George P. Shultz, who as Secretary of State in the 1980s shaped US foreign policy in the final stages of the Cold War, when a dangerous nuclear weapons stalemate gave way to peaceful – if not cordial – relations between the superpowers, died in the Saturday. He was 100 years old.
Shultz’s term as chief diplomat for President Reagan from 1982 to 1989 came after he served in three ministerial-level positions in the Nixon administration: secretary of the Treasury, director of the Office of Administration and Budget and secretary of labor.
Shultz died at his home on the Stanford University campus, said Jeff Marschner, director of media relations at the Stanford Hoover Institution on Sunday.
Shultz spent his last years in the Bay Area as an older Republican statesman, teaching economics at Stanford. He was one of the most prominent advocates of reducing the risks of nuclear war.
Shultz also spoke openly about climate change. In a break with the Trump administration, he joined another former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, in calling for a carbon tax on oil, natural gas and coal to discourage the burning of fossil fuels.
An economic adviser to former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shultz was one of many Republican figures who resisted Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency.
Following the diplomatic behavior of a former secretary of state, he avoided direct criticism of Trump, but an outburst of openness a few months before the 2016 election made his opinion clear: “God help us,” he told reporters.
Shultz prided himself on his integrity, leaving unscathed when the Watergate scandal consumed Richard M. Nixon’s presidency. As secretary of the Treasury, Shultz rejected a request from the White House to audit the tax returns of Nixon’s enemies, prompting the president to ask his attorney John Dean: “What does that idiot think I sent him there?”
Shultz had no stomach for the self-promotion that made some other state secretaries more famous. His achievements in foreign policy, especially with the Soviet Union and US allies in Europe, were little recognized during his tenure.
When Shultz replaced Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. in 1982, Washington’s relations with Moscow were as icy as they had been in a generation. Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s “detente” policy was dead after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and ex-President Carter’s vehement response: economic sanctions and a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
The relationship, strained by Reagan’s staunch anti-communism, worsened further when Soviet-dominated Poland imposed martial law to crush a popular uprising. Washington’s ties to its traditional European allies were also undermined when sanctions interfered with plans for a Soviet gas pipeline to supply natural gas to Western Europe.
When Reagan and Shultz left office in January 1989, relations with Moscow were heated and friction with Western Europe largely forgotten.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s rise to the highest post in Moscow in 1985 played a key role in the change. But Reagan, encouraged by Shultz, paved the way for Gorbachev’s conciliatory policy by softening anti-communist rhetoric and resuming arms control negotiations.
The high point came in 1987, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed a treaty banning all intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe, the first time in the long-standing rivalry between superpowers that an entire class of weapons was banned.
Only after George HW Bush succeeded Reagan in the White House and Baker replaced Shultz in the State Department did the Soviet Union finally collapse, ending the last vestiges of the Cold War with a victory for the West. But luck was cast during Shultz’s tenure at the State Department.
Shultz’s approach to the Soviet Union was pragmatic. He advocated a policy of engagement because he believed it would advance US interests. Reagan endorsed the policy for the same reason. Right-wing ideologues, who populated much of the upper echelons of the Reagan government, never fully trusted Shultz and consistently resisted his policies. But Reagan generally supported him.
“Shultz’s great achievement as Secretary of State was that he developed and refined, and thus ensured the success of Ronald Reagan’s basic foreign policy,” wrote Robert W. Tucker, professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies at Foreign Policy magazine.
Tucker argued that Shultz, virtually alone among Reagan’s top officials, realized early on that historical trends were favorable to the United States and should be encouraged.
“He made a good hand, he played well,” said Tucker.
Shultz rivaled defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, CIA director William Casey, White House national security adviser John Poindexter and others. Conservatives like former United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Pentagon official Richard Perle and others have accused Shultz of being too tolerant of communist powers.
Shultz was an impassive and apparently emotionless man, whose policy was, in fact, firmly conservative. In addition, he emerged as the most outspoken hawk in a government that valued toughness, advocating the use of military power to support US diplomacy in situations that even the Pentagon was trying to avoid. He called for a demonstration of strength after the 1983 bombing of the US Navy headquarters in Lebanon, which killed 241 military personnel, but Reagan rejected the idea.
“Power and diplomacy must always go together or we will achieve very little in the world,” Shultz used to insist. He despised what he considered a Department of Defense timid approach to counterterrorism.
In his 1993 memoir, “Turbulence and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State,” Shultz noted ironically, “For Weinberger, as I heard, our forces should be constantly increased, but not used.”
Shultz’s record was mixed in the Middle East and Central America.
He devoted much of his time to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, but to no avail.
During his last week in office, he agreed to direct negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a break with long-standing policy that prohibits diplomatic contacts with what the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization.
The PLO’s recognition by Shultz paved the way for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for a series of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Central America, the Reagan government – with full support from Shultz – sought to overthrow the communist government in Nicaragua. Washington supported an anti-communist rebel group, the Contras. The White House National Security Council sought to support the rebels by secretly selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in the Middle East, channeling the money to the Contras. When the seemingly illegal scheme came to light in 1986, the scandal put Reagan’s presidency at risk.
Shultz left Iran-Contra unharmed because, as he told congressional investigators, he was not informed of the plan – and he vehemently objected when he discovered it.
George Pratt Shultz was born in New York on December 13, 1920. He grew up in the affluent suburb of Englewood, NJ. In 1942, he graduated from Princeton University, where he played football and basketball. He later enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in the Pacific for the rest of World War II.
While in Hawaii, on leave of war, Shultz met Helena Marie O’Brien, an Army nurse he married in 1946. They had five children.
In 1949, Shultz earned a doctorate in industrial economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught until 1957. He served on the staff of President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers and later joined the faculty at the University’s graduate school of business. from Chicago. He became the dean there in 1962.
As an academic, Shultz specialized in industrial relations, often serving as a mediator between management and unions, honing his skills as a negotiator.
As Nixon’s Secretary of Labor, Shultz pressured the Philadelphia construction unions, then all white, to accept minority members as a condition for getting government work. It was one of the first uses of racial quotas in federal hiring.
In 1970, Shultz ordered an investigation into the murder of Joseph A. “Jock” Yablonski, an insurgent candidate for president of the United Nations Workers of America. The investigation led to the fall of union president Tony Boyle.
Nixon subsequently hired Shultz to head the Office of Administration and Budget, where his deputy was Weinberger.
Shultz was a key player in Nixon’s effort to combat violent inflation. The government imposed a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, ended the gold standard for the American currency, placed a 10% surcharge on imports and cut the federal budget. Shultz had reservations about parts of the program, but he agreed with him.
In 1972, Nixon appointed Shultz as secretary of the Treasury. Inflation rose after the end of the wage price freeze. Nixon ended up imposing an additional 60-day freeze. Shultz later told the Washington Post that he planned to resign after the second freeze, but waited almost a year before announcing his departure for “personal reasons”. At that time, Watergate had devastated the administration. Nixon resigned a few months later.
Outside the government in 1974, Shultz became executive vice president of Bechtel Corp., a global construction and engineering company based in San Francisco. He later became president of Bechtel Group Inc. While working for Bechtel, he was also a part-time professor at Stanford and a distinguished member of the Hoover Institution on campus.
For decades, Shultz divided his time between his home on the Stanford campus and his apartment in San Francisco. His first wife died in 1995, and two years later, Shultz married Charlotte Mailliard Swig, an important socialite in San Francisco.
In retirement, Shultz remained active in academia and politics. In 2003, he was co-chair, with Warren Buffett, of the California Economic Recovery Council, an advisory group for the Schwarzenegger government campaign.
More recently, he has focused on campaigns to reduce stocks of nuclear weapons, combat global warming and decriminalize possession of drugs for personal use to stimulate treatment instead of incarceration.
Shultz leaves his wife, Charlotte Mailliard Shultz; their five children, Margaret Ann Tilsworth, Kathleen Pratt Shultz Jorgensen, Peter Milton Shultz, Barbara Lennox Shultz White and Alexander George Shultz; 11 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.
Kempster is a former Times writer.