Charles Woodruff Yost

Charles W. Yost born in Watertown, N.Y., on November 6, 1907; died in Washington, D.C., in May 1981) was a career U.S. diplomat and United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1969 to 1971.

Biography

Charles Yost was born in Watertown, New York, on November 6, 1907. He attended the Hotchkiss School, with Roswell Gilpatric and Paul Nitze, before graduating from Princeton University in 1928. He did postgraduate studies at the École des Hautes Études International in Paris. Over the next year he traveled to Geneva, Berlin, the Soviet Union, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Spain, and Vienna.

Yost joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1930 on the advice of former Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and he served in Alexandria, Egypt as a consular officer, followed by an assignment in Poland. In 1933 he left the Foreign Service to pursue a career as a freelance foreign correspondent in Europe and a writer in New York. After his marriage to Irena Rawicz-Oldakowska, he returned to the U.S. State Department in 1935, becoming assistant chief of the Division of Arms and Munitions Control in 1936. In 1941, he represented the State Department on the Policy Committee of the Board of Economic Warfare. Yost was appointed assistant chief of special research in 1942, and he was made assistant chief of the Division of Foreign Activity Correlation in 1943. In February of the next year he became executive secretary of the Department of State Policy Committee. He attended the Dumbarton Oaks Conference from August to October 1944, when he worked on Chapters VI and VII of the United Nations Charter. He then served at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in April 1945 as aide to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius. In July of that year he was secretary-general of the Potsdam Conference.

In 1945 Yost was reinstated in the Foreign Service, and later that year he served as political adviser to U.S. Lieutenant General Raymond Albert Wheeler on the staff of Lord Louis Mountbatten in Kandy, Ceylon. He then became chargé d'affaires in Thailand. Throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s, his assignments took him to Czechoslovakia, Austria (twice), and Greece. In 1954, he was named minister to Laos, and he became the first United States ambassador there a year later. In 1957, he was minister counselor in Paris. At the end of the same year he was named ambassador to Syria. Shortly after his appointment, Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic, and the U.S. was asked to close its embassy in Syria. Yost was then sent as ambassador to Morocco in 1958.

In 1961, he began his first assignment at the United Nations as the deputy to Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. After Stevenson's death in 1965, Yost stayed on as deputy to Ambassador Arthur Goldberg. Yost was promoted to career ambassador, the highest professional Foreign Service rank, before resigning from the Foreign Service in 1966 to begin his career as a writer, at the Council on Foreign Relations, and as a teacher, at Columbia University.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon called Yost out of retirement to become the permanent United States representative to the United Nations. He resigned in 1971 and returned to writing, at the Brookings Institution, and teaching at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

Yost set forth his views in a syndicated newspaper column, for the Christian Science Monitor, and in four books — The Age of Triumph and Frustration: Modern Dialogues, The Insecurity of Nations, The Conduct and Misconduct of Foreign Relations, and History and Memory.

In 1979, Yost was co-chairman of Americans for SALT II, a group that lobbied the Senate for passage of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. He was a trustee of the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and director of the Aspen Institute for cultural exchanges with Iran. He took part in the unofficial Dartmouth Conferences of United States and Soviet scholars. In 1973, he was named head of the National Committee on United States-China Relations; he visited the People's Republic of China in 1973 and 1977.

Yost died of cancer in May 1981 at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.

His papers are at Princeton University Library. Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections under call number MC193.

Family

Yost’s ancestors, who were driven out of the German Palatinate by Louis XIV’s armies at the end of the 17th century, settled in the Valley of the Mohawk River in New York State. Others were of Scotch-Irish origin and came to this country with the immigration that took place about the middle of the 18th century.

Yost’s ancestor, Edward Howell, founded Watermill on Long Island, New York and his ancestor Abraham Cooper founded Oxbow, New York. His ancestor, Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer, was a Revolutionary War hero.

Yost’s father Nicholas, an attorney, judge and bank president was married to his mother Gertrude by Pastor Dulles the father of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

In 1934, Yost married Irena Rawicz-Oldakowska in Poland. They had two sons, Nicholas and Casimir, and a daughter Felicity.

Career Timeline

1931: Vice Consul Alexandria, Egypt
1932: Vice Consul Warsaw, Poland
1933: Resigned from the Foreign Service and became a journalist
1935:
- 1) Progress Report Specialist at the Resettlement Administration
- 2) Divisional Assistant, U.S. Department of State, Division of Western European Affairs;
1936 Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of Arms and Munitions Control
1939: Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of Controls
1941:
- 1) Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of Exports and Defense Aid
- 2) Assistant to the U.S. High Commissioner to the Philippine Commonwealth
1941-42: Designated to act in Liaison between Division of European Affairs of State Department and British Empire Division of the Board of Economic Warfare
1942:
- 1) Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of European Affairs
- 2) Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of Special Research
1943: Office of Foreign Economic Coordination, U.S. Department of State,
1943-44: Assistant Chief, U.S. Department of State, Division of Foreign Activity Correlation
1944:
- 1) Executive Secretary, Department of State Policy Committee
- 2) Executive Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Joint Secretariat of Executive Staff Commission
- 3) Assistant to the Chairman for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference
1945:
- 1) Special Assistant to the Chairman, Secretary of State Stettinius, U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organizations, San Francisco
- 2) Secretary-General, U.S. Delegation, Berlin Conference, Potsdam Agreement
- 3) Assigned as U.S. Political Advisor to General Wheeler, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander to the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC), India & Ceylon
- 4) Assigned as U.S. Political Advisor to General Thomas Terry, Commander of the American India-Burma Theater
1946:
- 1) Chargé d’affairs, Bangkok, Thailand
- 2) U.S. Delegation to UNESCO, United Nations, Lake Success, New York
- 3) Political Advisor to U.S. Delegation, General Assembly of the United Nations
1947: First Secretary & Counselor, Prague, Czechoslovakia
1947-49: First Secretary & Counselor of Legation, Vienna, Austria
1949:
- 1) Member of U.S. Delegation; Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large for Sixth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting, Paris, France
- 2) Member of Delegation to Fourth Regular Session of GA of UN as Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large
- 3) Director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs, Department of State
1950:
- 1) Director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs, Department of State
- 2) Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large, Deputy Policy Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations, New York
- 3) European Affairs Rep., U.S. Department of State, on Policy Comm. on Immigration and Naturalization
- 4) U.S. Department of State, Policy Planning Staff
1950-53: Counselor with Personal rank of Minister, Athens, Greece
1953: Deputy High Commissioner & Deputy Chief of Mission, Vienna, Austria
1954: Minister, Vientiane, Laos
1955-1956: Ambassador, Laos
1956: Minister, Paris, France
1957-58: Ambassador, Damascus, Syria
1958:
- 1) Foreign Affairs Specialist, U.S. Department of State, Policy Planning Staff
1958-61: Ambassador, Rabat, Morocco
1961-65: U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations with Adlai Stevenson
1965-66: U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations with Arthur Goldberg
1966:
- 1) Bureau of Near East & South Asian Affairs, State Department
- 2) Chairman, United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), New Delhi
- 3) Resigned from the Foreign Service
1966-69: Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
1967:
- 1) Consultant to the State Department, member of the Panel of Advisers on Near East, South Asian and International Organizations
- 2) President Johnson's Special Envoy to the Middle East (May-June)
- 1968: U.S. Presidential envoy to Egypt
1969-71:
- U.S. Representative to the United Nations, New York ^[1]. President of the Security Council
1970-80: Member of the Dartmouth Conference Delegation
1971: Resigned from the Foreign Service [1]
1971-73:
- 1) Counselor to UN Association
- 2) Professor at Columbia University's School of International Affairs
1973-75: President, National Committee on US-China Relations
1974: Professor at Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni Study and Conference Center in Bellagio
1975-81: Chairman, National Committee on US-China Relations
1975-81:
- 1) Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
- 2) Professor at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University
1976-81: Special Advisor, Aspen Institute
1977: Woodcock delegation to Vietnam.
1979: Co-chairman Americans for SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

Associations

Syndicated columnist for the Washington Post
Syndicated columnist for the Christian Science Monitor ^[2]
Trustee of the American University in Cairo
Member of the Council on Foreign Relations
American Academy Political and Social Science
American Society International Law
Princeton Club
University Club
Century Association
Honorary Co-Chairman UN Association of U.S. America
Chairman of the Board, International House, New York City
American Philosophical Society
Chairman of the National Advertising Review Board
Editorial Board, Foreign Service Journal
Editorial Committee, VISTA Magazine
Institute for World Order
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The Fund for Investigative Journalism
Member of the Dartmouth Conferences

Honors

Hotchkiss Man of the Year
1958: Appointed Career Minister
1961: Lotus Award of Merit
1964: Appointed Career Ambassador
1964: Rockefeller Public Service Award
1971: State Department Distinguished Honor Award
1974: Awarded The Foreign Service Cup
Honorary Degree, Princeton University
Honorary Degree, St. Lawrence University
Honorary Doctor of Laws, Hamilton College
Honorary Doctor of Social Science, University of Louisville

Appearances Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

1958: Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), Vol. X, Eighty-Fifth Congress, Second Session- Statement and questioning of CWY to be Ambassador to Morocco
7 February 1961: Executive Session, Tuesday- Nomination of CWY to be Deputy U.S. Representative, Security Council, United Nations
January 21, 1969: United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination of CWY to be U.S. Representative to the UN
26 May 1971: Senate Foreign Relations Committee-Statement on Southeast Asia
18 May 1972: Committee on Foreign relations-Subcommittee on the Near East
22 February 1973: Statement to Foreign Affairs Committee on the Rhodesian situation
11 May 1973: Senate Foreign Relations Committee-International Court of Justice
5 December 1973: Foreign Affairs Committee-United Nations Peacekeeping

Oral History Interviews

International Negotiations Project - Columbia University (May, 1974)
Interview with Charles Yost by Dr. Thomas Soapes - Oral Historian, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (September, 1978)
Oral History Interview with Charles W. Yost by Sheldon Stern – JFK Library (Washington, DC, October, 1978)

Writings

The Age of Triumph and Frustration: Modern Dialogues (Speller, 1964)
The Insecurity of Nations: International Relations in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 1968
The Pursuit of World Order (Villanova University Press, 1969)
The Conduct and Misconduct of Foreign Affairs (Random House, 1972)
American Foreign Policy in a New Era (Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976)
History & Memory (Norton, 1980)

Articles and Papers by CWY

Carnegie Foundation "Bermuda" paper on Vietnam
"The United Nations: Crisis of Confidence and Will", Foreign Affairs Magazine, Oct., 1966
“The Arab-Israeli War: How It Began”, Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan., 1968
“World Order and American Responsibility”, Foreign Affairs Magazine, Oct., 1968
“Israel and the Arabs: The Myths that Block Peace – Atlantic Magazine, 1969 ^[3]
“Last Chance for Peace in the Mideast” Life Magazine, 1971
"A Letter to a Soviet Friend", Life Magazine, September 24, 1971
"The Instruments of American Foreign Policy", Foreign Affairs Magazine, Oct., 1971
“Toward Peace in the Middle East: Report of a Study Group, The Brookings Institute, 1975
"National Security Revisited", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, Oct., 1980 [2]
“National and Collective Responsibility: The Governance of International Affairs”, Aspen Institute ‘Wye Paper’, 1981
BCSIA, Volume 6, Number 3, Winter 1981/82 "Commentary: The Governance of International Affairs"

CWY Online

On Jerusalem ^[4]

Recordings

JFK Library: President's Office Files, Presidential Recordings, tape # 49 (Cuban Missile Crisis)

Radio Interview with Larry King (Washington, DC, 11/11/80)

Interview with Charles W. Yost by Charley Holmes (United Nations, 1964)

References

On Laos
- “Some Left on Stretchers, Others on Straightjackets” - Yale Richmond (Foreign Service Journal, May 1988)
- “Ah! La Vie en Vientiane” - James F. Prosser (CANDOER, January 2001)
- Meeker, Oden - The Little World of Laos (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1959)
- Menger, Matt J. - In the Valley of the Mekong: An American in Laos (Paterson, NJ St Anthony Guild Press 1970)
- Laos: Beyond the Revolution - Edited by Joseph J.Zasloff &Y Leonard Under (St Martin's Press, New York, 1991)
- The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
  - L. Michael Rives
On Thailand
- “Staying Behind in Bangkok: The OSS and American Intelligence in Postwar Thailand” - E. Bruce Reynolds (The Journal of Intelligence History 2, Winter 2002)
- McDonald, Alexander – Bangkok Editor (MacMillan, 1949)
- Thailand's Secret War: OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground During World War II - E. Bruce Reynolds [3]
- “Democracy, Elections and Internal Security: U.S. Policy Toward Laos in the Late 1950s” - Koji Terachi (Rutger’s University)
- Wikipedia: King Ananda Mahidol Ananda Mahidol
On Vietnam
- Hass, Richard (editor), O’Sullivan, Meghan L. (editor) - Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (Brookings Institution Press 2000) Chapter 8-The United States and Vietnam: Road to Normalization - Brown, Frederick Z.
On the UN
- Walton, Richard J. – The Remnants of Power: The Tragic Last Years of Adlai Stevenson (Coward-McCann, Inc., 1968)
- Beschloss, Michael - Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965 (Touchtone, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001)
- Finger, Seymour Maxwell - American Ambassadors at the UN: People, Politics, and Bureaucracy in Making Foreign Policy (UNITAR, 1992)
- McKeever, Porter – Adlai Stevenson: His Life and Legacy (William Morrow and Company, 1989)
- Martin, John Bartlow – Adlai Stevenson and the World (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978)
- Oral history of Charles Easton Rothwell
- May, Ernest R.& Zelikow, Philip D. Editors –The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis – (The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1997)
- Ambassador Christopher H. Phillips, Association for Diplomatic Studies, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University
- United States Ambassador to the United Nations – William C. Moore (Hotchkiss Alumni News, April, 1969)
- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Cold War International History Project. Russian Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis/14 September-21 October 1962
- Johnson, Walter Editor – The Papers of Adlai Stevenson: Ambassador to the United Nations, Volume VIII, 1961-1965 (Little, Brown and Company, 1979)
- May, Ernest R.& Zelikow, Philip D. Editors –The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crisis, Volume Three, October 22–28, 1962 (W.W.Norton & Company, 2001)
- Foreign Relations, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information Policy; United Nations; Scientific Matters. Kennedy Library, Arthur M. Schlesinger Papers, UN Speeches, 8/2/61-8/11/61, Box WH22. U.S. Strategy in the 16th General Assembly
- Schlesinger Jr., Arthur – A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House - (Houghton Mifflin, 1965)
- Urquhart, Brian – Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (W.W. Norton & Company, 1993)
- Joseph Johnson UN interview 1985 [4]
- Harlan Cleveland Oral History, JFK Library [5]
On Iran
- Ganji, Moocher - Defying the Iranian Revolution (Praeger, 2002)
On the Middle East
- "Cold War and Covert Action: The U.S. and Syria, 1945-1958" Middle East Journal, Winter 1990
- Yaqub, Salim - Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East
- AlRoy, Gil Carl - The Prospects of War in the Middle East (Commentary/Mach 1969)
- Draper, Theordore - Israel and World Politics (Commentary/August 1967)
- Draper, Theodore - The United States & Israel (Commentary/April 1975)
- Nef, Donald – Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East in 1967 (Amana Books, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1988)
- Sheehan, Edward R.F. – The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East (Reader’s Digest Press, 1976)
- Riad, Mahmoud - The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East (Quartet Books, 1983)
The Dartmouth Conferences
- Voorhees, James – Dialogue Sustained: The Multilevel Peace Process and the Dartmouth Conference (United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C.; Kettering Foundation, 2002)
On Morocco
- Nes, David, Association for Diplomatic Studies, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Georgetown University
On Syria
- The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
  - Jane Smiley Hart
  - Parker T. Hart
On Greece
- Markezinis, Spyros - Truman Presidential Museum and Library (Interviewer: Theodore A. Wilson- July 22, 1070 [6]
- Goldbloom, Maurice - What Happened in Greece (Commentary/December 1967)
- The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
  - Norbert L. Anschutz
  - Betty Jane Peurifoy
On the USSR
- Laqueur, Walter - America and the World: The Next Four Years (Commentary/March 1977)
- Laqueur, Walter - Rewriting History (Commentary/March 1973)
On Human Rights
- Laqueur, Walter - The Issue of Human Rights (Commentary/May 1977)
On China
- Borg, Dorothy & Heinrichs, Waldo Editors - Uncertain Years: Chinese Relations. 1947-1950
On Potsdam
- James W. Riddleberger [7]
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
- ALfred Leroy Atherton Jr.
- Lucius D. Battle
- Robert O. Blake
- Samuel De Palma
- Dwight Dickinson
- C. Douglas Dillon
- Richard Funkhouser
- Samuel W. Lewis
- Cecil B. Lyon
- Robert B. Oakley
- Mary Seymour Olmsted
- Claiborne Pell
Misc.
- “Will the Balance Balance at Home” Stanley Hoffmann (Foreign Policy Magazine, Summer 1972)

Foreign Relations of the U.S. with References to CWY

Foreign Relations of the US, Diplomatic Papers, 1941, Vol. IV, General: The Far East

Foreign Relations of the US, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Vol. I, General: The United Nations

Foreign Relations of the US, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Vol. VI, The British Commonwealth, The Far East

Foreign Relations of the US, 1946, Vol. I, General: The United Nations

Foreign Relations of the US, 1946, Vol. VIII, The Far East

Foreign Relations of the US, 1947, Vol. II, Council of Foreign Ministers; Germany and Austria

Foreign Relations of the US, 1949, Vol. II, United Nations Organization

Foreign Relations of the US, 1949, Vol. III, Council of Foreign Ministers; Germany and Austria

Foreign Relations of the US, 1950, Vol. I, Foreign Economic Policy

Foreign Relations of the US, 1950, Vol. V, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa

Foreign Relations of the US, 1952–1954, Vol. VII, Germany and Austria (in two parts) Part 2

Foreign Relations of the US, 1961–1963, Vol. XI, Cuban Missile Crisis & Aftermath. #86, #93: [9], #112: [10], #138-139: [11], #153, #156, #163: [12], #183 [13] #210, #212-213, #220, #223: [14] #233-234, #239, #245: [15] #253, #256, #259: [16]

Foreign Relations of the US, 1961–1963, Vol. XVI, Cyprus; Greece; Turkey, #33, #63, #76, #78, #207, #358, #359, #369

Foreign Relations of the US, 1961–1963, Vol. XVII, Near East, 1961–1962, #242, #298

Foreign Relations of the US, 1961–1963, Vol. XVIII, Near East, 1962–1963, #320

Foreign Relations of the US, 1961–1963, Vol. XXIII, Southeast Asia

Foreign Relations of the US 1961-63, Volume XXV, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information Policy; United Nations; Scientific Matters, #35, #162, #165, #168, #177, #187, #207, #284, #287, #299

Foreign Relations of the US, 1964–1968, Vol. II, Vietnam, January-June 1965: Feb. 11-March 8, #161-162, #164: [17]

Foreign Relations of the US, 1964–1968, Vol. II: Vietnam, July 29-November, 1965, #99, #106 ;state/history/vol iii/098.html #114: [18], #203, #207: [19], #278: [20]

Foreign Relations of the US, 1964–1968, Vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967, #100 [21]

Foreign Relations of the US, 1969–1976, Vol. IV, Foreign Assistance, International Development, Trade Policies, 1969–1972, #26

Foreign Relations of the US, 1969–1976, Vol. V, United Nations 1969-1972, [22]

Preceded by: James Russell Wiggins	U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations 1969–1971	Succeeded by: George H. W. Bush
Preceded by: James S. Moose, Jr.	U.S. Ambassador to Syria 1957–1958	Succeeded by: Ridgway B. Knight
Preceded by: Donald R. Heath	U.S. Ambassador to Laos 1955–1956	Succeeded by: J. Graham Parsons
Preceded by: Cavendish W. Cannon	U.S. Ambassador to Morocco 1958–1961	Succeeded by: Philip W. Bonsal

de:Charles Woodruff Yost sv:Charles Woodruff Yost

[1] Old Faces and New - TIME

[2] The Christian Science Monitor | Daily Online Newspaper

[3] 1969: The myths that block peace | From Occupied Palestine

[4] The United States' position on Jerulsalem as stated by its ambassador

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Charles Woodruff Yost

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