Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2018

Photos: Jessica Ravenelle

George Shultz Reflects

Former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz ’38 paid a return visit to the Island for a question-and-answer session with Head of School Sheila Culbert in front of an all-school audience on October 27. During the 45-minute conversation, he shared stories and insights from his work with five U.S. presidents, his knowledge and opinions about issues at the forefront of current public discourse, and reflections on his time as a Loomis student 80 years ago.

In the following excerpt from the conversation, George Shultz discusses Russia’s role in the world today with an illuminating story from his experiences as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.

George Shultz: The Russians are playing a very disruptive role on the world stage right now. We are letting them get away with it, and I think we need a big stop sign because their country is playing a weak hand very powerfully, and we’ve got to call that hand.

Sheila Culbert: How do we do that?

George Shultz: I’ll tell you a story from the Cold War period. … I had come back from a trip to China that ended at Andrews Air Force Base. It was snowing. I was lucky to land. It snowed all day Friday, snowed Friday night, snowed Saturday. The Reagans were stuck in the White House. So our phone rings and Nancy says, “Would you come over and have supper with us?” So my wife and I go over to the White House, and the four of us sit around having supper, and before long the two of them, the president but Nancy also, started asking me about the Chinese leaders: “What kind of people are they?” “Do they have a sense of humor?” “Can you find their bottom line?” and so on. Then they knew I’d dealt with the Soviets earlier, so they started asking me about them. And I’m saying to myself, “This man has never had a real conversation with a big-time communist leader, and he’s dying to have one.” I had gotten permission to [meet with] Ambassador [Anatoly] Dobrynin — he was the Soviet ambassador, very accomplished guy — once a week, and the object of our meetings was to get rid of weeds — if there’s a little weed, let’s get rid of it before it becomes a problem. So I said, “Mr. President, Dobrynin is coming over next Tuesday at five o’clock. What if I bring him over here and you can talk to him?” And he said, “That’s a good idea but it’ll only take about 10 minutes. … If he’s interested in a constructive conversation, I’m ready.” … So I bring Dobrynin over, and we must have been there for at least an hour and a half. We talked about a lot of arms control things, but mostly we talked about human rights, and the president came down very hard on how the Soviet Jews were treated, and there had been some Pentecostals who had rushed into our embassy during the Carter administration. They were still there. … And [Reagan] kept saying to him, “Well, I just want something to happen.” Going back in the car to the State Department, Dobrynin and I say to ourselves, “Why don’t we make that our special project and see if we can do something about it?” So we exchanged pieces of paper back and forth, and finally I get one that I think is pretty good, and I take it over to the president. I said, “Mr. President, your lawyer would tell you [that] you could drive a truck through the holes in this memo. But I have to believe after all of our exchanges in the background of this, if we get them to leave the embassy, they’ll be allowed to go home and eventually emigrate.” So we worked on it. They did leave. They were allowed to go home. … Not only were they allowed to emigrate, all their families of 50 or 60 people [were allowed to emigrate]. It was giant. And I always felt that little incident had more meaning than people [realized]. … On the one hand [Reagan] saw he could make a deal with these people and they’d carry it out, and they saw the same thing. … So both sides learned a little trust. And I think in these kinds of dealings and any human dealings that you have, a big lesson is [that] trust is the coin of the realm. If you trust somebody, you can deal with them. If you don’t trust them, it’s hard.

After the convocation, George Shultz and his wife, Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, met with members of the Shultz Fellowship, a bi-partisan, student-led club inspired by the former secretary of state's legacy of statesmanship and diplomacy.