Peter Galbraith

Peter W. Galbraith
1st United States Ambassador to Croatia
In office June 28, 1993 – January 3, 1998
President	Bill Clinton
Succeeded by	William Dale Montgomery
Personal details
Born	(1950-12-31) 31 December 1950
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Anne O'Leary,divorced; Tone Bringa
Relations	John Kenneth Galbraith, father; James K. Galbraith, brother
Children	three
Alma mater	Harvard University (A.B.) Oxford University(M.A.) Georgetown University (J.D.)
Profession	diplomat, public servant, professor, writer

Peter Woodard Galbraith (born December 31, 1950) is an author, commentator, policy adviser and former United States diplomat. In the late 1980s, he helped uncover Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he negotiated the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Croatia War.

Early life and education

He is the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the leading economists of the 20th century, and Catherine (Kitty) Merriam Atwater and the brother of economist James K. Galbraith. After attending the Commonwealth School, he earned an A.B. degree from Harvard College, an M.A. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Career

Official Appointments

Galbraith was an assistant professor of Social Relations at Windham College in Putney, Vermont, from 1975 to 1978.

Galbraith was a professional staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1993, where he published many reports about Iraq and took a special interest in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. In 1987, he uncovered Saddam Hussein's systematic destruction of Kurdish villages and a year later wrote the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988" which would have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq because of the gassing of the Kurds. The bill unanimously passed the Senate but was opposed by the Reagan Administration as "premature" and did not become law.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Galbraith as the first United States Ambassador to Croatia. In 1995, he was the co-mediator and principal architect of the Erdut Agreement that ended the war in Croatia by providing for the peaceful reintegration of Serb-held Eastern Slavonia. From 2000 to 2001, he served with the United Nations in East Timor, where he was head of the UNTAET political section and Cabinet Member for Political Affairs and Timor Sea in East Timor's first Transitional Government. He was East Timor's lead negotiator for maritime boundaries with Australia and produced two agreements, including the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty, that effectively quadrupled East Timor's share of the petroleum resources between the two countries.

He was also a Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in 1999 and between 2001-2003. In 2003, he resigned from the U.S. government service after 24 years.

Involvement in Iraq's constitutional process

From 2003 to 2005, Iraq was involved in a number of negotiations to draft an interim and then a permanent constitution. Galbraith advised the Kurdistan leaders. In his book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, which was published in 2006, Galbraith described some of his contributions to the negotiations. In particular, he wrote that:

after I left Iraq in May 2003, I realised that the Kurdish leaders had a conceptual problem in planning for a federal Iraq. They were thinking in terms of devolution of power – meaning that Baghdad grants them rights. I urged that the equation be reversed. In a memo I sent Barham [Salih] and Nechirvan [Barzani] in August, I drew a distinction between the previous autonomy proposals and federalism: ‘Federalism is a “bottom-up” system. The basic organising unit of the country is the province or state. The state or province is constituted first and then delegates certain powers (of its choice) to the central government…In a federal system residual power lies with the federal unit (i.e. state or province); under an autonomy system it rests with the central government. The central government has no ability to revoke a federal status or power’ [...] Finally I wrote [...] 'any conflict between laws of Kurdistan and the laws or constitution of Iraq shall be decided in favour of the former'. [...] The Constitution should state that the Constitution of Kurdistan, and laws made pursuant to the Constitution, is the supreme law of Kurdistan. Any conflict between laws of Kurdistan and the laws of or Constitution of Iraq shall be decided in favor of the former.' These ideas eventually became the basis of Kurdistan's proposals for an Iraq constitution.

Galbraith favors the independence, legal or de facto, of the northern region of Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Galbraith's 2006 book The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, advocates acceptance of a "partition" of Iraq into three parts (Kurd, Shiite Arab, and Sunni Arab) as part of a new U.S. "strategy based on the reality of Iraq", and argues that the U.S.'s "main error" in Iraq has been "wishful thinking.".

Vermont politics

On January 17, 2008 Galbraith told VPR that he was considering a run for the governorship of Vermont. He would have run as a Democrat against the incumbent Republican governor Jim Douglas and Progressive Anthony Pollina in the 2008 elections. On May 13, he announced that he would not be running and said he would back former House Speaker Gaye Symington instead.

Deputy Envoy to Afghanistan

Galbraith was announced as the next United Nations' Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan on March 25, 2009. He is considered a close ally of Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan.

However, Galbraith abruptly left the country in mid September 2009 at the request of UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide following a dispute over the handling of the reported fraud in the 2009 Afghan presidential election. On September 30, the UN announced that he had been removed from his position by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In response to his firing, Galbraith told The Times, "I was not prepared to be complicit in a cover-up or in an effort to downplay the fraud that took place. I felt we had to face squarely the fraud that took place. Kai downplayed the fraud."

Other activities

Galbraith is a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and a principal in the Windham Resources Group, that does work in Iraq.

In June 2004, Galbraith entered into a business deal with DNO, a Norwegian oil company, that invested in Iraqi Kurdistan. Immediately after he publicly accused the Norwegian head of the UN mission in Afghanistan of election fraud, Dagens Naeringsliv, a Norwegian tabloid, published a story about Galbraith's connection to DNO. Although he was a private citizen at the time, Galbraith had, in the months before the DNO deal, assisted the Iraqi Kurdistan leaders prepare their autonomy proposals, which included Kurdistan control over oil. Critics accused Galbraith of a conflict of interest but the Kurds and Galbraith both explained there was no conflict as securing political control over oil fields and developing a Kurdistan oil industry were congruent objectives. Galbraith was criticized by the New York Times and the New York Review of Books for not having disclosed his business interests in connection with some of the articles he wrote for those publications.

Personal life

He and his wife, a Norwegian social anthropologist, Tone Bringa, have three children and a home in Vermont.

Galbraith was a good friend of the twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, dating back to their student days at Harvard and Oxford Universities, and was instrumental in Bhutto's release from prison in Pakistan for a medical treatment abroad during the military dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

Writings

• Galbraith, Peter (2006), The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End; Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743294238
• Galbraith, Peter W. (2008), Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies; Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1416562257

External links

• "Peter W. Galbraith". Book reviews and articles. New York Review of Books. 2009. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• "Fired UN Official Accuses the U.N. of Helping Cover Up Electoral Fraud". Transcript and Video of Interview. Democracy Now. 2009-10-05. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• "Sacked UN diplomat speaks out". Short Video clip of Hard Talk Interview. BBC. 2009-10-14.
• "Staff profile Peter Galbraith". Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)