“I worried a lot about terrorism,” Mr. Shultz told me, “and I didn’t think we had an adequate strategy.” So in that 1984 speech, the next sentence says this: “The question posed by terrorism involves our intelligence capability, the doctrine under which we would employ force, and most important of all our public’s attitude toward this challenge.”
Shultz was the first A-level pol to talk straight (1984) about confronting terrorism. Here he is interviewed by Daniel Henninger - ranging over a number of topics, from retired-general complaints to the Cold War.
“I don’t know how you define ‘neoconservatism,’ ” he replied, “but I think it’s associated with trying to spread open political systems and democracy. I recall President Reagan’s Westminster speech in 1982–that communism would be consigned to ‘the ash heap of history’ and that freedom was the path ahead. And what happened? Between 1980 and 1990, the number of countries that were classified as ‘free’ or ‘mostly free’ increased by about 50%. Open political and economic systems have been gaining ground and there’s a good reason for it. They work better. I don’t know whether that’s neoconservative or what it is, but I think it’s what has been happening. I’m for it.”
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