Peter Galbraith

Peter Woodard Galbraith (born December 31, 1950) is an American author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former diplomat.

Galbraith was an assistant professor of Social Studies at Windham College in Putney, Vermont, from 1975 to 1978.

Galbraith worked as a staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1993.

As a staffer, he wrote several reports on Iraq and took a special interest in the Kurdish regions of Iraq.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he helped uncover Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds.

Galbraith contributed to the uncovering of Saddam Hussein's systematic destruction of Kurdish villages and use of chemical weapons after visits in 1987 and 1988.

Galbraith wrote the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988," which would have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq in response to the gassing of the Kurds.

The bill unanimously passed the Senate, and passed the House in a "watered-down" version, but was opposed by the Reagan Administration as "premature" and did not become law.

During the 1991 Iraqi Kurdish uprising, Galbraith visited rebel-held northern Iraq, and narrowly escaped capture by Saddam Hussein's forces as they retook the region.

His accounts were instrumental in recording and publicizing attacks on the Kurdish civilian population and contributed to the decision to create a Kurdish "safe haven" in northern Iraq.

In 1992, the Kurdish parties gave Galbraith 14 tons captured Iraqi secret police documents from northern Iraq detailing the atrocities committed against the Kurds.

He was involved in airlifting the documents to the United States where he deposited them in the files of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the National Archives.

Galbraith's work in Iraqi Kurdistan was discussed in Samantha Power's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he was co-mediator of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian War of Independence.

He served in East Timor's first transitional government, successfully negotiating the Timor Sea Treaty.

As an author and commentator, Galbraith, a longtime advocate of the Kurdish people, has argued for Iraq to be "partitioned" into three parts, allowing for Kurdistan independence.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Galbraith as the first United States ambassador to Croatia.

Galbraith was actively involved in the Croatia and Bosnia peace processes.

He was one of three authors of the "Z-4 plan," an attempt to negotiate a political solution to the Croatian War of Independence.

Galbraith and UN mediator Thorvald Stoltenberg went on to lead negotiations which led to the Erdut Agreement that ended the war by providing for peaceful reintegration of Serb-held Eastern Slavonia into Croatia.

Galbraith helped devise and implement the strategy that ended the 1993-94 Muslim-Croat war, and participated in the negotiation of the Washington Agreement that established the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

During the war years, Ambassador Galbraith was responsible for U.S. humanitarian programs in the former Yugoslavia and for U.S. relations with the UNPROFOR peacekeeping mission headquartered in Zagreb.

Galbraith diplomatic interventions facilitated the flow of humanitarian assistance to Bosnia and secured the 1993 release of more than 5,000 prisoners of war held in inhumane conditions by Bosnian Croat forces.

Beginning in 1994, on instructions from then-President Clinton, Galbraith tacitly allowed weapons to be shipped into Bosnia through Croatia in violation of a UN arms embargo; this policy generated controversy when made public, with a Republican-led House of Representatives committee referring criminal charges against Galbraith, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and other Clinton Administration officials to the Justice Department.

The Select Committee also investigated Galbraith's personal life, discovering that he had dated an American journalist while a bachelor in Zagreb.

Galbraith was in Croatia's capital, Zagreb, when Serbian forces rocketed the city on May 2 - 3 1995.

One of the missiles hit about a block from the U.S. Embassy in the center of Zagreb.

From 1996 to 1998, Galbraith served as de facto Chairman of the international commission charged with monitoring implementation of the Erdut Agreement.

Later, he was professor of national security strategy at the National War College in 1999 and between 2001 and 2003.

He is an Honorary Fellow at St Catherine's College.

Oxford University.

Beginning in 2003, Galbraith acted as an advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, helping to influence the drafting process of the Iraqi Constitution in 2005; he was later criticized for failing to fully disclose financial interests relevant to this role.

In 2009, Galbraith was appointed United Nations' Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, where he contributed to exposing the fraud that took place in the 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan before being fired in a dispute over how to handle that fraud.

Galbraith served as a Democratic member of the Vermont Senate for Windham County from 2011 to 2015, and was a candidate for governor of Vermont in 2016.

He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arm of the Council for a Livable World.

Galbraith was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the leading economists of the 20th century, and Catherine Galbraith (née Catherine Merriam Atwater).

He is the brother of economist James K. Galbraith.

Galbraith attended the Commonwealth School.

He earned an A.B. degree from Harvard College, an M.A. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of American University of Kurdistan in Duhok since its establishment in 2014.