SALTed Away
Or
Ice Cold Warrior
Paul Nitze, whose unprecedented influence for a sub-Cabinet official earned him the reputation as the unofficial father of the Cold War, has died at the age of 97. As any doting father, he did all he could to foster the development of his offspring, and answered the Cold War by trying to outspend the Soviet Union, thus lining the pockets of the military industry complex in the U.S. and sentencing thousands of Russians to starvation. A former carpooler of Alger Hiss’, Nitze followed George Kennan as director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff in 1950 and encouraged 8 presidents to commit to a hard-line approach in dealing with the Soviets that only took nearly 40 years to come to fruition. He drafted National Security Council Memorandum No. 68, which effectively laid out U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades, leading some to call it “the blueprint of the Cold War.” He later advised President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, helped negotiate the SALT I treaty, then derailed the SALT II treaty out of bitterness at having been left out of the Carter Administration, and helped remove medium-range missiles from Europe in the 1980s. Not bad for a man who once scored a 0 on a final exam at Harvard in history. Nitze’s accomplishments outside the Beltway were equally impressive. He was a millionaire stock broker by the age of 30 despite the Depression, was at one time one of the largest individual stockholders of 20th Century Fox, and was one of the founders of the Aspen ski resort. But it was his Cold War mentality for which he will be remembered. In 1985, Nitze was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the man who was the beneficiary of the sands through the hourglass approach to the Cold War. A battleship was named in his honor last year, a fitting tribute to a man referred to by John Kenneth Galbraith as “a Teutonic martinet happiest in a military hierarchy.” Prof. Barker can answer any other questions you make have about Nitze’s lasting influence.
Ice Cold Warrior
Paul Nitze, whose unprecedented influence for a sub-Cabinet official earned him the reputation as the unofficial father of the Cold War, has died at the age of 97. As any doting father, he did all he could to foster the development of his offspring, and answered the Cold War by trying to outspend the Soviet Union, thus lining the pockets of the military industry complex in the U.S. and sentencing thousands of Russians to starvation. A former carpooler of Alger Hiss’, Nitze followed George Kennan as director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff in 1950 and encouraged 8 presidents to commit to a hard-line approach in dealing with the Soviets that only took nearly 40 years to come to fruition. He drafted National Security Council Memorandum No. 68, which effectively laid out U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades, leading some to call it “the blueprint of the Cold War.” He later advised President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, helped negotiate the SALT I treaty, then derailed the SALT II treaty out of bitterness at having been left out of the Carter Administration, and helped remove medium-range missiles from Europe in the 1980s. Not bad for a man who once scored a 0 on a final exam at Harvard in history. Nitze’s accomplishments outside the Beltway were equally impressive. He was a millionaire stock broker by the age of 30 despite the Depression, was at one time one of the largest individual stockholders of 20th Century Fox, and was one of the founders of the Aspen ski resort. But it was his Cold War mentality for which he will be remembered. In 1985, Nitze was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the man who was the beneficiary of the sands through the hourglass approach to the Cold War. A battleship was named in his honor last year, a fitting tribute to a man referred to by John Kenneth Galbraith as “a Teutonic martinet happiest in a military hierarchy.” Prof. Barker can answer any other questions you make have about Nitze’s lasting influence.
Labels: History
posted by The Grim Reaper at 10:15 AM
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