George Shultz on Economics, Human Rights and the Fall of the Soviet Union

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2007

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

George Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of economics in his career, the tension between morality and pragmatism in foreign policy, and the role of personalities and economics in diplomacy, particularly in US/Soviet relations in the 1980s.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Before I introduce this week's guest, George Schultz, I wanted to
0:41.2	thank all of you out there who are listening for your support and help in spreading the word
0:45.1	about e-contalk. And I appreciate all of your suggestions and feedback. The volume of mail
0:50.4	sometimes means I can't get back to all of you personally, but I read every email and
0:54.7	please keep in touch. Let me know what you're thinking, your ideas, your reactions, mailadicontalk.org
1:02.8	is our address. One topic I'd like to hear about from you in particular is the stuff we put
1:07.5	up at the website at econtalk.org, the additional readings and the podcast highlights. Are those
1:12.7	helpful to you? Do you use them? All these features are costly, so I'd love to know if you find them
1:18.5	helpful and useful. Interviewing George Schultz was very stimulating. He was on his way out of town,
1:23.6	so the interview is a little shorter than usual. So I thought I'd introduce it with some thoughts
1:27.7	about the role of leadership in history. It's really a classic question. Do people change history
1:34.1	or do various forces lead to particular leaders being almost inevitable and their actions and views?
1:40.9	At the heart of my conversation with Schultz is the fall of the Soviet Union. Was that fall the
1:45.2	result of the unique leadership skills of Schultz, Reagan, Gorbachev and others? Are there broader
1:50.3	economic and political forces explained that fall? Certainly both play a role. But as I spoke to
1:55.6	Schultz, I thought of a recent column by David Brooks at the New York Times about George Bush's
1:59.7	view of leadership. Here's what Brooks had to say about Bush's view. Quote, he's convinced leaders
2:06.0	have the power to change societies, even in a place as chaotic as a rack. Good leadership makes
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