Philip Terzian
To those who knew Cyrus Vance, according to The New York Times, "the
tall, lanky, patrician lawyer ... was Mr. Integrity, Mr. Honesty. He was the
epitome of the American establishment, that small group of men who moved
seamlessly from the prep schools of New England and the Ivy League colleges
of the East to the law firms of Wall Street, with time out for service in
government. Then they would return again to private practice, bringing with
them the old values of family, work and public service."
All of that may well have been true, but from my modest vantage point,
he was neither Mr. Integrity nor Mr. Honesty, but a Mystery Man of whom
something was known, but was seldom seen and from whom little was heard. For
a speechwriter, especially an ambitious one in his late twenties, this was
immensely frustrating. Secretary Vance did not like to issue statements,
deliver speeches, or engage in the kind of public discourse that influences
foreign policy. He preferred secret talks, subtle nudges and private
persuasion.
As a lawyer of discreet and prudent habits Vance specialized in quiet
diplomatic repair jobs. He was sent on a peacekeeping mission to the Panama
Canal Zone after the 1964 riots. He sought to forestall war between Greece
and Turkey over Cyprus in 1967. He was deputy to Averell Harriman during the
Vietnam peace talks in Paris the following year. During the 1990s he
succeeded in negotiating a cease-fire in Croatia, which allowed the United
Nations to disarm the warring militias, and he shuttled between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. He and former British Foreign Secretary
David Owen tried to sort out Yugoslavia as it swiftly disintegrated -- the
so-called Vance-Owen plan -- but the Balkans were less amenable to lawyerly
settlements.
My tenure with Vance took place during a relatively quiet interregnum in
the Carter years: My immediate boss was Anthony Lake, later Bill Clinton's
national security adviser, whose principal interest was clearing the path
for Robert Mugabe to seize power in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Yet to come was
the arrival of a Soviet brigade in Cuba, the overthrow of the Somoza regime
in Nicaragua, the fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent hostage
crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the murder of the US
ambassador.
But my principal memory of that period is contending with the
multilayered bureaucracy, which seemed to insulate Vance from reality. The
Secretary not only avoided articulating policy, but declined to meet with
the people who put words in his mouth. I once wrote a long memorandum
warning that the SALT II treaty was not likely to pass the Democratic Senate
unless Vance did some salesmanship. (Lake, lips pursed in a pitying smile,
thanked me for the effort while his deputy, Samuel Berger, glared
ominously.) Speeches were vetted by innumerable bureaus and embassies, or
converted into lead by Vance's number two, Warren Christopher, who once sent
a draft back for revision 33 times. The process was so cumbersome and
discouraging that I soon volunteered, for amusement's sake, to write Jimmy
Carter's after-dinner remarks to foreign dignitaries, shaping jokes and
homely anecdotes to his Georgia delivery.
Hanging over the seventh floor of the department, like an angry cloud,
was the Secretary's continual feud with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's
national security adviser. Vance always maintained that recruiting
Brzezinski was a serious error -- and to some degree, he was right: Their
rivalry poisoned the atmosphere. But even at the time it was evident that
Vance was the one who was out of his depth, and Brzezinski had the greater
acumen and clearer vision.
The whole unworkable arrangement exploded in April 1980 when eight
Americans were killed in the ill-fated mission to rescue the American
hostages in Tehran. Brzezinski, who promoted the mission, had prevailed in
the White House over Vance, who opposed it, and the Secretary promptly
resigned.
Vance was much admired for quitting on principle -- the first secretary
of state to do so since the pacifist William Jennings Bryan in 1915 --
although some detractors faulted him for abandoning Carter at a vulnerable
moment. In retrospect, however, it seems appropriate. Vance was
unquestionably true to those old-school values of honor and selfless
service: He did what he thought was right, and he didn't care about the
consequences for his career. The fact that he was probably wrong, and did
more harm than good by his action, is another
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
I HAD a brief, and decidedly tenuous, connection to Cyrus
Vance, who died this week at the age of 84. During 1978-79, when he was
Jimmy Carter's first secretary of state, I was one of his speechwriters. It
was an instructive, but not especially happy, experience, and the only
detour I have ever taken during three decades in journalism. For my sins,
however, that season in the State Department haunts me still: In a recent
book about political bias in the media, I am quoted and described as a
"former Carter administration official." For that I have Cyrus Vance to
thank, or blame. 
JWR contributor Philip Terzian is associate editor of The Providence Journal.
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