Diplomat Galbraith Makes Peace His Career

It was evening in Sarajevo, and a warm glow lit up the second-floor windows of the private home of a United Nations official. U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter W. Galbraith '73 sat across the table from Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic and prepared for a tense dinner of diplomatic discussions.

But sudden gunfire between Muslims and Serbs 30 yards from their table brought the elegant courses to a rapid halt. Bullets whizzed past the window as Galbraith and Silajdzic fled the area in an armored land rover.

As U.S. ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998 during much of the former Yugoslavia's civil war, Galbraith says he had many close encounters with death--both his own and those of others.

When Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's plane crashed into a foggy hillside in Croatia, Galbraith was one of the first to witness the strewn corpses, a scene that greatly disturbed him.

More importantly, however, this scene and other aspects of life amid the destruction of war only renewed Galbraith's commitment to hope and respect for human life on all sides.

"I believe we're all passengers on the planet," Galbraith says from his temporary home in Norway. "What happened in Bosnia and Croatia does affect us all. The U.S. acted out of concern for our fellow human beings and because it's the right thing to do."

Lisa L. Tepper, Croatia country director for the State Department, praises Galbraith's commitment to the mission. "He has an extraordinary degree of personal dedication and sense of human rights and democracy that translated into inspiration for the whole mission."

Galbraith was the only person on both sides to participate in all three peace agreements: the Washington Accord, signed on February 28, 1994, to create a cease-fire between the Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia; the Erdut Accord, signed on November 12, 1995, aimed to end the war in Croatia, and the Dayton Accord, signed on November 21, 1995 to end the war in Bosnia.

Galbraith played a lead role in negotiating the Washington Accord, wrote the Erdut Accord and supported Richard Holbrooke in brokering the Dayton Accord.

During negotiations, Galbraith says he faced some of the toughest personalities in history, including the "Franco-like" Croatian president, Farfranjo Tudjman.

"I know I spent more time with Tudjman than everyone else combined," Galbraith says. "He's a very rigid personality with a sense of his own place. He was convinced that Bosnia should not exist as a country. He showed extreme racism against Bosnian Muslims."

Meetings took place atop a hill in Zagreb, in a room Tito, the former-Yugoslavia's communist-era leader, used as a living room more than 40 years ago.

Galbraith says he always sat to Tudjman's left on a white, gilded couch, while Tudjman lounged in a gilded armchair. Meetings were often intense, and voices quickly rose.

"He would sometimes yell," Galbraith recalls. "I was never intimidated. I'd yell back."

But he says dealing with Tudjman was not difficult once he devised a strategy.

"The strategy was to persuade him that the U.S. could end the war on the basis of certain principles which were essential to Croatia, namely reuniting their country," Galbraith says. "But [they] would have to accept our principles not to divide Bosnia. I had to persuade him that we were going to be involved."

And involved Galbraith became. In August, 1995, Galbraith defended the Serbs against the Croatian government, earning the name "tractor diplomat," a title that he brandishes with pride.

On Aug. 4, thousands of Serbs took to the roads in caravans, tractors and cars to flee the Croat offensive and were assaulted along the trip by Croat mobs.

Galbraith read the Associated Press account of the tragedies the following day and says he became enraged that the government was not standing up for its people.

"I told Tudgman, 'If your police are not prepared to protect these people, I'll do it,'" Galbraith says. "'I'll go down and join them.' Then I had to keep my word."

He joined the people on their tractors and rode to the border. Galbraith says the police were conspicuously present every 15 yards for the rest of journey, and the Serbs made it safely to the border.

Capitol Influence

Tepper says everyone in Washington, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, respects Galbraith for his strong spirit and sense of right and wrong.

"You knew where Peter Galbraith would end up," she says. "Because you knew what his bottom line was. He never took no for an answer."

Tepper adds, "Galbraith energized Washington [into] getting actors to focus on Croatia. He challenged the system."

But, Tepper says, despite intense dedication to his work, Galbraith does not lose touch with the lighter side of life. She says Galbraith possesses a funny personality and the ability to tell a good story which contribute to his success as a diplomat.

Even Peter's father, John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg professor of economics emeritus and former U.S. ambassador to India under John F. Kennedy '40, praised his son's the diplomatic techniques.

"He is one of the great peace makers in Croatia," John Galbraith says. "We [his family] shared pride in what he had done. So far as I was informed, I certainly agreed with what he was doing."

Crimson Childhood

Galbraith has been interested in the welfare of others since childhood, when he took care of a collie named Tavish, a spotted turtle and a series of cats.

"I was very attached to my pets," Galbraith says.

He was also attached to his family. Both father and son say the family was very cohesive, and Galbraith is still close to his two brothers, J. Alan '63 and James Kenneth '73.

John Galbraith says he instilled an interest in international relations in his sons at an early age, when conversations at the dinner table would center around issues of public policy and international relations.

As a long-haired, rebellious Harvard student, Peter Galbraith pursued these interests further.

A history concentrator, he was active in the anti-war movement. He was co-chair of the Harvard-Radcliffe Indochina Teach-In, which travelled into the community to make citizens and students more aware of issues surrounding the war.

In a second anti-war teach-in that he organized, several prominent Republicans who were opposed spoke at a hotel in Boston while former vice president Spiro Agnew was in the city.

Briefly contemplating a career in academia, Galbraith studied at Oxford for two years and went on to teach at Windham College for four years.

But Galbraith says he realized he wanted to make history, not just to study it, and he began working on Capital Hill.

"Since I left Harvard, I've done very much what I always wanted to do," Galbraith says. "War and peace."

In 1981, Galbraith was instrumental in arranging classmate and close friend Benazir Bhutto's release from prison. In her autobiography, Bhutto names Galbraith as her liberator, the man who engineered her release from prison.

"I made a huge effort to get her out," Galbraith says. Working as an advisor to the Senate at the time, Galbraith says he used his position to speak for her release and for the larger issue of human rights.

The escape reads like a scene from a Tom Clancy thriller.

Galbraith made a visit to Pakistan; Bhutto smuggled him a note describing her situation.

Galbraith says her eventual release was the result of a trap he set to catch the Pakistani president in a false promise. The president told Galbraith that friends could both visit and call Bhutto, but Galbraith found neither to be true.

Before he could arrange for a meeting with her through the president, her captors moved her prison to Switzerland, a move Galbraith attributes to an attempt to dodge him. Soon, however, Bhutto was free.

Always in the line of fire, Galbraith was the last person to escape from Iraq during the Kurd uprising in 1991. Galbraith shared his videotape of the Kurd flight from Iraq and later recounted this experience for Peter Jennings of ABC News. Galbraith says he believes this account was influential in forcing the Allies to take quick action against Iraq.

Still wading through dangerous territory, but in a more secure position, Galbraith also wrote the legislation that provided humanitarian assistance in Cambodia after Pol Pot's rule.

Family Man

Despite his hefty professional duties and international stature, however, Galbraith says he still makes plenty of time for family and fun.

Galbraith and his wife, Tone R. Bringa, met on a blind business date a few years ago. Bringa, a Norwegian anthropologist who was working as a political analyst for the United Nations in Croatia, says one of her British journalist friends set up an interview for her with Galbraith.

Bringa says she was impressed with Galbraith's tough stance against the Croatian government, and the romance proceeded from there.

"He's fair, and he's very clear," she says. "He has very strong principles and a strong sense of right and wrong."

Now the couple has a two-year-old daughter, Liv, whom Bringa insists will be bilingual.

However, Liv gets to see her grandparents very little, as the family is always traveling from one place to another.

"We don't see a great deal of her," John Galbraith says. "We see much too little of them."

But perhaps Grandpa will finally get his wish. Peter is now faced with what to do--and where to live--next and may even settle down in Washington.