Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

216. Interview of Secretary of State Shultz by Don Oberdorfer of the Washington Post¹

Washington, November 7, 1984, 5:05 p.m.

MR. OBERDORFER: Sir, the reason for this interview is that some of my editors were quite interested in the speech that you made at Rand²—I didn’t cover it because I was out in California myself—and about Soviet policy, your thinking about it, where it might go, and so on. And so that is primarily what I’d like to focus on. Of course, the circumstances are slightly changed now that the election is over, and so on.³

The central question, really, many people about—

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Actually, the President seems to be going out of his way to say that the circumstances haven’t changed now that the election is over, or that he’s saying—he’s making a point that he is essentially taking the same positions that he was taking before.

QUESTION: Yes. That’s true. But, of course, he takes it from a different platform having been—

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Right.

QUESTION: re elected.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: That always impresses people.

QUESTION: The central question about the United States’ foreign policy in the next four years is, of course, about relations with the U.S.S.R.

Based on your conversations with the President and any other policymaking that there may have been in the U.S. Government, do you think that you have a mandate to negotiate with the Soviet Union in the period ahead?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Well, I think the President feels that it’s important for the country and for the world at large that he work out as constructive a relationship as is possible with the Soviet Union.

I think he’s felt that way for all along, and at least as I watch him operating, there is a sense that for the past year or so and certainly now is a time to push the negotiating and talking leg of the stools in his policy toward this subject.

You mentioned the speech that you didn’t cover, but that was an effort on my part to sort of ask myself, how has this President behaved, and how can I conceptualize what he actually seems to do, and the way he reacts to things, and in effect put forward—conceptualize the President’s policy as I saw it.

I had some discussions with him well before that speech even started getting written down in a kind of outline form along the lines of saying to him in effect. Mr. President, I know thus and so, and here are these different things you’ve done, and here’s the way it seems to add up to me. Is this sort of what you—the way you look at it?

So that’s what I was trying to do in that speech, and I would say, obviously, I agree with it, but anyway—

QUESTION: Did you go over the speech, when you finally formulated, at all with him?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: I talked about the subject, but the actual speech he had before it was given. But I didn’t—

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY SHULTZ:—go over it word for word with him. It was read carefully by the NSC before it was delivered.

QUESTION: You said that he feels that now is the time, especially to activate the negotiating side of these stools, as you put it, of his policy.

In your view, what are the areas where there seems to be the greatest likelihood of producing some negotiations, or possibly some movement, with the Russians?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: The President’s approach—and bear in mind he’s been trying to work at the negotiating side with them for quite a long while—is, as we have said many times, to try to develop all four aspects of the Soviet relationship as we see it.

That is, there are a host of issues in the field of arms control of varying types and sizes, and there are lot of tension points around the world that bear discussion. There are a myriad things in our bilateral relationships which actually have been moving along. And there are our concerns with human rights subjects, and we think that those concerns and discussion of them is legitimatized, not only inherently but by the Helsinki Accords. So we push on all those things.

What is the most promising, it’s hard to say exactly, and I think it’s a matter of trying to engage with the Soviet Union and to see what kind of a process will emerge.

It was quite apparent in the meetings between the President and Foreign Minister Gromyko that they both agreed that the most important issue is, what are you going to do about these offensive nuclear arms? So, obviously, the President would like to get engaged on that subject, but just how you do that—he made a number of proposals he has, and we’ll just have to see now.

[Omitted here is discussion concerning the Soviet Union.]

QUESTION: Concerning the big world, one of the things you spoke about in this speech, and it was much remarked on, was the limitations of the question of linkage, linking one thing with another.

Now we have the question of Nicaragua. You didn’t address it specifically in the speech, but if the Soviets were to send advanced combat aircraft to Nicaragua—as you and others have warned repeatedly would cause great consequences, or various other words—do you think that you could, nevertheless, pursue arms control talks?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: As the President said, we’ll just leave our statement about that subject where it is. We’re not going to amplify it. The thing that has struck at and got me thinking about the question of linkage—as the President has behaved, so to speak—in economics there is something called the Doctrine of Revealed Preferences. There used to be a time in economics when people thought that putting out preference maps was a way to go about analyzing economic activity. Then the question was, how do you find out what the preference map of somebody looks like, and the answer is, don’t listen to him, just observe behavior.

I’m a believer that you should listen to Presidents, but also it’s interesting to look at behavior, and it has struck me that the contrast of the Korean airliner situation and the Afghan sanctions situation was quite dramatic. I don’t mean by that to put them on the same scale, because I think invading Afghanistan was a very special event in a whole lot of ways. But President Carter did everything, as far as I can see, except break diplomatic relations, and some of the things that he did clearly were against our own interests.

In the case of the Korean airliner, the President was very concrete and realistic and unrelenting in his comments about it, and had us organize or help organize—and it wasn’t very difficult—a worldwide reaction to it. But, he sent his negotiators back to Geneva. And I tried to make this contrast in the speech.

So he didn’t say, well, they’ve shot down a Korean airliner, so we’re just going to drop everything, because some things that we had in motion and that might have had the relationship a lot further along, to be postponed—we very consciously didn’t take things off the table. We just held them in abeyance for the time being.

QUESTION: As a part, or big as they might be, the Korean airliner and the Afghanistan invasion are both a whole lot further from the shores of the United States than is Central America or the Caribbean area.

I guess my question is—not going to the facts of the case, whether or not there are MiG’s on there or not—I gather we really don’t know at this point where there are

SECRETARY SHULTZ: I think that in the Central America/Caribbean case, we have a situation in which the President believes, and the vast bulk of opinion that thinks about it at all agrees with him, that our national interests are very much engaged, and I think we have to confront that situation directly in its own terms.

QUESTION: Could you see arms control talks proceeding while we confronted them?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: I’m not going to try to speculate about that, but I do say that a subject like that, I don’t think you can—I think it’s not likely that you can say to the Soviet Union, unless you do X, Y, Z in Nicaragua, we’re not going to have arms control talks. That doesn’t seem to work out very well.

I think we have to be prepared to defend our interests in Nicaragua or in Central America and the Caribbean in their own terms.

[Omitted here is discussion concerning Central America.]

QUESTION: Yes. Here’s a question that’s not going to stun you. You probably wondered why I took so long to get around to it.

Now that the election is over, we know who’s going to be President, anyway, for the next four years. We don’t know—at least I don’t know completely—who’s going to be Secretary of State.

If the President asks you to continue on, are you willing to do so?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Well, that’s the kind of question that I’ll discuss with the President. You—we have been around the circle before.

QUESTION: He hasn’t asked you yet.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: I talked to him and congratulated him on his victory, and he was hurrying to get on to his press conference, and what-not.

QUESTION: You mean you cut out some of that press conference time?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: We’ll get around to that subject. But I can tell you this. I’m working very hard on what I think is a good agenda for the time ahead.

QUESTION: What would the main points of it be, in your mind?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: We’ve been discussing some of the issues.

QUESTION: The U.S.S.R.?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: I think that’s obviously a prime issue. There are many others.

QUESTION: Do you expect there’s going to be a great period of activity in the next, you know, first six months or year of the new Administration? Some people think that if anything is going to get done, now it’s a going to have to be—strike while the iron is hot—while he’s got his mandate. Congress is amenable, other nations are amenable to the kind of leadership role.

Do you see that as the tempo of things that is likely?

SECRETARY SHULTZ: It’s a little hard to say, but we’re certainly prepared for a stepped-up tempo. At the same time, I personally have the view that there is a tendency to misjudge what the nature of successful foreign policy is.

I’ll give an example of something that you’re a genuine expert on.

QUESTION: I can’t imagine there’s hardly anything in the world in that category.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Well, I think that the situation basically in the Asia/Pacific region has moved, and there is a process there that’s a very healthy one from our standpoint, and, for that matter, from the standpoint of the other nations in the region.

It’s not the result of frenetic activity. There isn’t any sort of big, dramatic agreement to point to, although there are a lot of things that have been worked at and negotiated about and agreed to and developed, and so.

But by the time you add up what has happened with Japan, with China, with Korea, with the ASEAN countries, Australia, and compare that, I think you see that there is a difference and there’s also a process. So it seems to me that one of the things we have to learn how to do better and better is to have the processes moving in a direction that we think is constructive in important places.

There are some subjects and some places that lend themselves to punctuating processes like that with major agreements that sort of almost take stock of what the situation is and certify it and legitimatize it, and it’s important to do that, all right. So I think they’re both aspects of this.

QUESTION: There’s a theory that it’s going to take—given the world and all the difficulties—a lot of basic executive energy on the part of this government to get things done; that the inertial forces going the other way of technology, of misunderstandings among peoples, of the complications among nations are such that for anything much to be accomplished, somebody has got to be awfully determined and spend an awful lot of time at it.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: That’s true.

QUESTION: And I guess my question is, do you think that in the early months of this new Administration with the mandate the President has now received from the voters of the United States, that is the time to make some moves—not that you haven’t been trying before—but of a more determined character to try to move some of these issues off dead center.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: Those that are on dead center, yes. There are some that aren’t on dead center, and they’re moving, no doubt, with obstacles, but are moving in good directions, and I gave one example. Another example is what we’re doing in southern Africa. So you have to keep these things moving along.

MR. HUGHES: Mr. Secretary, I’m afraid we’re at the finishing wire.

QUESTION: Okay. Well, on another day I want to ask you about how you analyze the response to your suggestion about terrorism.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: It’s a mixed bag.

QUESTION: It seems it was.

SECRETARY SHULTZ: However, there’s one thing that isn’t mixed, and that is, it got people’s attention, and that was one of the prime objects; and attention in the sense of saying what are the things that we have to face up to?

MR. OBERDORFER: Thank you, sir.

(5:52 p.m.)

1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC Agency File, Department of State (10/11/1984–12/14/1984). No classification marking. For the condensed version of the interview, see Don Oberdorfer, “Shultz Asks Soviets for ‘Concrete Deeds’ on Improving Ties,” Washington Post, November 8, 1984, pp. A1, A13.
2. See Document 209.
3. On November 6, Reagan and Bush defeated Democratic Presidential nominee Mondale and Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro to win re-election. The next morning, beginning at 9:46 a.m., the President took part in a question-and-answer session at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and answered various questions concerning domestic and foreign policy issues. For the text of the question and answer session, see Public Papers: Reagan, 1984, Book II, pp. 1802–1806.