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Biography
Cyrus Roberts Vance (1917–2002) was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. He served in World War II and practiced law before joining the Department of Defense, where he became deputy secretary. During the early 1970s Vance returned to practicing law until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter asked him to be secretary of state.
As secretary, Vance emphasized negotiations over military confrontation and shared with President Carter a belief that human rights should be central to U.S. diplomacy. Vance worked on arms control issues with the Soviet Union, diplomatic relations with China, and helped negotiate two important treaties: the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977, which relinquished U.S. control of the Canal Zone, and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979, the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbor. He also achieved a settlement among political factions in Zimbabwe that allowed for majority rule. In 1979, during the political turmoil over Americans held hostage in the embassy in Tehran by Iranian student militants, Vance resigned rather than support the military operation for their rescue.
Although Vance returned to private law practice, he frequently served as a special envoy in diplomatic missions, most notably as the UN special envoy to Bosnia in 1993.