The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

44 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL This account of Ambassador Charles Yost’s tenure in Morocco during the Cold War offers a window into his remarkable career and the texture of postwar diplomacy. BY F E L I C I TY O. YOST CHARLESW. YOST Our Man inMorocco W hen World War II ended in 1945, three years after “Oper- ation Torch,” the Allied inva- sion of North Africa, U.S. sol- diers remained in Morocco. They were still there 13 years later—and for Moroccans, this was a problem. In 1958, in the midst of the Cold War, Charles W. Yost became part of the solution. On a hot, muggy Sunday in July, he walked out onto the tarmac of Washington’s National Airport. The State Department had booked him on a four prop-driven, dolphin- shaped Lockheed Constellation—the luxurious “Paris Sky Chief.” Two days later, after stops in Newfoundland, Ireland and France, the plane landed in Rabat. A week after his arrival, photographers recorded the new U.S. ambassador, his top hat sitting at a rakish angle on his slender frame, arriving at the royal palace in a convertible, followed closely by a mounted military escort. Ushered into the throne room, he presented his credentials to King Mohammed V—a Felicity O. Yost, the daughter of Ambassador Charles W. Yost, retired recently after 37 years as a graphic designer and election monitor at the United Nations. She is now writing a biography of her father, tentatively titled Charles W. Yost and the Golden Age of U.S. Diplomacy , from which this account of his tenure as ambassador in Morocco is drawn. man he referred to as “a wise and courteous scion of an old dynasty.” A slight man with a kindly face, the king was delighted to dis- cover that his exchanges with the American ambassador could be conducted in French, and thus in private. Over the coming years, the two would form a personal bond based on trust and respect—a bond that would ease them, and their countries, through the national and international problems they confronted. Chaos Brewing Within days of his arrival, the country team gave Ambassador Yost a sobering view of the current political situation. In a nut- shell, the stability of the newly independent Moroccan govern- ment, and U.S. objectives there, were under serious threat. A faltering economy, rising unemployment, and an unedu- cated and impoverished lower class were all creating a fertile recruiting ground for extremists. As Amb. Yost well knew, Morocco had a rich but turbulent history, and had regained its independence from Spain and France only in 1956. The most problematic issue concerned the four American military bases built in Morocco during World War II. At the end of the war, the French had taken over the bases; but in 1950, they reverted to the United States under the aegis of NATO. There the 316th Air Division housed American nuclear-armed B-47 bomb- ers, with their capability to strike the Soviet Union. They were a FS HERITAGE