The Secretary of State who pushed Reagan toward dialogue with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War
Over dinner with the Reagans, snowbound at the White House, Shultz listened to the president's relentless questions about Soviet leaders and realized: 'This man has never had a real conversation with a big-time communist leader, and he is dying to have one.'
George Shultz is one of only two Americans to have held four different Cabinet posts, serving as Labor Secretary, OMB Director, Treasury Secretary, and finally as Reagan's Secretary of State for six and a half years, reshaping the direction of U.S. diplomacy with the Soviet Union. Against the opposition of Defense Secretary Weinberger and CIA Director Casey, Shultz insisted that Reagan engage Gorbachev directly, laying the diplomatic groundwork for the Geneva (1985) and Reykjavik (1986) summits. The result was the 1987 INF Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons; Shultz then watched the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unraveling of Moscow's hold on Eastern Europe, witnessing the end of the Cold War from the front row. His memoir Turmoil and Triumph remains an essential primary source for the diplomacy of the 1980s.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1920Born in New York City, raised in Englewood, New Jersey
- 1942–1945Marine Corps officer; saw action at Angaur in the Pacific
- 1969–1974Labor Secretary → OMB Director → Treasury Secretary; ended the Bretton Woods system
- 1974–1982Bechtel president and director; expanded Middle East operations
- 1982–1989Secretary of State; Geneva and Reykjavik summits, INF Treaty
- 1989–2021Hoover Institution distinguished fellow; nuclear disarmament and carbon tax advocacy
- 1993Published Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State
Related historical events
- 1979–1989The Soviet-Afghan WarWitness to the Soviet withdrawal from AfghanistanShultz watched the Soviet Union withdraw from Afghanistan.
- 1985–1989The New Thinking and the End of the Cold WarSecretary of StateAs Secretary of State, he pushed Reagan toward direct dialogue with Gorbachev, laying the diplomatic groundwork for the Geneva and Reykjavik summits and the INF Treaty.
Bechtel Years, 1974–1982: The Government–Corporate Revolving Door
In May 1974 Shultz left the Nixon administration after his Treasury tenure to become executive vice president of the Bechtel Group, the large engineering and services company, and later became its president and a director. Under his leadership Bechtel won many large construction contracts, including in Saudi Arabia, and in the year before he left the company reported a 50% increase in revenue. He remained on Bechtel's board of directors until 1996, so the tie outlasted his public career.
That career became an immediate issue on July 16, 1982, when President Reagan named him the 60th Secretary of State, replacing Alexander Haig. At his confirmation hearings several senators raised the possibility of a conflict of interest given his senior management role at Bechtel; Shultz briefly lost his temper when questioned on the subject, yet the Senate confirmed him unanimously. The revolving door illustrates how late Cold War U.S. diplomacy moved not only on military and diplomatic questions but alongside the interests of capital and resources.
His choices in the 2000s over Iraq and Afghanistan read in the same register. He was an early advocate of George W. Bush's candidacy in 1998 and an informal campaign adviser in 2000, and he wrote in support of the 2003 invasion months before it began. At the same time, while he called the Sandinista government in Nicaragua "a very undesirable cancer in the area" in 1983 congressional testimony, he opposed the arms-for-hostages dealings that became the Iran-Contra affair, and said of negotiating with that government: "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table."