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Charles Yost

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Charles W. Yost (born in Watertown, N.Y., in 1907; died in Washington, D.C., in 1981) was a career U.S. diplomat who was assigned as his country's representative to the United Nations from 1969 to 1971.

Biography

Charles Yost was born in Watertown, New York, on November 6, 1907. He attended Hotchkiss School — with Paul Nitze, Paul Warnke, and Livy Merchant — 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 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. Iin 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.

Yost was reinstated in the Foreign Service, and in late 1945 he was political adviser to U.S. Lieutenant General Raymond Wheeler on the staff of Lord Louis Montbatten 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 [1]

Career Timeline

  • 1930: Vice Consul Alexandria, Egypt
  • 1932: Vice Consul Warsaw, Poland
  • 1933: Resigned from the Foreign Service. Became journalist
  • 1935: Resettlement Administration
  • 1935: Divisional Assistant, U.S. State Department; Assistant Chief Division of Arms and Munitions Control
  • 1939: Assistant Chief Division of Controls
  • 1941: Assistant Chief Division of Exports and Defense Aid
  • 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: Assistant Chief, Division of Special Research; Division of European Affairs
  • 1943-44: Assistant Chief, Division of Foreign Activity Correlation
  • 1944:
    • 1) Executive Secretary, Department of State Policy Committee
    • 2) Executive Secretary, Joint Secretariat of Executive Staff Commission
    • 3) Department of State [2]. Assistant to the Chairman for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference
  • 1945:
    • 1) Assistant to the Chairman, 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, the Commanding General of the India-Burma Theater, India & Ceylon
  • 1946:
    • 1) Chargé d’affairs, Bangkok, Thailand
    • 2) Political Advisor to U.S. Delegation, United Nations, Lake Success, New York
    • 3) General Assembly to the United Nations, New York
  • 1947: First Secretary & Counselor, Prague, Czechoslovakia
  • 1947-49: First Secretary & Counselor of Legation, Vienna, Austria
  • 1949: Member of U.S. Delegation; Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large for Sixth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting, Paris, France
  • 1949: Member of Delegation to Fourth Regular Session of GA of UN as Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large
  • 1949: Director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs
  • 1950:
    • 1) Special Assistant to Ambassador at Large, Deputy Policy Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations, New York
    • 2) European Affairs Rep. on Policy Comm. on Immigration and Naturalization
    • 3) Policy Planning Staff
  • 1950-53: Counselor with Personal rank of Minister [3], Athens, Greece
  • 1953: Deputy High Commissioner & Deputy Chief of Mission, Vienna, Austria
  • 1954: Minister, Vientiane, Laos
  • 1955-1956: Ambassador, Laos [4]
  • 1956: Minister, Paris, France
  • 1957-58: Ambassador, Damascus, Syria
  • 1958: Member Policy Planning Staff
  • 1958-61: Ambassador, Rabat, Morocco
  • 1961-66: U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations with Adlai Stevenson [5]
  • 1964: Appointed Career Ambassador [6]
  • 1965: U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations with Arthur Goldberg [7]
  • 1966:
    • 1) Bureau of Near East & South Asian Affairs
    • 2) Chairman, ECAFE, Delegation, New Delhi (March)
    • 3) Resigned from the Foreign Service
  • 1966-69: Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Council on Foreign Relations website
  • 1969-71:
    • 1) U.S. Representative to the United Nations, New York [8]. President of the Security Council [9]
    • 2) Honorary Degree, Princeton University [10]
  • 1970-80: Member of the Dartmouth Conference Delegation
  • 1971: Resigned from the Foreign Service
  • 1971-73: Counselor to UN Association
  • 1973-75: President, National Committee on US-China Relations [11], [12]
  • 1975:
  • 1976-81: Special Advisor, Aspen Institute [14]
  • 1977: Woodcock delegation to Vietnam.
  • 1979: Co-chairman Americans for SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

Activities

  • Syndicated columnist for the Christian Science Monitor
  • Board of the American University in Cairo [15]
  • Council on Foreign Relations [16]
  • 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
  • International House New York City-Chairman of the Board, [17]
  • American Philosophical Society [18]
  • Board of "Advertising Age"

Oral History Interviews

  • Interview with Charles Yost by Dr. Thomas Soapes - Oral Historian, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (September 13, 1978) [19]
  • Oral History Interview with Charles W. Yost by Sheldon Stern – JFK Library (Washington, DC, October 23, 1978) [20]


Books

  • The Age of Triumph and Frustration: Modern Dialogues
  • The Insecurity of Nations: International Relations in the Twentieth Century
  • The Conduct and Misconduct of Foreign Affairs
  • History & Memory
Preceded by U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations
1969–1971 		Succeeded by
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