The New York Times obituary of George Shultz is strange. The print headline is "Statesman Who Guided U.S. Toward the End of the Cold War." The jump headline over the end of the piece is "George Shultz, 100, Who Helped End The Cold War, Dies." I would have gone with "Statesman Who Guided U.S. Toward Victory in Cold War," or "George Shultz, 100, Who Helped Win The Cold War, Dies." For whatever reason, though, the Times headline writers seem loath to admit that the U.S. won the Cold War.
This isn't just a headline problem with the obituary, either. The Times obituary says, "Mr. Shultz lived long enough to see his most lasting legacy from the Reagan years come largely undone." This is followed by a long dirge about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. But Shultz's most lasting legacy was not the INF treaty but the defeat of the Soviet Union, the freeing of the captive nations, and the emigration of Soviet Jewry. None of those legacies have come undone.
The Times obituary claims "relations with the Soviet Union were at rock bottom when Mr. Shultz became the 60th secretary of state. Moscow and Washington had not spoken for years." That's misleading. Reagan sent at least two letters to Brezhnev. In a January 1982, letter to refuseniks, Reagan wrote, "We have been in touch with Soviet officials at high levels to seek resolution of this question." On February 18, 1982, Reagan had the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, to dinner at the White House.
In May 1982, Reagan transmitted to Congress an exchange of diplomatic notes extending a fishery agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It's possible this agreement was extended without speaking but only through written communications, but the Times makes it sound like there was a total absence of U.S.-Soviet communications until George Shultz swept onto the scene and miraculously mended relations. That is nonsense.