James Baker as Secretary of State
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 Official portrait, 1991 | |
| James Baker as Secretary of State January 25, 1989 – August 25, 1992 | |
| Party | Republican |
|---|---|
| Nominated by | George H.W. Bush |
| Seat | Harry S Truman Building |
 Seal of the United States Secretary of State | |
James Baker served as the 61st United States secretary of state under George H.W. Bush. He held the position from his Senate confirmation in January 1989 until August 1992, when he left to help Bush's re-election campaign as White House Chief of Staff. In this role, he was influential in determining the administration's foreign policy. Since the death of Henry Kissinger in 2023, Baker is currently the oldest living former United States secretary of state, as well as the last surviving Secretary of State to have served in the 20th century.
As Secretary of State, Baker helped oversee U.S. foreign policy during the end of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union. He traveled extensively to negotiate political and financial support for United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 and the subsequent Gulf War. He also worked on administration prerogatives in Nicaragua and in convening the Madrid Conference of 1991
President George H. W. Bush announced Baker as his choice for Secretary of State the day after his election victory.[1] The Senate unanimously confirmed Baker on January 25, 1989.[2]
Some perspective at the time framed Baker as equal to the president, which Bush wrote in his diary was "nonsense."[3] Even so, Baker's close friendship with Bush and his status in Washington made him a powerful figure in the political landscape.[4] National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft originally deferred to Baker as the public foreign policy voice of the administration, despite longstanding institutional competition between the two positions.[3] Columnist William Safire predicted that he would define the administration's foreign policy, for better or worse.[3] As Baker's biographers Susan Glasser and Peter Baker (no relation) summarized the view:
[Baker] had an advantage that no secretary of state before him ever had. [...] No one could go around him or over his head. [Vice President Dan] Quayle and others had already tried, and Baker invariably shut them down, often by directly intervening with Bush. If Baker declared a position on behalf of America, his interlocutors knew it would stick. And if he made a promise, they knew he could deliver. For nearly four years, it was almost as if the country had a second president to send overseas to negotiate and lay down the law.[5]
Nicaragua and Iran-Contra
One of Baker's immediate priorities after his appointment was to reduce American involvement in Latin America, which had resulted in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration.[6] Baker appointed Bernard Aronson, a Contra-supporting Democrat, to be his Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.[7] Negotiating with House Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX) shortly after the election, Baker offered to stop requesting military funding for the Contra rebels, providing an off-ramp for American involvement in the conflict.[8]
Aronson and Baker reoriented their position toward humanitarian, rather than military, aid for Nicaragua. Baker took the position that the administration would not assist the Contras, at least until the results of the 1990 election, when Sandinista incumbent Daniel Ortega would seek re-election.[9] Partly as an olive branch to his Democratic partners, Baker worked with the Carter Center to ensure the election was run fairly.[10]
In March 1989, Bush signed the Bipartisan Accord on Central America, which stated that the "Executive and the Congress are united on a policy to achieve" democratization, an end to intra-American subversion, and a reduction in Soviet influence.[11] It also earmarked $4.5 million a month in humanitarian aid to the Contras through to the February 1990 election.[12]
Baker ran afoul of some Republicans who supported the Contras' armed rebellion against Ortega's Sandinista government. Senator Jesse Helms (R-SC) in particular opposed Aronson as too dovish and inexperienced.[13] Quayle's office also strongly opposed Baker's stance on Nicaragua, criticizing Aronson's appointment and providing intelligence that cast doubt on Baker's strategy.[9]
In the 1990 Nicaraguan election, the Sandinista party was defeated by Violetta Chamorro.[14] Chamorro was a relatively inexperienced consensus candidate for the anti-Sandinista UNO coalition, who successfully ran on ending the Contra-Sandinista war and American sanctions.[15] Baker himself expected that Ortega would win out, but he and the Bush administration had strongly supported Chamorro's candidacy.[16]
The Soviet Union
Baker also played a significant role in the administration's approach to the Soviet Union.[17] Bush and Reagan had met together in December 1988 with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to continue warming relations between the countries, with Gorbachev announcing that he planned to withdraw hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe.[18] Baker and Bush's immediate strategy was to "pause" détente while the Americans could reassess.[18] Despite the Pause, events in the region throughout Baker's terms required greater involvement.[19]
German Reunification
Amidst the dissolution of the USSR, Baker participated extensively in the negotiations to reunify Germany following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Baker was the first American official to enter East Berlin after the Wall's destruction in December 1989.[20] Vice President Quayle had intended to visit first, but Bush allowed Baker the honor over Quayle's objections.[21] On his trip, Baker became the first and only Secretary of State to go into East Germany beyond Berlin, where he met with the East German premier Modrow and visited St. Nicholas Church.[22] The US Ambassador to Germany in Bonn, Vernon Walters, strongly opposed the trip on the belief that it would bolster the communists, leading to Baker excluding him for the rest of German reunification negotiations.[23]
Baker, while primarily negotiating with the Soviets and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, spoke of the Two Plus Four plan for German reunification.[24] The framework, which, in September 1990, became the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, emphasized the self-determination of the two partitioned parts of the German whole, with the assent of the Four Powers countries.[24] The notion was drafted by Baker's State Department advisors, though it is disputed whether Francis Fukuyama or Dennis Ross was the prime mover.[25] The plan was mildly distrusted by Bush and Scowcroft at the time, who worried about the speed of the change and whether West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was completely on board.[26] Baker created controversy when he negotiated with Gorbachev over the eastward expansion of NATO.[27] In discussions with Gorbachev and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, per a contemporaneous memo, Baker said that:
There would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.[28]
Given that a unified Germany would naturally result in either NATO's expulsion of West Germany (which had been a member since 1955) or an eastward expansion of NATO's jurisdiction, the promise taken literally would be untenable in the context of German reunification.[29] Some in the Bush administration cautioned Baker, but Baker indicated that he had only meant that NATO would not add new members in Eastern Europe.[30] The record is conflicted on exactly what Baker meant and how what he said was understood at the time, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others, have labeled it as one of multiple instances where NATO and the US allegedly misled Russo-Soviet stakeholders into reducing their share of geopolitical power.[31]
After Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Gorbachev insisted that Baker's comments should not be taken as a broken promise.[32] He said that NATO expansion was not considered relevant during the discussions in 1989 and that "everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done."[32] Gorbachev instead dated NATO's expansion eastward to 1993 and said it did not connect to previous promises.[32] The final Two Plus Four agreement was signed in September 1990, paving the way for a unified Germany by March 1991.[33]
Soviet dissolution
Over the course of Baker's term, Soviet member states individually staged revolutions and made declarations of independence. When his tenure ended in 1992, the Soviet Union had completely shifted from one large communist state into 15 different democratic republics, with satellite states (e.g., Poland, Romania) also departing Soviet orbit through the sunset of the Warsaw Pact.
Baker visited multiple former Soviet countries and satellites during this upheaval. He made official stops in Ukraine, Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia.[34] Over his term, he visited every country that had been party to the Warsaw Pact.[35]
Throughout Baker's tenure as Secretary of State, the Soviets repeatedly attempted to suppress secessionist movements. Bush and Baker supported some of the interventions as necessary for law and order. Baker had told Shevardnadze in July 1989 that the US appreciated that the military might be needed to suppress "irrational bloodletting and national hatreds."[36] The administration therefore "completely" supported Soviet suppression of Azeri Popular Front demonstrators in Baku, as Bush told Soviet diplomat Yuri Dubinin in January 1990.[36]
The US had a stronger response to Soviet crackdowns in Lithuania, which voted for independence in March 1990. Baker warned Shevardnadze that—while the administration had restrained its criticism—should the Soviets use force, the "nuances" in its public statement would end.[37] Against Bush and Baker's wishes, more than a third of the US Senate unsuccessfully supported recognizing an independent Lithuania.[38][39] Conservative figures like William Safire, Evans & Novak, and Senator Jesse Helms all publicly criticized Bush and Baker's conciliatory approach.[39]
In April, Baker attempted to mediate the conflict, separately pressing both Shevardnadze—by threatening a proposed trade agreement and the START treaty—and Lithuanian independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis.[40] The other Baltic republics joined Lithuania in resisting Soviet occupation that summer, but Baker and Bush maintained focus on bilateral issues issues like arms reduction, German reunification, and economic revitalization.[41][42]
When the Soviet Armed Forces confronted democracy protestors in Lithuania's capital in the so-called "Vilnius Massacre," Baker warned his counterpart that the escalation could bring "consequences," but the focus on the Gulf War prevented those consequences from materializing.[43]
As the Soviet Union completely dissolved, Baker was a voice for caution in the administration. Against anti-Soviet hardliners like Cheney and Quayle, who wanted the US to expedite Soviet disintegration, Baker worried that independent states would become "another Yugoslavia."[44] Baker felt that rash action or proactive support would only help "radicals," that risk of "chaos & civil war" would increase.[44] Despite his reservations, Baker declared in December 1991—shortly after the Belovezha Accords— that "the Soviet Union as we've known it no longer exists."[45][46]
The Balkan peninsula
Baker was the first US representative to officially visit Albania, in June 1991. Approximately 300,000 Albanians evinced pro-American enthusiasm as Baker spoke in Tirana's Skanderbeg Square.[47][48] In the speech, Baker spoke in favor of Albania's post-Soviet reintegration into the world system.
With the recent reestablishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries and with my own trip here today, I say to the people of Albania: America is returning to you.[49]
On the same trip, Baker visited Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, to meet with Serb nationalist Slobodan Milosevic.[50] Three days after he departed, Croatia and Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia, plunging the country into what would become a decade of intermittent war.[51] Baker felt that even should the Balkans enter a state of war, the region bore little importance to US foreign policy interests.[52] To that point, he was quoted as saying that the US does not have "a dog in that fight."[53][54] This disposition was received by Milosevic as a correct assumption that he had a free-hand for domestic repression without intervention by the Bush administration.[52]
Ukraine
Beyond the Balkans, Baker also shaped the administration's approach to Ukrainian independence. Soviet stakeholders felt that Ukraine's departure would be especially harmful, given its size and cultural history. Despite popular nationalist sentiment among the vast majority of Ukrainians, Baker said that the administration was "nervous" about Ukrainian secession due to their productive relationship with Gorbachev.[55] Bush therefore spoke in Ukraine's capital city to denounce "those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred." The speech would be derided by columnist William Safire as the "Chicken Kiev" speech, reflecting Baker and Bush's skittish approach toward the newly fractured Soviet ecosystem.[56]
