American lawyer and government official (1917–2002)
This article is about the former U.S. Secretary of the Army and Secretary of State. For his son, the New York County District Attorney, see Cyrus Vance Jr.
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, he resigned in protest of Operation Eagle Claw, the secret mission to rescue American hostages in Iran. He was succeeded by Edmund Muskie.
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 Philadelphia and was active in civic affairs.[6] Following her husband's death, she moved her family to Switzerland for a year, where Vance and his brother learned French at L'Institut Sillig in Vevey.[5] Vance's much older cousin (referred to as an "uncle" within the family) John W. Davis, an Ambassador to the United Kingdom and 1924 United States presidential candidate, became his mentor and adopted him.[7]
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:
Vance first supported the Vietnam War but by the late 1960s changed his views and resigned from office, advising the president to withdraw US troops from South Vietnam. Vance served as a deputy to W. Averell Harriman during the Paris Peace Accords, which were a failure due to the duplicity of the South Vietnamese. Vance called the failed peace talks "one of the great tragedies in history".[1] He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1969.[6]
In May 1970, Vance was appointed to serve as a commissioner in a landmark panel known as the Knapp Commission, which was formed and assigned by New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay to investigate systemic corruption in the New York Police Department. The Knapp Commission held televised hearings into police corruption and issued a final report of its findings in 1972. The work of the Knapp Commission led to the prosecution of police officers on charges of corruption and culminated in significant, if short-lived, reforms and oversight of the police department, including the appointment of a temporary special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute corruption committed by NYPD officers, district attorneys, and judges.
Vance also pushed for détente with the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish National Security AdvisorZbigniew 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, but Brzezinski lobbied for a tougher more assertive policy vis-a-vis the Soviets. He argued for strong condemnation of Soviet activity in Africa and in the Third World as well as successfully lobbying for normalized relations with the People's Republic of China in 1978.
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 SALT II agreement directly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, bypassing American Ambassador Malcolm Toon, who then criticized the agreement.[10] In June 1979, President Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty in Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace, in front of the international press, but the Senate ultimately did not ratify it. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979, Vance's opposition to what he had called "visceral anti-Sovietism" led to a rapid reduction of his stature.[9]
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 Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Croatia and proposed the Vance 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. The plan was rejected, and Vance announced his resignation as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General. He was replaced by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg.
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]
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.
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. JSTOR44234902 (pp. 10–20)
Vance, Cyrus R. "The Human Rights Imperative". Foreign Policy 63 (1986): 3–19. JSTOR1148753.
.jpg)
_(page_16_crop).jpg)
