American politician Donald Rumsfeld: biography

A native of Chicago, Donald Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932) grew up in a middle class family, which implies a mixture of all-American athleticism with academic cleverness sufficient to receive a scholarship in Princeton.

Donald Rumsfeld: biography of the politician

After graduating from Princeton, the graduate went to serve in the Navy for 3 years, where he was known as an energetic pilot and wrestler, until the shoulder injury put an end to his Olympic hopes. After parting with a brilliant sports career, Donald naturally turned to the next promising occupation - politics.

In 1954 he married Joyce Pearson. The couple had three children: Valerie (1967), Marcy (1960), and Nicholas (1967).

In 1962, Donald Rumsfeld (pictured below) won on almost hopeless elections to the House of Representatives, where he showed himself as a liberal Republican who supports civil rights. After the defeat of Goldwater in 1964, he helped a bloc of moderate Republicans to lead Gerald Ford into minority leaders. He joined the Nixon administration in 1969, where he held a number of posts, including the post of economic adviser and ambassador to NATO. Although Rumsfeld appeared on several records used to impeach the president, he was not brought to criminal responsibility.

Administration of Ford

After the resignation of Nixon, Rumsfeld worked first as head of the administration of Ford (1974-1975), and then as defense minister (1975-1977). A strategic bomber "B-1", a Trident ballistic missile and an intercontinental ballistic missile "Peacemaker" were created at it. In 1977 he was awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Republican politician Donald Rumsfeld may have been more moderate than, for example, Barry Goldwater, but over the years his political profile has shifted to the right. It was a consequence of the circumstances or the actual change in the outlook, it is not known. Indicative is that, according to legend, Henry Kissinger describes Rumsfeld as the most ruthless man he has ever met. And he communicated with both Mao Zedong and Augusto Pinochet, except for Kissinger himself.

Pharmaceutical and Electronics

When Ford's fabulous presidency came to an end, he decided to return to the private sector, focusing on ultra-high-profile pharmaceuticals (GD Searle & Co., Gilead Sciences) and the high-tech area (General Instrument Corp.). Despite the fact that before he had no experience in business, Rumsfeld in his resume hinted at his political influence and parallel service in different positions. From 1982 to 2000, he carried out a dozen of special government assignments.

Perhaps the most memorable of them fell on the reign of the Reagan administration, when Donald Rumsfeld was appointed special representative of the president for the Middle East. According to the Washington Post, he was the main supporter of support for Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad experience

As a conciliatory gesture in 1982, the United States removed Iraq from the list of states sponsoring terrorism, which provided Rumsfeld with the opportunity to visit Baghdad in 1983, when the 10-year Iran-Iraq war was in full swing.

At the time, intelligence reports indicated that Baghdad almost every day used illegal chemical weapons against Iran. During several visits to Iraq, Rumsfeld told government officials that the United States was considering Iran's victory as its main strategic defeat. In a personal meeting with Saddam Hussein in December 1983, he told the "Baghdad butcher" that the US would like to restore diplomatic relations with Iraq in full.

In 2002, Rumsfeld tried to rehabilitate himself, claiming that he warned Hussein not to use illegal weapons, but this statement was not supported by the State Department stenogram.

Failures with Dole

Satisfied with the service of his people, Donald Rumsfeld again went to work in the private sector. Then he participated in the presidential race in 1988, but withdrew from the race in favor of Bob Dole. The then victorious Bush-senior neglected Donald, excommunicating him from influential appointments.

In 1996, politician Donald Rumsfeld once again put on Dole, and again was among the losers.

In 1997, he became one of the founders of the "New American Century Project", a neoconservative foreign policy group. The co-founders were also the future vice-president of the USA Dick Cheney, the former vice-president Dan Quayle and the governor of Florida Jeb Bush, the brother of George Bush junior.

Donald Rumsfeld: Policy Growth

Bill Clinton was more generous in his victory than Bush. In 1999, he instructed Rumsfeld to lead a commission to assess the feasibility of creating a national missile defense system.

George Bush, becoming president in 2000, instructed him to lead the army in line with the requirements of the XXI century. Without active fighting, Rumsfeld was known as a reformer when he began to review the basic theses that guided the formation of defense spending-for example, the provision that the army should be prepared to wage two wars simultaneously in different parts of the globe.

9/11

But on September 11, 2001, the world suddenly seemed much more dangerous than before. After the terrorists sent two stolen aircraft to the towers of the World Trade Center, Donald Rumsfeld was in the reserve headquarters near the Pentagon, where the third aircraft subsequently collapsed. He rejected the evacuation plan, even when the air was filled with smoke. The minister hurried to the crash site, despite the objections of security officials, and helped evacuate the wounded.

September 11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan made Rumsfeld a star. His daily briefings were as popular as the Evening Show monologue, and twice as exciting. Demonstrating the strikingly colorful balance between brute force and clever wordplay, Rumsfeld made it clear that on the day he dislocated his shoulder, professional wrestling lost a first-class superstar.

Despite the strange combination of stiffness and comicness, he held the shortest war in history to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Strategist Rumsfeld

American politician Donald Rumsfeld played a major role in creating the strategy of conducting the Afghan war, leaving the development of military tactics to commanders. His heroism during the attack on the Pentagon caused deserved sympathy among subordinates. Even during the conduct of one war and the planning of the next, he persistently continued to implement the reforms launched before September 11 to create the armed forces of the new millennium.

Soon after the terrorist attack, the public sentiment rating about Rumsfeld's performance of his duties exceeded 80%, roughly coinciding with the assessment of the work of the commander-in-chief. His prospects for the future largely depended on the future war with Iraq. Together with Dick Cheney, he was one of the most ardent supporters of the destruction of his former companion Saddam Hussein.

Like the Afghan war, the Iraqi scenario followed the "stratagem of Rumsfeld" - an imperceptible preliminary invasion before its official announcement in the media, to make it look better than anyone could imagine. In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld introduced air forces and military forces long before the United States recognized the fact of warfare. As a result, the six-month war looked as if it took only two months.

In February 2003, the US special forces already were in Iraq, and the air strikes of the Allied forces were tripled, compared with the operations of the last dozen years. By the time the historical photos of the "first strike" appeared, the United States had already controlled half of the country.

After losing the Republicans in the 2006 elections, which was the fault of the ongoing war in Iraq, Rumsfeld announced his resignation. In December, he was succeeded by Robert Gates.

Life after retirement

In 2007, Rumsfeld founded a fund of his name to support US public organizations and the development of free political and economic systems abroad.

He transferred the advance for publishing his memoirs in favor of the veterans. The book "Known and Unknown: Memoirs" was published in 2011.

In 2013 the book "Rules of Rumsfeld: Lessons of Leadership in Business, Politics, War and Life" was published. She appeared thanks to the records, which the author made on small sheets of paper and kept in a box from under the shoes. One of the aphorisms reads: "Only those stupidities are difficult to solve, which are created by intelligent people."