Among the adjectives that Richard Holbrooke's fans and critics have used to describe this illustrious fixture of American foreign policy, you will not find the word "diplomatic."
One of the ironies of Mr. Holbrooke's epic career, spanning the decades from the presidency of John F. Kennedy to that of Barack Obama, is that he was so effective despite spurning the established etiquette of diplomacy.
Mr. Holbrooke, who died at 69 on Monday night, was a prickly, high-maintenance partisan with sharp elbows who was known more for nagging interlocutors than stroking egos - except, perhaps, his own.
Yet he was considered so indispensable by Democratic presidents, and such a pain by Republican ones, that few figures in American foreign policy have risen to his level of influence both in and out of power.
He was forever the bridesmaid when it came to snagging his dream job - secretary of state. But from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, he established himself as a bulwark against advocates of brute force in Washington and a sober voice of caution against American hubris in foreign policy.
By brokering the 1995 Dayton peace deal that brought an end to sectarian warfare in the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Holbrooke assured his legacy as much for that achievement as for the way he went about making it.
His brow-beating of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, along with U.S.-led air strikes, saved the lives of countless Bosnian Muslims. Mr. Holbrooke repeatedly trotted out this point to counter post-9/11 charges that America was anti-Islam.
"The Dayton Accords, in retrospect, look inevitable, but they were nothing of the kind," Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor of public policy at George Mason University, said in an interview. "It is one of those rare moments in history when you can point to a single diplomat below the secretarial or presidential level whose personal engagement with top leaders led to a sustained agreement."
The peace accord put Mr. Holbrooke in line to succeed Warren Christopher at the State Department. But he lost out to Madeleine Albright; Hillary Clinton wanted her husband to appoint the first female secretary of state. The post eluded him again in 2000 when Al Gore lost to George W. Bush, and once more in 2004 when John Kerry was beaten by Mr. Bush
When Republicans were in power, Mr. Holbrooke took up his pen, writing prolifically on the foreign policy issues of the day. It was during his first stint in opposition, in 1972, that the former editor of the Brown University student newspaper founded Foreign Policy magazine.
Indeed, journalism was Mr. Holbrooke's first career choice. It made him a unique communicator among the diplomatic corps, and particularly adept at getting his name in print. "He didn't merely court reporters; he stalked them," Peter Beinart wrote Tuesday on The Daily Beast website. "And when they didn't write enough about him, he wrote about himself."'
As a confidant of the Clintons, Mr. Holbrooke hitched his wagon to Ms. Clinton's 2008 presidential bid and later pivoted to court Mr. Obama's inner circle. Ms. Clinton immediately brought him back to the State Department after she took over there.
But Mr. Holbrooke's final diplomatic job, as the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, may also have been his most unrewarding. His skepticism toward the military strategy to defeat the Taliban - he advocated and oversaw a "civilian surge" to accompany the buildup of troops - led to attempts by the Pentagon to marginalize him.
The back-biting among Mr. Obama's Afghanistan policy team blew into the open in June, when Rolling Stone magazine published a devastating exposé that led to the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. The article depicted Mr. Holbrooke as a "wounded animal" who was being kept in his job by the White House only to prevent him from writing a tell-all book.
In his latest book, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward quotes Vice-President Joe Biden calling Mr. Holbrooke "the most egotistical bastard I've ever met," but conceding that "maybe he's the right guy" for the mission, which involved working both sides of the Af-Pak divide.
Mr. Holbrooke's death, from complications from a torn aorta, comes the very week the Obama administration is to release a review of its Afghanistan strategy - one that is expected to tout measurable progress since the President announced his troop surge a year ago.
Mr. Holbrooke emphasized the importance of the country's political and economic development, combatting government corruption and winning over the public. He was instrumental in getting the United States to rein in attempts to eradicate poppy crops, often the only source of income for Afghan farmers.
Unfortunately, his input has become unavailable just when it might have been most welcomed.
"By now, the [Afghanistan policy]team has coalesced and differences in perspective that may have been salient early on may be less so now," said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
General David Petraeus, now the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, went to lengths to portray Mr. Holbrooke as his civilian equal.
"I like to think that we made an effective civil-military team," Gen. Petraeus wrote in a tribute posted Tuesday on The Washington Post website. "Those of us in uniform joked that it was every commander's dream to have a diplomatic partner nicknamed 'the Bulldozer'."
Konrad Yakabuski