[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992-1993, Book II)]
[August 13, 1992]
[Pages 1350-1352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1350]]


Letter Accepting the Resignation of James A. Baker III as Secretary of 
State
August 13, 1992

Dear Jim:
    With this letter, I accept with deep appreciation your decision to 
resign as Secretary of State effective August 23, 1992; and I look 
forward, with great pleasure, to your joining me at the White House as 
Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to the President.
    Your service as Secretary of State has been superb. You have brought 
to foreign policy-making a rare combination of personal characteristics: 
substantive command, political sophistication, extraordinary negotiating 
skills, tireless dedication, personal integrity, and consistent grace. 
Applying these distinctive characteristics in yet one more public policy 
domain, you have again excelled.
    With your outstanding leadership at State, Eastern Europe has been 
liberated. Germany has been peacefully and democratically unified, 
within NATO. The Soviet empire has disbanded; the captive nations have 
regained their independence; and Russia is becoming a democratic nation, 
seeking to transform itself into a market economy. You have successfully 
concluded negotiations that make the risk of super-power nuclear 
conflict a thing of the past. At the same time, you have turned U.S. 
strategy toward the new post-Cold War era by establishing a framework 
for continued U.S. engagement in Europe; and by advancing the global 
effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
    In addition, you deserve special credit for leading our successful 
negotiating efforts to stabilize areas of regional conflict: first, 
gaining international support for free elections in Nicaragua and a 
peace accord for El Salvador; second, organizing a U.N. coalition that 
effectively stopped and reversed Iraqi aggression in Kuwait; and 
finally, getting Arabs and Israelis to sit down together--in order that 
a stable Mideast peace might be won in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
    The record is of genuinely historic proportions. I can well 
understand your reluctance to resign as Secretary of State.
    Foreign policy will continue to demand vigilant and creative 
attention in the post-Cold War period and the team there at the 
Department of State under Acting Secretary Larry Eagleburger, working 
closely with the White House as you have done so well, is well qualified 
to handle any and all challenges. But America will not be able to 
fulfill her historic mission at home or abroad if our domestic 
leadership and performance are not strong and secure.
    To help assure that America enjoys both domestic strength and 
security, I have asked you to join me in the White House. As a former 
Chief of Staff and Treasury Secretary, you bring extraordinary skills 
and experience to the policy challenges that lie immediately before us. 
It is imperative that we define appropriate new policies for a changing 
domestic environment--just as we have done for a radically transformed 
international environment. In so doing, we must attend to the 
connections between domestic and foreign policy, and between economic 
and security policy. At the same time, we must develop and implement 
more effective strategies for advancing our policies through the U.S. 
Congress.
    For all of this, you are uniquely well-suited. I am profoundly 
grateful that you have agreed to yet another challenge of service. We 
have been friends and colleagues for a very long time. So again let me 
say: I appreciate your willingness to change assignments, and look 
forward to our working even more closely together.
    Barbara and I know how difficult the demands of travel have been for 
you, Susan, Mary Bonner and the rest of the family. If there is any 
consolation in this new challenge, it may be that, although I will still 
call upon you in foreign policy, you will not have to travel so much in 
this new job!

[[Page 1351]]

    Sincerely,

                                                             George Bush

                    
Dear Mr. President:
    It is with pride and a sense of accomplishment that I submit my 
resignation to you as Secretary of State effective August 23. It is also 
with a sense of gratitude to you, Mr. President. Gratitude because you 
have placed great trust and confidence in me and do so again by asking 
me to work with you to build a safe, strong America at home and abroad. 
Gratitude, also, because you gave me the high honor of serving you to 
shape American foreign policy during a period of extraordinary and 
revolutionary change.
    I have little doubt that when we look back on these last three years 
and seven months, we'll understand we've lived through a fundamental 
watershed in world politics. In this short period of time the strategic 
verities of the post-World War II era were shattered. The Cold War 
ended. The division of Europe was undone. The Soviet empire collapsed, 
and the Soviet Union dissolved.
    Changing those verities created new hopes and new possibilities--and 
what was unthinkable before became achievable through very active and 
dynamic diplomacy that you mandated. Germany was unified in NATO, 
something we were told at the time was impossible. Central America has 
been transformed through a policy based on free elections and peaceful 
reconciliation of long-standing differences. A peaceful settlement has 
been developed for Cambodia. Iraqi aggression was defeated in Kuwait 
with an unprecedented coalition that would never have been possible in 
the bipolar world of the past. And, in the aftermath, in defeating Iraq 
and rescuing Kuwait, it became possible to break the historical taboo 
and produce Arab and Palestinian partners to talk peace with Israel.
    Nothing was inevitable, and managing these historic transformations 
both to create new possibilities and to ensure a peaceful transition to 
a new, vastly safer world required very active American leadership. You 
provided it, Mr. President.
    Working with Presidents Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and others, we managed to 
help shape a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and empire; to 
ensure there would be no new nuclear states emerging from the breakup of 
the USSR; to assure that tactical nuclear weapons would not fall into 
dangerous hands; and to negotiate ground-breaking START and CFE 
agreements that drastically reduce both nuclear and conventional arms.
    On top of this, Mr. President, we were able to conclude the most 
far-reaching understanding on strategic arms reduction in history at 
your June Summit with President Yeltsin. We came into office with the US 
having 13,000 strategic nuclear arms and the Soviets about 11,000. Your 
agreement with President Yeltsin means we will slash those levels by 
over 75 percent by the year 2003. In addition, we will eliminate all 
MIRVed ICBMs, the most destabilizing strategic weapons.
    There is still much to be done and new international challenges to 
deal with. The tragedy that is unfolding in the former Yugoslavia is a 
reminder of one of the new dangers in the world caused by the explosive 
mix of extremist nationalism and ethnicity in politics. As you have led 
the way in ending the Cold War, so too we must lead in building a new 
peace, developing the collective means to defuse these kinds of 
conflicts before they begin; contain those where they can't be defused; 
and employ peacekeepers and monitors to preserve ceasefires and ensure 
conditions for peacemaking. That's a tall order, and it will require 
American leadership. But it will be necessary if we are to mobilize the 
coalitions that can be useful and effective in dealing with a challenge 
we and others are sure to face in the years ahead.
    Active American leadership will also be necessary as we continue our 
efforts to stop and undo the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and 
biological weapons and the missiles that might deliver them. This will 
increasingly dominate the arms control agenda of the 1990's.
    Of course, we will also have to continue accelerating our efforts to 
promote free markets and free trade and facilitate the

[[Page 1352]]

work of American businesses and investors overseas. Free markets and 
free trade do not simply reflect our values, they promote our economic 
growth and well-being. The more we open markets to our goods and 
services internationally, the more we will expand economically and 
generate good jobs domestically. NAFTA can be a model for the future.
    I look forward to supporting your efforts to more strongly integrate 
domestic and foreign policy and to build our strength here at home. Mr. 
President, we have been friends for 35 years, and I have always known 
you to finish the jobs you've begun. Work remains to be done and I look 
forward to helping you complete the job you started.
    Sincerely,

                                                      James A. Baker III

                    Note: These letters were made available by the 
                        Office of the Press Secretary but were not 
                        issued as White House press releases.