Peter W. Galbraith Biography

Peter Woodard Galbraith (b. December 31, 1950), son of the economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith, holds degrees from the Commonwealth School, Harvard College, Oxford University and Georgetown University Law Center.   He served on the staff of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1979 to 1993, where he took a special interest in Kurdistan. In 1993, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Croatia by President Bill Clinton. He later served as United Nations ambassador in East Timor where he negotiated an oil-treaty between East Timor and Australia 90/10 in Timor's favor, and forced Australia to back down on maritime boundary issues declaring to Australian oil men, "The Timor Sea is closed for business!"

In 2003, he resigned from U.S. government after 24 years of service in order to be able to criticize U.S. Iraq policy more freely.   He is a strong and vocal proponent of independence for Kurdistan.  He is currently senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, writes frequently about Iraq in the New York Review of Books and is the author of  The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (2006), which advocates partitioning Iraq into three parts.

He is married to Norwegian social anthropologist Tone Bringa. They have three children and a home in Townshend, Vermont.

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