CYRUS VANCE: In spite of a long career in the higher reaches of the US government, Cyrus Vance, who died on January 12th aged 84, left strangely little mark on the history of his age. Although highly regarded by his contemporaries, his painstaking approach to international crises lacked the flair which might have generated more lasting solutions to the problems which landed on his desk.
The Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia for example - his final contribution to the art of peace-making - crumbled in the face of Serbian intransigence. His efforts to conclude an agreement with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear weapons was never ratified by the US Senate. His contribution towards a Middle East settlement was more enduring, but could not be sustained.
Cyrus Vance was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He graduated with honours from Yale Law School in 1942, and entered the navy, serving as a gunnery officer in the Pacific during the second World War.
After an early career as a Wall Street lawyer, he entered public life at the age of 39 as general counsel to the Senate space and aeronautics committee. There he drafted the law creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1960, he moved to a similar post at the Pentagon until, two years later, President Kennedy made him army secretary.
Shortly after Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson elevated him to deputy defence secretary under Robert McNamara. Within months of this appointment Cyrus Vance found himself at the centre of the escalating Vietnam conflict.
For four years he was a vigorous advocate of American involvement, but by 1967, with 100,000 people attending a New York protest rally and a similar number marching on the Pentagon, he reversed his opinion and resigned from the government.
As the domestic and international furore over the war increased, he repeatedly tried to persuade Johnson to stop America's ferocious bombing of North Vietnam.
When, in March 1968, Johnson withdrew from the impending presidential election and finally offered to discuss peace terms with Hanoi, he made Cyrus Vance deputy to the chief American negotiator, Averell Harriman. The joke at the time was that Cyrus Vance's well-established reputation for endless nit-picking showed that Johnson was simply pursuing the war by other means. If so, he seriously underestimated the Vietnamese: it took five years and another administration before the terms were signed.
During the Nixon years Cyrus Vance returned to his law practice, but was recalled to government by President Carter in 1977. From his earliest days as Secretary of State there were clear tensions between him and the White House national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Cyrus Vance's cautious, one-step-at-a-time approach was wholly at odds with Brzezinski's brash need to dig up the roots of international relationships and replant them according to America's election results. There was a small but telling example within a week of the administration assuming office. The State Department issued a formal declaration of support for the dissident Soviet physicist Dr Andrei Sakharov, then involved in a row with the Kremlin. It brought an outraged protest from Moscow about US interference in its internal affairs. Within hours it emerged that the declaration had been made without the Secretary of State's knowledge: the national security adviser had been flexing his newly acquired muscle.
In spite of the administration's heavy foreign affairs agenda, this internal struggle never abated. In part Cyrus Vance was a victim of the political geography of Washington. The State Department building is a mile or more from the White House, while the national security adviser adjoins the Oval Office. In the day-to-day press of events, proximity became a powerful factor.
Brzezinski's disruptive influence emerged over the complex negotiations for the strategic arms limitation treaty (Salt II), which had also been going on for years. He persuaded Carter to present a completely new set of proposals to the Russians, which were briskly greeted by Moscow as "absurd" - a reaction that disrupted the talks for more than a year. He also intervened destructively after the conclusion of the Camp David accords in 1978, in which Cyrus Vance had played a powerful role.
In the wake of this settlement between Egypt and Israel, Brzezinski ignored State Department warnings that the Jordanians and Saudis would take a long time to accept the new situation. He enraged both nations with ill-disguised briefings in which he claimed they were simply putting up token opposition before joining enlarged talks.
This pattern continued across the foreign policy spectrum, culminating in the showdown precipitated by the crumbling of the Shah's regime in Iran, which Cyrus Vance had analysed with great accuracy. He strongly advised President Carter that realpolitik required the administration to open lines to the dissident Iranian ayatollahs, by then well on their way to winning the power struggle.
Brzezinski, in contrast, persuaded the president that the US must continue to back the Shah, a disastrous misreading which eventually destroyed the Carter presidency. The crunch came after the US allowed the deposed Shah to seek medical treatment in New York, a move which provoked hostile demonstrations in Teheran. They climaxed with the seizure of the US embassy there, with many of its staff held hostage. The subsequent intransigence of the Iranian regime slowly paralysed the White House.
In a desperate effort to resolve the crisis - further complicated by Carter's inept domestic response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - the White House started planning a military rescue mission. The final decision to go ahead was taken at a meeting of the National Security Council held while Cyrus Vance was on holiday. He opposed the scheme vigorously on his return, insisting that the council must be reconvened to hear his arguments. The second meeting did not accept them and, although it was kept secret at the time, Cyrus Vance resigned and went back to the law.
In 1992, he was asked by the European Union to join David Owen, the former British foreign secretary, in brokering a settlement of the Bosnian conflict. Their joint plan for a decentralised Bosnian federation soon bit the dust and Cyrus Vance made that the last chapter in his diplomatic career.
He is survived by his wife Grace and five children.
Cyrus Roberts Vance:born 1917; died, January 2002