My Review of James Graham Wilson's "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan"

A Man of Action

 

Where is Paul Nitze when we need him? Paul Nitze engaged in national security policy for every president from Roosevelt to Reagan. The lesson he learned from Pearl Harbor carried through his entire career and that was in order to defend the United States, the United States had to be stronger than any potential aggressor. His policy was the essence of peace through strength.

 

James Wilson’s biography fully discusses Nitze’s professional career from being an investment banker in the 1930’s to being a tribune in the highest councils of government on national security affairs.  Nitze modeled himself on what he called “men of action.” They included his first boss Clarence Dillon, Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. While working for Clarence Dillon at the Dillon Reed banking firm Nitze was involved in putting together the Cal-Tex agreement which sent middle eastern oil to Asia and the financing of the Triboro Bridge.

 

As war clouds loomed in 1940 Nitze followed his mentor at Dillon Reed, James Forestal into government. He could well afford to work in government because of his wife’s wealth and his own personal investments. During World War II he worked on the strategic bombing survey and after the war he found himself at the State Department working under George Kennan. In 1950 he succeeded Kennan as the Director of Policy Planning. There he authored the now famous NSC-68 memorandum which called for a massive defense build-up wrapped in American values. The build-up would come with the onset of the Korean War a few months later.

 

In the mid-1950’s he would switch parties and became a Democrat because of his disagreement over Eisenhour’s massive retaliation strategy and his thinking was very influential in the Kennedy campaign of 1960. Nitze was in the room when during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nitze thought Kennedy’s policy only worked because the U.S. had superior forces relative to the Soviet Union. That advantage would erode away in the 1960’s and turn into a severe disadvantage in the 1970’s. Though now a Democrat, Nitze participated in arms control negotiations under Nixon. He was respected by hawks across the aisle.

 

When not in government during the Nixon-Ford era he found a home at the Johns-Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, which is now named after him. His interns there included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who would soon become real players in the Reagan Administration and beyond. His contribution to the arms debate in the 1970’s was his leading role in the Committee on the Present Danger which anteceded the Reagan military build-up of the 1980’s.

 

Reagan hired him as an arm control negotiator and in 1982 he had his famous walk in the woods with his Soviet counterpart, Kvitsinsky. Although nothing came of it at the time, it was a percussor of all of the arms control agreements that would follow. In the 1980’s Nitze was far too suspicious of Gorbachev and overestimated Soviet strength. He didn’t realize how much the Soviets feared Reagan. ( See: Shulmaven: My Review* of Sergey Radchenko's "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Bd.........." )Nitze wasn’t perfect, but he got most of the big things dead right. Further his brittle personality kept him from being either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, although he served admirably in both departments. Wilson has done us a real service in writing Nitze’s biography at this time. We surely need someone like him today. 

My Amazon Review of David Sanger's "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion....."

Pre-War, Not New Cold Wars

 

New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger is way too close to his sources, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is an advantage because Sanger puts us behind the scenes to give us a very real sense of the diplomatic events of the past four years, especially the tick-tock of America’s warning to the world about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.  It is a disadvantage, because instead of being a clear-eyed reporter, he was sucked into the world views of Sullivan and Blinken, an apologia, if you will.  He buys into the idea that we will give enough aid to prevent a Russian win, but not enough to allow for a Ukraine victory.

 

In 2014 after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, I noted that this would the start of something big and both the U.S. and Europe would have to respond forcefully. (See:  Shulmaven: The Ukraine: What is to be Done )However, both the E.U. and the Obama White House accepted Russia’s aggression as a fait accompli. Thus, too me it was no surprise that given the lack of will in the West, that Putin would sooner or later go in for the kill.

 

 

If you want to put dates on the start of the new cold wars between the United States and Russia and China, you can start at the 2007 Munich Security Conference where Putin decisively separated himself from the West. In the case of China, you can use Chairman Xi’s 2013 address to the Communist Party where he girded the party cadre to prepare for the struggles ahead. Simply put, the whole policy framework that brought China into the global economy was a failure. In both cases Russia and China returned to their dictatorial roots with Putin viewing himself as the “new Tsar” and Xi as the “new Mao.” (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy's " Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin")

 

Sanger rightly spends much time on the ongoing cyber war with both Russia and China being aggressors attacking both governmental and private web sites. It is here where such private companies as Microsoft, Google and Palantir play leading roles in defense of our country. We also can’t forget Elon Musk’s StarLink system initially saved the day in Ukraine.

 

Sanger picks up on Sullivan’s industrial policy views where the U.S. is now in the business of subsidizing America’s chip production. Because computer chips are at the core of both the modern economy and defense hardware, it makes little sense to import most of our chips from abroad, especially where the bulk of those chips come from very vulnerable Taiwan. (  Shulmaven: My Review* of Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology") Indeed, in the new Cold War, Taiwan is the new Berlin.

 

Sanger is too casual in his discussion of the new Russo-Chinese alliance that was formed at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 where the two partners stated their relationship was “without limits.” Hello, this foreign policy nightmare happened on the Biden Administration’s watch.  If Kissinger got credit for splitting the Soviets from China, shouldn’t the Sullivan/Blinken team get the blame. Within days Russia invaded Ukraine.

 

What is wrong with Sanger’s book is that he does not discuss defense policy. If we are in new Cold Wars with Russia and China, our stagnant defense budget certainly does not reflect that. Biden in his 2023 State of the Union address called attention to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 address discussing how dangerous our world has become. However, he did not mention that a week before Roosevelt called for America to become “the arsenal of democracy.”  ( See:  Shulmaven: President Biden's State of the Union: Strong on Form Weak on Substance) The defense budget would quadruple in the following year.  Similarly, Biden has yet to make the equivalent of the 1947 Truman Doctrine speech and Sanger has not reported any national security council memorandum equivalent to the 1950 NSC-68 which called for “a massive build-up of conventional and nuclear weapons.”

 

Sanger hardly discusses Iran and North Korea who are objectively aligned with Russia and China, a serious omission. It seems to me the world is a far more dangerous place than the new cold wars that Sanger suggests that are now with us. To me, we are in a far more dangerous pre-war period that we are ill-prepared to deal with it. (See: Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today)

For the full amazon Review see: Pre-War, Not New Cold Wars (amazon.com)