Herbert S. Okun

Herbert Stuart Okun (November 27, 1930 – November 8, 2011) was a United States Ambassador to East Germany (1980–1983) and the Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1985–1989). He was a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, and after his retirement from the State Department he played a key role in unsuccessful efforts to halt the Balkan wars in the early 1990s.

Born in Brooklyn, Okun earned his A.B. in history from Stanford University in 1951, and his Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1959. His father, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk, became a wholesale vegetable vendor in New York.

Okun decided to become a diplomat at 16 after reading 1947 Foreign Affairs article in which scholar George F. Kennan (writing under the pseudonym "X") offered a strategy for Western resistance to Soviet expansionism. The policy was known as "containment" and served as the intellectual blueprint for American foreign policy during the Cold War. "I read it and said, 'That's what I want to do,'" Okun told the New York Times in 1993.

As a young foreign service officer, Okun translated the correspondence between President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Okun recalled that Khrushchev nicknamed him "ryzhyi" — redhead — because of his hair color.

Okun also was the chief State Department negotiator for the SALT Treaty. While at the United Nations, Okun led a walkout of the U.S. delegation during a speech by Iranian President Ali Khamenei. "The false accusations that he made against our country distort the facts and totally misrepresent our policy," Okun told reporters. "I do not intend to sit by passively when our country is insulted, our President is pilloried and the truth is trampled."

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