| 65th | Top people from West Virginia |
| 57th | Top Barnard College people |
| Cyrus Vance | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|---|---|
| In office January 20, 1977 – April 28, 1980 |
|
| President | Jimmy Carter |
| Deputy | Warren Christopher |
| Preceded by | Henry Kissinger |
| Succeeded by | Edmund Muskie |
|
|
|
| In office July 5, 1962 – January 21, 1964 |
|
| President | John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Elvis Jacob Stahr, Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Stephen Ailes |
|
|
|
| In office 1964–1967 |
|
| President | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Roswell Gilpatric |
| Succeeded by | Paul H. Nitze |
|
|
|
| Born | March 27, 1917 Clarksburg, West Virginia |
| Died | January 12, 2002 (aged 84) New York City |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Grace Sloane |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Navy |
| Unit | USS Hale |
Cyrus Roberts Vance (March 27, 1917–January 12, 2002) was an American lawyer and civil servant. He served as the United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980. Prior to his service as Secretary of State, he held a number of executive positions, including the Secretary of the Army and the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
As Secretary of State, Vance approached foreign policy with an emphasis on negotiation over conflict and a special interest in arms reduction. In April 1980, Vance resigned in protest of Operation Eagle Claw, the secret mission to rescue American hostages in Iran. He was succeeded by Edmund Muskie.
Vance was the cousin (and adoptive son) of 1924 Democratic Presidential Candidate and noted lawyer John W. Davis. He was the father of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.
Contents |
Vance was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He graduated from Kent School in 1935 and received a bachelor's degree in 1939 from Yale University, where he was a member of the secret society Scroll and Key. He also earned three letters in ice hockey at Yale. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1942.
Vance served in the United States Navy as a gunnery officer on the destroyer USS Hale until 1946, and then joined the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City, before entering government services.
Vance was the Secretary of the Army in the John F. Kennedy administration. He was Secretary when Army units were sent to northern Mississippi in 1962 to protect James Meredith and ensure that the court-ordered integration of the University of Mississippi took place.
As Deputy Secretary of Defense under President Lyndon Johnson, he first supported the Vietnam War but by the late 1960s changed his views and resigned from office advising the president to pull out of South Vietnam. In 1968 he served as a delegate to peace talks in Paris. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. He was a professor at Georgetown University afterwards.
As Secretary of State in the Jimmy Carter administration, Vance pushed for negotiations and economic ties with the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Vance tried to advance arms limitations by working on the SALT II agreement with the Soviet Union, which he saw as the central diplomatic issue of the time. He was heavily instrumental in Carter's decision to return the Canal Zone to Panama, and in the Camp David Accords agreement between Israel and Egypt.
After the Camp David Accords, Vance's influence in the administration began to wane as Brzezinski's rose. His role in talks with People's Republic of China was marginalized, and his advice for a response to the Shah of Iran's collapsing regime was ignored. Shortly thereafter, when 53 American hostages were held in Iran, he worked actively in negotiations but to no avail. Finally, when Carter ordered a secret military rescue - Operation Eagle Claw - Vance resigned in opposition after the rescue attempt failed. Vance had doubts that the rescue would work and thought it would undermine diplomacy, but he waited to announce his resignation until after the first rescue was attempted. The second rescue was planned but never carried out.
In 1997, he was made the original honorary chair of the American Iranian Council.
Vance returned to his law practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 1980, but was repeatedly called back to public service throughout the 1980s and 1990s, participating in diplomatic missions to Bosnia, Croatia, and South Africa.
In 1991 he was named Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Croatia and proposed a plan for solution of conflict in Croatia. Authorities of Croatia and Serbia agreed to Vance's plan, but the leaders of SAO Krajina rejected it, even though it offered Serbs quite a large degree of autonomy by the rest of the world's standards, as it did not include full independence for Krajina. He continued his work as member of Zagreb 4 group. The plan they drafted, named Z-4, was effectively superseded when Croatian forces retook the Krajina region (Operation Storm) in 1995.
In January 1993, as the United Nations Special Envoy to Bosnia, Vance and Lord David Owen, the EU representative, began negotiating a peace plan for the ending the War in Bosnia. Their plan was criticised as conceding too much to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and for treating him as a diplomatic equal to the leaders of Bosnia and Croatia, when others regarded him as a war criminal. Nevertheless, it was Bosnian Serbs that first rejected the plan, and Vance announced his resignation as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General. He was replaced by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg.
In 1993, he was awarded the United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award.
In 1995, Cyrus Vance again acted as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and signed the interim accord as witness in the negotiations between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece.
Vance also was a member of the Trilateral Commission.
He died aged 84 after a long battle of pneumonia in New York after having Alzheimer's disease for many years, and was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
| Government offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Elvis Jacob Stahr, Jr. |
United States Secretary of the Army Served under: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson July 1962–January 1964 |
Succeeded by Stephen Ailes |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Roswell Gilpatric |
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense 1964–1967 |
Succeeded by Paul Nitze |
| Preceded by Henry Kissinger |
United States Secretary of State Served under: Jimmy Carter 1977—1980 |
Succeeded by Edmund Muskie |
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
   | Transcript, Cyrus R. Vance Oral History Interview - Cyrus R. Vance Oral Histories: LBJ Library |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
