A statesperson is a diplomat that understands that power and brute force are not the same thing.

He quickly developed a reputation for writing brash but influential memos, earning the nickname “the Bulldozer.” In November 1967, Mr. Holbrooke drafted one such document, a 17-page paper for President Lyndon B. Johnson in the name of Nicholas Katzenbach, then the undersecretary of state, that argued that North Vietnam was winning the battle for public opinion in the United States.

“Hanoi uses time the way the Russians used terrain before Napoleon’s advance on Moscow, always retreating, losing every battle, but eventually creating conditions in which the enemy can no longer function,” he wrote. “For Napoleon it was his long supply lines and the cold Russian winter; Hanoi hopes that for us it will be the mounting dissension, impatience, and frustration caused by a protracted war without fronts or other visible signs of success; a growing need to choose between guns and butter; and an increasing American repugnance at finding, for the first time, their own country cast as ‘the heavy.’ ”

via Richard Holbrooke dies: Veteran U.S. diplomat brokered Dayton peace accords.