The Cold Warrior
Often overshadowed by Kennan in Cold War hagiography, Paul Nitze had a remarkable career: he served in seven presidential administrations from Franklin Roosevelt to George HW Bush; he authored NSC-68, whose militarized approach to containment every administration implemented with varying flavors; he was in the room with Kennedy during both the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis; and, under Reagan, he headed negotiations with the Soviet Union that yielded the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. As Wilson points out, Kennan’s career in public service ended shortly after his famous Long Telegram. While the vaunted diplomat was writing scathing articles in Foreign Affairs about the Reagan administration, Nitze was still in the heart of things, crafting one of the most consequential nuclear deals of the era.
Throughout his six decades of service, Nitze possessed an unshakable conviction that strategic superiority in both nuclear and conventional forces was critical for checking communist ambitions. He learned this lesson while serving on the Strategic Bombing Survey assessing the efficacy of Allied bombing campaigns in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. Japan, in Nitze’s appraisal, felt confident attacking the United States in 1941 because America failed to both maintain and project a “preponderance of power.” Perceived weakness, in will or armaments, is an invitation for hostility and risky behavior on the part of our adversaries. Nitze made it his mission for the rest of his career to correct this mistake. This conviction is on full display in the document for which he is most famous, NSC-68.
“United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” better known as NSC-68, elected a militarized version of containment for American strategy against Soviet communism. Echoing many of Kennan’s insights from his Long Telegram and X article, NSC-68 acknowledged the bipolar power distribution of the post-WWII era and identified Soviet leaders as fanatical in their beliefs, expansionist in their designs, and dangerous to American interests and the cause of freedom more broadly. The global threat posed by the Soviets, and their own recognition of the US as their primary rival, impelled Americans to “take up the mantle of world leadership.” Containment needed to be comprehensive: “In the context of the present polarization of power, a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.” In addition to blocking any further Soviet expansion, victory required of the US to “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.”