Takes years to do it, too. So we try to subsidize good working biographers. I mention this because the deadline for the next years fellowship is coming up january 6, so if any of you are biographers have no of people who would love to do a biography, go on our website. George packer is a staff writer at the atlantic and the author of the unwinding and enter history of new america which is the winner of the 2013 National Book award. His other nonfiction books include the assassin date american iraq a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize and blood of the liberals, when of the 2001 robert f. Kennedy book award. Hes also the authohe is also to novels and a play, betrayed and the editor of a two volume edition of the essays of george orwell. Hes really one of the countries best working journalists today. With that introduction, im going to sit down and begin to have a conversation with George Packer and we will talk for about 30 minutes, 20, 25 minutes and then we will have time for questions from the audience. Thank you. [applause] its also unusual for the subject i am a Foreign Policy wont. I love foreignpolicy issues ive written about vietnam and the war in the middle east and Nuclear Weapons and so i knew who Richard Holbrooke was that he isnt exactly a household name and he was sort of a secondtier member of the foreignpolicy establishment and yet this book has really found an audience. I was in new york the other day having lunch with stacy schiff who won the Pulitzer Prize for one of her use from years ago and stacy is aware of the foreignpolicy gut was telling me she just finished reading your book and was blown away by it. And more important, she said i have friends who are artists, musicians who are not foreignpolicy wonks and theyve begun picking up the puck and if you are captivated. It is a serious complement. I want you to tell us how you came to this topic. Why did you choose to write about a man that you called almost great and the answer to thathis might be found in the ft paragraph. Yes i knew him. I cant get his voice out of my head. I still hear it saying you havent read this book. You really need to saying i feel, and i hope this doesnt sound too selfsatisfied and that in a very difficult situation where nobody has the answer, i at least know what the overall questions and moving parts are. Saying we got to go, hillary is on the line. That voice, calm, the trace of older new york. A song of cadence when he was being playful but doing something to you, cajoling, splattering, seducing, needling, analyzing, one upping you, applying continuous pressure like a strong underwater current so that by the end of a conversation from even two minutes on the phone, you found yourself far out from where you started unsure of how you got there and then seriously exhausted. I was working on the unwinding when he died unexpectedly. His aortic poor when he was in a meeting with Hillary Clinton in the office of the state department, the office he always wanted to have for himself but never reached. I did know him. I profiled him in the new yorker in a few weeks after his death, his widow offered me his papers. No strings attached. I have to make a decision yes or no rightparen because if i didnt take them, no one else would. I didnt know what was in them and neither did she. In a couple of weeks they were going across the Brooklyn Bridge from tribeca to my Small Home Office full of diaries, letters, strasse official stationery on which he wrote all kinds of papers. So iso anyway i didnt choose ay kind of chose me and that isnt always the best way to get into a book. But the papers themselves were so beguiling. He is so mesmerizing, terrible, generous, cool. He had the scale of a Lyndon Johnson and his character, so i thought this could be a character study of ambition and a portrait of the era. It is a period that i am obsessed with as you are and he seemed like just the right device to find our way through it because he isnt so no one history hasnt already kind of settled around him with a glow of some kind of narrative that is already in place, and everything is sort of transparent when you are moving through power and government of the level of someone who gives in the very top, but is not stored down. The key that i read in the opening paragraph isnt really my voice. It is the narrative voice to me is more like the voice of kind of an old pier of his death knows the story and you never quite find out how but its more of a yarn tha than 80 a biograp. Viavoice is magnetic. Its very intimate and occasionally you actually stop and address the reader and say you dont need to know more about that in his childhood and there are other similar interventions that make it sort of familiar. Its a risky voice that you carry off. Its risky because it feels like an actual person talking with you rather than the allknowing voice of the biographers. I felt i needed Something Like that for two reasons. Im not a biographer yes you are. Yes you are. Hispanic and probably never again. Its hard work as you know. I felt like i needed a way to make it more intimate than the sum of all my research would be and as you said, he wasnt important enough to need a monument. What you need is a novel because the protagonist of a 19th century novel and im not a novelist im actually a failed novelist but i am a nonfiction writer that was fiction and uses the techniques so i try to write this as if it were Joseph Conrad rather than thats where my aspirations is in which he becomes the main character. I think that also works as the voice, because you have such a fantastic material. What the widow gave to you turns out to be extremely rich letters, unpublished memoir that you quoted from occasionally. He is a big personality, huge ego that is obsessed with his ambitions but also an excellent observer. A key had a big ego and appetite and he loved life and women and its all in there. His appetites are all on the surface. Theres nothing mysterious. You dont know the next youll find yourself out of my hearing for his idealism and commitment to the Southeast Asia refugees or by his treatment of those in the 1970s after he got himself free of his first wife and sons. Theres a lot to be appalled by the thought i tried to do is withhold judgment. I wanted simply to show that this one titanic ego whose idealism is almost as great as his egotism and in an uneasy balance and at times that i got out of control that is got in trouble but at times they were aligned and that is when he achieved something truly great t for just a piece that the bosnian war that was his main achievement. Manhattan is a small village and i said i just finished reading your book and after was it difficult to get permission, unfettered access to all these materials she mustve known that there were going to be intimate stories about what might come in marriages, failed marriages, and i suggested to her that perhaps as a very good historian now working on a biography of angela merkel, perhaps the instinct as a writer overcame her instincts as a widow. She readily agreed. I dont know to this day why she gave me the papers and didnt look through them first to look at some of this stuff no widow would want in the hands of a biographer. But what about soviet plot, there is a passage where she says they are like burglars who break into the house of a dead person and rifle through her dresser and get all the best jewelry and then expect to be congratulated by the public further research. So, there is something shady about what we do. I was edited in the crime by the widow of who basically said take it all and i will help you in any way i can. Im not asking for anything except a good book out of this. At the end it was a very complicated experience because it is not the portrait of a saint for the perfect marriage by any means. Its full of stories of people are going to be sort of appalled by. One in the middle of the book im not going to spoil, but it runs all the way through. This has relationships with anthony lake was his pier in the Foreign Service, they served in vietnam together, very young man, and they ran all the way through the years of johnson, nixon and then something happened that destroyed their friendship so by the time they were both working with bill clinton the hated each other and that had a direct effect on the policymaking process because one thing i learned was Foreign Policy is not bloodless abstractions ambition, ignorance its kind of a pretty brutal enterprise. Through this book you get at all the history of the tortured intervention in vietnam, bosnia, iraq, and then by the end of the book afghanistan, and these are all the series foreignpolicy dilemmas that were still dealing with grappling today, and its this battle between the idealistic character, our National Character an hell we tk of ourselves. The. Because intervention in vietnam is a colossal mistake of the cold war. The. At the end of the first two are in the delta by 63 because afghanistan in the corrupt governmena corruptgovernment thr in kabul seemed so much like what he had been through in vietnam and the ending is rather tragic. Why do they despise them, they couldnt stand tcould stand to e. Told his top advisers i dont want them in the oval office if hes going to be in the situation room hes going to have to keep it brief. It was a couple of encounters he was soft dramatizing, flattered, he lectured, he went on and on about vietnam and got teary eyed and said you dont have to be an africanamerican to cry, mr. President , as if that was going to win over barack obama. His inability to himself. If they couldnt see the the eft of this having on barack obama and kept trying harder and harder finally they would lead them to places like kabul where he was supposed to be his top advisor. For a man at the end of his life after his death barack obama said im tired of being told i told Richard Holbrooke, but i think it was a little. The spirit had been broken. She managed to delay it, overrule it, defended the data difference and relationship kept them in the game for the last two years on his whole goal was to begin talks with the taliban, to negotiate if they had seemed the only way out of the vietnam and obama and even the three clinton didnt want to hear it. He kept silent. He knew the analogy was vietnam when it comes to afghanistan and hillary didnt want to hear it. She was for a big surge. So, this leads me to ask you know, your account is very sympathetic to holbrooke although it is embarrassing. I would say its more ambivale ambivalent. You dont go after them with knives you are empathetic as any good biographer would be. I cant imagine spending that much time in someone elses skin and found feeling their life. Its some of the more painful aspects she is such a policy wont and so involved emotionally. He wants to do the right thing and yet i ask myself give holbrooke ever risk his ambition over a matter of principle . You can honorably resign and still have a political career. In the american tradition that doesnt exist so much and even less so inside of the bureaucracy. So, once resigning over a matter of principle, holbrooke never did. No, it is hard to imagine him withdrawing from the game, because for him it wa them it wh everything and he was out of government during the Republican Administration making money on wall street or any Foreign Policy magazine, but always waiting for the next chance because all that really mattered to him was to be in the middle of the action, not just to have power although that certainly was a big part of it, but to do things in assault problems at its remarkable how many go into these ideals and after a certain amount of time theyve are not solving problems they are rising up through the bureaucracy. We can admire him for that you are right he never really took the ultimate risk in the sense of career suicide, he might have done it in his 20s during vietnam. That would have been an early exit from his lifes ambition. And he might have been at the end in afghanistan. His friends would say why are you still doing this, you are not getting anywhere. Its killing you. Look at the color of your skin, you will knew he was dying. And he would sa say ive got a n i will be out in three months and they knew he would never leave because this was the last chance for him to do something. Earlier in the book on the decision on whether to invade iraq in 2003, you show what he thinks privately that its going to be a disaster, yet you have him getting john kerry the advice you have to vote for this. Im not sure he knew it would be a disaster. He didnt think about it very hard. Over in the fall of 2002 holbrook said if you are going to run for president in 2004, you have to vote for the war resolution, which was a pretty opportunistic and cold thing to say. He also might as well have added if im going to be your secretary of state, i have to support it, too which he di whon the testimony before the senate. And it was maybe as a public figure one of the slowest performance is because honestly, he hadnt thought about it and he walked away from it as quickly as he could after the war went south and turned his sights to afghanistan which he considered and many considered the war that we had to do. So, was this a cathartic experience for you to write . Did it change your views on the making of the foreignpolicy or humanitarian intervention or the whole foreignpolicy agenda . I was piling up evidence for how troubled that doctrine is and how in some ways for its record is case after case. I was writing the book during the presidency of donald trump whose foreignpolicy is entirely about selfish selfinterest and a very narrow view of national interest. The trail for example if the incursion a few weeks ago which has given russia, iran, alassad and isis new strength in northern syria. Its keeping with the idea we have no business being involved in other peoples problems. Its hard to come to a settled view because as soon as im shaking my head over what a slowmotion disaster afghanistan has been. For the action and the american involvement its only when the United States intervened that the war came to an end with a rather tortured piece. I dont think anyone should feel as if they have a simple one for all answers to the question because as soon as you do, someone out there that we dont understand completely overturns it when finishing your book with a sort of lingering thought that you miss him precisely because he was so engaged its where the nuances and where they wanted to figure out the right thing to do. Because of everything that he had done as an architect in the vietnam war and yet as i became the biographer and went through that process, it took seven years, you know, i came to understand he was smart, intelligent and trying. So, we sort of a there is no comparison to. He was above him in the hierarchy and was his role model until vietnam and he didnt realize the smartest man in the room is not always right and holbrook then became that for younger people as well but one thing i can say and this is so rare in american government, he carecare about the rest of the d he could be contemptuous and disdainful. He listened carefully to a refugee in the pakistani refugee camp or the cambodian on the border. He really have a passion for helping people who were victims of history. And there was a role that we have to play that this was given to us by the cold war and if we didnt, no one else would. In vietnam and elsewhere, but it also led to the Marshall Plan and also led to the end of the war of bosnia. With holbrook it wasnt negotiable. If we want to have time for questions maybe we should open it up. Theres a microphonthere is a me middle of a. I want to make an observation and a question ambassador holbrook was basically its referred to as a deep state and the descendents are the three or four Foreign Service officers who i would take my hat off if i had one who were in the impeachment proceedings. I think that he was a little above them and might not have given them the time of the day if he was interested in. But youre right that he believed in the Foreign Service throughout his career and would have respected the hell out of those witnesses who appeared in front of Congress Come absolutely. Thank you. Why did she not live through her tenure with obama and what was the problem . Say that again. I missed the first one. She didnt live through her tenure with obama. Why . [inaudible] she ended her curb you mean . She was getting ready to run for president and one term as the secretary was enough and two terms might have been too much, so she was positioning herself for the next one. Obama didnt want to do the things she wants to do. She wants to go to war with iran. I dont think she ever wanted to go to war with iran but she was more hawkish in a disappointed that in the meetings on afghanistan when they were discussing putting in more troops, he wanted her to take a critical view and instead she was all for the military position coming and i learned later that obama really thought that was disappointing and let him down. What was her mission in the it was a huge disaster. She had nothing to do with it until the state department issued a couple of statements that were contradicted by events. It happens all the time but only the Republican Congress would turn that into years and years of hearings in the stations that culminated in the 2016 email elections. Thank you. An idea forming that is a National Tragedy that ended up for politics reasons decided that its okay to go into india to iraq when they said its a horrible idea. I am a retired Foreign Correspondent and had some interaction with holbrook in germany. He was on the very bad wrong side of one of the foreignpolicy things fulltime with iraq. And in some ways the worst reason that was the political calculation. It showed a kind of failure on the part of the establishment. He always wanted to achieve the level of renowned and success of the heroes that were the postwar architects, dean acheson, George Kennan and george marshall, but one thing that it took was the ability to tell the truth in a difficult moment. He had that ability multiple times in his career and beer and the book. Age 22 he is telling William Westmoreland and Maxwell Taylor that we are losing the war and the delta because of excessive firepower and lying to ourselves he sold out when he came to that moment at the tail end of his career when ambition the better of him, he absolutely failed. Two questions. Would you agree that it was a Great Success . He did something nobody else knows about, but he was clintons un ambassador at the end of the administration and we were about to get kicked out of the un because we owed a billion dollars in dues. To get that money really stand to save our seat, they lobbied every un ambassador from around the world to reduce our dues to get the agreement from helms to pay and he did it. No one else had been able to. We were about to lose our seat. A tiny things, like two paragraphs in a book that its a remarkable story. Another question i have related to that one. From what i remember, holbrooke could put the hammer down. Can you kind of recount to us any kind of stories on the bosnia negotiations in which he pressured into published something . It had to be in alignment used together to get them to finally stop the siege and come to negotiate so they were bombing obombing the bees all oa in september of 95. Holbrook was talking to the leaders especially most of it and at one point in the conversation with those which get a Hunting Lodge outside of belgrade, he said if you want to talk to the two war criminals who were running that war, they are right over here, 200 yards away, so they show up come hes asking his staff should i shake their hands, what should i do come and he sets himself up by thinking about some, about having to talk to eichman in order to get the jews out of hungary. He shakes their hands, starts talking and encourages and stands up and starts berating him for the bombing. So many diplomats have been powered by these thugs its amazing how many european and american senior diplomats allowed him to just block them and holbrook stood up and said if this is going to continue, we are leaving. He turned to melissa, you promised me there would be no speeches like this. Theres nothing in it for us. We are leaving and the bombing is going to continue. He kind of looked at him like shut up we are trying to get a negotiation. He sat down, and that was the beginning of the end its because he had the nerve to call their bluff. Thank you. Did Richard Holbrooke [inaudible] in the middle east diplomacy and if he were still alive, what part do you think that he would play or be able to bring . Thats a great question. One littleknown thing about him is that he was jewish. His mother was a refugee from hitler and his father from stalin. But they raised him and his brother with a kind of hush over the familys past. They wanted to erase the tragedy of europe and raise their voice to be american in Westchester County new york, so holbrook grew up with no consciousness. He finally learned of the past, but he never talked about it until he became ambassador to germany and suddenly it seemed like it might be in his favor if he became jewish for a few years. [laughter] he never went anywhere near the middle east conflict. It was the one area of the world where he decided to have nothing to do with it. He wanted every other major issue. He thought he could solve them all. That on one he stayed away fromd i think the reason again was political. He was going to be secretary of state, he could not afford to make powerful enemies on either side of the conflict in the United States. And anyone who got involved with make enemies, so he just looked at it and said thats not for me and what ago and he rarely talked about it almost never. Its kind of a blank space, very careful blank space in his resume. I have another question on my list that i didnt get to. At one point in the book, you talk, you write at great length about this one very small tragic incident, the accident. Talk a little bit more about that. So, during the shuttle diplomacy around the balkans summer of 95, on his first effort to get into serious which was besieged by the positions on the mountains, he had to go over a dangerous Mountain Road with his negotiating team to get into sarajevo. One of the vehicles went over the side and three american diplomats were killed. We have time for me to finish the story lacks holbrook begins his book which is a very fine book on ending the war in bosnia with this story. It turned out he had embellished his own role considerably and left out the real hero of the action was a totally obscure American Army officer named Lieutenant Colonel who was the one who rescued and saved the diplomats who survived. And its such a disgraceful stealing the bravery of the kernel for himself but in the book i told the story twice, once in the sort of grandiose terms of holbrook and general wesley clark who was also there that day and the second time in great detail through the reporting i did and the account of the kernel and it just shows that usually history is written by great men. They write their autobiographies and often they are full of fabrications and embellishments and distortions that almost normal. Its something to be expected. And it takes an accident like this, me finding a letter from holbrooke in his papers to be able to correct the record. So, one final question. This is your first biography. What is the next one . [laughter] they are so hard and require a kind of submission of the writers ego. That is maybe the hardest thing. March the having your ego to somebody elses story. My answer to that because i have an ego as a writer is to write it in the voice that you heard in the first paragraph so that it could kind of be a little resistant to someone else in the story, a narrator pushing back against the against the outside scale of the subject so im going to recover from this one for a few years before i even think about another one. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] heres a look at some of the most notable books of 2019 according to the new york times. In this room tonight, my mother writes how as a child i watched her every move, seeing her eyes fall upon every word anywhere encountered in the grocery store, on the bus, pamphlets, packets, my high school textbooks, she was always insatiable which is how i learned the ways in which words were a kind of sustenance to be a beautiful release. I learned that words were the best map. Make me know my mother was always seen in between raising 12 humans. I am in this room; and so is my mother. [applause] [cheering] in this room my big sister who left for Fashion School in new york city when she was only 19 which then felt like a mission to the planet unknown. In this room tonight, my love a fellow artist, the most inspired accompaniment of my life, and my siblings that are not here but whose voice exists in mine, carl, michael, karen, troy, eddie, deborah, thank you for telling me the stories in the first place, and for allowing me to call your name because it is no small thing to recover the names. There are other names of my family who told me the history of myself, some of whom died before this book was finished. These absent presences, my mother is only sister, my uncle joe in january of this year and my brother simon junior who died the day after this book appeared in the world. Good evening everybody. Welcome to the American Enterprise institute. Im the director o director of , cultural and constitutional studies here and it is my great pleasure to welcome our friend to discuss this important new book the case for nationalism. Of course the editor of the National Review and flagship magazine of american conservatism for decades. He is edited since 1997 and is also a syndicated columnist and author very much i recommend to you his previous book the study of abraham lincolns social and economic thoughts of
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