Paul Nitze, his biographer James Graham Wilson observes, “crafted a new type of career: national security professional.” For half a century, Nitze served in high roles in American government. His career spanned nearly every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, encompassing the entirety of the Cold War. Highly respected, indeed sometimes feared, by his peers, Nitze never quite achieved the fame of many of his contemporaries. Wilson’s new biography of Nitze, America’s Cold Warrior, helps explain why.
Nitze was nominally one of several men, dubbed “the Wise Men,” who helped construct U.S. foreign policy at the dawn of the Cold War. They included Robert Lovett, John McCloy, George Kennan, Chip Bohlen, Averell Harriman, and Dean Acheson. Many had careers in the foreign service, law, or as investment bankers that helped prepare them for key national security roles as the United States squared off against the Soviet Union. All held pivotal roles, ranging from ambassador to the Soviet Union to secretary of state and secretary of defense, during a pivotal moment in history.
Virtually all were members of what would later be called, sometimes with derision, “the Establishment.” They were, with few exceptions, born to wealth and privilege, coming from illustrious families. Their parents were railroad tycoons, diplomats, reverends, and judges. Many had attended elite boarding schools such as Groton before going on to study at Harvard or Yale. They often knew each other.
Paul Nitze was no different. He was born in 1907 to an upper-crust family of German stock, and Nitze’s father was a professor at the University of Chicago. His grandfather, Charles Nitze, was an investment banker who helped finance the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Paul benefited from his family’s wealth and connections, attending Harvard before embarking on a career in finance.
In his early 30s, Nitze felt unfulfilled. The world was geopolitically crumbling due to international communism and fascism, which were splintering Europe and tearing Asia apart with wars. Nitze longed to be a “man of action” and more than a bystander to global affairs. Through connections to Clarence Dillon, a Wall Street titan, Nitze met James Forrestal. Forrestal would serve as secretary of the Navy and later the nation’s first secretary of defense. But first, Forrestal was tasked with helping to prepare the Selective Service Act of 1940. Nitze, whose work on public infrastructure bonds in New York had attracted attention, went to work for Forrestal.
World War II would give him his first taste of important involvement in government affairs, with Nitze working for the coordinator of inter-American affairs, Nelson Rockefeller. Much of Nitze’s initial work focused on the defense industrial base and the acquisition and use of raw materials essential for the war effort. Later, he would be drafted into a study of how strategic bombing affected the German war economy. It marked, Wilson notes, “a new phase” in Nitze’s line of work. “Rather than figuring out how to procure strategic resources in the war mobilization effort,” Nitze now “tackled the problem of how best to employ arms to defeat the enemy.” Most of Nitze’s long and storied career would revolve around different variations of this problem. But the weapons and the enemy would soon change.
After the U.S. used nuclear weapons to defeat Japan, Nitze was sent to Japan to study the effects of the weapons. The devastation he saw left an indelible impression. America’s problems didn’t end with Japan’s surrender, however. The U.S. soon found itself in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. And Washington was in dire need of men with Nitze’s skill set.
World War II had taught Nitze a key “formula” to solving problems: “Go somewhere, see for yourself, assess and analyze, and devise a plan for individuals in power” and then “repeat this sequence until power comes to you.” Nitze would employ it to great effect, as he and other “Wise Men” would take on the role of advising a new president: Harry Truman.
As head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Nitze authored what would become a legendary document, NSC-68, which advocated a more muscular policy to deter the spread of communism. Nitze would retain a lifelong admiration for Truman, as well as two of his secretaries of state, George Marshall and Dean Acheson.
Nitze would work briefly for the administration of Dwight Eisenhower but would soon find himself dissatisfied with Ike’s more budget-conscious approach to defense spending. He became a fierce critic of Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, using a think tank that he founded, now the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to criticize Eisenhower’s efforts to cut spending and reduce conventional forces. Dulles and Eisenhower came to find Nitze a nuisance, but they respected his good faith assessments. They learned what other presidents over the years would come to find out: Agree or disagree with him, Nitze could not be ignored.
Nitze would come to believe that his criticisms helped spur a change in Ike’s approach. At the very least, they attracted the attention of Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy. Under Kennedy, Nitze served as assistant secretary of defense and played a key role in the Berlin and Cuban missile crises. Nitze’s career would reach its height under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, in which he served as secretary of the Navy and eventually the deputy secretary of defense. Unlike some of his fellow “Wise Men,” Nitze never achieved his ambition to become the Pentagon’s No. 1. Nor was he ever considered for secretary of state or director of the CIA. And the reasons go beyond pure fate.
Nitze was never close to the presidents he worked for. He was not, by nature, a partisan animal. As often as not, he seemed to frustrate many of his various bosses, including Secretaries of Defense Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford. The latter cited Nitze’s “impatient intellect,” which often manifested itself in “irritable peevishness and flashes of unveiled contempt.” Nitze was solely devoted to defense matters and showed little interest in “playing the game.” Most politicians, indeed the often-messy political process itself, didn’t impress him.
Years later, a bad meeting with then-candidate Jimmy Carter would similarly sabotage Nitze’s ability to gain a top post. Nitze was unwilling to refrain from staying silent or pretending to agree with policies that he felt were flawed. It may have kept him from top Cabinet posts, but he was able to be influential as a critic and activist on the outside.
Nor did Nitze ever achieve the sort of popular fame along the lines of his friend George Kennan or his younger contemporary Henry Kissinger. As Wilson observes, both Kennan and Kissinger were talented writers, blessed with a level of literary flair that eluded Nitze. Nitze would not write widely acclaimed books. He would not serve as the preeminent national security adviser in the Oval Office. Yet Nitze’s career eclipsed many of his more famous, and more titled, peers. Nitze spent more time in government service, if in smaller roles, than any of his fellow “Wise Men.” Nitze alone would command presidential attention from 1940 to 1989. He found other ways to garner influence and make change and eventually served as a top arms control adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Through it all, Nitze was his own man, unapologetic and steadfastly committed to what he believed was best for his country. With its sharp prose and a balanced portrayal, America’s Cold Warrior charts an amazing life helping America navigate the gravest dangers of the 20th century.
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Sean Durns is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst.