Richard Armitage
Richard Armitage (1945-) is an American foreign policy specialist, currently in his own private consulting firm, who served in a variety of political and military posts, the highest being Deputy Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration. At present, he is Board of Directors of ConocoPhillips, ManTech International Corporation and Transcu Ltd., is a member of The American Academy of Diplomacy as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).[1]
He is a close friend of Colin Powell, and, like Powell, is more an internationalist than a neoconservative.
Early life
He graduated from the United States Naval Academy, class of 1967, and was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. He first went to the Vietnam War on a destroyer, and then served three combat tours as an adviser to the Vietnamese riverine forces. He became fluent in Vietnamese. Some reports incorrectly describe him as a U.S. Navy SEAL,[2] but he did have missions that overlapped the SEAL inland water patrols.
Leaving active Navy duty in 1973, he became a Defense Department employee in South Vietnam, and helped remove Vietnamese Navy personnel and equipment before the fall of South Vietnam.
In May 1975, he came to Washington as a Pentagon consultant and was posted in Tehran, Iran, until November 1976. After private sector work, he became Administrative Assistant to Senator Robert Dole (R-KS) in 1978.
Reagan Administration
In the 1980 Reagan campaign, he was senior advisor to the Interim Foreign Policy Advisory board, which prepared the President-Elect for major international policy issues confronting the new administration. He worked with Caspar Weinberger in this role, who found him a complement:
Weinberger was precisely the sort of person whom Armitage knew how to charm. In style, Armitage was everything Weinberger was not. The defense secretary was slight in build, formal in manner, cultivated and enamored of pomp and ceremony; Armitage was physically imposing, loose, brash, outgoing and informal. In military terms, the defense secretary could legitimately look at Armitage as representing a successor generation; during World War II Weinberger had been an infantryman and an intelligence officer under General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific.[3]
From 1981 until June 1983 Mr. Armitage was Deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the Pentagon from June 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
George H. W. Bush Administration
From 1989 through 1992, he was Presidential Special Negotiator for the Philippines Military Bases Agreement and Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East. President Bush sent him as a Special Emissary to Jordan’s King Hussein during the Gulf War.
From March 1992 until he left government in May 1993, with the personal rank of Ambassador, he directed U.S. assistance to the new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.
George W. Bush Administration
He was Deputy Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration, differentiated himself from many other policy officials in the administration, in that he had the perspective of actual combat. This was one reason for his close collaboration with Colin Powell, and probably for his conflicts with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.
On the day of the 9-11 attack, he was on the main operational conference, representing State. Richard Clarke described him as focused, "responding in tactical radio style", and emphatic on counterattacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda.[4]
When a pro-Israel rally was held in Washington in April 2002, during a new push for peace with Palestine, Armitage was considered as the Administration's representative, but it was decided that sending a State Department representative might imply too much approval of the Israeli position, at a time when Powell was negotiating. [5]
Bush second term
Armitage left the Administration in the second term. Among the positions he took, as a private citizen, was that the only way to resolve Israel's conflict with Hizbollah and Lebanon was for the U.S. to talk with Syria.[6]
He testified that he had inadvertently leaked the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to Robert Novak. [7]
References
- ↑ The Honorable Richard L. Armitage, Armitage International
- ↑ Richard A. Clarke (2004), Against all Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, Free Press, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0743260244, p. 9
- ↑ James Mann (2004), Rise of the Vulcans: the History of Bush's War Cabinet, Viking, ISBN 0670032990, p. 108
- ↑ Clarke, p. 9, p. 23
- ↑ Mann, p. 325
- ↑ "Richard Armitage: U.S. Must Talk to Syria", Morning Edition, National Public Radio, July 26, 2006
- ↑ Joel Seidman (September 20, 2006), NBC News