U. Alexis Johnson

U. Alexis Johnson circa 1970

Ural Alexis Johnson (born October 17, 1908 in Falun , Saline County , Kansas , †  March 24, 1997 in Raleigh , North Carolina ) was an American diplomat who responded while serving as deputy ambassador to South Vietnam on March 29, 1965 an attack with a car bomb failed and later as United States Under Secretary of State for political Affairs the third highest post in the United States Department of State held.

Life

After attending school, Johnson studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles , where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1931 . This was followed by studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 1931 to 1932 .

He then entered the diplomatic service and, after serving in the State Department from 1935 to 1937, was an interpreter at the embassy in Japan . After a subsequent assignment as Vice Consul in Keijo, Seoul , which was then occupied by the Japanese Empire , he was briefly Vice Consul in Tianjin in 1939 . He was then employed as Vice Consul in Shenyang between 1940 and 1941 , before he was Vice Consul and Third Secretary at the Embassy in Brazil from 1942 to 1944 .

In 1945 he became consul at the embassy in the Philippines and then returned to Japan in 1946, where he was acting political advisor to the consular staff of the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces at his headquarters in Yokohama . He was then Consul General in Yokohama between 1947 and 1949 and then returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was Deputy Director of the Office for Northeast Asia Affairs , i.e. the department responsible for Mongolia , Japan, China , North Korea and South Korea , until 1951 .

He then served as Deputy Secretary of State for the Office for Far East Affairs, before becoming Deputy Head of the US Mission in Czechoslovakia from November 1952 to 1953 . In December 1953 he was appointed ambassador to Czechoslovakia to succeed George Wadsworth and worked there until 1957. After that, however, he returned to Asia and was initially between February 1958 and April 1961 as the successor to Max Waldo Bishop ambassador to Thailand .

After serving as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1961 to 1964, he became Vice Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1964, and thus deputy to the then Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor . As a recognized expert on Asia, he also gave lectures on diplomatic relations between the USA and Asian countries. While he was working in South Vietnam on March 29, 1965, he was assassinated outside the embassy in Saigon with a car bomb, but it failed.

Nevertheless, he returned to the State Department after the assassination attempt and was there again for a year Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs before he was Ambassador to Japan between November 1966 and January 1969, succeeding Edwin O. Reischauer .

He then finally took from 1969 to 1973 as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the third highest post in the US State Department. Most recently, Johnson served as Ambassador-at-Large for the State Department during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson between February 1973 and February 1977, replacing David M. Kennedy . During these years he was also instrumental in bringing about the first talks with the Soviet Union on disarmament .

Publications

He wrote Arms Control and the Gray Area Weapons System (1978) on his experiences with the preparations for the disarmament negotiations .

In 1984 he published his memoirs under the title The Right Hand of Power , which gave an insight into US foreign policy from the 1950s to the 1970s .

Web links

• U. Alexis Johnson in nndb (English)
• THE NEW YORK TIMES: U. Alexis Johnson Dies at 88; Led Arms Talks With Moscow (March 27, 1997)
• Interview from June 19, 1975 (trumanlibrary.org)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexis Johnson's Address Made Before the Economic Club of Detroit, "The United States and Southeast Asia," April 8, 1963
2. ↑ Arms Control and the Gray Area Weapons System , ISBN 978-0-87855-738-7 , 1978  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.