John B. Ritch III (born March 13, 1943) is a former American diplomat experienced on the congressional side of US foreign policy and in international business. After an early career in the US Army (1968–1972) and as a staff adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1972–1993), he was appointed by
President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
to serve as the
, a position he held from 1993 to 2001. Thereafter (2001–2012) he headed the London-based trade association that encompasses the world nuclear energy industry.
Early life and education
Ritch was born into a Navy family during World War II and grew up in the postwar years in locations on the East and West Coasts associated with the military career of his father, a 1939 graduate of the Naval Academy. Ritch's grandfather, a Montanan and longtime friend of famed painter
Charlie Russell, was among the new state's first historians, known for his nostalgic poetry and beguiling reminiscences about the fast-disappearing West.
Ritch III attained a moment of national fame at age 10 by winning a local contest in
Bremerton, Washington
Bremerton is a city in Kitsap County, Washington. The population was 37,729 at the 2010 census and an estimated 41,405 in 2019, making it the largest city on the Kitsap Peninsula. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerto ...
(home of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard) that offered a bicycle to the top collector of used shoes for war refugees in Korea. On April 19, 1953, dominating the front page of New York's ''Sunday News'' (then the nation's major tabloid) was "Johnnie Ritch" sitting atop a mountain of 10,000 pairs of shoes piled dockside for shipment. Ritch alone 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
The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...
at West Point, graduating in 1965. There he was an Academic All-American and all-N.I.T. in basketball and selected to be a
Rhodes Scholar
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
. Ritch received the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference award as the outstanding scholar-athlete of West Point's class of '65.
At
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
from 1965 to 1968, Ritch studied
Philosophy, Politics and Economics at
University College
In a number of countries, a university college is a college institution that provides tertiary education but does not have full or independent university status. A university college is often part of a larger university. The precise usage varies ...
. He played on an
Oxford University Basketball team that came close, but for a travel mishap, to achieving a perfect slate of three consecutive British national championships at both the university and amateur levels. During that period, Ritch's teammates included future New York Knick
Bill Bradley
William Warren Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American politician and former professional basketball player. He served three terms as a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey (1979–1997). He ran for the Democratic Party's nomination f ...
and now-eminent novelist
John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus o ...
.
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 four months in Seoul as coach of Korea's Olympic basketball team as it prepared for that year's Asian Games.
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
James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. , Fulbright is the longest serving chair ...
.
On the committee, Ritch's first job was to aid chairman Fulbright in gaining Senate approval for two landmarks in US-Soviet arms control: the SALT-I accord and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Early in his work for the committee, Ritch devised the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. For the next 25 years, this annual legislation served not only to authorize appropriations for the State Department budget but also as the vehicle for a series of innovative bipartisan amendments designed to shape the policies and institutions of American diplomacy. Among the laws Ritch designed is the now-longstanding delineation of the authority and responsibility of an American ambassador for all US activities in the country where appointed to serve.
After 1979, when the previously unified 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, most extensively, with
Joe Biden. In that more bipartisan era, Ritch also worked cooperatively 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.
For 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
Founded in 1955, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) serves as the consultative interparliamentary organisation for the North Atlantic Alliance. Its current President is Gerald E. Connolly from the United States, elected in 2019. Its curre ...
, and was the principal drafter of committee publications on NATO nuclear strategy and the SALT II treaty, US-Soviet relations, the Portuguese revolution, Hungarian communism, the world heroin trade, politics and strategy on NATO's southern flank, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, international failure to defend the Bosnian republic, and Senate responsibilities overseeing the war and treaty powers.
In 1984, after covertly crossing the Pakistani border to spend time with Afghan resistance forces in the field, Ritch authored a Senate report describing the Soviet army’s brutalities in Afghanistan. Some months later, when Soviet authorities balked at allowing Ritch to accompany a Senatorial visit to Moscow, declaring him “persona non grata” in the Soviet Union, the delegation’s leaders (Senators Joe Biden and William Cohen) cancelled the trip. This episode became a minor ''cause célèbre'' during a contentious phase in US-Soviet relations. But a year later, after
General Secretary
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
came to power, Moscow relented and the ban on Ritch was lifted.
In 1988, Ritch played an active role in responding to the Reagan administration’s purported “reinterpretation” of the ABM Treaty, a maneuver aimed at supporting Reagan’s “Star Wars” vision by permitting the creation of a weapon the treaty was intended to prohibit. Acting on Biden’s behalf after the Senator was hospitalized by a brain aneurysm, Ritch promoted a measure, known as the Biden Condition, that affirmed explicitly the normally implicit principle that every US treaty must be interpreted in accord with the Senate’s reasonable understanding of its meaning at the time of ratification. After the Senate attached the Biden Condition to its approval of the US-Soviet treaty on intermediate-range nuclear missile forces (INF), that treaty and the Biden Condition’s enunciation of broad principle became a part of US law.
A year later, after the Berlin Wall fell, Ritch conceived and helped enact the
Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act of 1989 Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act of 1989 are a series of legislative acts of the US Congress from 1989 to 1995. These are pre-eminent financial laws.
Adopted by the Chambers of the 101st US Congress (3 January 1989 - 3 January 1991 ...
.
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
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...
. There he worked with then-IAEA directors
Hans Blix
Hans Martin Blix (; born 28 June 1928) is a Sweden, Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party (Sweden), Liberal People's Party. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs (Sweden), Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979 ...
and
Mohamed Elbaradei
Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei ( ar, محمد مصطفى البرادعي, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá al-Barādaʿī, ; born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who served as the vice president of Egypt on an interim basis from 14 July ...
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, industry, and carbon-free electricity generation.
During Ritch’s tenure in Vienna, the US assisted a special IAEA team that located and dismantled Iraq's nuclear program. This multinational achievement was 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
World Nuclear Association is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry. Its members come from all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, ur ...
, the London-based trade association for companies that comprise the global nuclear energy industry. The WNA was created in 2001, when Ritch and a few industry leaders undertook to build on the foundation of the Uranium Institute a fully inclusive body for a diverse industry that consists of uranium miners, fuel makers, reactor vendors, electrical utilities, and related professions in more than 30 countries. During Ritch's 12-year tenure, WNA membership quintupled from fewer than 40 companies to more than 200. This success in recruiting most enterprises with a significant role in the generation of nuclear power has positioned WNA to foster cooperation within, and to represent, this key global industry.
As WNA head, Ritch was an international advocate for expanded use of nuclear power, propounding its role as an environmentally beneficial technology of crucial value in preventing catastrophic climate change. As an industry spokesman, Ritch also responded to public alarm over the Japanese accident at Fukushima.
In 2003, to mark the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's Atoms-for-Peace initiative, Ritch conceived and launched the
World Nuclear University The World Nuclear University (WNU) is a network which was created in 2003 on the 50th anniversary of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's ‘Atoms for Peace’ initiative, and is recognized as a "Partnership for Sustainable Development" by the UN ...
, sponsor of an annual "summer institute" that each year brings together young nuclear-energy professionals from some 30 nations. In 2007, Ritch led WNA in creating World Nuclear News, which now serves as an authoritative internet resource providing comprehensive daily news and analysis on events in the global nuclear industry.
As an American sideline, Ritch has engaged in historic preservation in the nation's capital. Notably, he created
John Logan House, once a home and now a tribute to the heroic Civil War commander who went on to found Memorial Day and serve in the US Senate as a champion of civil rights and advancement for newly freed black Americans. Ritch salvaged the building in 1975 when it was derelict and collapsing, then began the research and renovation that yielded a
Logan Circle landmark. In the early 1980’s, near Logan Circle, Ritch gained the placement of
Wardman Row
Wardman Row is a block of historic apartment buildings at 1416-1440 R Street, NW in Washington, D.C. The buildings, located in the Greater Fourteenth Street Historic District were designed in 1911 by Harry Wardman and Albert Beers. In 1984, the ...
—seven early-20th-century apartment buildings created by famed developer
Harry Wardman
Harry Wardman (April 11, 1872 – March 18, 1938) was a real estate developer in Washington, D.C. during the early 20th century whose developments included landmark hotels, luxury apartment buildings, and many rowhouses. When he died in 1938, one-t ...
—on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
; he then began renewal of that block by renovating two of its buildings. More recently, on Capitol Hill adjacent to the Library of Congress, Ritch revitalized a mid-century apartment building now known as The Montana.
In other entrepreneurship, Ritch co-founded CaliVita International, an overseas supplier and multi-level marketer of American-made
vitamin supplements
A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrien ...
. Since its launch in 1992, the Calivita sales system has attracted tens of thousands of participants and resulted in the export of a large volume of US products to some three dozen European countries.
Ritch's publications include pieces in ''The Atlantic'' and ''Prospect'' magazines, ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', ''The International Herald Tribune'', ''World Energy Review'', ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'', and ''Arms Control Today'', and two law journal articles—on the war and treaty powers of the Constitution—co-authored with then-Senator Joe Biden.
["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/]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritch, John B.
Living people
1943 births
20th-century American diplomats
Representatives of the United States to the United Nations International Organizations in Vienna
Clinton administration personnel
American Rhodes Scholars
Army Black Knights men's basketball players