[2] As Secretary of State, Vance approached foreign policy with an emphasis on negotiation over conflict and a special interest in arms reduction.

[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.

[1] During World War II, Vance served in the United States Navy as a gunnery officer on the destroyer USS Hale (DD-642) until 1946.

[6] In 1964, Vance became the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense and now-President Johnson sent him to the Panama Canal Zone after student riots.

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.

[8] Vance returned to his law practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 1980, but was repeatedly called back to public service throughout the 1980s and 1990s, participating in diplomatic missions to Bosnia, Croatia, and South Africa.

[9] Vance played an integral role as the administration negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties, along with peace talks in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa.

Vance insisted that the President make Paul Warnke Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, over strong opposition by Senator Henry M.

[1] Vance also pushed for détente with the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1995 he again acted as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and signed the interim accord as witness in the negotiations between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece.

[1] Vance suffered for several years from Alzheimer's disease,[17] and died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, on January 12, 2002, aged 84, of pneumonia and other complications.