James F. Dobbins, an American diplomat whose career took him to Haiti, Afghanistan and many points in between, and who was both respected as a peace negotiator and widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on nation building, died on Monday in Washington. He was 81.
His sons, Christian and Colin Dobbins, said he died in a hospital from complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Until the 1990s, Mr. Dobbins was best known for his behind-the-scenes role in some of the Cold War’s most delicate trans-Atlantic issues, including trade negotiations and the movement of nuclear weapons around the chessboard of Western Europe.
His trajectory changed In 1993, when he was asked to oversee the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia. Though he had no previous experience in the field, or in Africa, he was later assigned to oversee all of the peacekeeping-related issues at the State Department, including the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
A stint as a special envoy in Haiti followed, during the U.S. intervention in 1994 and 1995. In the late 1990s, he was assigned to postwar Bosnia and Kosovo.
Each time, Mr. Dobbins deepened his experience with reconstructing war-torn societies, developing insight into an immensely complex foreign-policy conundrum. He managed the diplomatic side of the NATO air campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and then helped manage peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts there.
The United States had rebuilt nations before, notably postwar Germany and Japan. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the old world order, nation building moved to the top of the foreign-policy agenda.
Mr. Dobbins became its leading practitioner. He drew on America’s earlier experiences, but he also recognized that the difficulties the country faced at the turn of the millennium — involving security, economic and political challenges simultaneously — were different from those it faced after World War II.
“He had an insatiable appetite for understanding the concepts, the theory at hand,” Douglas Lute, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a phone interview. “And he coupled that with a very sharp instinct for how to actually do it on the ground.”
He counseled pragmatism, warning that there was no single solution for every country’s problems. Still, he repeatedly emphasized the need to establish security first, after which, he said, political and economic redevelopment could flow safely.
When the United States invaded Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Dobbins was selected as envoy to the anti-Taliban opposition, and then to the new government. On a rainy day in Kabul, in December 2001, he proudly presided over the reopening of the U.S. Embassy, which had been closed in 1989.
“We are here, and we are here to stay,” he said.
Despite playing that central role, he was later critical of the government’s efforts in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq — especially after he retired in 2002, when he became the director of…
2023-07-08 15:47:02
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