When briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the beginning of the gulf war, Mr. In doing so he stamped the Powell Doctrine on military operations: Identify clear political objectives, gain public support and use decisive and overwhelming force to defeat enemy forces. Powell reshaped the American Cold War military that had stood ready at the Iron Curtain for half a century. Along with Dick Cheney, the defense secretary at the time, Mr.
Powell was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, which ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but left him in power in Iraq. Gorbachev.Īs chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mr. He was later national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, helping to negotiate arms treaties and an era of cooperation with the Soviet president, Mikhail S. Powell served two decorated combat tours in Vietnam. Starting as a young second lieutenant commissioned in the dawn of a newly desegregated Army, Mr. Born in Harlem of Jamaican parents, he grew up in the South Bronx and graduated from City College of New York, joining the Army through the R.O.T.C. His was a classic American success story. Powell was emblematic of the ability of minorities to use the military as a ladder of opportunity.
Beginning with his 35 years in the Army, Mr. Powell was a pathbreaker, serving as the country’s first Black national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state. He had also been treated for early stages of Parkinson’s disease, she said. He had been due to receive a booster shot for his vaccine last week, she said, but had to postpone it when he fell ill. The cause was complications of Covid-19, his family said in a statement, adding that he had been vaccinated and was being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md., when he died there.Ī spokeswoman said his immune system had been compromised by multiple myeloma, for which he had been undergoing treatment. Powell, who in four decades of public life served as the nation’s top soldier, diplomat and national security adviser, and whose speech at the United Nations in 2003 helped pave the way for the United States to go to war in Iraq, died on Monday.
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