James Graham Wilson, America's Cold Warrior

Paul H. Nitze gave “At the Center of Decision” as the subtitle for his 1989 memoir From Hiroshima to Glasnost. James Graham Wilson's political biography of Nitze suggests that a more accurate subtitle would have been “In Proximity to the Center of Decision.” America's Cold Warrior portrays Nitze as a new breed of national security professional—a man who served in various capacities through almost the entire Cold War, from Franklin Roosevelt's presidency through Ronald Reagan's administration some four decades later. Nitze, however, is cast largely in the role of a significant supporting actor. Much to his dismay, he was never appointed to a cabinet post. A role such as secretary of state, secretary of defense, or national security adviser eluded him, despite his willingness to audition for these posts on numerous occasions. At times, he was in the room when important decisions were made, but he was never the decisive protagonist in more than 40 years of U.S. national security policy. However, as Wilson's study elucidates, it was not for want of trying to influence the direction of the story.Wilson is plowing over well-trodden territory here. In some sense, he updates David Callahan's rather lengthy 1990 study Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War. Wilson is more measured than Callahan in his assessment of Nitze. Callahan blamed Nitze for accelerating the nuclear arms race, among other failings. But perhaps Wilson's admirable effort to be careful and restrained causes him to give too little emphasis to “the clash and blend of motives, personalities, abilities, and even accidents that occur in the policy process,” as Barry Rubin describes the making of foreign policy in his Secrets of State: The State Department and the Struggle over U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. xi). For more engaging surveys of Nitze's personality and motives, one should turn to Strobe Talbott's The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace (New York: Knopf, 1988) and especially to Nicholas Thompson's insightful joint biography The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2009). Thompson is Nitze's grandson, and he provides fascinating details of the profound differences separating Nitze and Kennan from the time of their initial dispute over the development of the hydrogen bomb onward.Both Kennan and Nitze wanted to influence policy, but they approached this task in very different ways. After Kennan passed the baton of leading the State Department's Policy Planning Staff (PPS) to Nitze in late 1949, he largely withdrew from Washington and spent much of the rest of his career writing and criticizing developments from the outside. Nitze, by contrast, remained in Washington from his arrival during World War II until his death in 2004. He was a perennial “insider” determined “to precipitate action” to enhance and secure U.S. military strength (p. 5). From his observations during the war and his service on the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Nitze drew some crucial lessons, which, as Wilson demonstrates, he applied repeatedly in subsequent decades. Nitze believed that U.S. weakness had invited attack and that the United States “could not afford again to let down its guard” (p. 47). After being passed over for several high-level positions in the Truman administration, including as the first Secretary of the Air Force, Nitze came into close proximity to a key decision-maker when he served as intellectual consigliere to Secretary of State Dean Acheson. As director of the PPS, Nitze aided Acheson in the debate over moving forward with the hydrogen bomb and when he served as the principal drafter of NSC-68, focusing on Soviet capabilities rather than Soviet intentions. The report called for a major boost in defense spending, and President Harry Truman eventually approved this option as a result of the shock caused by the outbreak of the Korean War. These events were the high-water mark of Nitze's influence on policy.When shut out of a policymaking position during the Eisenhower administration, Nitze retreated to Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, which he had helped found and which provided him with a place to develop his qualifications as a nuclear arms expert. During the presidency of John F. Kennedy, Nitze initially held important mid-level positions. As a member of the so-called Executive Committee (ExComm) during the Cuban missile crisis, he favored pushing the Soviet Union hard and recommended a ground invasion of Cuba. Such advice did not endear him to the president. In the aftermath of the crisis, President Kennedy had “little use for Nitze” as the administration pursued a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR (p. 125). Under Lyndon Johnson, Nitze was decidedly outside the president's inner circle dealing with Vietnam. Nitze viewed the war as a distraction and warned that it was allowing the Soviet Union to engage in a massive arms build-up, which eliminated U.S. nuclear superiority. This perception of increasing U.S. weakness is what Nitze tried to convey when working in Richard Nixon's and Gerald Ford's administrations, but Henry Kissinger held sway during those years.Nitze hoped to obtain a high government position during Jimmy Carter's administration, but he was passed over yet again and indeed shut out of any position. As Wilson notes, Nitze was a rational man not given to demonstrative shows of emotion, but genuine anger caused him to launch a vigorous assault on the Carter administration and those appointed in his stead. He believed the United States needed a major defense build-up no matter what the cost. As the author of NSC-68, he had been instrumental in the formation of the Committee on the Present Danger in the early 1950s, and he revived it in the 1970s, proving to be a formidable critic of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) signed by Carter in June 1979. I had the chance to interview Nitze during those years for my own study of Kennan and the PPS, and my sense, based on my recollections of that interview, is that Wilson's study does not capture either the depth of contempt that Nitze held for Carter's weakness or his acute concern about the peril in which Carter's approach was placing the United States. He proved a powerful political foe for Carter, ultimately helping to block SALT II's ratification. Wilson notes but does not emphasize that Nitze ironically exercised greater influence over policy—admittedly in a negative fashion—from the outside than he had from the inside during the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations.Nitze returned to the policymaking matrix with Ronald Reagan's election. He was cast in the role of nuclear arms negotiator working under instructions from others. Of course, he “strayed right off the reservation” with his fabled but unsuccessful “walk in the woods” démarche (p. 203). Yet, his venerable age and experience allowed him to stay in the administration under the protection of Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who proved to be the decisive policy adviser in Reagan's second term. Nitze certainly assisted on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but his own committed labors to negotiate a new strategic arms agreement failed to bear fruit. In light of this, Strobe Talbott's designation of Nitze as the “master of the game” seems rather inflated, as Wilson's book reveals.Wilson suggests in his conclusion that “while Nitze saw himself as failing in most of his pursuits, his overall legacy has profoundly influenced the crafting of the policy during and after the Cold War” (p. 268). Wilson does not fully make the case for this particular Nitze accomplishment. In our present circumstances, when the United States seems overextended and its defense capabilities are underfunded, one might wish that there were more national security analysts willing to examine carefully the nexus between means and ends. Perhaps those who read Wilson's study and learn more about Nitze's ideas and actions might revive something of his approach in the troubling decades that now face the United States. Nitze devoted much of his career to outlining the resources necessary to allow the United States to execute a successful foreign policy. Whatever the limitations of his extended efforts, that task still seems an essential one. Perhaps some readers of America's Cold Warrior might be inspired to take up this important challenge

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