Cyrus Vance
Cyrus Vance | ||
---|---|---|
Deputy Warren Christopher | | |
Preceded by | Henry Kissinger | |
Succeeded by | Edmund Muskie | |
11th United States Deputy Secretary of Defense | ||
In office January 28, 1964 – June 30, 1967 | ||
President | Lyndon B. Johnson | |
Preceded by | Roswell Gilpatric | |
Succeeded by | Paul Nitze | |
7th United States Secretary of the Army | ||
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 | |
General Counsel of the Department of Defense | ||
In office January 29, 1961 – June 30, 1962 | ||
President | John F. Kennedy | |
Preceded by | Vincent Burke | |
Succeeded by | John McNaughton | |
Personal details | ||
Born | Cyrus Roberts Vance March 27, 1917 Clarksburg, West Virginia, U.S. | |
Died | January 12, 2002 New York City, U.S. | (aged 84)|
Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery | |
Political party | Democratic | |
Spouse |
Gay Sloane (m. 1947) | |
Children | 5, including Cyrus Jr. | |
Relatives | John W. Davis (adoptive father) | |
Education | Yale University (BA, LLB) | |
Signature | ||
Military service | ||
Branch/service | United States Navy | |
Years of service | 1942–1946 | |
Rank | Lieutenant | |
Unit | USS Hale (DD-642) | |
Battles/wars | World War II | |
Cyrus Roberts Vance Sr. (March 27, 1917 – January 12, 2002) was an American lawyer and
As Secretary of State, Vance approached foreign policy with an emphasis on negotiation over conflict and a special interest in
Vance was the cousin (and adoptive son) of 1924 Democratic presidential nominee and lawyer John W. Davis. He was the father of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Early life and family
Cyrus Vance was born on March 27, 1917, in Clarksburg, West Virginia.[3] He was the son of John Carl Vance II and his wife Amy Roberts Vance, and had an elder brother, John Carl Vance III.[3][4] Following Vance's birth, his family relocated to Bronxville, New York, so that his father could commute to New York City, where he was an insurance broker.[5] Vance's father was also a landowner and worked for a government agency during World War I. He died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1922.[6]
Vance's mother was Amy Roberts Vance, who had a prominent family history in
Vance graduated from Kent School in 1935 and earned a bachelor's degree in 1939 from Yale College, where he was a member of the secret Scroll and Key society and earned three varsity letters in ice hockey. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1942.[6] While there, his classmates included Sargent Shriver, William Scranton, Stanley Rogers Resor, and William Bundy, with all of whom he would later work.[1]
During
At the age of 29, Vance married Grace Elsie "Gay" Sloane on February 15, 1947. She was a Bryn Mawr College graduate and was the daughter of the board chairman of the W. & J. Sloane furniture company in New York City. They had five children:
- Elsie Nicoll Vance
- Amy Sloane Vance
- Grace Roberts Vance
- Camilla Vance Holmes
- Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
Political career
In 1957, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson asked Vance to leave Wall Street to work for the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, where he helped draft the National Aeronautics and Space Act, leading to the creation of NASA.[1]
In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recruited Vance to become General Counsel of the Department of Defense.[1] He was then made the Secretary of the Army by President John F. Kennedy. 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.[6]
In 1964, Vance became the
Vance first
In May 1970, Vance was appointed to serve as a commissioner in a landmark panel known as the
From 1974 to 1976, Vance served as president of the New York City Bar Association.[8] 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. Vance helped negotiate the dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.[1]
Secretary of State
President
Vance also pushed for détente with the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish
As Brzezinski took control of the negotiations, Vance was marginalized and his influence began to wane. When revolution erupted in Iran in late 1978, the two were divided on how to support the United States' ally the Shah of Iran. Vance argued in favor of reforms while Brzezinski urged him to crack down – the 'iron fist' approach. Unable to receive a direct course of action from Carter, the mixed messages that the Shah received from Vance and Brzezinski contributed to his confusion and indecision as he fled Iran in January 1979 and his regime collapsed.
Vance negotiated the
Vance's attempt to surreptitiously negotiate a solution to the Iran hostage crisis with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini through the Palestine Liberation Organization failed badly. Believing that diplomatic initiatives could see the hostages safely returned home, Vance initially fought off attempts by Brzezinski to pursue a military solution. Vance, struggling with gout, went to Florida on April 10, 1980, for a long weekend. On April 11, the National Security Council held a newly scheduled meeting and authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a military expedition into Tehran to rescue the hostages. Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher, who attended the meeting in Vance's place, did not inform him.[9] Furious, on April 21 Vance handed in his resignation,[11] calling Brzezinski "evil".[9][12] The only Secretaries of State who had previously resigned in protest were Lewis Cass, who resigned in the buildup to the Civil War, and William Jennings Bryan, who resigned in the buildup to World War I. President Carter aborted the operation after only five of the eight helicopters he had sent into the Dasht-e Kavir desert arrived in operational condition. As U.S. forces prepared to depart from the staging area, a helicopter collided with a transport plane, causing a fire that killed eight servicemen.[9] Vance's resignation was confirmed several days later, and he was replaced by Senator Edmund Muskie. A second rescue mission was planned but never carried out, and the diplomatic efforts to negotiate the release of the hostages were handed over to Deputy Secretary Christopher. The hostages were released during the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan, after 444 days in captivity.[1][13]
Later career in law and as Special Envoy
In 1991, he was named
In January 1993, as the
In 1997, he was made the original honorary chair of the American Iranian Council.[14]
Later life and death
Vance was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[15][16]
In 1993, Vance was awarded the United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award.
In 1995 he again acted as
Vance also served on the
Vance suffered for several years from
Legacy
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.
In 1980, Vance received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.[19]
He received the Freedom Medal in 1993.
The house of Vance's mother, which was known as the
In 1999, Vance was presented the Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award by the American Foreign Service Association.
In the 2012 movie Argo, he was portrayed by actor Bob Gunton.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Marilyn Berger (13 January 2002). "Cyrus R. Vance, a Confidant Of Presidents, Is Dead at 84". The New York Times. p. A1. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
- ^ Bell, William Gardner (1992). "Cyrus Roberts Vance". Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army: Portraits and Biographical Sketches. United States Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 14, 2007. Retrieved September 22, 2007.
- ^ a b "Birth Record Detail: Cyrus Roberts Vance". West Virginia Vital Research Records. West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
- ^ "Birth Record Detail: John Carl III Vance". West Virginia Vital Research Records. West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
- ^ a b Mihalkanin 2004, p. 512.
- ^ a b c d e Bell, William Gardner (1992). ""Cyrus Roberts Vance"". Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army: Portraits and Biographical Sketches. United States Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 14, 2007. Retrieved September 22, 2007.
- ^ Harbaugh 1973, pp. 389–390.
- ^ "The Legacy of Cyrus R. Vance". New York City Bar - Vance Center. Retrieved 20 September 2012.
- ^ a b c d e Douglas Brinkley (29 December 2002). "THE LIVES THEY LIVED; Out of the Loop". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
- ^ Goldstein, Richard (2 May 2017). "Malcolm Toon Made Waves as a Diplomat, but His Death Went Largely Unreported". The New York Times. p. B14. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
- ^ Carter, Jimmy (October 1, 1982). Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. Bantam Books. p. 513.
- ISBN 9780801448157.
- ^ "Cyrus R. Vance". chriswallisblog.wordpress.com. Dec 22, 2016. Retrieved Sep 17, 2022.
- ^ Khoda Hafez. "A Message from AIC on the Occasion of the New Year". American Iranian Council. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011. Retrieved September 20, 2012.
- ^ "Cyrus Roberts Vance". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
- ^ "Obituary: Cyrus Vance". The Guardian. Jan 14, 2002. Retrieved Sep 17, 2022.
- ^ "Vance, Grace Sloane". The New York Times (Paid Notice: Deaths). March 26, 2008. Retrieved October 3, 2013.
- ^ "Jefferson Awards Foundation Past Winners". Jefferson Awards Foundation. Archived from the original on 2018-02-16. Retrieved 2018-03-15.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ^ Harrison County Historical Society Archived July 3, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
- Harbaugh, William Henry (1973). Lawyer's Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis. New York City: Oxford University Press. OCLC 777309.
- McLellan, David S. Cyrus Vance. Rowman & Littlefield, 1985. Scholarly biography.
- Mihalkanin, Edward S. (2004). American Statesmen: Secretaries of State from John Jay to Colin Powell. OCLC 57534433.
- Mulcahy, Kevin V. "The secretary of State and the national security adviser: Foreign policymaking in the Carter and Reagan administrations." Presidential Studies Quarterly 16.2 (1986): 280–299.
- Rosati, Jerel A. "Continuity and change in the foreign policy beliefs of political leaders: Addressing the controversy over the Carter administration." Political Psychology (1988): 471–505.
- Sexton, Mary DuBois. The wages of principle and power: Cyrus R. Vance and the making of foreign policy in the Carter administration (Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 2009).
- Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986).
- Wallis, Christopher. The Thinker, the Doer and the Decider: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cyrus Vance and the Bureaucratic Wars of the Carter Administration (PhD Thesis, Northumbria University 2018).
Primary sources
- Talbott, Strobe, Endgame: The Inside Story of Salt II (New York: Harpercollins, 1979) online
- Vance, Cyrus. Hard Choices: Four Critical Years in Managing America's Foreign Policy (1983) memoir as Secretary of State. online
- "U.S. Foreign Policy: A Discussion with Former Secretaries of State Dean Rusk, William P. Rogers, Cyrus R. Vance, and Alexander M. Haig, Jr." International Studies Notes, Vol. 11, No. 1, Special Edition: The Secretaries of State, Fall 1984. JSTOR 44234902(pp. 10–20)
- Vance, Cyrus R. "The Human Rights Imperative". Foreign Policy 63 (1986): 3–19. JSTOR 1148753.
External links
- Cyrus R. and Grace Sloane Vance Papers at Yale University
- Media related to Cyrus Vance at Wikimedia Commons
- Foreign Service Journal article on his Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award.
- Oral History Interviews with Cyrus Vance at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
- Cyrus R. Vance and Grace Sloane Vance Papers, 1957-1992, held at Yale University Library, Manuscripts & Archives
- Arlington National Cemetery
- Interview on French TV at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-11-28): Cartes sur table, 31 March 1980 (40 minutes)
- Appearances on C-SPAN