Secretaries of State: George P. Shultz
Next month, George P. Shultz will turn 97 years of age. He is the oldest living former Secretary of State and the longest serving since the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, holding the office during most of the Reagan Presidency. He has had a remarkable career as a Marine who served in the Second World War, an economist and as a cabinet member in two other posts besides the State Department.
George Pratt Shultz was born on December 13, 1920 born in New York City, an only child. His great-grandfather was an immigrant from Germany. In 1938, Shultz graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Princeton University, with a minor in Public and International Affairs. From 1942 to 1945, Shultz was a United States Marine. He was an artillery officer, attaining the rank of captain. He was detached to the U.S. Army 81st Infantry Division during the Battle of Angaur. While serving with the Marines in Hawaii, he met military nurse lieutenant Helena Maria O'Brien. They married on February 16, 1946, and had five children.
After he returned home from the war, Shultz earned a Ph.D. in industrial economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949. From 1948 to 1957, Shultz taught in the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Sloan School of Management. He took a leave of absence in 1955 to serve on President Dwight Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers as a Senior Staff Economist. In 1957, Shultz taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business as a Professor of Industrial Relations. From 1962 to 1969, he was a Professor of Economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. While at Chicago, he came into contact with Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
Shultz's first cabinet post was as President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970. One of his first challenges was the Longshoremen's Union strike, which the previous administration had delayed with an injunction that expired. His approach was to let the parties work it out, which they soon did. When some construction unions refused to accept African-American members, he ordered them to do so, the first use of racial quotas in the federal government.
Shultz became the first director of the Office of Management and Budget (formerly known as the Bureau of the Budget) on July 1, 1970. In June of 1972 Nixon appointed him to the position of Secretary of the Treasury and he held that post until May 1974. During his tenure, Shultz personally disagreed with Nixon's "New Economic Policy," begun under Secretary John Connally. He also faced a dollar crisis that began in February 1973. He also enacted the next phase of the New Economic Policy and lifted price controls begun in 1971. This led to high inflation, and price freezes were reestablished five months later. He participated in an international monetary conference in Paris in 1973, which grew out of the 1971 decision to abolish the gold standard. This conference formally abolished the Bretton Woods system, which caused all currencies to float. During this period Shultz co-founded the "Library Group," which became the G7. Shultz resigned in May, 1974, during the Watergate Crisis and shortly before Nixon resigned the following August.
In 1974, he left government service to become executive vice president of Bechtel Group, a large engineering and services company. He was later its president and a director. Bechtel received contracts for many large construction projects including from Saudi Arabia. In the year before he left Bechtel, the company reported a 50% increase in revenue.
On July 16, 1982, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the sixtieth U.S. Secretary of State, replacing Alexander Haig, who had resigned. In the aftermath of Reagan's attempted assassination, Haig had mistakenly stated that he was "in charge", causing some embarrassment and mistrust for the former General. Shultz served as Secretary of State for six and a half years, the longest tenure since Dean Rusk. During his confirmation hearings Shultz was questioned about the possibility of a conflict of interest in his position as Secretary of State due to being in the upper management of the Bechtel Group. He briefly lost his temper in response to some of the questions on this subject but despite this, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
Shultz had personally selected most of the senior officials in the State Department, placing an emphasis on professional over political credentials. He was considered to be one of the most popular Secretaries of State by department officials and he earned the respect of not only the bureaucracy but also from his president. Whereas some presidents have micromanaged their foreign policy, Reagan delegated much more responsibility to his State Secretary.
Shultz negotiated with China over Taiwan. Under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States was obligated to assist in Taiwan's defense, which included the sale of arms. In August 1982, after months of arduous negotiations, the United States and China issued a joint communiqué on Taiwan in which the United States agreed to limit arms sales and China agreed to seek a "peaceful solution."
By the summer of 1982, relations were strained between Washington and Moscow. In response to the imposition of martial law in Poland the previous December, the Reagan administration had imposed sanctions on a pipeline between West Germany and the Soviet Union. European leaders protested these sanctions which they said damaged their interests but not U.S. interests in grain sales to the Soviet Union. Shultz resolved this issue in December 1982, when the United States agreed to abandon sanctions against the pipeline, and the Europeans agreed to adopt stricter controls on strategic trade with the Soviets.
A more controversial issue was a decision by NATO Ministers that had been made in 1979, when they decided thatif the Soviets refused to remove their SS-20 medium range ballistic missiles within four years, then the Allies would deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. When negotiations on this issue stalled, Shultz and other Western leaders worked hard to maintain allied unity while anti-nuclear demonstrations became prevalent in Europe and United States. In spite of the protests, the allies began placement of the missiles as scheduled in November 1983. This led to an increase in US-Soviet tensions, and those tensions were increased even more with the announcement in March 1983 of the Strategic Defense Initiative. On September 1, 1983, the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island. Tensions reached a height with the Able Archer 83 exercises in November 1983, during which the Soviets feared a pre-emptive American attack. Shultz and Reagan agreed that further dialogue with the Soviets was needed.
When President Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia came to power in 1985, Shultz recommended that Reagan pursue a personal dialogue with Gorbachev. In 1987, the two leaders signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty eliminated an entire class of missiles in Europe.
Shultz believed that Soviet intentions were changing under Gorbachev. The Soviet Union's initial withdrawal from Afghanistan convinced Schulz that the Brezhnev policy was no longer what the Soviets intended. During the nineteenth Communist Party Conference, Gorbachev proposed major domestic reforms such as the establishment of competitive elections with secret ballots and term limits for elected officials, as well as the separation of powers with an independent judiciary, and provisions for freedom of speech, assembly, conscience, and the press. These proposals by Gorbachev were seen as revolutionary changes.
Shulz also faced the issue of escalating violence of the Lebanese civil war, Reagan sent a Marine contingent to protect the Palestinian refugee camps and support the Lebanese Government. The October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Shultz negotiated an agreement between Israel and Lebanon and convinced Israel to begin a partial withdrawal of its troops in January 1985 despite Lebanon's contravention of the settlement. He proposed an international convention in April 1988 and an interim agreement for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to be implemented as of October for a three-year period. By December 1988, Shultz had was able to establish a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Shultz was vocal in his opposition to the "arms for hostages" scandal that would eventually become the Iran Contra situation. In a 1983 testimony before the U.S. Congress, he called the Sandinista government in Nicaragua "a cancer in our own land mass", that must be "cut out". He was also opposed to any negotiation with the government of Daniel Ortega.
Shultz left office on January 20, 1989. In retirement from the State Department, he made headlines when he became the first prominent Republican to call for the legalization of recreational drugs. He was one of a number of prominent signatories to an advertisement, published in The New York Times on June 8, 1998, entitled "We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." In 2011, he was part of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which called for a public health and harm reduction approach towards drug use.
In 1995 Shulz's wife Helena died from pancreatic cancer. In 1997, Shultz married Charlotte Mailliard Swig, a prominent San Francisco philanthropist and socialite.
Shultz was an early supporter of the presidential candidacy of George W. Bush, whose father, George H. W. Bush, had served as Reagan's vice president. In April 1998, Shultz hosted a meeting at which George W. Bush discussed his views with policy experts including Michael Boskin, John Taylor and Condoleezza Rice, who were evaluating possible Republican candidates to run for President in 2000. At the end of the meeting, the group felt they could support a Bush candidacy, and Shultz encouraged him to enter the race. He was an advisor for Bush's presidential campaign during the 2000 election, and senior member of the "Vulcans", a group of policy mentors for Bush, which also included Condoleezza Rice. Shultz has been called the father of the "Bush Doctrine". He also occasionally advised Bush and his administration during his presidency, and he was part of a January 2006 meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State, to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.
In 2003, Shultz served as co-chair (along with Warren Buffett) of California's Economic Recovery Council, an advisory group to the campaign of California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2005, Shultz spoke out against the Cuban embargo, calling the policy towards Cuba "insane". He argued that free trade would help bring down Fidel Castro's regime and said that the embargo led only to continued repression.
On 15 January 2008, Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn co-authored an opinion paper in The Wall Street Journal, that called on governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The four created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this concept. In 2010, the four were featured in the documentary film Nuclear Tipping Point, which discussed their agenda.
Shultz has come out in support of a revenue-neutral carbon tax to address the problem of global warming. In April 2013, he co-wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal which argued that "a revenue-neutral carbon tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field for energy producers." Shultz is a leader of the Climate Leadership Council, along with Henry Paulson and James Baker.
In April 2016, he was one of eight former Treasury secretaries who called on the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union ahead of the "Brexit" referendum in June.
Earlier this week Shulz was honored with an award at a ceremony on Friday on the eve of the Limmud conference for Russian-speaking Jews on the West Coast of the United States, for his efforts as Secretary of State in helping many Jews in the Soviet Union leave the country freely.
George Pratt Shultz was born on December 13, 1920 born in New York City, an only child. His great-grandfather was an immigrant from Germany. In 1938, Shultz graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Princeton University, with a minor in Public and International Affairs. From 1942 to 1945, Shultz was a United States Marine. He was an artillery officer, attaining the rank of captain. He was detached to the U.S. Army 81st Infantry Division during the Battle of Angaur. While serving with the Marines in Hawaii, he met military nurse lieutenant Helena Maria O'Brien. They married on February 16, 1946, and had five children.
After he returned home from the war, Shultz earned a Ph.D. in industrial economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949. From 1948 to 1957, Shultz taught in the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Sloan School of Management. He took a leave of absence in 1955 to serve on President Dwight Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers as a Senior Staff Economist. In 1957, Shultz taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business as a Professor of Industrial Relations. From 1962 to 1969, he was a Professor of Economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. While at Chicago, he came into contact with Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
Shultz's first cabinet post was as President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970. One of his first challenges was the Longshoremen's Union strike, which the previous administration had delayed with an injunction that expired. His approach was to let the parties work it out, which they soon did. When some construction unions refused to accept African-American members, he ordered them to do so, the first use of racial quotas in the federal government.
Shultz became the first director of the Office of Management and Budget (formerly known as the Bureau of the Budget) on July 1, 1970. In June of 1972 Nixon appointed him to the position of Secretary of the Treasury and he held that post until May 1974. During his tenure, Shultz personally disagreed with Nixon's "New Economic Policy," begun under Secretary John Connally. He also faced a dollar crisis that began in February 1973. He also enacted the next phase of the New Economic Policy and lifted price controls begun in 1971. This led to high inflation, and price freezes were reestablished five months later. He participated in an international monetary conference in Paris in 1973, which grew out of the 1971 decision to abolish the gold standard. This conference formally abolished the Bretton Woods system, which caused all currencies to float. During this period Shultz co-founded the "Library Group," which became the G7. Shultz resigned in May, 1974, during the Watergate Crisis and shortly before Nixon resigned the following August.
In 1974, he left government service to become executive vice president of Bechtel Group, a large engineering and services company. He was later its president and a director. Bechtel received contracts for many large construction projects including from Saudi Arabia. In the year before he left Bechtel, the company reported a 50% increase in revenue.
On July 16, 1982, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the sixtieth U.S. Secretary of State, replacing Alexander Haig, who had resigned. In the aftermath of Reagan's attempted assassination, Haig had mistakenly stated that he was "in charge", causing some embarrassment and mistrust for the former General. Shultz served as Secretary of State for six and a half years, the longest tenure since Dean Rusk. During his confirmation hearings Shultz was questioned about the possibility of a conflict of interest in his position as Secretary of State due to being in the upper management of the Bechtel Group. He briefly lost his temper in response to some of the questions on this subject but despite this, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
Shultz had personally selected most of the senior officials in the State Department, placing an emphasis on professional over political credentials. He was considered to be one of the most popular Secretaries of State by department officials and he earned the respect of not only the bureaucracy but also from his president. Whereas some presidents have micromanaged their foreign policy, Reagan delegated much more responsibility to his State Secretary.
Shultz negotiated with China over Taiwan. Under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States was obligated to assist in Taiwan's defense, which included the sale of arms. In August 1982, after months of arduous negotiations, the United States and China issued a joint communiqué on Taiwan in which the United States agreed to limit arms sales and China agreed to seek a "peaceful solution."
By the summer of 1982, relations were strained between Washington and Moscow. In response to the imposition of martial law in Poland the previous December, the Reagan administration had imposed sanctions on a pipeline between West Germany and the Soviet Union. European leaders protested these sanctions which they said damaged their interests but not U.S. interests in grain sales to the Soviet Union. Shultz resolved this issue in December 1982, when the United States agreed to abandon sanctions against the pipeline, and the Europeans agreed to adopt stricter controls on strategic trade with the Soviets.
A more controversial issue was a decision by NATO Ministers that had been made in 1979, when they decided thatif the Soviets refused to remove their SS-20 medium range ballistic missiles within four years, then the Allies would deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. When negotiations on this issue stalled, Shultz and other Western leaders worked hard to maintain allied unity while anti-nuclear demonstrations became prevalent in Europe and United States. In spite of the protests, the allies began placement of the missiles as scheduled in November 1983. This led to an increase in US-Soviet tensions, and those tensions were increased even more with the announcement in March 1983 of the Strategic Defense Initiative. On September 1, 1983, the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island. Tensions reached a height with the Able Archer 83 exercises in November 1983, during which the Soviets feared a pre-emptive American attack. Shultz and Reagan agreed that further dialogue with the Soviets was needed.
When President Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia came to power in 1985, Shultz recommended that Reagan pursue a personal dialogue with Gorbachev. In 1987, the two leaders signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty eliminated an entire class of missiles in Europe.
Shultz believed that Soviet intentions were changing under Gorbachev. The Soviet Union's initial withdrawal from Afghanistan convinced Schulz that the Brezhnev policy was no longer what the Soviets intended. During the nineteenth Communist Party Conference, Gorbachev proposed major domestic reforms such as the establishment of competitive elections with secret ballots and term limits for elected officials, as well as the separation of powers with an independent judiciary, and provisions for freedom of speech, assembly, conscience, and the press. These proposals by Gorbachev were seen as revolutionary changes.
Shulz also faced the issue of escalating violence of the Lebanese civil war, Reagan sent a Marine contingent to protect the Palestinian refugee camps and support the Lebanese Government. The October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Shultz negotiated an agreement between Israel and Lebanon and convinced Israel to begin a partial withdrawal of its troops in January 1985 despite Lebanon's contravention of the settlement. He proposed an international convention in April 1988 and an interim agreement for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to be implemented as of October for a three-year period. By December 1988, Shultz had was able to establish a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Shultz was vocal in his opposition to the "arms for hostages" scandal that would eventually become the Iran Contra situation. In a 1983 testimony before the U.S. Congress, he called the Sandinista government in Nicaragua "a cancer in our own land mass", that must be "cut out". He was also opposed to any negotiation with the government of Daniel Ortega.
Shultz left office on January 20, 1989. In retirement from the State Department, he made headlines when he became the first prominent Republican to call for the legalization of recreational drugs. He was one of a number of prominent signatories to an advertisement, published in The New York Times on June 8, 1998, entitled "We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." In 2011, he was part of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which called for a public health and harm reduction approach towards drug use.
In 1995 Shulz's wife Helena died from pancreatic cancer. In 1997, Shultz married Charlotte Mailliard Swig, a prominent San Francisco philanthropist and socialite.
Shultz was an early supporter of the presidential candidacy of George W. Bush, whose father, George H. W. Bush, had served as Reagan's vice president. In April 1998, Shultz hosted a meeting at which George W. Bush discussed his views with policy experts including Michael Boskin, John Taylor and Condoleezza Rice, who were evaluating possible Republican candidates to run for President in 2000. At the end of the meeting, the group felt they could support a Bush candidacy, and Shultz encouraged him to enter the race. He was an advisor for Bush's presidential campaign during the 2000 election, and senior member of the "Vulcans", a group of policy mentors for Bush, which also included Condoleezza Rice. Shultz has been called the father of the "Bush Doctrine". He also occasionally advised Bush and his administration during his presidency, and he was part of a January 2006 meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State, to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.
In 2003, Shultz served as co-chair (along with Warren Buffett) of California's Economic Recovery Council, an advisory group to the campaign of California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2005, Shultz spoke out against the Cuban embargo, calling the policy towards Cuba "insane". He argued that free trade would help bring down Fidel Castro's regime and said that the embargo led only to continued repression.
On 15 January 2008, Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn co-authored an opinion paper in The Wall Street Journal, that called on governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The four created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this concept. In 2010, the four were featured in the documentary film Nuclear Tipping Point, which discussed their agenda.
Shultz has come out in support of a revenue-neutral carbon tax to address the problem of global warming. In April 2013, he co-wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal which argued that "a revenue-neutral carbon tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field for energy producers." Shultz is a leader of the Climate Leadership Council, along with Henry Paulson and James Baker.
In April 2016, he was one of eight former Treasury secretaries who called on the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union ahead of the "Brexit" referendum in June.
Earlier this week Shulz was honored with an award at a ceremony on Friday on the eve of the Limmud conference for Russian-speaking Jews on the West Coast of the United States, for his efforts as Secretary of State in helping many Jews in the Soviet Union leave the country freely.