Former US Secretary of State, George Shultz died over the weekend, aged 100.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed him as Secretary of State, a post in which he exhibited exceptional diplomatic skills during the cold war with Russia. Shultz was particularly concerned about escalating nuclear war tensions.

His approach to diplomacy can be gleaned from an address he gave to Stanford University where he served as a senior professor for many years.

“In an age of nuclear weapons, maintaining collective security is no easy task. We must both defend freedom and preserve peace. We must seek to advance those moral values to which this nation and its allies are deeply committed. And we must do so in a nuclear age in which a global war would thoroughly destroy those values.”

Shultz was one of the best US senior government officials, serving three presidents, holding several Cabinet posts during his illustrious career. Over four decades he served in the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury, Labor and State Department.

Some place George Shultz as America’s greatest policymaker taking a scholastic approach to the task at hand. He lived by his phase, “Trust is the coin of the realm”.

Born on December 13, 1920, in New York City, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton in 1942 before joining the Marine Corps and going off to fight in the Pacific during World War II.

He had a long association with Stanford University which goes back to 1968 eventually becoming a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor Emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Shultz worked at Stanford right up to his death.

In 1989, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Of Shultz’s passing, President Joe Biden said: “I regret that as President, I will not be able to benefit from his wisdom, as have so many of my predecessors.”

The current Secretary of State Antony Blinken said of the former top American diplomat, whose mantra was ‘defend freedom and preserve peace’: “Every Secretary of State who came after George Shultz has studied him – his work, his judgment, his intellect. I know I have.”

Another former renowned Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice who also has an association with Stanford University, serving as Director of the Hoover Institution, said of her colleague and fellow Republican: “Our colleague was a great American statesman and a true patriot in every sense of the word. He will be remembered in history as a man who made the world a better place.”

In December 2020, Shultz wrote an article in the Washington Post, titled “The 10 Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Trust Over 100 Years.”

It was insightful and proved instructive for anyone looking to live a productive and honourable life.

In it, Shultz wrote: “December 13 marks my turning 100 years younger. I’ve learned much over that time, but looking back, I’m struck that there is one lesson I learned early and then relearned over and over: Trust is the coin of the realm. When trust was in the room, whatever room that was – the family room, the schoolroom, the locker room, the office room, the government room or the military room – good things happened. When trust was not in the room, good things did not happen. Everything else is details.”