Passing of Holbrooke, Rise of WikiLeaks

Richard Holbrooke led closed-door negotiations during the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement to end the Bosnian War, but his passing on Monday night was nearly overshadowed by WikiLeaks' effort to end such discretion, notes scholar Michael Fullilove, who spoke with the former State assistant secretary this year for a forthcoming book on presidential envoys.

"Only a figure like Holbrooke could have stood up to Slobodan Milosevic and talked him down," writes Fullilove in the Interpreter, a blog maintained by the Sydney, Australia-based Lowy Institute for International Policy. "But not even Holbrooke could have brokered Dayton without the ability to have confidential conversations with his interlocutors. At a time when WikiLeaks is undermining diplomacy, it has taken the death of a legendary diplomat to show us why diplomacy matters."

Over the past month, the anti-secrecy website has disclosed reams of diplomatic cables exposing intimate details about the nation's allies and enemies.