George Shultz

George Shultz while serving as Secretary of State

George Pratt Shultz (* 13. December 1920 in New York City ; † 6. February 2021 in Stanford , California ) was an American politician of the Republican Party . From 1969 to 1970 he was Minister of Labor and from 1972 to 1974 Treasury Secretary in the government of President Richard Nixon and from 1982 to 1989 Secretary of State in the government of President Ronald Reagan .

Studies and professional career

Shultz received 1,942 his Bachelor Accounts in Economics at Princeton University and served from 1942 until 1945 States United Marine Corps , where he was an artillery officer, and the rank of Captain ( captain reached). In 1949 he received his doctorate in industrial management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) . Shultz taught at MIT from 1948 to 1957, with intermittent hiatus from 1955 to 1956 when he was a senior staff economist on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers . In 1955 he became a professor at MIT. In 1957 Shultz moved to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business as a professor of industrial relations. From 1959 to 1960 he was a consultant in the US State Department . In 1962 he became dean of the University of Chicago. From 1961 to 1972 Shultz was a member of the company's personnel policy committee.

Political career

Minister of Labor and Finance under Nixon

From 1969 to 1970 he was Minister of Labor in the Nixon cabinet before becoming director of the Office of Management and Budget . From May 1972 to May 1974 he was then Minister of Finance. In 1974 he left the government and became director of the Bechtel Group . Shultz had been its president since January. President Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the panel of non-government economists.

Secretary of State under Reagan and withdrawal from politics

George Shultz (left) with Eduard Shevardnadze , 1987

On July 16, 1982, he was appointed by Reagan as the successor to the resigned predecessor Alexander Haig as 60th US Secretary of State. As a dove in foreign policy he met frequently with the hawks of the Reagan administration together. In particular, he was known for his outspoken opposition to the "guns for hostages" incident that later became known as the Iran-Contra affair .

In the Middle East, he called on Israel and its Arab neighbors to adopt the Reagan Plan in October 1982. After the suicide attack on the American-French-Italian peacekeeping force (MNF) with 241 dead US soldiers and 58 dead French paratroopers in October 1983, he presented a Lebanon agreement that provided for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon . In June 1985 he reached a non-military solution to the hostage affair in Lebanon.

Shultz was a leading proponent of a US invasion of Nicaragua . In 1983 he said to the US Congress : "We have to cut out Nicaraguan cancer." He repeatedly stressed the US intention to prevent Nicaragua from "exporting the revolution to its neighboring countries". He also disagreed with any negotiation with Daniel Ortega's Nicaraguan government . "Negotiations are a euphemism when the shadow of power does not fall on the negotiating table."

Efforts to limit arms and the start of new disarmament talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in March 1985 were pursued by Shultz together with his Soviet partner Eduard Shevardnadze and led to the dismantling of medium-range nuclear missiles in 1987 .

Shultz left the State Department at the end of Reagan's tenure on January 20, 1989 to become a professor at Stanford University in California , but remained a Republican Party strategist . He was an advisor to George W. Bush in the 2000 election campaign. Shultz did not support Donald Trump's presidential candidacy in 2016.

Honors and memberships

George Shultz with his successors Rex Tillerson and Condoleezza Rice at the Hoover Institution in Stanford (2018)

In 1970 Shultz was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1992 to the American Philosophical Society . On January 19, 1989, Shultz received the Freedom Medal . In 1992 he received the "Seoul Peace Prize". In 2001 he was awarded the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and in 2008 the Rumford Prize .

Shultz was a member of the Hoover Institution , the American Enterprise Institute , the New Atlantic Initiative , which was dissolved in 2005 , the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq", the "Committee against the Current Peril," and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy . He has also served on the boards of Bechtel Corporation , Gilead Sciences, and Charles Schwab Corporation .

literature

• Robert F. Gorman: George P. Shultz. In: Edward S. Mihalkanin (Ed.): American Statesmen: Secretaries of State from John Jay to Colin Powell . Greenwood Publishing 2004, ISBN 978-0-313-30828-4 , pp. 472-477.

Web links

Commons : George P. Shultz  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• George Shultz in the nndb (English)
• George P. Shultz (1972-1974). In: University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs . February 23, 2017(English). 
• George P. Shultz: Op Chart; A record of recovery. In: The New York Times . August 4, 2004 (in response to a New York Times economic report on the terms of office of George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tim Weiner: George P. Shultz, Influential Cabinet Official Under Nixon and Reagan, Dies at 100. In: The New York Times , February 7, 2021. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
2. ↑ Former US Secretary of State George P. Shultz is dead. In: tagesschau.de. February 8, 2021, accessed February 8, 2021 . 
3. ↑ Member History: George P. Shultz. American Philosophical Society, accessed February 8, 2019 .