ruin he has visited on his own people, tend to paint him in broad and inaccurate colors. Holbrooke's account of his many sessions with Milosevic show the Serbian dictator as ruthless and cunning, and ultimately without any passion or vision. Milosevic was never interested in "greater Serbia", he sold the Croatian Serbs in a heartbeat. His betrayal of the Bosnain Serbs at Dayton, and the utter contempt he felt for them, marks him as a ruthless machiavelli rather than a true Serb nationalist. The book is useful, but not without minor blemishes: some explanations reek of hindsight, such as the decision (p.166) not to allow Croatian forces to conquer Banja Luka in 1995. Holbrooke's pasted-on humanitarian concerns ring hollow. The strategic implications of such an attack, and its effect on Dayton, are much more credible as reasons to insist that the Croatian offensive stop short of the city. Holbrooke's attempts at concern for humanitarian principles and his constant pats on the back for his colleagues often sound over-done and smarmy. He did a good job at Dayton, but he ain't gonna be canonized. (A nitpick: the map on p. 25 incorrectly places Russia on Slovakia's border.)

The added value of "To end a war" is its very detailed description of the Dayton negotiations from one of the main players. However, the book takes a very biased view of the causes of the conflict in the Balkans, what perpetuated them and what brought them to an end. Holbroke presents the simplistic view that he, together with US military force, ended the war.

He mentions nothing of previous peace initiatives. Holbroke does not acknowledge the US role in the Croatian government reconquest and subsequent ethnic cleansing of the Krajina region (populated by ethnic Serbs) in Croatia, one of the main factors in the chain of events leading to the Dayton negotiations.

Any diplomatic memoir written so recently after the events in question will actually shed little light on the political motives and decision-making at the highest levels, since most of the documents and decisions involved are subject to confidentiality. Thus, their primary value is in revealing details about the actual personalities involved: the politicians, war leaders and diplomats whose actions shape events. Here Holbrooke's account falls short. There's very little he says in this book that hasn't been recounted previously in any number of news reports and documentaries on the shuttle diplomacy and diplomatic negotiations that eventually led to the Dayton Accords which ended the actual fighting in Bosnia. "To End a War" tells the reader more about Holbrooke than anything else, for this is a very vain man who is attempting to secure his place in history by retelling the story of his astounding negotiating efforts. Therefore, his observations of the personalities and behavior of various Balkan politicians (with the possible exception of Slobodan Milosevic) are often superficial, although we do learn which ones Holbrooke seemed to dislike on a personal level. We also learn that Holbrooke was usually treated to tasty meals of roast lamb whenever he visited Belgrade or the Serbian strongholds in Bosnia-altogether useless facts, unless I'm misinterpreting some incredibly subtle metaphorical symbolism. The only good thing about Holbrooke's account is that the writing style is straightforward and easy to read, so if you need to read this book for some minor details on the American aspect of Balkan diplomacy in the mid-1990s, it won't take long to get through it. Otherwise, even David Owen's dry and tedious "Balkan Odyssey" is more informative, while Warren Zimmermann's "Origins of a Catastrophe" provides the most lucid and perceptive (not to mention revealing) observations of the major Balkan leaders by a high-level foreign diplomat (he was the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia). The most revealing aspect of Holbrooke's book is that it highlights the arrogance of U.S. foreign policy: Holbrooke continuously jabs at the U.N. and European diplomats for their failure in the Balkans, while stressing how America stepped in to single-handedly save the day. Not that I think the UN and the EU didn't bungle pretty aimlessly in the Balkans, but the "success" of the U.S. diplomatic initiative is subject to question. After all, Holbrooke himself notes that almost all signatories of the Dayton Accords were generally dissatisfied with the agreement--and this is reflected in the ongoing political problems in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"Reads like a thriller" wrote one student on his course evaluation. This account by Clinton's principal negotiator to end the conflict in the Balkans takes the reader from the landmined mountain roads of Bosnia to the late-night arm-twisting of Milosevic and others at Wright-Patterson AFB. I have used the book in different courses to provide an understanding of the substance of the Balkan conflicts, the role of leadership, and an on-the-ground exposition of diplomacy. Students tend to have two kinds of reactions. First, it reveals (through an admittedly single, American perspective) the issues at stake in the Balkans. But it also offers a more general model for the unseen stakes and battles in diplomacy itself: the variety of interests, the relative (in)flexibility of position on different issues, examples of "spin" to the press, and displays of persistence, skill and the occasional human error (uh, we forgot to consult Croatia!).

Although the roads are better in New York, the book helps one begin to imagine some of the behind-the-scenes battles in the 2002-2003 UN negotiations on military action in Iraq.

Several reviewers have labeled Holbrooke either racist or merely biased. I am an American, not of Serb descent, but a serious student of Serb life and history. I speak Serbian, lived in Serbia, visited all the key Serb historic/cultural sites, including a thorough survey of medieval Serb monasteries. I have visited all corners of the former Yugoslavia including four visits to Kosovo. I say all this not to be arrogant as some reviewers accuse Mr. Holbrooke; rather to give some credentials of a person who well understands Balkan mindsets and who is not anti-Serb (I love Serbia and most Serb people!). As such, I consider Mr. Holbrooke's views and accounts very balanced, fair, and ethical. My suspicion is that the flames of reviewers own passions and biases enter here in large measure. This is a fascinating book written by an admirable civil servant. His inside accounts of dealings with Milosevic, Tudjmann, Izetbegovic and others are simply marvelous. I personally knew Nikola Koljevic, the suicide victim ex-Bosnian Serb VP and former chairman of the English Dept at the Univ. of Sarajevo and found Holbrooke's harsh treatment of Koljevic very believable. This is a balanced book for balanced people; unfortunately there are many Balkan natives with axes to grind who are not easily pleased.

Virtues:
- detailed, day-to-day description of activites in preparation for Dayton and its implementation;
- thorough analysis of the US posture on Bosnia, inter-governmental debates and military-civil cooperation (or - quite often - disagreements);

Drawbacks:
- the book lacks overall analysis of resolution of the conflict in Bosnia in the wider context of international politics; the description of the European position seems to be rather biased;
- R.Holbrooke's posture on the Bosnian issue is obviously (though sometimes on reasonable grounds)anti-Serb;
- "To end a war" understandably lags behind the post-1998 ground-breaking developments on the Balkans;
- while reading the book one may feel that the author's principal aim was to promote his own achievements, but not to present clear description of the situation.

For whom is this book best suited: excellent guide for Bosnia's (and in general - former Yugoslavia's) recent history researchers, biographers of the key decision-makers of that time.
For those "ordinary readers", interested in the Bosnia conflict, it may seem rather boring. Look for better - i.e. more analytical and not descriptive - works.

Mr. Holbrooke gives us a quite detaily led account of the negotiations a Dayton and before. He nevertheless makes good use of the book to tap himself over the shoukder numerous times. I beleive Mr.Holbrooke skipped Modesty 101 in college!! Furthermore it is very interesting to see that the European counterparts are conveniently forgotten as if they did not participate in the entire Dayton process. Luckily they all also have written their own version of the facts which kind of keeps the balance.

Holbrooke is sorely missed. He was one of the most competent and intelligent diplomats representing the US since General George Marshall's era.

This book is a fair assessment of the conflict and America's role in ending it, which Clinton and Holbrooke were able to undertake after Clinton found his footing in office by 1995.

The reader below strangely rates the book highly while completely trashing Holbrooke and this is telling, for Serbians and their sympathizers have, like Irishmen in Yeats' time, "with hearts grown brutal" fed themselves on fantasies.

Ultimately, believing the lie results in a more global confusion.

In actuality, Holbrooke, far from being "taken in" by the late Alija Izetbegovic, was quite clear about Izetbegovic's character and motives. Holbrooke retails an amusing story about Alija's showing up at Pamela Harriman's Paris mansion dressed like Che Guevara. Holbrooke was well aware that like Milosevic, Izetbegovic cared only about his country and his career, and the only difference that emerges in To End a War is that Izetbegovic put Bosnia before his career.

Therefore Holbrooke reserves his highly diplomatic scorn for the Serbian side. While not engaging in any tirades, Holbrooke sticks to the facts which are as I write being confirmed in the Hague and finally being made available to the Serbian public, in a collective "who knew?"

We think of diplomats as Hollow Men without strong convictions or moral seriousness on their own: we think of lawyers in the same way. We don't reflect that in modern society, alienation for even the elite MEANS that diplomats might have to deal with unpleasant thugs politely, or that in an adversary system, a lawyer might have to represent a John Gotti or Ken Lay.

Legal and political regression is a reality however, and causes more and more people to clamor for simple, "black and white" causes that, in alienated (which is to say dysfunctional in psychobabble) lives, people can vicariously identify with.

Holbrooke shows how to resolve the alienation. Not for a second did he change his personal opinion about the relative morality of the Bosnians versus that of the Serbians, nor should he have had to; just as President Clinton deserved even as President a personal life which right was violated by Starr, Holbrooke was entitled to infer, especially from his access to secret reports, that the Serbians were by far the worst.

But in childish regression, people in America (forced, they think, in low-level symbolic jobs to be Empty Suits) actually believe that one is either an ideologue or an Empty Suit, and that there are no other choices.

A diffuse sanctimony, equally diffused on the Right (with absolutist Fundamentalism being common) as on the Left (with a sort of nonsense-Heidegger committment to humility and authenticity systematically disempowering progressives), informs American life. The result is that Americans, like little old ladies with a savings account, are uniquely prey to bunkum steerage and the long con, with 2003's "weapons of mass destruction" being only the largest and smelliest pigeon drop.

Holbrooke has that urbanity and sense of humor, shared with his boss the great Bubba, which is immune to the long con.

General Marshall was different, a man of his era whose immunity to bunkum was that of the New England sort, long out of date.

In the late 1940s, there was simply nothing sexy in George Marshall's essentially pitching in with the women of Berlin at the bottom level, who cleaned up the town, for what Marshall was doing with his Plan was the same thing at the top.

Nor was there anything sexy about seeing to it that a somewhat questionable Virginia company specializing in advising foreign governments on military matters armed the Croatians with modern weapons, and pointing them west, saying, go get em, boys. In fact, the whole affair was reprehensible on a humanitarian basis because it caused mass flight of Serbians in Krajina.

Even if part of this relocation was voluntary and a symptom of the fears of poorly-informed Serbian rural folk, this was still an injustice, and to have a hand in it made Holbrooke poor copy and an undesirable guest on Larry King.

But the tasks addressed were the staple of traditional diplomacy, basically a matter of drawing lines on map so that men don't get killed, and then seeing them get killed anyway in all too many instances.

Not being sexy, taking responsibility, and staying cool: this being, in other words, a traditional grown-up of the sort that in America, is only seen for the most part in the armed services. And the tragic daily loss of real grown-ups in Iraq as a result of the chickenhawks' incompetence may encode a more global war, in America, on the very idea of being a grown up even in the reified and military way.

Even Bill Clinton, far more unable to be tarred with a Yugoslavian brush, had to delegate adult tasks to others lest a childish and regressed public start screaming bloody murder in front of TeeVee, and today, this delegation of adult tasks has reached the level of a murderous farce, with Cheney loose about the shop.

It took a grown up, a *mensch* to force Slobodan Milosevic to sit down in Dayton and negotiate an end to the war. It took a first-class individual to manage the conference by objectives.

Holbrooke, it appears, selected Wright-Paterson in one of the more boring areas of the USA so that Milosevic would not be able to party hearty while stonewalling.

There's an especially funny section about the only place where Slobo could go for a drink during the conference, a sports bar where the Butcher of the Balkans was a favorite of the waitresses. Being Middle Americans, the waitstaff didn't know anything about the Balkans and cared less, and the waitresses just thought Milosevic a charming old rogue from Cleveland, it appears.

Thanks, however, to Milosevic and the still at-large Karadzic, Bosnia is indeed more Moslem-confessional than it should be, and Holbrooke foresaw this happening; the brutalized turn brutal, with hearts grown brutal; any dog trainer knows this. As Holbrooke shows, the Serbian insistence on destroying cosmopolitanism CREATED today's Bosnia which in a limited way enforces Moslem rules: for example, today, Sarajevo's bars close at 11.

However, there is little indication today that Bosnia is a danger to its neighbors and even Serbia's record is improving.

I look forward to Secretary of State Holbrooke under President Hilary Clinton, in part because only a first class intellect and a first class temperament will rescue the US from the mess it's in, created by childish, regressed and emotionally manipulative half-truths slicker than the Serbian version of history, but able, in the same way, to galvanize TV brains into a doomed cause.

President Bush seems to think that diplomacy is public relations. As Holbrooke shows, it is hard work. I hope reading this book inspires people to enter the Foreign Service.

Of course, this would be AFTER Bush leaves office. There is no place in America's diplomatic corps today, it seems, for intelligence, just for people to lecture other countries on what they should be doing, with a signal futility even under its own value-system that was on display, this week, during Bush's trip to China.

Holbrooke shows that Americans can be cosmopolitans, and how a truly cosmopolitan foreign policy, able to suspend judgement of Milosevic at Wright-Paterson, gets results. George Marshall got the results Harry Truman wanted in Italy and France (non-communist governments) by accepting socialist parties in power, and a large Communist element in the general populace and in coalition governments.

This was because Marshall was able to "parse" international situations and subordinate ideology to specific and achievable goals. His era was an exception to the anti-intellectualism of American foreign policy in which we manage not by parsing a moral grammar but by reacting to ideological keywords.

This is hard work. Marshall and Holbrooke, as subordinate men, put in long hours and had no opportunity to grandstand as did Kissinger. Marshall was later driven out of public life by Senator McCarthy because, apparently, McCarthy wanted a 1948 war using atomic weapons between the US and Russia, on the brutalized terrain of Western Europe, and a return to the Stone Age, the favorite terrain of people like McCarthy, and Milosevic.

Holbrooke was also sidelined, of course, by the Bush coup d'etat of 2000.

I hope Mr. Holbrooke is willing like Cincinnatus to leave his plow again, and real soon. Although my own politics are to the left of Holbrooke's, I admire him for the same reason I admire John McCain.

Dick, if you're reading this: your country needs you.

Holbrooke's book is seemingly a reflection of his personality: it is frank and purports to be honest. It is utterly self-serving: almost everyone who will matter from now on in Holbrooke's glittering career gets a good word, even arch-foe Madeleine Albright. If this book is an extremely interesting albeit one-sided look at what happened at Dayton, it is also the first shot in the man's campaign to become Secretary of State in 2001.

This is the most selfserving acount of an important event I have read. What would the world have experience if the GREAT Richard Holbrooke not have been there to save the world. One would think that no one could pull it off except Richard. "Controlled fit" my foot.

Charles Jinks