Hira Bahadur Thapa

Any country’s foreign policy is interchangeably linked to its economic policy. These policies need to be pursued simultaneously. One of these policies has very great impact on the other and vice versa. Both policies complement each other. Undermining one is going to be at the expense of another. Successful foreign policy necessitates strong economic foundation and vice versa.
It is in this light that the architects of foreign policy and international relations professors in the US are judging the performance of a renowned statesman and veteran Secretary of State in the Reagan era, George P. Shultz. He died as a centenarian on February 7, 2021. The high-profile former US Secretary of State is also known for “Shultz Doctrine” as laid out in his historic 1984 speech vis-à-vis US-Soviet relations. According to historian Gail Yoshitani, Shultz said: “Only if the Soviet leaders see the West as determined to modernise its forces will they see an incentive to negotiate agreements”.

Enviable stints
He was amazingly active as an academician until recently. His October 2020 interview to The New York Times is an evidence of this. During his long career in government job, Shultz had enviable stints first as Treasury Secretary in Nixon administration in the early 1970s and later he served for six years and a half as Secretary of State during Reagan presidency in the 1980s
In 1985 President Reagan as a strategic visionary and negotiator articulated the usefulness of Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a massive research and engineering programme to create a space-based missile shield. Shultz was initially skeptical of the SDI though later he won president’s trust as an aide who shared Reagan’s belief in “Peace Through Strength”. This policy was based on the conviction that formidable willingness to use force, if necessary, bolstered the American hands at the negotiating table with the Soviets and made diplomatic solutions possible.
Academically, George Shultz, a graduate of Princeton University has had a brilliant resume having earned his doctorate in Industrial Relations from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who also went on to become the Dean of Chicago University’s School of Business in the 1960s before he took up the high-profile post of the Treasury Secretary under the Nixon administration.
As a man of principle never willing to give up his tenacity to serve the nation with utmost sincerity, he even opposed his boss Richard M. Nixon, when asked to manipulate his departmental prerogatives as desired by the president to undermine his opponent in the Democratic Party. Suffice it to say that Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 amidst a controversy due to his secret wiretapping of Democratic Party Convention better known as Watergate Scandal.
Shultz believed that power and diplomacy are not alternatives, they must go together. His economic statecraft also helped transform the US-Japanese relationship from an economic rivalry to a strategic partnership and the cornerstone of the US posture in the Asia Pacific region that it remains to this day. This brought immediate strategic benefits.
Under Prime Minister Yashuhiro Nakasone, Japan tripled its defense spending, deepened its military cooperation with the US, and substantially increased pressure on the Soviet Union in its vulnerable Far East. In the words of Michael J. Green, contributor to the Foreign Policy and renowned Asia hand, “Shultz was the most effective US Secretary of State on Asia and the Pacific in the history of the Republic.” Shultz was a skilled negotiator with friends and foes alike. He combined empathy with the ability to see the other side’s viewpoint with tenacity in pressing his own position. Sometimes that tenacity was tested during difficult negotiations with the Soviets.
Paul Nitz used to be Shultz’s chief adviser on arms control issues and hence he had the chance to accompany the Secretary of State whenever negotiations were held with his counterpart, who was then the veteran Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, who had the distinction of being his country’s longest serving Soviet ambassador to the US. Shultz’s adviser recalls one such meeting with the Soviet team led by Gromyko, when the scheduled time for bilateral negotiations was three hours. During that meeting as recounted by Paul Nitz, Gromyko spoke for almost three hours in which he criticised the US policy.
Once Gromyko wrapped up consuming almost all the scheduled time, Shultz took the floor and to Soviets dismay began to go through his points one by one, very leisurely, accurately, precisely as if he had no hurry to finish his presentation. As a result of this, the meeting lasted for six hours. Shultz himself recalled that he was determined to go through every scrap of paper Nitz had with him and sit there until Gromyko broke. This displays his determination to display toughness, if required.

Diplomacy
Another noteworthy tenet of Shultz diplomacy was his rejection of the concept of linkage in US-Soviet relations. Pioneered by Nixon and Kissinger, and continued under President Jimmy Carter, linkage conditioned progress in one area on Soviet actions in another. For example, Nixon and Kissinger tied US concessions on arms control to Soviet concessions on Vietnam and the Middle East. At the time, it was a sensible way to negotiate but by the time Shultz took office (July 1982), the Kremlin had become adept at using the linkage to hold the US policy priorities hostage.
The credit of transforming the Soviet Union and creating the congenial conditions for dismantling the iron curtain and the Berlin Wall goes to George Shultz. His perception of Soviet Union’s fragility and backed by his recognition of Gorbachev’s commitment to reform helped to achieve the world’s transformation with the Cold War’s end.

(Thapa was Foreign Policy advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008-09. thapahira17@gmail.com)