Francis P. Sempa
The publication of a new biography of Paul Nitze, who served in national security posts in Democrat and Republican administrations between 1940 and 1989, is a good moment to reflect on the need for knowledgeable, informed, and courageous experts to help guide and, at times, provide critical assessments of American national security policies. Nitze’s career is a testament to the invaluable contributions that such experts can make to help presidents and other policymakers navigate the often dangerous international political arena. In Nitze’s case, this meant thinking about the unthinkable — nuclear war — for more than 40 years.
Paul Nitze was seven years old and was vacationing in Austria with his family in August 1914, when the First World War began. Like his friend and colleague George Kennan, Nitze came to regard war as having a devastating impact, according to his autobiography From Hiroshima to Glasnost, “on the structure of civilization, the disillusionment and brutalization of man and his humanity . . . such that the civilized world was never again the same.”
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