George P. Shultz - Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy, Power, and the Victory of the American Deal

At crucial moments, at turning points,
when factors appear more or less equally
balanced, chance, individuals and their
decisions and acts, themselves not
necessarily predictableindeed, seldom
socan determine the course of history.

I SAIAH B ERLIN

On January 20, 1989, I left Washington on the five oclock flight for San Francisco to take up private life once again, combining association with Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business and several businesses where I knew and respected the management. I was tired after six and one-half tumultuous years, and I felt that memoirs could easily become self-serving. Turn over the documents to the historians, I thought, and let them write the record of foreign policy during the Reagan years.

Soon my energy returned and, as I looked into my records, I felt a renewed sense of excitement about what had happened on my watch, and a desire to set out the flow of events, the hows and the whys, as they appeared from my own angle of view. Much had been accomplished during those crucial years. The process was at times exhilarating, at times fractious, in an administration often at odds with itself. I wanted to present the reality as I experienced it, warts and all: a foray into how things happened in Washington during years that were on the hinge of history. When I started as secretary of state, the world was in turmoil, and when I left office, the cold war was over and, after a struggle lasting over four decades, the idea of free and open political and economic systems had triumphed.

And so I began what turned out to be three years of hard but fascinating work. My objective has been to produce a living history, re-creating the scene as I experienced it. I was exposed to a fire hose of information and a kaleidoscopic round of action, day after day, week after weekwith an unrelenting pressure to perform and an opportunity to make a difference. My adrenaline started to rise again but, in the telling, I could also reflect more fully on these experiences.

As I prepared to write, I found at hand an unusually rich record about a period of extraordinary importance in our countys foreign affairs: not just official papers that flowed in and out of my office, but careful notes about my meetings with key leaders and a contemporaneous, on the spot record of what went on in my office wherever I was, my readouts of meetings I attended elsewhere, and my own musings about what I thought there and then.

Presentation confronted me with the problem of capturing the flow and interplay of developments in different parts of the world at one moment in time and in one aspect of our foreign policy at different points in time. There are, unfortunately, no literary techniques to convey the simultaneity of events. Most chapters take up a subject over a defined period, simply for the sake of coherent presentation. Nevertheless, a sense of development was needed and all the connections had to be remembered. I tried to do that as I went along.

I have been blessed with an editor of extraordinary talent, Cynthia Fry Gunn. I first worked with Cynthia sixteen years ago when she edited my book Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines. She encouraged me to undertake this memoir in the first instance and has seen me through from early, tentative efforts to completion of the book. She provided challenge, debate, and sound advice on the entire manuscript in endless iterations, making extensive and essential editorial transformations, reorganizations, and critiques. I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for contributing her keen intelligence and insight, her laser-beam focus and drive for excellence, and her boundless energy to this demanding project. With unswerving dedication she held me to the highest standards and aspirations, and has kept me at it these past three years.

This book bears the imprint of Robert Stewart, who has been a source of patient support and genuine encouragement, providing helpful suggestions and allowing me the time I needed to do this job right.

I also thank a tireless and talented group that has assisted me as well. Grace Hawes has been a resourceful archivist whose capacity for detective work and organization has made my vast records readily available. Romayne Ponleithner has been a wonder at managing and typing the massive flow of drafts, keeping the flood of changes and reorganizations straight, and meticulously indexing the book. Kiron Skinner has been an unflagging provider of the public record, critic, and manager of a rotating group that relentlessly checked the manuscript for factual accuracy. Maren Leed was especially helpful in this effort. The Hoover Institution has graciously put at my disposal the necessary facilities. Phyl Whiting, Juanita Nissley, and June DeVille have helped me organize my life so that I could save the blocks of time needed for this endeavor.

Four friends have provided penetrating and constructive criticism in their reading of the entire manuscript: Ken Dam, Andrew Knight, Don Oberdorfer, and, until his sudden death, George Stigler. John Whitehead provided helpful recollections of our efforts to stimulate change in the countries of Eastern Europe. Tony Motley provided me vital information and his account of the Grenada effort. Ray Seitz, my executive assistant, who broke me in during my first two years as a new secretary of state, provided especially helpful recollections.

Charlie Hill, a senior research fellow at Stanfords Hoover Institution, served as my executive assistant for two-thirds of my time as secretary of state and was a close associate during the two years before taking up that post. With the perspective gained from his experience as a senior foreign service officer and with great ability, he took extensive notes in my office and other places where I happened to be. These notes constitute a remorselessly precise record and a vivid picture of a slice of history in the making. Charlie drew from his notes to provide invaluable and unique raw material for this book. I am deeply grateful to him, both for his critical role while I was secretary of state and for his essential work with me on this manuscript.

Many friends and associates have read parts of the draft manuscript dealing with subjects familiar to them and have given me the benefit of their reactions. I thank Mike Armacost, Harry Barnes, Jerry Bremer, Chet Crocker, the late Phil Habib, Jim Hodgson, Geoffrey Howe, Bob Kagan, Max Kampelman, Henry Kissinger, Clay McManaway, Dick Murphy, Paul Nitze, Nick Platt, Roz Ridgway, Harry Shlaudeman, Gaston Sigur, Abe Sofaer, Bill Stanton, and Jim Timbie.

In my stewardship at the State Department and in writing about those times in this book, I have been fortunate to have been surrounded by talented colleagues. I could not do without them. I thank them for being special friends and partners in what I regard as great endeavors.

G EORGE P. S HULTZ

Stanford, California

December 1992

Someone handed me a note: a George Clark from the White House was calling. I did not know any George Clark and pushed the slip of paper aside. It was Friday morning, June 25, 1982. As president of Bechtel, an engineering and construction company with global reach, I was in the midst of an important meeting in London. When my presentation was over, the call came through again. This time the note said Bill Clark was on the line. Judge William P. Clark, Jr., President Reagans California friend and now his national security adviser. I had telephoned him a week earlier to express my concerns over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the destruction of Beirut, which was now in full fury. I left the room and took the phone. The president wants to talk to you about something of great importance, he said. Can you go to the American embassy, where you can talk on a secure phone?