IN MEMORIAM: Paul H. Nitze, 1907-2004
Srodes, James
IN MEMORIAM JAMES SRODES Paul H. Nitze 1907-2004 N THE OP-ED PAGE of the October 28, 1999 edition of the New York Times, Paul H. Nitze, then 92, stirred up the foreign policy beehive by...
...To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security...
...In Kennan's 1947 article in Foreign Affairs, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which he signed as "X," he saw the Communist economic paradox as ultimately stymieing Stalin's aggressiveness...
...More liberal folk stress Nitze's famous but ill-fated "walk inthe woods" with a Soviet counterpart in 1982 when the two powers came close to a mutual renunciation of nuclear weapons...
...PEDANT'S NOTE AT THIS POINT...
...Something more aggressive would be required over an indefinite period...
...Well, I was hissed when I walked into the dining room at the Metropolitan Club yesterday," he chuckled...
...The death of Paul Nitze this past autumn at the age of 97 has touched off a struggle for possession of his legacy...
...Nitze added, "Our aim in applying force must be to compel the acceptance of terms consistent with our objectives, and our capabilities for the application of force should, therefore, within the limits of what we can sustain over the long pull, be congruent to the range of tasks which we may encounter...
...I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us...
...All one has to do is substitute the phrase "radical Islam" and its arguments still resonate...
...A few days after that, I asked Paul what the reaction had been to the piece...
...Nitze believed in surgical strikes but he also hated incompetence when force was finally used...
...Nitze knew better from the start...
...Paul Nitze could have had an even more glamorous career in public life—tony ambassadorships and first row seats in the cabinets of the eight presidents he served...
...The proteges who are contesting for his legacy are a poor substitute...
...The Nitze-Kennan divide over the American foreign policy to combat Stalin's attempts to seize colonies in Eastern Europe are all the more relevant today...
...In April 1950, after the Soviet explosion of its atomic bomb but before the North Korean invasion of the south, Nitze and his policy planning staff at the State Department produced the landmark document NSC 68, "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security...
...Shades of John Kerry's promise to call a summit of our estranged European allies, "and to sit down with them and say, what's it going to take...
...The truth is Josef Stalin was the architect of the Cold War...
...HAT MADE NSC 68 so CONTROVERSIAL among Soviet apologists at the time was Nitze's assertion that taking no action was not an option...
...In later years Kennan went to great pains to say he never meant "containment" to mean military opposition...
...He and his Kremlin strategists were well aware of the structural fault-line in their Socialist paradise: to maintain the total control of their populace, Stalin's regime needed to provide the Russian people with some visible economic progress...
...What, for example, would our targets be...
...But Nitze's reputation throughout eight presidential administrations rested on the unassailable analysis he brought to the two overarching problems America faced in the menace of the Soviet Union and the related threat of a nuclear holocaust...
...He argued that the Cold War was a real war and required a sustained buildup of our political, economic, and military strength and the commitment to confront the Soviet Union wherever it sought to enslave people to support their own despotic regime...
...1/4 James Srodes is the author of Allen Dulles: Master of Spies (Regnery Publishing...
...NSC 68 quoted the Federalist (No...
...In his final days, Nitze was miffed at attempts to shanghai his reputation to endorse an Iraq invasion that was hardly proportioned to the mischief Saddam Hussein's regime could have done us...
...Then a pause for the punch line...
...And I did, of course...
...Kennan and Nitze fashioned competing responses to that threat, and successive presidents over the last half century have tried variations of the themes they first sounded...
...Neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz have tried to claim Nitze's theories to justify the war in Iraq...
...DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63...
...It should still be required reading for our foreign policy planners despite the widespread notion that its relevance faded with the fall of the Russian Communist state...
...And I got a note from George Kennan that said that he had not agreed with anything I have said for forty years, but he was inclined to agree with this piece...
...IN MEMORIAM JAMES SRODES Paul H. Nitze 1907-2004 N THE OP-ED PAGE of the October 28, 1999 edition of the New York Times, Paul H. Nitze, then 92, stirred up the foreign policy beehive by proposing that the United States destroy its stockpile of nuclear warheads and serve notice on rogue nations pursuing nuclear weapons that they must destroy their own growing stockpiles or risk preemptive attack on those supplies by conventional American military forces: The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons...
...It is at the root of this past election's debate over our invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's ambitions to "contain" aggressive Islamic fundamentalism...
...Yet he never wavered in his belief that America, because of what it symbolized—its freedom, prosperity, and tolerance—would always be the implacable target of despots on the make and that to be safe we must remain strong and resolute...
...There is an eerie similarity in the Al Qaeda threat to world peace and the Kremlin adventuring of 60 years ago...
...To say so reduces the importance of the Cold War to a struggle between two rival superpowers both contending for world domination...
...This latter group tries to portray Nitze as a kind of Foxy Grandpa who voiced strongly worded opinions but who really didn't mean them...
...Who was Paul Nitze...
...But there was a reason that eight presidents turned to Paul Nitze even when they did so warily—the man was usually right...
...28) on the use of force against aggression: "The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief...
...Neither Kennan nor Nitze were truly "architects" of American Cold War policy...
...He always thought that I hijacked our Cold War policy of 'containment' away from him," Nitze said...
...His biography is stunning in its longevity and brilliance...
...He recognized that as long as the Soviet Union was nourished by its captive possessions, any policy that merely hemmed in the Kremlin's offensive jabs at other vulnerable nations would only prolong the world's agony...
...It is impossible to conceive of a target that could be hit without large-scale destruction of many innocent people...
...Instead of Kennan's prescription for moral and diplomatic suasion, Nitze and NSC 68 defined "containment" as "all means short of war to (1) block further expansion of Soviet power, (2) expose the falsities of Soviet pretensions, (3) induce a retraction of the Kremlin's control and influence, and (4) in general, so foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system that the Kremlin is brought at least to the point of modifying its behavior to conform to generally accepted international standards...
...Russia simply could not ever become strong enough to attack the United States, and all we had to do was "contain" it whenever it threatened anyone else—meaning in Europe...
...Nitze went to great pains to disavow the hawkish calls at the time for a direct attack on the Soviet Union...
...Again, the deep chuckle...
...Starting in 1941 with wartime assignments, he held most of the jobs worth having at both the State and later Defense Departments, including stints as secretary of the navy and deputy secretary of defense...
...His own inability to tolerate second-rate minds and poseurs cost him...
...I asked him why he and Kennan had not gotten along...
...Just diplomatic counterforce, argument, negotiations, and public disapproval generated through multilateral forums such as the still-aborning United Nations...
...Yet the burdens of rushing to military industrialization in a slave state meant that a tremendous subsidy had to be exacted from conquered nations if his control 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 JAMES SRODES over Russia was to remain total...
Vol. 37 • December 2004 • No. 10
