“3. Cold Warrior” in “America’s Cold Warrior”
CHAPTER 3 Cold Warrior
Paul Nitze had no onward assignment when World War II ended. Military and foreign service officers could advance in rank, yet Nitze lacked an established trajectory. Most corporate lawyers and bankers who served in wartime executive roles left Washington after 1945. Briefly tempted by an offer to run a New York investment firm, Nitze decided to remain in the capital. He was enticed by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Will Clayton’s offer of the position of deputy director of the Office of International Trade Policy at the State Department. His mentor James Forrestal had remained as secretary of the navy; while another Dillon, Read pal, William Draper, led the economics section of the Allied Control Council for Germany. With these key personal connections, in the spring of 1946, the thirty-nine-year-old Nitze joined the State Department.
Economics Portfolio, Will Clayton, and the Marshall Plan
Nitze brought considerable practical experience to postwar US foreign economic policy. He could do business with representatives from the private sector and other countries. Few things brought him more satisfaction than tackling complex and significant problems. And no problem was more urgent than restoring the devastated economies of Europe. When it came to supplying Europe with oil, which was essential to recovery, that meant mediating between US and international firms and governments. Traditionally, this had been the purview of State Department consular officers. Postwar circumstances called for individuals of greater stature to broker deals with chief executive officers and government leaders. Nitze’s experiences made him a formidable negotiator. What he lacked in diplomatic adroitness, he made up for with the self-confidence gained from interacting with powerful men at Hotchkiss, Harvard, on Wall Street, and in wartime Washington.
Nitze’s first year at the State Department was momentous. The awful winter of 1946 sapped Great Britain of the strength to preserve political stability in Greece and Turkey—gateways from East to West. In March 1947, President Truman requested from Congress $400 million in emergency assistance to those countries and declared, “I believe we must assist free peoples to work out their destinies in their own way.” Head of Near Eastern Affairs Bureau Loy Henderson asked Nitze to help implement that assistance package. Dealing with allies was no easy task. As the United States was taking over the geopolitical responsibilities of a crumbling British Empire, Nitze and Will Clayton encountered stiff resistance from the United Kingdom and Australia in their efforts to harmonize tariffs on wool in the spring of 1947.1
Meanwhile, Nitze-as-diplomat remained a work in progress. Meeting with Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish government official who later served as United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Nitze could not abide the Swede’s modesty. He had calculated how to reduce the US–Swedish trade imbalance, and his number was significantly higher than Hammarskjöld’s. Once he determined its accuracy, a Nitze figure became nonnegotiable, with no give and take. Effectively, Nitze dictated to Hammarskjöld what his position ought to be.2
Here and elsewhere, Nitze regarded problems as manageable and solutions as quantifiable. Regarding Germans suffering in the aftermath of World War II, caloric intake overrode all other factors. At 1,700 calories a day, food was all a person thought about. However, 2,700 calories a day meant a person would be full of “political energy.” The objective ought to be to keep caloric intake somewhere between the floor (desperation might make communism attractive) and the ceiling (free will could also lead in that direction).3 While none of this pseudopolitical science made it into Nitze’s memoir, it is emblematic of his quantitative approach to a qualitative problem: hunger. Whether it was the terms of a Wall Street deal—or, as it would be later, the ratio of warheads on missiles to targets—he thought it was possible to apply formulas and calculate precise figures to explain why people and states acted as they did, and thus what they ought instead to do. Logic could surely prevail. Whether in formulating US high policy or negotiating with allies or adversaries, Nitze regarded his role as apprising his interlocutors of paths to logical outcomes.
Nitze’s approach to human needs may have been coldly rational. The context was a widespread skepticism about the State Department’s ability to think strategically. Returning from the March 1947 Moscow ministerial conference, Secretary of State George Marshall lamented the quality of the preparatory staff work (i.e., an analysis of a problem and options for what to do about it) on the US side compared to that of other countries. In his charge to George Kennan to set up a Policy Planning Staff to report directly to him, Marshall exhorted him to “avoid trivia.” Kennan initially asked Nitze to serve as his deputy. However, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson nixed this appointment. Not without evidence, Acheson blamed Nitze for circumventing the State Department during World War II. “George, you don’t want Nitze,” he told Kennan. “He’s not a long-range thinker, he’s a Wall Street operator.”4
This was neither the first nor last time that Nitze found himself passed over. Kennan set to work writing papers; Acheson returned to Covington & Burling. Nitze stayed close to Will Clayton, who spearheaded the effort that became the Marshall Plan. On May 19, 1947, Clayton convened a meeting at the Metropolitan Club, where he assessed that Europe stood on the brink of disaster and needed immediate intervention. “It is now obvious that we grossly underestimated the destruction to the European economy by the war,” he wrote a few days later. Millions faced starvation. “Without further prompt and substantial aid from the United States, economic, social, and political disintegration will overwhelm Europe,” Clayton continued. “Aside from the awful implications which this would have for the future peace and security of the world, the immediate effects on our domestic economy would be disastrous: markets for our surplus production gone, unemployment, depression, a heavily unbalanced budget on the background of a mountainous war debt.” He summed up: “These things must not happen.”5
Clayton asserted that the United States needed to provide up to $6 or $7 billion a year to prevent European citizens from starving. “Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and Union of South Africa could all help with their surplus food and raw materials,” Clayton wrote, “but we must avoid getting into another UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]. The United States must run this show.”6 As in past instances in Nitze’s career, a determined figure set aside hesitation, cut through red tape, and took command.7
In a speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall outlined the plan for assisting the economic recovery of Europe. Afterward, Nitze and colleagues threw themselves into generating congressional support for what became known as the Marshall Plan. Nitze crunched the numbers for precisely what each recipient country needed. According to Clayton, he knew “more about the Marshall Plan than perhaps any other individual.”8 In a more stressful testimony than his 1933 appearance before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Nitze endured several weeks of hostile questioning before Congress and lost fifteen pounds.9
In discussions in Paris from August 4–6, Nitze stressed to allies that economic assistance was not charity. The vitality of US trade relied on preserving a European way of life. Since $10 billion in previous assistance had failed to restore Europe, the scrutiny of further US expenditures promised to be intense. In a coldly rational way—while acknowledging its self-interest—the United States had to help the Europeans help themselves. Congress should appropriate money on a declining scale to create “a self-sustaining Europe at the end of three or four years.”10 No matter which justification the administration prioritized to obtain the money from Congress, there was little daylight between the twin objectives of preventing starvation and fending off communist penetration of Western Europe. “Our goal was to revive Europe economically and spiritually and make it thrive again,” Nitze would later recall: “theirs [the Soviets] was to perpetuate squalor and chaos in the hope that eventually all Europe would fall to Communist control.”11
The National Security Act of 1947
Nitze’s work on selling the Marshall Plan overlapped with the creation of the modern US national security apparatus. On July 26, 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the Department of Defense, CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the NSC. The measure took effect on September 18. Nitze’s Dillon, Read mentor James Forrestal became the nation’s first secretary of defense. Admiral Sidney Souers served as executive secretary of the NSC, which employed only a handful of staffers. While some State Department officials remained in the old State, War, and Navy Building, most moved into the department’s current home at 2201 C Street in what had been called Foggy Bottom since the late eighteenth century.
One thing that the 1947 National Security Act did not do was set up a pipeline for training national security professionals. Future army officers would continue to be recruited from West Point; foreign service officers—and, now, CIA aspirants—would come mainly from Ivy League institutions. “Pale, Male, and Yale” prevailed at the State Department. Nitze himself added no diversity. Given the skills that he brought to the table—generalist experiences in economics, military, diplomacy, and an ability to work with Congress—he was supremely qualified.
Elitism certainly informed his worldview. So did the cause of defending democracy. He was skeptical about popular opinion and doubted whether democratic institutions could act efficiently or effectively reward merit. More trustworthy were the actions of great men who rose to the top. For the lead, Nitze looked to Marshall and Clayton and others—not to the so-called common man or congregations thereof. Women and non-whites were virtually nonexistent in positions of authority. Just “getting by” was an alien concept to the residents of Northwest DC with whom Nitze associated.
Did Nitze think of himself as “one of the great men”? Or “a great man in the making”? Neither seems likely, as the nature of his ambition was down to earth: aspirations that were practical and results driven. He savored verbal, as well as physical, competition, in the same way one might seek to play tennis against someone better. Perseverance prevailed when innate talents went unrecognized. He was willing to do tedious staff work and weather disappointment. For instance, General Lauris Norstad recommended to President Truman that Nitze become the first secretary of the air force, a position which the National Security Act had created out of the United States Army Air Forces. After apparently discovering that Nitze was a registered Republican, Truman nominated his fellow Missourian, Stuart Symington. “Symington doesn’t know anything about the Air Force, the air business, at all,” according to Norstad. “Would you be willing to work with him and help him get started in this job?” Without resentment, he did as Norstad asked and spent the next six weeks in an adjacent office assisting Symington.12
The Division of Europe, the “Loss” of China, and the United States’ Economic Policy
On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act (the Marshall Plan) and appointed the former president of the car company Studebaker, Paul Hoffman, as head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, overseeing the dispersal of funds to rebuild Europe. Will Clayton recommended Nitze to be Hoffman’s deputy. Yet Hoffman rejected him in favor of Nitze’s friend, Richard Bissell, the son of the president of the Hartford Insurance Company and a graduate of Groton and Yale. As with previous slights, this one made Nitze work only harder. Tremendous obstacles remained in terms of getting Congress to authorize the funds, and Nitze intended to overcome them. In seeking votes on the Hill, Nitze continued to be dazzled by the political acumen of George Marshall. On one occasion, the secretary of state refused Nitze’s offer to prepare an opening statement for his testimony so that he could declare he had come from a memorial service for a fellow retired general and tell committee members he had no prepared statement to read.13
Nitze’s own political acumen rested on an ability to avoid getting pinned down on any particular issue. This was a time when many of his peers found themselves in the crossfire of the House Un-American Activities Committee. As deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs, he worked in a functional bureau and held a global portfolio that included China. In August 1948, Nitze wrote memos on currency reforms in that country. And, while he later acknowledged that Chiang Kai-shek’s government was hopelessly corrupt, he refrained from stating that on the record at the time.14 Unlike foreign service officers such as John Paton Davies, Nitze evaded blame for the so-called Loss of China the following year.
NSC 20/4 (November 23, 1948)
On November 2, 1948, President Truman pulled off his surprise victory over former New York governor Thomas Dewey and two other candidates. In his campaign, Truman trumpeted the passage of the Marshall Plan and other foreign policy achievements while promising a “Fair Deal” for the American people to include increased civil rights and expanded health insurance coverage while also balancing the budget. Pursuing these domestic priorities amid financial solvency was premised on restricting the defense budget in the hope that European recovery—and the US atomic monopoly—would obviate the need for significant rearmament.
Three weeks later, the NSC presented the president with a report, NSC 20/4, which Kennan had drafted, titled “On US Objectives with Respect to the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] to Counter Soviet Threats to US Security.” “The will and ability of the leaders of the USSR to pursue policies which threaten the security of the United States constitute the greatest single danger to the US within the foreseeable future,” it read. However, Moscow’s ambitions did not stop there. “Communist ideology and Soviet behavior clearly demonstrate that the ultimate objective of the leaders of the USSR is the domination of the world.”15
NSC 20/4 warned of stark dangers. “The present Soviet ability to threaten US security by measures short of war” would soon become even more fearsome, it stated. “Present estimates indicate that the current Soviet capabilities … will progressively increase and that by no later than 1955 the USSR will probably be capable of serious air attacks against the United States with atomic, biological and chemical weapons, of more extensive submarine operations (including the launching of short-range guided missiles), and of airborne operations to seize advance bases.”16 To counter that threat, NSC 20/4 listed two primary objectives: (1) “To reduce the power and influence of the USSR to limits which no longer constitute a threat to the peace, national independence and stability of the world family of nations,” and (2) “To bring about a basic change in the conduct of international relations by the government in power in Russia, to conform with the purposes and principles set forth in the UN charter.” In so doing, the United States and its allies needed to proceed without “permanently impairing our economy and the fundamental values and institutions inherent in our way of life.” Doing so required a series of steps, laid out in sections 21 A–F of the directive. In the event of war, military aims were laid out in sections 22 A–E.
Perceptions of threat and proposed policy responses in Kennan’s Long Telegram and Mr. X article had guided US policy makers during 1946–48. With Truman on the verge of a new four-year term, they now constituted US policy. Implementing this policy required people to make hard choices that were bound to be politically costly. Left unclear were such matters as funding or potential tradeoffs occasioned by the ambitious domestic agenda that Truman and the Democrats had in mind. The state of US abilities to combat communism—whether in measures short of war or in actual war—also remained unclear. So too were such questions as: Might it be possible for the Soviet Union ever to abide by the Charter of the United Nations? Did not others in the “world family of nations” threaten peace? How long could the American people expect the conflict with the Soviets to last? And, how many dollars should they be expected to contribute? The Truman administration expected a budget surplus for fiscal years 1948 and 1949, as balancing the budget in future years was then considered practically a moral responsibility of US representatives.
On December 1, 1948, Secretary of Defense Forrestal submitted to Truman a proposed increase in the defense budget, recommending a figure between the $23 billion requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the $14.4 billion the president had previously insisted was the ceiling. He wrote that a $16.9 billion budget “will furnish the strength necessary for our national defense under present international conditions”—even though the Joint Chiefs disagreed.17 Truman rejected Forrestal’s request. On March 2, 1949, Forrestal submitted his letter of resignation. His successor, Louis Johnson, promised to keep the defense budget under $13 billion. Meanwhile, Forrestal’s physical and mental health rapidly deteriorated. He committed suicide on May 22, 1949.
Nitze grieved for his mentor. If he took umbrage at how Truman treated Forrestal, however, he kept that to himself. Nitze certainly held new secretary of defense Johnson in open contempt—an assessment he shared with Dean Acheson, who became secretary of state on January 21, 1949. Nitze held no grudge toward Acheson, who had previously rebuffed his warnings of Soviet aggression and scuttled his appointment as deputy director of policy planning. The State Department’s top priority in the first half of 1949 was to restore the economic strength of Western European nations and build up their forces to defend themselves. In the lead-up to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, on April 4, 1949, and the formulation of the 1949 Mutual Defense Assistance Act, Nitze contributed much of the staff work and must have impressed Acheson more than on previous occasions. In the founding of NATO, to whose cohesion Nitze was committed forever thereafter, Acheson was the man of action.
S/P, the Prospect of War, and the H-Bomb Debate
On August 1, 1949, Kennan elevated Nitze to deputy director of policy planning with the expectation that he would eventually succeed him as director. This time, Acheson supported Nitze. On August 10, Truman endorsed an amendment to the National Security Act that upgraded the position of secretary of defense by placing him above the unified services, a move that strengthened Louis Johnson’s hand in his efforts to restrain defense spending. Even more consequentially, on August 29, 1949, US intelligence detected that the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic device. The Truman administration now had to decide whether to pursue a hydrogen bomb, a then-hypothetical weapon consisting of fusion triggered by fission. A hydrogen bomb could potentially be a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945.
The fall of 1949 thrust Nitze into the field that would define much of the rest of his career: atomic and nuclear strategy. Although Nitze had witnessed the effects of the atomic bombs in Japan, his main objective in the Pacific War summary report had been to assert that air power strategy—as he conceived it at the beach in the summer of 1945—could have ended the war without the use of the atomic bomb. Never before had he (or anyone else) had to contend with two atomic states locked in opposition with each other. Nitze set about getting up to speed on the technical details while also assisting Kennan and Acheson in dealing with other setbacks in what were an awful ninety days for US foreign policy. In September, the sterling crisis further imperiled the United Kingdom’s ability to protect its once-mighty empire against communist encroachment. And, on October 1, Mao Zedong declared communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. These events were not organically connected with each other. Yet it would have been impossible for anyone in government to disentangle the Soviet acquisition of an atomic bomb from a perception that it empowered communist advancements everywhere.
The implications of nuclear weapons for the reconstitution of Western Europe came up in a meeting of the Policy Planning Staff on October 11, 1949, where Secretary Acheson “suggested that unless we face up to what we want, decide on how to get it, and take the necessary action, the whole structure of the Western World could fall apart in 1952.”18 One of the challenges, at least from Kennan’s perspective, was figuring out how the United States could “swallow its own surpluses.” To Nitze, the solution was calculable: “we may not have to spend $5 billion a year abroad but we probably will have to spend something.” Helping Western Europe to restore its strength, however, required more specificity about what was required. Implicitly acknowledging one of the omissions of NSC 20/4, Kennan “stated his belief that there is no clear-cut Government concept of what our objectives would be if we got into a war with Russia.”19
Acheson, Kennan, and Nitze speculated that Soviet possession of the atomic bomb might deter the United States from using atomic weapons against an overwhelming conventional attack. Again, for Nitze, Soviet possession of the bomb “might make conventional armaments and their possession by the Western European nations, as well as by ourselves, all the more important.” And, that it would require European countries to devote 20 percent rather than 5 percent of their economies toward defense. Consequently, it might be necessary “to lower rather than to raise civilian standards of living in order to produce arms as against consumer goods”; promoting this objective would require a “different propaganda approach than the one we were presently using.”20 In other words, the Americans would have to figure out how to convince the Europeans to rearm.
On this last point, Acheson reminded Nitze “that we must examine these problems from the point of view of what peoples and governments will do rather than what they can do.” An exchange toward the end of this meeting presaged debates about atomic deterrence that played out in some variant for the next forty years. “The Secretary said that it was his feeling that we should look first at the general implications of the Russian possession of the atomic bomb and then proceed to the examination of the problem of international control of atomic energy,” according to the minutes. Nitze responded that US “effective civilian defense against atomic warfare” might deter the enemy. Acheson went on to reject any agreement of “no-use” of atomic weapons was “to deprive yourself of the effect on the enemy of the fear of retaliation by atomic bombing against orthodox aggression.”21 In other words, discussions about the role of nuclear weapons in deterring the other side would inevitably be hypothetical, and arguments about it were unwinnable so long as countries possessing atomic weapons refrained from attacking one another using such weapons.
Regarding the hydrogen bomb debate, a fundamental question was whether the Soviets could build one. The failure of US intelligence to detect the Soviet atom bomb project, in advance of August 1949—not to mention the failure of US counterintelligence to uncover Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project—strengthened the argument for taking a worst-case approach to Soviet capabilities. “In discussing the pros and cons of the advantage to us of developing the super-bomb,” according to the minutes of a November 3, 1949, meeting of the Policy Planning Staff, “the only complete agreement was that we would have to start with the assumption that the Russians were working on it also.” Members reached no conclusion on whether Moscow could successfully build a hydrogen bomb while also weaponizing its atomic capabilities. “There were no final conclusions as to whether the Russians would be able to develop it and the atomic bomb at the same time. Nor is it known how much effort it would require for us to develop both.”22 In his opinion, Nitze “felt that the burden of proof should fall on those who say that there would be no power advantages to the country developing it; but further study obviously is called for on the answers to the Secretary’s question as to whether we would really be at a disadvantage if they developed it and we did not and why.”23
On November 19, 1949, Truman placed the hydrogen bomb decision in the hands of a Special Committee of the National Security Commission, which consisted of the secretaries of state and defense as well as Atomic Energy Commission chairman David Lilienthal. Acheson, Johnson, and Lilienthal deputized members of their staff to come up with an agency recommendation. Acheson selected Nitze.24
Nitze threw himself into a study of all the technical components of the potential hydrogen bomb. He called in physicist Edward Teller, a Hungarian émigré who had urged the pursuit of fusion even before the success of the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945.25 Nitze delighted in standing at the chalkboard with Teller and going through complex equations that he purported to grasp. He also received briefings from Robert Oppenheimer, who was exceedingly pessimistic about the future. “Dr. Oppenheimer said that if one is honest the most probable view of the future is that of war, exploding atomic bombs, death, and the end of most freedom.”26 Ten years prior, Nitze had been enamored of Spengler, whose warnings seemed justified given the horrors of World War II. Sentimentality was, however, of no matter to the task at hand. Nitze paid no deference to Oppenheimer, whose political opinions he considered to be steeped in remorse and quite distinct from his technological prowess. When it came to determining how the US government should proceed, logic should always trump emotion. When it came to debating US national security, neither past achievements nor rank could overcome faulty judgments.
The primary task, as Nitze saw it, was to determine whether it was possible to build the hydrogen bomb. “I agreed with the judgment that Oppie [Oppenheimer] and others who opposed trying to build the ‘super’ bomb that the world’s future prospects would be better if it proved beyond the power of technology to build such a weapon,” Nitze later recalled. “But I also suspected that Oppenheimer was not being totally straightforward with me on other arguments—that he was letting his political views cloud his scientific judgment.”27 Again, according to Nitze, the scientist felt that it was simply too dangerous for one side to have such a powerful weapon. Nitze regarded such a judgment as outside the writ of his assignment, which was to determine the feasibility, and then move on to how to prepare for a world in which the hydrogen bomb existed. Moreover, he saw nothing at all wrong with the US possession of overwhelming strength. The lack of US preponderance had invited Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.
Consistent with the findings of the Strategic Air Survey for the Pacific, preparedness was the paramount consideration. Preparedness could deter; it was inseparable from preponderance. Needless to say, the consequences were enormous, and it was a choice between two undesirable outcomes. “I believe that the Secretary thinks the military position will probably be that it cannot afford to take any risk of finding itself without this weapon if others have it,” Undersecretary of State James Webb, who had succeeded Robert Lovett, wrote to Nitze and the two other members of the State Department’s working group on December 3, 1949. “I believe, also, he is troubled about the possibility that a decision to go ahead would be interpreted all over the world as a decision that war is inevitable and that we have reached this decision, with all its implications and effects on all types of future decisions.”28
At a December 16, 1949, meeting of the Policy Planning Staff, Nitze suggested that US objectives “must be examined in the light of the risks.” Among these risks “a total war started deliberately by the Soviets is a tertiary risk.” Rather than “deliberately start a total war themselves,” the Soviets were “more apt to get the satellites involved with the West, as they have gotten the Chinese communists to do their dirty work in the Far East.”29 Kennan agreed with Nitze and Soviet expert Llewellyn E. “Tommy” Thompson that the Kremlin preferred “to intervene cheaply in someone else’s war, their ideal being a total conflict between ‘imperialists.’ ” Still, the United States needed to commit to preventing Western Europe from being overrun.30 In other words, “tertiary risk” hardly diminished the need to rebuild US and allied strength to prevent Moscow from orchestrating attacks on the free world.
On December 19, Nitze advised Acheson that the State Department support going ahead with research on the hydrogen bomb. While he estimated a 50 percent probability of success, the bottom line was that there was more “to be feared from a growing fission bomb capability and a possible thermonuclear capability on the part of the USSR than is to be gained from the addition of a thermonuclear possibility to our growing stockpile of fission bombs.”31 Emphasis “on the possible employment of weapons of mass destruction, in the event of a hot war” would be “detrimental to the position of the US in the cold war.” He recommended to Acheson that President Truman tell the Atomic Energy Council to “proceed with an accelerated program to test the possibility of a thermonuclear reaction,” and that further decisions be deferred until it was proven possible. During the course of the research and testing, there should be no public deliberation of the topic.32 Left unstated was the fact that Americans could hardly be expected to understand this convoluted approach. Needless to say, there would be no public referendum on this decision to proceed with a weapon that could destroy cities.
On January 1, 1950, Secretary of State Acheson appointed Nitze director of the Policy Planning Staff, while keeping George Kennan on as counselor of the department. Three years earlier, George Marshall had given Kennan little instruction apart from “avoid trivia.” Acheson provided more clarity. “Congressional support is essential but judging whether it is adequate or not isn’t your job; that is the President’s and my job,” Acheson told Nitze about one idea. “What we want from you and the Policy Planning Staff is your considered judgment on the issue, based on national-security and foreign policy grounds, not on the degree to which public or congressional opinion favors a given stand.” The president and secretary of state would have to compromise and make concessions to congressional and public opinion—but “we don’t want these concessions made twice, first by you and then by us.”33
In other words, Nitze’s Policy Planning Staff was to provide clinical advice, as would a doctor. The president would face Congress and the public. His political party’s fortunes would be on the line every two years. As a foreign service officer in charge of policy planning, Kennan worked within an existing framework of assignment—in that case, a capstone to his undeniably impressive diplomatic career in wartime Germany and Russia prior to and after World War II. As his successor, Nitze was a political appointee with the explicit charge to avoid politics. He was a registered Republican in a Democratic administration. The men he admired—e.g., Marshall and Clayton—had little use for politics, though the elected officials who chose them had political use for them. Nitze acted with confidence and intellectual agility, yet he had no stature with Congress. The staff work he provided helped triage the problems and summarize the potential ways forward. While he did not offer pithy quotes as did Kennan, Acheson did not need help on that front. He and the president would make the decisions. They were accountable to the American people. Nitze was not.
In a January 31, 1950, meeting of the Special Committee, Truman resolved the debate over the US pursuit of the hydrogen bomb. “Can the Russians do it?” he asked. Yes, the committee responded. In retrospect, no alternative could have advanced US interests.
The Soviets were not only capable of building the hydrogen bomb they were close to achieving it. This was because of a combination of spies from Los Alamos and their own independent efforts led by physicist Andrei Sakharov. George Kennan and Robert Oppenheimer opposed going ahead with the hydrogen bomb, warning that the Soviets would have no choice but to reciprocate. We know today it was not the US decision to proceed with the hydrogen bomb that led the Soviets down the path toward building one; they were already on it. Nitze was correct, but not necessarily for the reasons he figured. Nitze’s aspirations to get up to speed on the science behind fusion were broadly irrelevant to the outcome of the debate. Truman still would have cut through the details with the simple question: Can the Russians do it? The answer was yes. Simply put, capabilities outweighed intentions.
Meanwhile, George Kennan retreated to his farm in Princeton. He remained the counselor of the department for a short time, yet that title was transitory and mattered little because Acheson did not seek his counsel. Though he would return to the department in 1952 to serve a disastrous ambassadorship to the Soviet Union, never again would Kennan persuade the president or secretary of state to make an important decision. To put it another way, Kennan retired from Cold War policy making in 1949 and embarked on a successful career as a nonfiction writer. His histories of Russia were first rate; his introspection exquisite. His contribution to the Cold War had been to put forward the idea that the United States could ultimately win it without outright war with the Soviet Union. It stopped after that.
This fundamental concept—winning without war—required a cadre of people who could stay involved and guide US policy makers throughout it. National security became a practice, just as law or medicine. All this was new to the United States after World War II ended. The country needed people like Nitze to meet the challenges of the postwar era. It needed generalists who would stay on and lend expertise to challenges that oftentimes resembled ones from World War II. The upside was that policy makers could apply history to make better outcomes. The downside was that history never actually repeats itself. A historical sensibility could help to solve problems, evaluate threats, and advocate for ways to address them. Cultivating and sustaining relationships made Nitze an action man close to the levers of power. While not fabulously wealthy, he did not need to rely on seeking positions of increasing salary levels. For Nitze, there was no leaving DC. For him, the practice of national security meant a life in the Cold War—however long that would last.
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.