An economics professor who saw himself more as a information-driven professional than an ideologue, Shultz had the uncommon distinction of serving in 4 distinctive cabinet positions — like Treasury secretary as Richard Nixon dismantled the post-World War II Bretton Woods monetary technique.
“One of the most consequential policymakers of all time, having served three American presidents, George P. Shultz died Feb. 6 at age 100,” the Hoover Institution assume tank stated in a statement on its web site.
In the Reagan White House, notorious for infighting, Shultz was one of the least controversial figures, cultivating cordial ties with Congress and the press and, most crucially, rock-strong backing from the president himself, who kept Shultz as his best diplomat for six and a half years.
In early 1983, half a year into his tenure, Shultz returned from China to a snowed-beneath Washington and was invited by Nancy Reagan to a casual dinner at the White House exactly where he was intrigued to hear the famously anti-Communist president sound eager to meet the Soviets.
“He had never had a lengthy session with an important leader from a Communist country, and I could sense he would relish such an opportunity,” Shultz wrote in his memoir, “Turmoil and Triumph.”
Days afterward, Shultz brought the Soviet ambassador to the White House in an unmarked vehicle for a secret meeting with Reagan, who pressed for Moscow to let the emigration of Pentecostal Christians who had sought refuge in the US embassy.
The Soviets quietly followed via. Reagan’s unlikely part as a negotiator with the superpower he termed an “evil empire” had begun.
– Hopes rise with Gorbachev –
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the helm of the Communist Party and Shultz, joining then vice president George H.W. Bush, flew to Moscow and met him at the funeral of his predecessor, Konstantin Chernenko.
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Shultz straight away detected possibilities with Gorbachev.
“Gorbachev is totally different from any Soviet leader I’ve met,” Shultz told reporters.
A former Marine who fought the Japanese in World War II, he recalled the trust he constructed with the Soviets as Treasury secretary when he supplied a sincere salute at a memorial to their war dead.
Shultz’s strategy with Gorbachev encountered deep skepticism from Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and CIA chief Bill Casey, but Reagan overruled them.
By 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Soviet Union quickly started disintegrating following Gorbachev initiated liberal reforms and dissent grew.
Shultz later played down the part of Gorbachev, pointing to underlying weaknesses in the Soviet technique and crediting the US leader’s huge increase in defense spending.
He also hailed European allies, specifically West Germany, that defied public protests against NATO missile deployments in the 1980s.
“The Soviets had to see that and realize that we were strong and our diplomacy was based on strength,” Shultz stated in a 2015 look at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, exactly where he spent his post-government profession.
Offense on terrorism
Shultz became secretary of state weeks following Israel invaded Lebanon, a nation that would grow to be central to an concern that would define his tenure — terrorism.
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In 1983, a suicide bomber suspected to be a Shiite Muslim terrorists blew up the barracks of US Marines serving as peacekeepers in Lebanon, killing 241, with a second attack targeting French forces, killing 59.
With hijackings and bombings increasing about the planet, Shultz vowed in a 1984 speech at a New York synagogue that the United States would go “beyond passive defense to consider means of active prevention, preemption and retaliation.”
“We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond,” stated Shultz, who advisable the US strikes on Libya in 1986 following a US soldier died in an attack on a Berlin nightclub.
Shultz’s doctrine was cited two decades later when George W. Bush invaded Iraq, inaccurately alleging it was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Shultz vocally backed the invasion, which along with ensuing wars would claim hundreds of thousands of lives.
Declaring Iraq to be a “rogue state,” Shultz stated Saddam Hussein’s overthrow was critical “for the integrity of the international system and for the effort to deal effectively with terrorism.”
While secretary of state, Shultz’s policies in the Middle East have been more moderate. He repeatedly clashed with ally Israel, specifically more than Lebanon, and opened contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Breaking orthodoxy
Shultz had served Nixon as labor secretary and also headed his Office of Management and Budget, a cabinet-level post.
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In an essay for his 100th birthday in 2020, he bemoaned the style of Donald Trump, saying that the United States, like men and women, could succeed only if other individuals trust it.
“Put simply,” he stated, “trust is the coin of the realm.”