On July 16, 1982 Shultz was sworn in as the 60th Secretary of State of the United States in the Reagan [[administration]]. He worked to resolve conflicts in the [[Middle East]] and route out international [[terrorism]]. In terms of dealing with the [[Cold War]], he supported Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). At the [[Reykjavík Summit]], [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] proposed on October 11, 1986 a plan toward multilateral nuclear disarmament that included a halt to SDI but Reagan rejected this condition and thus the proposal in its entirety. Shultz gave Reagan his full support on this decision.<ref>http://www.turmoilandtriumph.org/coldwar/reykjavik_summit.php</ref>
After Reagan's presidency, Shultz became a professor at [[Stanford University]]'s Hoover Institute and Graduate School of Business. In an interview in a 2001 interview about the summit, he was asked: "Peter Robinson: Da. George, was an historic opportunity squandered, we'll put in the passive to include both Gorbachev and Reagan? George Shultz: He didn't say nyet, he said no. Peter Robinson: … and you backed him up. George Shultz: Absolutely."<ref>http://www.hoover.org/research/crack-ice-legacy-reykjavik-summit</ref> Shultz would later talk and write about the [[paradox]] of nuclear deterrence, obviously rejecting unilateral disarmament, but lamenting the short period of time that a President has to make decisions about [[nuclear war]]. On January 15, 2008, an article entitled "Toward a Nuclear-Free World" by Shultz and [[William Perry]], [[Henry Kissinger]] and [[Sam Nunn]] was published in the [[Wall Street Journal]].<ref>https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120036422673589947</ref> On May 11, 2009, he spoke at the Stanford Memorial Church at the center of the campus quadrangle, where he emphasized the importance of "living in the future" in relation to [[multilateral nuclear disarmament|ridding the world of all nuclear weapons]].<ref>https://rathbun.stanford.edu/honorable-george-p-shultz</ref> In that talk, Shultz mention the November 9, 1979 NORAD computer error where national security adviser [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] awoken and notified that 250 ballistic missiles were incoming for the United States. Brzezinski demanded verification before waking President Carter and the error was soon diagnosed in a faulty $1 computer chip.<ref>http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/Close%20Calls%20with%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdf</ref>. Shultz also mentioned the September 26, 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident that was delayed by Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov until resolved.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter021099b.htm</ref> He also mentioned the January 25, 1995 Norwegian rocket incident where Russian President Boris Yeltsin became the first world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase after Russian radar systems detected the launch of a Norwegian Black Brant XII research rocket before the matter was resolved.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter031598a.htm</ref>
==Selected books==