John B. Ritch III

John B. Ritch III (born March 13, 1943)[1] is a former American diplomat with extensive experience on the congressional side of US foreign policy and in international business. After an early career of four years in the US Army (1968–1972) and 21 years as a staff adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1972–1993), he was appointed by President of the United States Bill Clinton to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations International Organizations in Vienna, a position he held from 1993 to 2001. Thereafter (2001–2012) he headed the trade association of the world nuclear energy industry.

John B. Ritch III
Ritch & Sen. Biden en route to Sarajevo 1993
United States Ambassador to the United Nations International Organizations in Vienna
In office
November 22, 1993 (1993-11-22) – January 1, 2001 (2001-01-01)
PresidentBill Clinton
Preceded byMichael H. Newlin
Succeeded byKenneth C. Brill

Early life and education

Ritch was born into a Navy family during World War II and grew up in the postwar years in locations associated with the military career of his father, a 1939 graduate of the Naval Academy. Ritch's grandfather, a Montanan and lifelong friend of famed painter Charlie Russell, was the new state's first historian and known for his nostalgic poetry about the fast-disappearing West.

Ritch III attained a moment of national fame at age 10 by winning a local contest in Bremerton, Washington (home of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard) aimed at collecting shoes for war refugees in Korea. The front page of New York's Sunday News (then the nation's major tabloid) on April 19, 1953 shows “Johnnie Ritch” sitting atop a mountain of 10,000 pairs of shoes, piled dockside for shipment. Ritch had gathered 1,325 pairs by taking a wagon door to door.

After a youth filled with peewee league and school sports, Ritch graduated in 1960 from Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine (a public high school near the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard). Ritch studied for one year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then entered the US Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1965. There he was an Academic All-American[2] and all-N.I.T. in basketball and selected to be a Rhodes Scholar. Ritch received the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference award as the outstanding scholar-athlete of West Point's class of ‘65.

At Oxford University from 1965 to 1968, Ritch studied at University College, gaining a master's degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He played on an Oxford University Basketball team that came close, but for a travel mishap, to achieving a clean slate of three consecutive British national championships at both the university and amateur levels.[3] During this period, Ritch’s teammates included future New York Knick Bill Bradley and now-eminent novelist John Edgar Wideman.

Career

After Oxford, Ritch served as an infantry captain in the US Army from 1968 to 1972, commanding a rifle company on the DMZ in Korea and working in the Pentagon on the staff of the Army Chief of Staff. (In 1970, as a goodwill gesture to the Korean Republic, the Army assigned Ritch to spend three months as coach of the Korean Olympic basketball team.)

In 1972, Ritch worked briefly for the new Environmental Protection Agency before joining the then-small and bipartisan staff of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), chaired by legendary Senator William Fulbright.

After 1979, when the SFRC staff was enlarged and bifurcated along partisan lines, Ritch worked on the Democratic side with such noted Senators as Church, McGovern, Pell, Sarbanes, Kerry, Dodd, Moynihan, and, extensively, with Biden. In that more bipartisan era, he also worked with Republican senators such as Aiken, Case, Percy, Mathias, and Lugar. From 1972 to 1993, under six committee chairmen, Ritch specialized in European and NATO affairs and also, at various times, directed the work of subcommittees on State Department operations, Asian affairs, and constitutional war powers.

Over two decades, while working on hearings, speeches and legislation, Ritch traveled extensively for the committee, often represented the Senate in sessions of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and was the principal drafter of committee publications on NATO nuclear strategy and the SALT II treaty,[4] US-Soviet relations,[5] the Portuguese revolution,[6] Hungarian communism,[7] the world heroin trade,[8] politics and strategy on NATO's southern flank,[9] the Soviet war in Afghanistan,[10] international failure to defend the Bosnian republic,[11] and Senate responsibilities vis-à-vis the war and treaty powers.[12]

In 1984, the Kremlin reacted to Ritch's report on Afghanistan (based upon time he spent with the Afghan resistance) by declaring him “persona non grata” in the Soviet Union; this travel ban was lifted after Premier Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985.[13] In 1989, after the Berlin Wall fell, Ritch conceived and helped enact the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act.

From 1993 to 2001, as American ambassador to UN agencies in Vienna during the two Clinton terms, Ritch's main role was representing the US on the governance board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. There he worked with then-IAEA directors Hans Blix and Mohamed Elbaradei on the agency's dual task of monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and assisting nations in the use of nuclear technologies for medicine, agriculture, and industry.[14] In this period, a special IAEA team located and dismantled Iraq's nuclear program, a success confirmed in 2003 when the second US invasion of Iraq revealed no weapons of mass destruction.

From 2001 to 2012, Ritch was in the private sector as director general of the World Nuclear Association, the London-based trade association of some 200 companies comprising the global nuclear energy industry. In this role, while advocating expanded worldwide use of nuclear power as an environmentally beneficial technology, Ritch also dealt with public alarm over the Japanese accident at Fukushima.[15] In 2003 Ritch launched the World Nuclear University, sponsor of an annual “summer institute“ that each year brings together young nuclear-energy professionals from some 30 nations.

As a sideline, Ritch has long been active in real estate, specializing in historic restoration in the nation's capital. Among his projects is John Logan House, a prominent DC landmark that was once a residence of the heroic civil war general who later founded Memorial Day and went on to become a stalwart Senate champion of far-reaching Reconstruction.[16]

As an entrepreneur, Ritch co-founded CaliVita International, a vitamin supplement marketing company that has been active since 1992 in more than a dozen European countries.[17]

Among Ritch's publications are pieces in The Atlantic[18] and Prospect[19] magazines, the Washington Post,[20] the New York Times,[21] the International Herald Tribune,[22] World Energy Review,[23] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,[24] and Arms Control Today,[25] and law journal articles—on war powers and on the treaty power—co‑authored with then-Senator Joe Biden.[26][27]

Personal life

Ritch and his wife Christina live in Washington, DC and have a home in Tuscany. They have two daughters, Nina Ritch Boland (Michael) and Alyssa Ritch-Frel (Jan), and three grandsons, Samuel, Vincent, and John (Jack).

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References
  1. "John B. Ritch III - People - Department History - Office of the Historian". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  2. Academic All-American Basketball selection, 1965. https://academicallamerica.com/documents/2018/4/30/1965_MENS_BASKETBALL.pdf?id=2813
  3. Oxford University won the national basketball championship of the British Universities Sports Federation (B.U.S.F) in 1965, 1966, and 1967; and the national championship of the Amateur Basketball Association (A.B.B.A.) in 1966 and 1968, being disqualified in 1967 due to a delay in transportation. Oxford won these titles in the 1965-66, 1966-67 and 1967-68 seasons.
  4. "SALT and the NATO Allies", Senate Foreign Relations Committee Print, 1979. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d008170660&view=1up&seq=1
  5. "Dangerous Stalemate: Superpower Relations in Autumn 1983", SFRC Print, 1983. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=5028366-Document-13-Dangerous-Stalemate-Superpower
  6. "Revolution into Democracy: Portugal After the Coup", SFRC Print, 1976. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d00817061a&view=1up&seq=1
  7. "Hungarian Communism Today", SFRC Print, 1978. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b5010684&view=1up&seq=5
  8. "Heroin: Can the Supply Be Stopped?", SFRC Print, 1972. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0000170555&view=1up&seq=1
  9. "Perspectives on NATO's Southern Flank", SFRC Print, 1980. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002873532n&view=1up&seq=1
  10. "Hidden War: The Struggle for Afghanistan", SFRC Print, 1984. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d00829084i&view=1up&seq=1
  11. "To Stand Against Aggression: Milosevic, the Bosnian Republic, and the Conscience of the West", SFRC Print, 1993. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000021085475&view=1up&seq=1
  12. "The ABM Treaty Interpretation Resolution", SFRC Report on S. Res 167, 100th Congress, 1987. After approving S. Res. 167, the committee converted it into the “Biden Condition” that became integral to the Senate′s approval of the INF Treaty in 1988. The committee explained the Biden Condition′s significance in “The INF Treaty”, Executive Report 100-15, pp. 90-108. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d008170660&view=1up&seq=1
  13. (a) “Soviets Deny Aide Visa; 4 Senators Cancel Trip”, Washington Times, April 9, 1985. https://www.scribd.com/document/468792129/Soviets-deny-aide-visa-4-senators-cancel-trip; (b) “Biden, 3 others call off Soviet trip over visa flap”, Morning News, April 9, 1985. https://www.scribd.com/document/468791958/Biden-3-Others-Call-Off-Soviet-Trip-Over-Visa-Flap; (c) “Critic is Denied Soviet Travel Visa”, USA Today, April 9, 1985. https://www.scribd.com/document/468792401/Critic-is-denied-soviet-travel-visa
  14. “Q & A / John B. Ritch 3d: UN’s Nuclear Watchdog is Sharpening Its Teeth,” New York Times, July 2, 1996. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/02/news/q-a-john-b-ritch-3d-uns-nuclear-watchdog-is-sharpening-its-teeth.html
  15. CNN/becky-anderson&john-ritch/18mar2011. https://vimeo.com/440776705
  16. Historical markers at John Logan House on Logan Circle, Washington, DC. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=113672. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=153987 https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=153986 https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=153988
  17. "John B. Ritch Cofounder and Chairman". CaliVita International. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  18. The Atlantic, “Korea”, October 1970, Volume 226, No. 4. https://www.scribd.com/document/468593998/Atlantic-Oct1970-Korea-Ritch “Iceland", April 1969, Volume 223, No. 4. https://www.scribd.com/document/468593893/Atlantic-April1969-Iceland-Ritch
  19. Prospect, “Nuclear Green”, March 1999. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/nucleargreen
  20. Washington Post, “The Key to Our Energy Future”, April 26, 2005. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2005/04/26/the-key-to-our-energy-future/98cea67a-f91b-475e-872c-2cd74f916dd4/
  21. New York Times, “This Uranium Deal Was No Scandal”, Nov. 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/opinion/uranium-deal-clinton-russia.html; and “It Makes Sense to End India’s Nuclear Isolation”, April 6, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/opinion/it-makes-sense-to-end-indias-nuclear-isolation.html
  22. International Herald Tribune, “Bulgaria’s Safe Nuclear Power Deserves Justice”, May 29, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/opinion/IHT-an-eu-ultimatum-bulgarias-safe-nuclear-power-deserves-justice.html
  23. World Energy Review, “Nuclear Power for a Clean-Energy Future”, October 2003. https://www.scribd.com/document/469083361/Nuclear-Energy-for-a-Clean-Energy-Future
  24. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Arms Control – Now or Never” (co-author with James P. Rubin), December 1988. https://www.scribd.com/document/468595425/Bulletin-Atomic-Scientists-Dec1988-Ritch-Rubin
  25. Arms Control Today, "The End of the Sofaer Doctrine: A Victory for Arms Control and the Constitution”, by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and John B. Ritch III, September 1988, Vol. 18, No. 7. https://www.scribd.com/document/468692241/A-Senate-Victory-Over-the-Sofaer-Doctrine
  26. “The War Power at a Constitutional Impasse: A ‘Joint Decision’ Solution”, by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and John B Ritch III; The Georgetown Law Journal, Volume 77, Number 2, December 1988. https://www.scribd.com/document/468592299/GeorgetownLawJournal-Dec1988-Biden-Ritch-War-Powers-Use-of-Force-Act
  27. “The Treaty Power: Upholding a Constitutional Partnership”, by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and John B. Ritch III; University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Volume 137, Number 5, May 1989. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol137/iss5/8/
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