The Missing Element

Welcome to Shield of the Republic a podcast sponsored by The Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. I’m dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Liptman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. A Bullework contributor, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center.

And my co host in all things strategic, Elliot Cohen, The Roberti Osgood professor of Strategy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in the early Berkshire in Strategy at the center for strategic and international studies, and a practicing magician. Elliott, our listeners, noted that when you spoke about it, and I think by popular demand, we may have to have you and John McLaughlin do a show for us on magic.

Well, I think that would be a great idea. I can guarantee that, you know, when you do this as a podcast, they just can’t see how you do it. Eric, I’m looking forward to this session about a book about somebody for whom you worked. I know who’s one of your heroes. So I’m actually planning on asking pointed questions, not only of our guests, but of you as well.

Though you’re forewarned.

Forewarned is forearmed. I’m ready to take whatever outrageous spheres and arrows you chuck my way. Our guests is Philip Taubman, a consulting professor at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation. But before he joined CSAC, Bill was a reporter and editor for The New York Times for some thirty years and I suppose fold this closure requires me to say that when he was serving as the New York Times Moscow correspondent, he and I overlapped while I served at the US embassy in Moscow. To welcome the shield of the republic.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Well, as I mentioned when we were in the green room before we got started, reading your book, a cave and a bit of a bout of PTSD in me having lived through so much of what you wrote about, tell us a bit about how you came to be George Schultz’s biographer and if you could, let our listeners know what you think this biography brings to the burgeoning literature now based on real historical sources of the Reagan administration. So

the origins of the book go all the way back to the days when I was covering George Schultz’s secretary of state, I was reporter in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times at that point in covering mostly defense intelligence issues, but got drawn into diplomatic coverage, took some travels with him, including a trip around the world, And then later when I was posted to Moscow by The Times, I had advantage point to cover his efforts along with president Reagan’s during the time that Mikhail Gorbachev was Soviet leader at least for the first three years of corporative leadership. The relationship, you know, was a professional reporter public official relationship, and it sort of drifted off after he left the job of secretary of state and I went off and did other things at the times. It rekindle when I required from the times in two thousand and eight and set up shop at Stanford to write books. And the first book I decided to do is a book about the effort of George Schultz Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and Bill Perry. To abolish nuclear weapons, which seemed a surprising effort on the part of all four of them at the time, at least as I began work on that project.

And as I was working on that book, I hadn’t finished it yet. Schultz came to me one day and asked me if I’d be interested in doing his biography. And there was no biography. Mine is really the first, which is kind of surprising when you think about it, given historic role that he played in winding down the Cold War and to, you know, motivate me, I guess, He said I’ll give you exclusive access to my papers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. And so I dipped into those papers while I was still working on the other book, and I found a lot of valuable material there.

Including an amazing diary that had been kept by his first executive assistant as secretary of state Raymond Sites. So when the time came that I finished the nuclear book, I went back to him, and I said, I’d be very interested in doing your biography But I think we we have to have a clear understanding about the nature of the book I’m gonna do. And the way I put it to him, I said, George, it’s your life, but it’s my book. And I have to have complete editorial control over it. He immediately agreed.

And frankly, you know, over the ten years, roughly, that it took me to complete the book. He never once tried to get me to revise the book in a way to reflect what he thought was a more favorable account of his role as secretary of state or in any other part of his life. So I think you asked about the historiography here you know, I think with the benefit of things like the Ray sites diary and the benefit of declassified materials, and the benefit of many interviews that I conducted with colleagues of Schultz’s and Reagan’s, I think one can begin to distill a sense of core events and dynamics in the Reagan administration that may have been a little obscure, I think, until the last five to ten years. And I think what you would find in my book that illuminates that point. I think most specifically is a sense of the vital really indispensable role that Schultz played as Reagan’s partner in windy down the Cold War and dealing with the Kremlin.

I think the book also in an argument you may disagree with a bit having been at ringside yourself is my sense that Reagan was struggling in his first term to execute the diplomatic dimension of of his policy to deal with the Soviet Union and that it it really took George Schultz to show Reagan a path forward diplomatically that would take advantage of the things that Reagan had done to put the Kremlin on the defense of in his first term.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, there’s a lot of discussion in the book about Reagan’s rhetoric, the belligerence of some of that rhetoric, both in the campaign in nineteen eighty, and then in the early years of of the Reagan presidency. I I mean, I I don’t think you fall into the trap that a lot of people do thinking in particular of our colleague at Johns Hopkins, Jim Mann who wrote a book about the difference between the first and second Reagan terms I don’t think it’s as stark as Jim painted on on the evidence of your own book. It from the outset, from what we know now from his diary. Reagan was intent on negotiating with the Soviets and and had a strong streak of nuclear ambolitionism in in him, but was beset by difficult divisions inside his own administration.

But would you how would you characterize his view of containment? I mean, to me, it seems like one that is pretty much in Continence with George Kennon’s argument in nineteen forty seven in the in the mister x article that containment applied judiciously against the Soviet Union’s expansionism would ultimately lead to, as Cannon said, either the breakup or the mellowing of of Soviet power. Do you see Reagan as diverging from that in some fundamental way? Well,

what I see is I think that the Canon doctrine of containment was modified over time. I I agree with your description of it. But as the cold war played out, different strategies were tried by different presidents in the larger effort to sustain a policy of containment. Daytona, for example, was a modification that stressed the potential convergence of the anxieties the possibility of reaching agreements that seem to accept as a given that the Soviet Union would be there forever. And I think when Reagan came in, certainly Reagan and and many of the aids around him believed in trying to confront the Soviet Union in a way that I

don’t

think one could say some of his predecessors had done as directly. And he did that. There’s no doubt, and I think my book goes into detail on this. You know, he was used a lot of belligerent rhetoric invested with the ascent of Congress, Democrats, and Republicans billions and billions of dollars in building up America’s defenses. He approved and and advocated the strategic defense initiative which while at least in my view, and I think a lot the view of a lot of people at the time was technologically unrealistic, had the advantage of adding to the sense of the Kremlin that the United States was advancing in ways that it might not be able to match.

So he did all those things. But as I as I say in the book, it really took Schultz to provide the diplomacy to execute on the steps that he had taken. And and you alluded yourself to the in fight I mean, you know, it’s just incredible how much opposition Schultz faced in trying to take basic diplomatic steps with the Kremlin. The people around the president seem to be implacably opposed to almost every diplomatic initiative that at least short start might be successful at the time. Howard Bauchner: So I think, yes, Reagan, was consistent with Kennen in some ways, but I think he also went a step beyond Kennen in some senses.

With the kind of hostile confrontation approach that he took at the outset of his presidency.

So I’d I’d like to push back on both of you. Eric, I don’t think Reagan’s understanding of containment was anything like Kennen’s, you know, Kennen was appalled at the idea of a military dimension of containment. And it was actually a much more passive kind of construction. Reagan and that, you know, we I I’ll recall our session with Will in Bolton. I think Will is right that Reagan did have this vision putting pressure on Russia on the Soviet Union and negotiating with it to be sure, but only after it was, as Phil said, really on the back foot.

And he was willing to press. Now, Phil, I’m not so sure I agree with you either because it seems to me, you know, for example, you quote, national security decision directive seventy five, which a lot of people talk about, which is the one where they’re talking about over time containing an over time reversing Soviet expansionism. Well, given when this was taking place, you know, after the Russian occupation of Afghanistan that’s not entirely unreasonable competing with them militarily again after given where the United States was in the nineteen seventies, not unreasonable to promote within the narrow limits available to us the process of change in the Soviet Union. I think it’s an understanding of limits, but something that’s not unreasonable to press. And then it says to engage the Soviet Union in negotiations who attempt to reach agreements which protect and enhance US interests.

Well, that’s kind of the job of the president. Now, I mean, obviously, the word fights in the Reagan administration as there always are. And people like Dick Pipes, who’s an old professor of mine, who’s probably a lot harder on the Soviet Union than than perhaps Schultz was. But I guess the point that I would make is from Reagan’s point of view, this all kind of fit together. That is to say, he had a vision of putting the Russians on the back foot as as you said, you know, one part of it which the book doesn’t really go into is a very active promotion of insurgency in Afghanistan against the Russians.

And then when the time came, he you know, there would be negotiations, and he was always some extent open to that. But I, you know, I I hate to say it, but in some ways, this makes me think more and more highly of Reagan as having been able to you know, while while everybody thinks that he’s kind of out of touch and unable and is, you know, to some extent, that the mercy of his subordinates he actually got what he wanted, which makes me think that maybe he wasn’t the puppet.

Well, you know, my estimation of Reagan changed considerably in the process of doing the book, you know, I ended up thinking much more favorably about him as I did the book than I felt when I began the book, but I do think that the missing element in the Reagan strategy and I’m not sure it was as clearly thought out by Reagan as the belligerent kind of language he was using and the military build up that he was investing in, I think was a diplomatic part of it. And once Schultz came in as secretary of state, he tried repeatedly to get diplomatic overtures going with the Kremlin beyond the stalled arms control negotiations, which were kind of static at at that point. And it it was a fortuitous combination as I described in the book of a Blizzard and Nancy Reagan that kind of was the breakthrough to get some kind of discussion started early on, this would have been, you know, under and drop off. But, you know, that was an amazing moment retrospectively when you look back on it where Nancy Reagan anxious that her husband was being wrongly depicted as a warmonger saw Schultz as an ally in trying to develop a more positive legacy for her husband.

And then she took advantage of this blizzard that paralyzed Washington in February of eighty three to invite the Schultz’s over for dinner. And it was that night at the private quarters of the White House that that Schultz’s really got his first full sense of what Reagan wanted to do and that it included diplomacy. And even because of that dinner, the first constructive, you know, granted very minimal bit of diplomacy began, which was the effort to to get the pentecostals who’d been hold up in the American embassy in Moscow. Freed so that they could go out onto the street and not get arrested and then would be allowed to emigrate. But

isn’t the really the the only real opening for diplomacy would come when once you had Gorbachev? Well, sure. There wasn’t really room for a serious diplomatic initiative when, you know, you had this or deteriorating AGP veteran in the shape of Andropa for the, you know, the other superannuated leaders who were all one by one dying in office. They were not really going to be in a position to to negotiate anything worth worth negotiating. So doesn’t all of this really hit I mean, I’m and I I I no mean no way mean to diminish George Schultz’s role, but you know, is it it’s the arrival of Gorbachev that makes a really big difference.

And Reagan deciding, yeah, as did, Maggie Thatcher, this is somebody we can do business with.

Right. Well, look, you know, we’ll never know what might or might not have happened with Andropa and Shrernanko. You’re quite right. They were they were dying as they took office and and they were gone, you know, in a matter of months in both cases. But the reality is if you look at it just within the context of the American side, an effort to even see what was plausible and possible with with these kind of elderly Soviet leaders was was kind of stopped before it ever could get started because of opposition around Schultz in the in the administration.

And And I would say it. I think it’s an important point that Schultz was really, you know, I think, clear buoyant in understanding when he met with Gorbachev at Chernobyl’s funeral in nineteen eighty five in Moscow that Gorbachev was a game changer. In the Kremlin. And I think Reagan picked up on that when he got to Geneva for the first summit. But Schultz was the advocate of that against a a tidal wave of internal material coming out of the CIA and the Reagan administration saying that Korpichov was just a fresh face on that old policy.

Yeah. I wanna dig in a little bit more on the White House side of this film. But before I do, I wanna, you know, defend my honor, which my cohost is like computing here. With regard to Canon. I think one has to distinguish by the way between the containment strategy as articulated by Canon in the x article, which was then picked up on by lots of people, as Phil said, in different permutations and combinations.

And what Ken and himself later made of it. In, you know, in the in the end of the day, you’re right. I mean, he he claimed retroactively that he had no intention of suggesting that containment should be a military doctrine, but it’s purely just a political diplomatic doctrine. But that’s not the way The article actually reads nor did most people who read it, take it that way and the language is pretty clear. Contain the Soviets until the either break Soviet power or it mellows.

I mean, that, you know, remains what was in the X article. Well,

we we we should be we should be talking to our our guests, but since you fired a shot back, I’ll fire another one back to you, which is it seems to me that thing that’s distinctive about Regan is the aggressiveness. Now, you know, whereas Kennen thought if you hold the ring around the Russian the Soviets, the internal dynamics of the regime would bring it at some point to either mellowing or the point of collapse, and there was some merit to that. What was distinctive about Reagan was the intensely competitive approach, which was shaped by people like Pipes who I think does deserve a lot of credit for that, which he followed on. And I very much take the point that Schultz early on detected that Gorbachev was indeed a a different kind of character. And I think that’s interesting.

It’s both him and and Thatcher. Who picked up on that much more quickly than the rest of the U. S. Government did. But I think there was a kind of willingness to really lean forward and really press, which I don’t think was really envisioned in the original containment policy.

No, I would go further and say that one of the things that’s distinctive about the Reagan approach and it’s enshrined in both NSC thirty two and seventy five is the notion of competing with the Russians on a variety of of different levels, including particularly economic, where Reagan thought we had a huge comparative advantage, but also contesting their gains in the third world, which had been a place where you know, American efforts that they taught earlier as Bill was talking about had had founded because of Soviet aggressiveness in the third world during the Carter. Hurt years. Phil, on the White House side of this, so, you know, you were talking about the people trying to restrain bolts. And again, I think you do a masterful job using Rae’s diaries of outlining just how frustrating and consistent, you know, a lot of the this bureaucratic and fighting was But in the White House, there there were divided councils. I mean, you talk about the role that missus Reagan played in that dinner, but well beyond the dinner.

There was also Jim Baker and Mike Deiver, who clearly had a different view than Ed Meese, who was the senior counselor and longtime Regan Aid. Even in the NSC itself, Judge Clark had one view and Dick Pipes out of view, But but McFarlane’s view was, you know, quite different, and McFarlane worked on and off with Schultz sometimes at cross purposes with Schultz. But frequently in sympathy with schulz. I mean, it it was not kind of a unified White House against George Schultz. It was, you know, a kind of mixed bag of shifting alliances.

And then, you know, you did have the cap wine burger phenomenon, which we we should come back to because that’s it’s really a fascinating relationship I’d like to come back to.

So let me elaborate on it a little bit because I think, yes, there were allies. Jim Baker certainly is Chief of Staff, Mike Deavor, Deputy Chief Chief of Staff. And and Deavor, of course, was was very close to Nancy Reagan. And

he controlled the schedule.

Yeah. He controlled the schedule.

But the preponderance of heavyweights in the national security circle around Reagan. We’re not in agreement with Schultz. You’ve got Weinberger. Don’t forget, Bill Casey. CIA who had a seat at the table in those days.

Gene Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador who was at least nominally a cabinet member in the Reagan administration. So, you know, a lot of the heavyweights were were in opposition to to what he wanted to do. And I think one of the things that I found so striking that’s in sites to IRIE. And I understand that, you know, some of what sites is recounting is is George Schulte Venteen at the end of the day. He comes back from meetings of one kind or another at defense or the White House, and he’s deeply frustrated.

And events. But even if you discount for that, you see the number of times that Schultz made an effort to get a diplomatic track going, and it gets swatted down in one way or the other. And it to go back, I think one of the most dramatic instances of that to me was I alluded earlier to the post Blizzard dinner diplomacy to try to get the Pentecostals re out of the Soviet Union Bill Clark, the National Security Advisor, was quite aggravated by the idea that kind of came up in this dinner at the White House between Schultz and Reagan that the Soviet ambassador, DeBreen, and she’d come over to the White House. Reagan hadn’t met to bring in yet other than going over to the Soviet embassy to sign a a condolence book about Brezhnev when Brezhnev died. And so Schultz with Reagan’s agreement takes to bring it over to the White House and they meet in the family quarters and The meeting which was supposed to last ten or fifteen minutes goes on for ninety minutes.

And it turns out that Reagan’s really interested in engaging with the Soviet ambassador. And out of that discussion comes this pentecostal diplomacy. So within a few days of this meeting, I think it was Bud McFarlane describing the added Bill Clark’s attitude about this pentecostal diplomacy and the meeting between Reagan and Sabrina says to the deputy secretary of state at the time, says, you know, the only reason that Reagan said those things to to Schultz at dinner was he wanted to appease his wife, Nancy. So to me, you know, that was that was a really kind of back alley way of trying to undermine Schultz. I mean, you know, to believe at that point that Reagan was just trying to appease his wife, I don’t buy that.

Yeah. Although, I mean, in essentials, had the last laugh because Nancy ended up pushing a Bill Clark out.

He did. And indeed, Clark was pushed out, I think largely through the back maneuvering of Nancy Reagan. But it just shows you, I cite that example just to show the degree to which some of the folks around Reagan were trying to block Shoals. You

know, I I I have to say, as I think back on my memories of this period that’s quite a while ago. Everybody was appalled at the nefarious influence of Nancy Reagan, you know, consulting astrologers, you know, sort of not a clue about any kind of policy, let alone foreign policy, let alone arms control, you know, and now she’s a hero or heroine. It’s been a maybe it’s just the, you know, the odd quirks of of history. But it’s, you know, I mean, this is the way it goes back to an earlier comment that Eric made that it is interesting that we’re only now getting real histories of the Reagan administration and that we’re just gonna I’m sure we’re going to go through several cycles of evaluations and reassessments of some of the key personalities. Howard

Bauchner: Yeah, I want to pick up on something that Phil said about Schultz’s venting. I I mentioned when we were in the green room that Rae would have these sessions with Schultz after the end of the day and going through what every business they needed to go through and then getting Schultz’s sense of what had happened and meetings at the White House that Ray might not have been privy to a lot of times there late day phone calls coming in while they’re meeting, including from the first lady and from the president and Clark and other other principles. But the the venting was real. And and and so everything you described is very accurate. But as someone who was living in the middle of this as George Schultz’s special assistant and who was getting briefed that the next morning by Ray about not everything that was in the diary, but but a lot of what was in the diary in terms of Judge Clark and Weinberger and this and that, it didn’t feel quite as beleaguered as the end of day venting might make it sound because Schultz was very, very busy doing bunches of other things, you know.

Getting the extraterritorial sanctions on the Yamal pipeline that had been one of the issues that precipitated Al Higgs resignation resolved without blowing up the NATO alliance in order to facilitate the deployment of the intermediate range nuclear forces that was part of the dual track decision inherited by the Reagan administration, ultimately leads to the INF Treaty. Actually helping negotiate at Williamsburg at the summit in the spring of eighty three, a joint statement among the g seven leaders that welcomes the actual deployment. Now, Phil, you you tell a very true story about what happened, which was a whole bunch of stuff about Nicaragua blows up at that point, including the effort to mine the rivers and Nicaragua and ports and all of that. But at the same time, he was doing these other things that he was succeeding at doing that were also important. So as I as I mentioned, it it, you know, a lot of times felt like a rugby scrum, but Schultz, you know, said to us that he particularly admired one of the assistant secretaries who would go in and, you know, get involved in the rugby scrum fight for what he could, make allies with whoever’s an ally that day and maybe different allies the next day, but dust himself off every day and go back into battle.

And my sense at the time when he said that was that was very much how he perceived himself as, you know, going back into battle and fighting with them on this. Although, it was obviously Enervating to continue to run into all these fights and did precipitate as you document, several efforts to use the leverage he knew he had after Al. Hague’s secretary ship blew up and and Hague was fired actually by Reagan, but had threatened to resign repeatedly. The Reagan audits knew that it would be very, very bad for the president, particularly before an election. In nineteen eighty four if Schultz were to resign.

So he he knew how to leverage that. I’d be interested in your your your view of that. But also the to go back to the Schultz Weinberger relationship, which is really fascinating. I remember early on in his tenure, secretary Schultz was asked whether he thought he could get along with secretary Weinberger because Weinberger and Hague had famously been kind of at each other’s throats in the first year and a half of the Reagan administration. And Schultz said with Mala Sephora thought, oh, absolutely, I can get along with Cap.

He’s worked for me before — Yeah. — because he had he had been Schultz’s deputy at OMB, and he had been the General Counsel for Bechtel and Schulz was the president. And Schulz, I think genuinely thought that he had a chance to build a a better relationship with Weinberger than Hague had. And I I can attest to the fact as your book documents he was very hastily disabused of that notion. But the the Schultz Weinberger relationship just seems to take on such a aura of personal animosity.

And I’m just wondering, you know, after all your research is what you made of that.

So first to go back to your observation about, you know, Schultz’s sort of sticking it out and having some successes, even in Reagan’s first term. You know, when you look back at Schultz, people ask me what were the characteristics character traits that defined him and accounted for his success. And I think two of them were very, very conspicuous in that first term patients and persistence. He just stuck it out. He he put together resignation threats a number of times.

Either pulled back from them or Reagan wouldn’t accept them. And but, you know, he he was a man of uncommon patience, I would say. And he he kind of waited out his opponents in some senses and and then history broke in his direction in the second term you know, in in large part because Gorbertshoof appeared in Moscow and and made possible things that might not have been possible in the first term. On the Schultz Weinberger relationship, it’s a fascinating dynamic and I think it goes to a larger point about the force and personality plays and shaping history, which is often underestimated, I think, And this is a classic example of two men who for reasons I think I don’t completely understand

were

had a very unfriendly relationship in some ways during the Reagan administration. You you cited some of the factors that might have led to a degree of resentment. I think on Weinberger’s part, he always seemed to be the person with the less prestigious job, whether it was in the Nixon Administration or at Bechtel. Even at their respective camps at the Bohemian Grove in the summer. Schultz was at the more prestigious camp than than Weinberger.

And this somehow carried over, you know, into the Reagan administration. Colin Powell, who I interviewed about all of this. He said he understood it completely. You know, it was basically, you know, George was the boss through the years. And then suddenly, they show up together in Washington and Weinberger is in a position of equal power to Schultz essentially.

And he’s no longer subordinate. And he seemed to enjoy exercising his authority in ways that that aggravated. Schultz, you know, there’s a there’s a moment at the beginning of of the Schultz’s term as secretary that that frankly amazed me. There was gonna be a weekly or or regular breakfast at least between Schultz and Weinberger. And it’s just within a matter of weeks of Schultz becoming secretary of state, he goes over to the defense department.

They have breakfast. They get into an argument over whether m one tanks should be sold to Saudi Arabia. Schultz opposes that Weinberger favors that Weinberger at least according to Schultz goes into a long kind of argument in favor of the sale. At that point, you know, Schultz looks at wine burger and says cap, everything you just said was incomprehensible. You know?

It was like, whoa. You know, the secretary of date is talking to the secretary of defense about that, you know, like three weeks into his secretary shift. So there was a bristling hostility between the the played out in ways that were probably constructive at times because they gave Reagan, you know, opposing views on various issues. But I think at other times it was destructive. Howard Bauchner:

They had some interesting principle disagreements. I think the one that is actually quite significant as you think about American attitudes towards the use of force. You don’t really talk about it that much in this book. But Weinberger articulates his I think there were six principles for the use of force, which were, you know, clearly a reaction to Vietnam. And which would would be extraordinarily restrictive and in many ways completely unrealistic.

And Schultz response in a speech. And then, actually, I think they kinda have one more exchange of speeches. They’re never on a podium together to talk about this. But it is conducted at a pretty high level. I mean, they are both trying to articulate approaches that make sense for United States that has recovered from Vietnam in some ways, but in other ways, still bears all the scars.

So I think that, you know, I I give them both credit for engaging at at that level as well as the, you know, personal pushing and shoving of two alpha males.

Yeah.

Look, there was no question. It was high end policy disputes that animated their relationship. But there was something going on beyond that affected the relationship. And you’re you’re right. They were often on opposite sides on the use of force with the secretary of state advocating the use of force and the secretary of defense opposing it.

Schultz told me a number of times that the worst day of his life was the day of the truck bombing of the marine barracks and in Lebanon, in eighty three, I was the one who woke him up in the middle of the night to tell him about He felt terrible because he was himself a former marine but also because he had been the primary advocate of putting the Marines into Lebanon on the ground, and Weinberger had opposed that. And then you could see that argument reappear because of the terrorist strikes in Lebanon during that period where Schultz was pressing hard for retaliatory military strike against the terrorist in Lebanon and in Syria, and Weinberger was deeply opposed to that. So it was both policy conflict of a high order and personal animosity of a high order, I would say. Wanted to ask you about Schultz in the

Nixon Administration. But maybe we can we can do that now or discuss it later. What do you say, Eric?

Well, you know, my question actually goes to that. So why don’t I ask my question and and Phil can answer both? One of the relationships that’s really fascinating here and because you’ve written another book about as you mentioned about Henry and Jordan George Schultz and Samnan and Bill Perry’s effort to follow-up, Ronald Reagan’s nuclear abolitionism, if you will. Is the relationship between kissinger and Schultz, which, of course, begins in the Knicks administration. But it’s really quite you know, phenomenal because you document here.

I mean, as Henry I’m saying this advisably as Henry approaches his hundredth birthday, George having died shortly after his at multiple points in the next administration before he gets into the Reagan administration. At the end of the Reagan administration, when they have the summit in New York City with Gorbachev, Kissinger is either privately undermining Schultz or directly publicly criticizing it. You you note that the New York summit and kissinger’s criticism and I think it was the Washington Post, if I recall correctly, ends up eliciting a, you know, a kind of awfish letter from George complaining about the the public criticism. Yet out of office, they end up becoming very close colleagues, including on the four horsemen op ed that you’ve written a book about, but also on multiple other issues where they wrote joint op eds together and kissinger ends up saying there’s no American I would more, one would trust the fate of the nation to than George Schultz, how do you explain that relationship? And and maybe you can talk about Schultz and the Knicks administration at the same Yeah.

That’s fascinating relationship. And I think, you know, the the way it ended up in their latter years as a as a close seemingly close friendship in many ways and an alliance of sorts on the nuclear weapons issue I think that that’s attributable to a charitable streak on in George Schultz. Who was willing to forgive Henry for the sniping that went on during the Reagan years. So if you back up, to the Nixon administration. You know, they were they were allies in a way at that point, although in in different spheres clearly.

Schultz was not much involved in foreign policy in the Nixon Administration and kissinger was at the center of it. But towards the end of the Nixon administration as the president was getting engulfed by Watergate and drinking heavily and seemingly to act increasingly erratically, Schultz and Kissinger would get together periodically to talk to make sure that the government wasn’t running off the rails as the mix of administration was essentially disintegrating. Then you fast forward to the Reagan years and and kissinger was doubtful about Schultz’s qualifications to be secretary of state thinking that she’ll lack the necessary background in foreign affairs and arms control issues and dealing

Certainly not as qualified as Henry.

Right. Yeah, nobody, of course, is as well qualified as Henry, which in some ways is literally true. But, you know, he he let the White House know that he didn’t think that Schultz would be a a good candidate to be secretary of state, which by the way Nixon agreed with at the time. So Reagan goes ahead and brings them into replace, hey, and then once Regan and Schultz began to do business with Gorbachev. Henry was writing columns in those days and he kept sniping at at the at the effort to work out deals with Gorbachev.

And and you mentioned at one point till Scott really hot under the collar about column that kissinger had written and wrote back a rather Kurt letter complaining about the sniping that was coming from kissinger. So throughout the Reagan administration, there was, you could not describe them as friends, certainly not in terms of their public communication. But once out of office, I think, George saw advantages in in the friending kissinger and vice versa. And then, clearly, there were mutual benefits to be had starting with Schultz’s effort to bring together a group to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and he’s he thought rightly so that if I can get Henry Kissinger to sign up for this, it will give our effort a huge boost and and and indeed it did. Although I think kissinger’s commitment to that cause was probably less kind of heartfelt and Schultz’s.

Yeah. So I the question I wanted to ask you about the Nixon Years that I I found one of the really fascinating parts of book come quite early on where it’s towards the end of the Nixon Administration, then here’s George Schultz who is by all accounts an upright man, somewhat of real integrity. And I think that was, you know, part of what attracted people like my friend, Eric Edelman, to him. And yet, he’s working for a guy who Ultimately, he knows is the one unprincipled and devious. And he decides to stay on, but he knows that maybe he should quit.

And and the way you describe it in the book, you you quote Arthur Burns’ Journal in which he to Schultz’s very sad, man. And then I think Burns says, Schultz is tired, but I think he likes being secretary too much to give it up. And and, you know, I think that it’s a particularly interesting moment because Nixon was a much better character than Trump, Lord knows. But, you know, we’ve had another presidency recently where you have good people wrestling with, you know, working in very, very high office for somebody who they know is unprincipled and devious and possibly criminal. You know, I I hadn’t really occurred to me that Schultz went through his own travails.

And I wonder if you could chair anything with that. Did he reflect on that later in life. Do you think he regretted any of the choices that he made? Just curious to know how he processed

all that. It’s a good question. So the example I’ll just describe it very briefly that brings us to the fore is Nixon’s effort to weaponize the IRS against his opponents. Schultz being treasury secretary at the time is, you know, supervising the IRS. It reports to him.

And after Schultz and the IRS commissioner, Johnny Walters, rebuffed an effort from the White House delivered by John Dean, the White House Council to weaponize the IRS against a a long list of Nixon’s enemies. They did they blocked that, but then the White House came back subsequently and said, we want you to we want the IRS to examine the tax returns of Larry O’Brien the head of the Democratic National Committee, and Schultz succeeded to that. And Johnny Walters, the IRS commissioner, later look back on that and criticize Schultz said he was disappointed that Schultz let that go forward. John Ehrlichman at the White House sort of browbeat the Schultz into doing this. And it was a a moment where I think Schultz did not live up to his own ideals or or values.

And when I confronted him with all of this during, you know, research for the biography, he at first didn’t wanna hear about it. He seemed stricken when I brought it up. And eventually, you know, we got into a conversation about it. And the counterargument the defense he he made at the time was that you know, Nixon had done many good things as president. He had tried to defend Larry O’Brien, when it was clear after the IRS investigation that O’Brien hadn’t done anything wrong, and in fact, the IRS cleared O’Brien.

And then Vis à vis Nixon, his argument was essentially, you know, if I had left someone else would have come in who would not have stood up against these kind of efforts by Nixon. So that’s, you know, that’s an argument you hear in Washington when very senior officials are serving under presidents that they have come to realize you know, are engaged in unethical or even criminal conduct. And and I think George regretted that effort with O’Brien. And the other thing I would attribute that to was a a sense of loyalty on Fultz’s part that, you know, when he signs up to serve, but the president goes to the title of the book in the nation’s service, he really felt an obligation of patriotic duty to serve. But in that case, I think he stayed on too long.

You know, with Nixon, he resigned only two or three months before Nixon did. So

I wonder if I could get you to comment on two things because we’re running out of time, and I want to go ahead and give Elliott the kind of the last word. But one, George Schultz says negotiator. What what your sense I mean, this is someone who was a labor economist, had been secretary of labor, had been involved in any number of labor management negotiations. So he might not have a lot of foreign affairs experience when he becomes secretary of state, but he got a lot of negotiating experience that’s pretty relevant. And my sense of him was that he was actually a damn good negotiator.

I mean, you you recount in the book the very fraught session he had with underground André Gormico, the Soviet foreign minister, after the shutdown of k a l, double o, seven in Madrid meeting was in Madrid. Shoot down was over over Sakhalin or a little after that, I guess, over Russian territory. But one of the things that struck me about that meeting was which I don’t think is captured in in any of the interviews or the documents that you were able to look at is what Schultz told us afterwards, which was he told Gamico that he’d been instructed by Reagan that the only thing I could talk about was the the shoot down and to get the Russians to own up to it and apologize and make restitution for the families that have been killed, etcetera. And Gramico got very angry. As you say, it was probably one of the most contentious confrontational meetings between an American secretary of state and a Soviet foreign minister.

The history of Cold War. But the thing that Schulz told us it was interesting was that Grubicom went to the door to walk out. And looked back because and it was clear to Schultz that he was looking back, expecting Schultz to come out of his chair and come get Grameco and keep him from walking out. But that Schultz just sat there, kinda Buddha like, until Grameka realized that Schultz wasn’t gonna come after him. And that Schultz was content to let him walk out the door.

At which point, he came back and sat down and they continued to have an exchange of unpleasantries for another. Hour or so. But I’d be interested in your sense of Schultz’s negotiator based on on the work you did for the book. And then The other thing that struck me about Schultz is that subordinate, bearing in mind the cliche that no man is a hero to his valet. I mean, I I always used to say that George Schultz was the, you know, living exception to the rule because really I think all is former special assistance.

I’d him and we were the ones carrying his bags on those trips. Schultz’s really got more out of the career foreign service than any secretary I saw during my thirty years in government. And it wasn’t because as kissinger and Nixon and others believed, that he would become the captive of the state department. I mean, you have many instances in the book where he basically tells people get with a, you know, get with the program or or leave, the president makes foreign policy and we get to execute it. You know, we get to advise him, but he’s the one who calls the shots.

If you don’t like it, he he really imposed Reagan’s agenda in some ways on the foreign service, but also used that subject matter expertise I think the great advantage. So could you comment on those two observations? Am I wrong? Or

No. No. I think you’re quite right. You know, Schultz had a formula for negotiations that grew out of his time as a labor economist and someone trying to help the captains of industry and labor union leaders to resolve disputes and avoid strikes or settle strikes. And the formula was very simple.

It was essentially if if you if you if people come together and argue over principle, they’ll never get to agreement. But if they if you bring them together to solve a problem, they’ll solve the problem. And I think he saw he applied that rule to diplomacy. And I think you can see it once he had a interlocutor in Edward Chevernazzi, the Soviet foreign minister under under Gorbachev, that’s exactly what they did over and over again was to sort of disaggregate the the ideological and political dimensions of the relationship, set them aside and tackle the problems inherent in the relationship. And, you know, that came up ultimately, you know, in resolving the many crisis over the arrest of McDaniel off.

The US News correspondent in Moscow, which, you know, I think had enough been for those two men in in their seats at that time that crisis might have extended a lot longer and probably there never would have been a Rayquevac summit that came out of that dispute. And out of Rayquevac ultimately came. The INF agreements are not, you know, in Rayquevac, but later. So I think you know, George had a real kind of gift for sort of taking the passion out of issues and trying to look at the substance of them and figure out how where common ground could be found. I think, you know, the the the phrase that I would use above all others to describe George Schultz is a pragmatic problem solver.

You know, you can see that across his career, really. So

let me ask one last question. He passed away, and if I remember correctly, February of twenty twenty one, my impression is that he was really quite sharp to the to the very end was paying attention to public affairs. You you

know,

you described him as a pragmatic problems. However, it was clearly in a very deep patriot. I’m curious, what’s your take on how he understood the political turmoil of the last years of his life. Trump administration. This is no.

Whatever Trump is, that’s not the Republican Party of George Schultz even though I don’t think he was really willing to go, you know, go out there and denounce him very sharply in public. What what what was his view? I mean, he you know, one of the last dates been probably the last dates been of that generation, which had, you know, fought in World War two and been through all that?

Well, he privately, he was deeply unsettled by the Trump presidency, and it sort of crept up on him. He could tell during the twenty the twenty sixteen campaign that that Trump was steering the Republican Party off in a kind of dark direction. But he was reluctant to say anything publicly. He finally did issue a joint statement with Henry Kissinger on the Friday evening of Labor Day weekend in twenty six team, which is as you Washington — Washingtonians know is probably that you put out a press release on the Friday of a holiday weekend is gonna get zero coverage and attention. And in fact, that’s exactly what happened.

But they did say in their joint statement that they not they wouldn’t vote for neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump, which, you know, considering that they were too diehard Republicans, was was an important statement for them to make. And they did say that whomever was elected, however they would be glad to assist after the election. And then as the Trump presidency played out, he became increasingly disturbed by what he saw. I I did a joint appearance with him at the Olympic club in San Francisco one day at lunch. This was midway through the Trump presidency, I think, and George pulled from his pocket to answer a question.

A speech that Ronald Reagan had given his president extolling the the importance of immigration in American history. It’s a stern speech. You know, if you go back and look at it, it was it was an eloquent defense of immigration as as a phenomenon that has reenergize the United States over and over again over the decades. So he was certainly disturbed by Trump’s immigration policies, and he became increasingly, I think, unsettled over foreign policy management And although, you know, the disarray in the Trump administration over foreign policy was was acute too as it had been in Reagan, but and Reagan, it was all within the bounds of what we would consider normal debate about policy issues in the Reagan administration. It was kind of out of bounds often with crazy stuff going on, you know, the president either condoning or seeming to ignore.

So, you know, by the time George died, he he was unable really cognitively to to speak up much anymore about these issues. But I can tell you having had private conversations with him he was appalled at the Trump presidency.

We could go on for hours literally talking about George Schultz. Who as Elliott said at the outset is one of my heroes. Our guest has been Bill Taubman, the author of In The Nation Service a life in times of George P. Schultz, the first really fooled biography, the fur the only biography I believe of one of America’s greatest twentieth century. Statesman.

Phil, thanks for joining us on Shield of the Republic.

It’s been a great fun. Thank

you.