American Secretaries of State: James A. Baker, III

Appointed by President George H. W. Bush, James Baker served from January 22, 1989 to August 23, 1992. Mr. Baker was interviewed for the American Secretaries of State Project in March 2012 when he was also presented with PON’s Great Negotiator Award. As part of his remarks, he conveyed the importance of information control and streamlined management for achieving negotiation success, saying that “the most important thing for a Secretary of State, in terms of whether he or she can be effective, is the relationship with their president…nobody was going to get between me and my president.” During a 1990 Camp David meeting with President Bush and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Baker helped establish a foundation of trust that was critical to persuading a recently reunified Germany to enter NATO, despite deep Soviet misgivings.