George P. Shultz - Later Life

Later Life

George Shultz left office on January 20, 1989, but continues to be a strategist for the Republican Party. He was an advisor for George W. Bush's presidential campaign during the 2000 election, and senior member of the so-called "Vulcans", a group of policy mentors for Bush which also included Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice. One of his most senior advisors and confidants is former ambassador Charles Hill, who holds dual positions at the Hoover Institution and Yale University. Shultz has been called the father of the "Bush Doctrine", because of his advocacy of preventive war. He generally defends the Bush administration's foreign policy.

After leaving public office in 1989, Shultz became the first prominent Republican to call for the legalization of recreational drugs. He went on to add his signature to an advertisement, published in The New York Times on June 8, 1998, entitled "We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." In 2011, he was part of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which called for a public health and harm reduction approach towards drug use, alongside with other luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Paul Volcker, and George Papandreou.

In April 1998, Shultz hosted a meeting at which George W. Bush discussed his views with policy experts including Michael Boskin, John Taylor and Condoleezza Rice, who were evaluating possible Republican candidates to run for President in 2000. At the end of the meeting, the group felt they could support a Bush candidacy, and Shultz encouraged him to enter the race.

He also has spoken against the Cuban embargo, calling the policy towards Cuba "insane". He has argued that free trade would help bring down Fidel Castro's regime and that the embargo only helps justify the continued repression in the island.

In August 2003, Shultz was named co-chair (along with Warren Buffett) of California's Economic Recovery Council, an advisory group to the campaign of California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State, to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.

On January 15, 2008, Shultz co-authored an opinion paper published in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Toward a Nuclear-Free World". His co-authors were William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn.

Shultz is the chairman of JPMorgan Chase's International Advisory Council and an honorary director of the Institute for International Economics. He is a member of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors, the New Atlantic Initiative, the prestigious Mandalay Camp at the Bohemian Grove, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and the Committee on the Present Danger. He is honorary chairman of The Israel Democracy Institute (www.idi.org.il). Shultz formerly served on the board of directors for the Bechtel Corporation, Charles Schwab Corporation, and was a member of the board of directors of Gilead Sciences from January 1996 to December 2005. He is currently a co-chairman of the North American Forum and also serves on the board for Accretive Health.