A Cold War strategist who moved between nuclear buildup and arms control
During the 1982 Geneva talks, he took a “walk in the woods” with Yuli Kvitsinsky to explore a compromise.
Paul Nitze was an American diplomatic and defense official who shaped Cold War strategy and nuclear policy. As the principal author of NSC-68, he framed the long confrontation with the Soviet Union as a problem requiring military expansion, yet he also saw painstaking negotiation as necessary to manage the dangers of nuclear weapons. After participating in SALT, he led the Reagan administration’s INF negotiations and pursued a pragmatic line that treated credible deterrence and arms reduction as compatible rather than mutually exclusive. His legacy therefore joins the architecture of the arms race to the search for a negotiable order.
Career Timeline
- 1944–1946Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
- 1950–1953Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State
- 1961–1963Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
- 1963–1967Secretary of the Navy
- 1967–1969Deputy Secretary of Defense
- 1969–1973U.S. delegation to SALT I
- 1981–1984Chief U.S. negotiator for the INF talks
- 1984–1989Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control