Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,084

This is the grave of Lawrence Eagleburger.

Born in 1930 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Eagleburger grew up in an upper middle class household. His father was a doctor and his mother taught school. Don’t believe the mythology of the past that women didn’t work outside the home. That was never really true (in fact, more women were in the workforce in 1955 than during World War II). The family was super hardcore right-wing Republican, especially his father who was basically a fascist. They were big Joe McCarthy people and so was young Lawrence. He was a Young Republican leader between 1949 and 1951. Eagleburger started his college journey at Stevens Point College, which I think was then a two year school before becoming almost famous for launching the NBA career of Terry Porter as Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He transferred to the University of Wisconin-Madison, got his bachelor’s, then stayed for a master’s.

Eagleburger decided on the Foreign Service as a career, joining it in 1957, the height of the Cold War. Eagleburger went into the Foreign Service and is in some ways the ultimate example of rising through the ranks. He did all sorts of things as one will do, but no one rose like he did. It was in 1963 that he started making a name for himself. He was working in Yugoslavia. There was a big earthquake. It was only 6.1, but with that architecture, over 1,000 people died. Eagleburger became the point person for American relief effort and became something of a hero in Yugoslavia for his work, even getting known as Lawrence of Macedonia, which is hilarious since he wasn’t exactly a charismatic guy. But this did launch his career onto another level. Even under Lyndon Johnson, he rose to became a special assistant for Dean Acheson, who LBJ had brought back into the fold to work on France’s threat to withdraw from NATO.

The Nixon administration brought Eagleburger to Washington as an assistant to Henry Kissinger. Now, no one could be morally untainted from being this close to scum like Kissinger, though of course being close to the Great Satan of American foreign policy hurt no one in their lifetimes. He moved through a bunch of mid-level roles in these years, important work if not the kind of thing that often gets remembered today. Among his jobs were advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO (I’m sure all these people are peachy guys today) and then deputy assistant secretary of defense from 1971-73. Somehow he and Kissinger got along because Eagleburger would tell Kissinger he was wrong and the egomaniac could accept it from the fat guy who looked even less like an international man of diplomacy than he did,

Now, when Nixon resigned, Eagleburger did too, but the Ford administration very quickly brought him back. He was named executive secretary to the secretary of state in 1975. Kissinger had him engage with the Castro government, though I don’t think it really amounted to much. Carter was happy to keep him on too and named him ambassador to Yugoslavia, a pretty important position at that time and of course he already knew the country.

Reagan had use for Eagleburger too. By this time, he was a very big deal. He was first assistant secretary of state for European affairs and then undersecretary of state for political affairs. He was part of the panel evaluating Reagan’s policy toward South Africa and was part of the minority position on it that….yep, Reagan hadn’t been nice enough to the apartheid government. In fact, the more one knows about Eagleburger, the more it makes sense that he had become close to Kissinger. I just remembered as an 80s foreign policy guy without too much detail, but there’s a lot of bad stuff in here. Technically, the minority report that Eagleburger was part of stated that aggressive sanctions were counterproductive, but at the most generous, talk about missing the point.

Eagleburger capped his career by being the first career Foreign Service officer to become Secretary of State. This wasn’t for long. When James Baker left the job to manage the Bush 92 campaign, Eagleburger was named as interim and then later got a recess appointment. So whatever. But still, it was amazing that a career foreign service officer had actually gotten the big job, for however briefly. He was the top Yugoslavia hand again in these years. He also was sent in 1991 to Israel to convince them to stay out of the war against Iraq, despite all the Scud missiles being launched. It was a delicate operation and any Israeli response would have made it nearly impossible for the U.S. to operate in Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton defeated Bush, James Baker decided to step down from the job early. Bush placed Eagleburger in the job to replace him in December 1992. So he served for a month. But still, what a way to cap that kind of career. Things got real problematic for Eagleburger after this. When Yugoslavia fell apart, he was a total hack for Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs, which….yucky. Eagleburger later said fo Milosevic, “I misjudged him.” You think???

In 1998, Eagleburger became the head of the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims. He faced a lot of criticism that the process was way too slow and not favorable enough to the victims. He stated it was hard and such a process was inherently slow without proper documentation. That might be true, but given his overall position on the genocide in Yugoslavia, I dunno.

Eagleburger was one of the top Republican foreign policy hands who tried to stop George W. Bush from invading Iraq. Along with people such as Brent Scowcroft, he was disgusted by such a stupid war and said that Daddy Bush never would do that. But such an argument wasn’t going to fly with W and his daddy issues, not to mention with bloodthirsty islamophobic maniacs such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In 2008, he was a big John McCain guy, despite being publicly dismissive of Sarah Palin.

Oh, also, Eagleburger named all three of kids Lawrence after himself. He gave them different middle names. He said he did it because of his own ego and also “I wanted to screw up the Social Security system.” What an asshole. No wonder Kissinger liked him so much.

Eagleburger died in 2011. He was 80 years old. Pneumonia got him, after a heart attack.

Lawrence Eagleburger is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

If you would like this series to visit other Secretaries of State, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. James Baker somehow lives, but Warren Christopher is in Hollywood (naturally for a man of that charisma….) and Cyrus Vance is also in Arlington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.