tv James Graham Wilson Americas Cold Warrior CSPAN January 26, 2025 4:40am-5:41am EST
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america's cold war policy today and national security strategy from roosevelt to reagan and hosting today, of course james graham wilson, who's an official historian of the us state department. this is his second book on the cold war, actually in his first one was a triumph of improvization and gorbachev's adaptation. reagan's engagement in the end of the cold war. so he's written on both bookends now, both the formation of cold war containment strategy and then also the reagan years where. the cold war successfully concluded. and what we're going to get into today, what i'd like to get into that i think really counts. here is how timely is paul nitze? a, as james points out, is not really a household name in. the united states, even as you have people that can kissinger or even george kennan, who people know and they know the history of u.s. foreign policy. but nisei was one of the main architects of. one of the most important strategies we've ever had. and did it at a time when
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everything was going wrong all around him. and i'd like to start taking a quote from his own in a retrospective on nsc 68, which was released in 1950, it was orchestrated by the state department and then sort of newly national security council, but they said we were to reassess national security policy in the whole big picture of american security, foreign policy and national and the entirety of us grand strategy. and he said that during the drafting of nsc 68 at that time, the pillars of our postwar foreign policy were failing. so basically we were in a moment we're having emerged victorious the second world war. we were nonetheless losing the entire for what really do we do with the post-cold war with the post-world two moment, with the early cold war? and then, you know, if you zoom very far out nixon, his colleagues came together and put together a us grand that arguably us up to win the long
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cold war and later was, as reagan saw it, set up the first principles that we ultimately use victory and contributed therefore to to enormous american success in the toughest contest we've had. if we're now in an era where certainly those at hudson believe we're facing something like a new cold war, at the very least, a sort of axis of adversaries worldwide. i mean, a tremendous foreign policy changes. i mean, everybody can understand now, you know, there are those of us like myself that say we need in the us grand strategy to get back to the ability to do that. well. and so therefore going back and seeing not only the strategies that the led this country to ultimate success, but the individuals that helped create them is i think, a really useful exercise for getting our bearings. now on the fundamental picture and also nixey is just this utterly interesting person. so one quote that i pulled out here, we'll get into this.
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but as writes, he formed the entire profession of national security professional. and that was really something of his making his career and. he was, on one hand a scholar, another an investment banker. he was also sort of an adventurer in the second world war. it was quite a unique approach to life. and i think impact and the experience that went into that impact were. you know, there's a lot to dig into here. so james. i'd just like to begin with the that that i usually ask when i get asked to do a book talk, people ask this and it's a good one. but what inspired you to write a new of pulitzer and i'm going to add to that did you expect it to be as timely it as it is and this is very timely and important. well, i wish weren't timely because i wish that there weren't so many very scary things around the world. so, you know, i'm i suppose it
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gets people talking about the cold and elements from it that might be helpful in terms of how the united states and its deal with these problems. and that's a good thing. i got interested in the topic about ten years ago and this is not testament to productivity on my part because it took me much longer do it but i was at the wilson center nearby during a talk by frank caustically all wonderful scholar at the university of connecticut about george kennan's diaries and george kennan and russia writ large. and there were several moments frank talked, you know, kennan said this. kennan thought that, wrote this or the other thing about vietnam, about the imf missile deployment in the early 1980s. and, you know, i then working as i am now on the foreign
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relations of the united states series and i suppose to say my views in my own, not those of the government, but i kept thinking to myself at each of these moments, i know that paul nitze is intimately involved in these negotiations and that kennan is writing in a way the kind reinforces what i think a lot of critics of american foreign policy were already inclined to, and he wrote beautifully. i mean, really a great scholar, historian, but did actually change the policy. and that kind of got interested in in the end, his longevity and the kind of point i'm making the book is you know from roosevelt to the title from roosevelt to reagan paul nitze ackerman's white house tension to the most important matters of u.s. national security and defense, namely nuclear strategy and arms
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negotiations. and, you know, i tried to lay out in the book. well, how does he do it? how he stay relevant for all these years? and i think that, you know, as you alluded to earlier, jonathan, the sort of it was creating this new profession that he's on wall street in the thirties. he's brought in the government by james forestall as the united states is preparing to enter world war two. and he this incredible set of experiences in world war two working for him, trying procure strategic minerals in south america, drafting the important elements of the strategic survey in europe, and then essentially leading the strategic bombing survey in japan after the end of the war. and he kind of takes from that, you know, a wider mandate, which he got president truman, which is basically, while you're
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talking to all of these generals and and leaders in a defeated country, try to figure why they attacked us in the first place and. so i think the strategic bombing and specially in context of nsc 68, is very because he's drafting it in early 1946 and he's staying in d.c. when a lot of bankers and lawyers are going back to their practices, private life and. his basic takeaway is that japan attacked the united states in december of 1941 because the united states had allowed its strength to atrophy and weakness for nixon was provocative and oh, by the way, he's looking out into the world in the early 1946, and he's seen the same a repetition of what he writes. in the late 1930s. now he gets some traction on this and he's very annoyed. the person who does get traction
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is, is george kennan writing his long telegram, which better written. and for younger scholars out. i think one takeaway from this book that you know nixon was not as good a writer as kissinger and kennan and so you always work on your writing. but, you know, nixon was very annoyed that james forrestal was the great, great champion of the long telegram, didn't the same about that. nixon. but he stuck with it and. that's, i think, a really important point. the book he is passed over for promotion originally when acheson acheson doesn't doesn't accept him at first he's initially passed over to be the deputy to george kennan, the policy planning staff. he's passed over for seven or eight other really big jobs throughout, his career and i think that there's something inspiring about his resilience and willingness to with it.
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but in terms of the profession retire the military officers at the end of world war two moved up in rank foreign service moved on to their next posting. nixon had no real career set for him and the national security act of 1947 doesn't really create a cadre national security professionals. so i would say in book it fits as a generalist somebody who is willing to learn to embrace of the things, all of the components, national security, planning that he really shows a way to thrive and succeed and, stay in the game. ray right. and that comes through really clearly. and i want to sort of go back and forth between it says impact and then the career that i think as you just pointed out, i mean, the long gravity of it you wrote in the book cannon at a certain period pretty soon after the establishment of containment
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doctrine was just done with foreign policy and. i think you wrote his impact ended or of that nature whereas nixon kept doing this and and the end of it you have this person that's done much and i want to pull out a few quotes from the book and then get us back to why does he actually matter and why do we need to know about this today? what was his impact? how to shape american history. but here's where he where he was. and i think you're right that this doesn't just happen in the short period. and is this is a whole life dedicated to this. you see, he attended the nation's most of academic institutions, prospered on wall street, devoted himself to the practice of us national security. from 1940 onward, he worked for the white house, department of state department of defense. the arms, arms control and disarmament agency. he was detailed to the us air force and department, the treasury, and consulted for the central intelligence agency and senate foreign relations committee. even outside his service to eight presidential
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administrations, it's remained vital in framing influencing debates about u.s. nuclear policy. you also write that it's a crafted, a new type of career national security professional. unlike his mentors and your peers, he never returned to his pre-world war two occupation as an investment banker. by the way, the wall street chapter is fantastic. i mean, this man had an entire ten year career on wall street. and reading that, it was like reading biography of steve schwarzman or something. it's quite a lot packed into one life. the early days of, the cold war demanded generalists with competence in multiple areas. military strategy intelligence, diplomacy, the know how to achieve results, whether in the private sector, academia or government bureaucracies. knutson met the demand. so in a way, you're talking about someone who right for this moment. and that's what i want to get into now, because the moment where everything was falling apart by his own account, that's where we were. the pillars of our postwar foreign policy were failing and they had to go back and address
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some fundamental questions about the world in nsc 68. and i think someone like this who who was able to draw in all of these and therefore deal with fundamental elements of the world to speak. it was really seemed to me like a unique moment in american history. we ask ourselves today what led to the creation of successful grand strategy and how would you define the sort of what was being asked the people that dealt with this at the beginning, what were they bring into it? and in a way? i mean, to me, there's sort of a creative to this, to be fundamental questions, to have a diverse background with lots of experience, and then to in and just do the job. so this specific context which you've alluded to is the fall of 1949, which was truly awful from the perspective of us foreign policy you have the fall of
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china the communist prevail in china and you have clear irrefutable evidence that the soviets have tested an atomic where the president and his advisors had said they can never do it. you have the british empire, which is perpetually the verge of collapse on. another in a purge. and you have it's a really i think attracting the trust of dean acheson then secretary of state in kind of the being the point person for should the united states pursue the hydrogen bomb which could be exposed actually more powerful than the vision the atomic bomb if it works on this project with alacrity it and talks to edward teller to robert oppenheimer incidentally robert i quote in the book says if we're honest to
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ourselves about this future is all gloom and doom atomic explosions yadda yadda yadda. that's his view. oppenheimer's view and the view of others and you know, they basically propose truman here is here is the report. here is the strengths and weaknesses of pursuing the hydrogen bomb. and the question boils to is, can the soviets do it? and the answer is yes. that's you know, there's a kind of clarity that moment in january of 1950, that's that's inspiring and it's an inspiring today. then the up appointed the head of policy planning to succeed george kennan and in a very short period of time i think seven or eight weeks, give or take, it's overseas. the drafting of nsc 68. now simple question, is it nsc? well, it's just the paper passed by the security council after
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nsc 67. but in mind here that all of we in 2024 and here is a very large national security council staff that would be doing this in-house back in 1950, the material is outsourced to the state department, the tasking is outsourced and it's a lead. the team quite well. i mean, kennan would have insisted writing it all himself if there was a pretty good of a group project. and more importantly, you know, he doesn't have to send it around all of the bureaucratic agencies of 24 he stamps restricted data on this project. there was. i don't think any restricted data which is the department of nuclear but he kind of gathers key constituencies in the department of defense to effectively override side the sitting secretary of defense which johnson would promise truman that he would keep the defense budget under $13 billion. now, as we earlier there's no specific dollar.
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and then the 6060 but it's pretty clear they're going to ask for a lot more. so what's the substance mean? the substance is effectively it gives an explanation for why peace in the interwar period it's very. very eloquently hides the challenges that the united states faces to fund founding documents in language that i suspect this is rarely misses. i think louis howe and some others on his team of crafted the more evocative of language but part and parcel with with nsc 68 as the text was the way they went doing it. i mean they got their constituency lined up as policy planning directors, something they would say today convenes the joint chiefs staff and the secretary of defense and the secretary of state and. they basically, you know, have the knives out for secretary of
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defense lee johnson when he when he arrives and he storms out in a huff, they send it to the white house. truman initially doesn't want to deal with it, but then it's the june 1950, the start of the korean war that truman around and basically signs off on it and why does it matter today. well. i think you can put both kennan's own strategy and myths. this nsc 68 in a sort of in one category, in the category that often understood is that the purpose of these strategies are not to to war with the soviet union. the purpose to win without war. and that, i think, is what's elemental today. and we really can't lose track of in terms where we go with with revisionist coalitions
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today. absolutely. and that's that's a critical element here that i think matters in today's grand. this idea of winning without war, which was novel the time having just having just fought having just gone to war. right. and something else that so that whole idea which today in washington i think is very important in in a lot of people looking at the contemporary issue of china. the question how do you have a peaceful, long term victory? i think people are by definition, taking kind of minutes and others as role models for what a real what strategic success looks like. and you know, another element that i think is really important to this. in nsc 68 is that it says generation is as you and i talked about before, they weren't worried the next vietnam because that hadn't happened were worried about the next pearl harbor. yeah can you tell us about that? because i think today, nsc 68 is
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often a controversial document, despite its importance and you know, keep people might look at it as something that led to the excesses of the cold war to over militarization u.s. policy. but they're coming from the point of view of what real failure is, is what happens at pearl harbor when when an adversary it's saw it and, you know, others around him, i'm sure would the us as weak as unprepared and therefore would seize the moment to is that essentially where stood. i think so if i could sort of say a word or two about the the criticism so far as i understand it of nsc 68 and it relates i think to kennan and especially his what did say in in the midst of vietnam which was basically to say that he kennan had laid a plan to focus on only the the
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most important strategic regions in the world and also in so doing to wage political containment and he kind of kind of contrast that to what nixon wrote in nsc 68, which is that it should be global the cold war and that we needed to rely on fast a large sizable military force. i remember kennan saying at one point it would just take a couple of our marine expeditionary and that's all we would need in the early cold war and. so i think that there's a kind of tendency to kind of accept what can and wrote and. you could say, well, we blundered our way these this global cold war and into vietnam because we rejected what kind of approach and the person perpetuating that line is kennan himself and then nsc 68 is not declassified.
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until 1975 and they were still becomes a rorschach test. you could well we've seen the mindset that led us into catastrophe or as somebody like ronald reagan said. well actually here we have this articulation first principles and the democratic party especially kind of veered away from that over time. but i think to your point about about another pearl harbor. yes. i mean, of course, what they're what. the kind of overriding metaphor of that generation was to it is munich and pearl harbor. i mean, they since they're not really negotiating with the soviets directly in 1958, is less concerned about and pearl is is the metaphor on their mind and then i just if i could just kind of say a word about the rest of the cold war writ large. i mean the the remarkable thing we have to remember is that we
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did manage to through it and we did get arms agreements, some of them formal treaty, some of them more of a reciprocal understand. that that made the took away the incentive for a disarming first strike. but that's you know that's what for the last years of his career before the nineties i was really obsessed with this notion of a first strike and this is it's a and this is after the soviets achieved parity and in some circumstances superiority after the cuban missile crisis. i don't i to think about it more, but i don't i know whether that kind of in terms of what we're dealing with today the dealing with whether pearl harbor harbor whether pearl harbor should the the overriding metaphor, i'm not sure.
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i mean, you may have a different. sure. and i thought it was really nicely expressed in the book. you say nixon's of history, again, based his personal experiences and readings was that preparedness mattered. the united states had been provocatively in the late 1930s, leading germany and japan to have their way with the free world. and i think that's what's what's important about this to me is you know we're about to head into this period where this whole town going to be talking about the return to peace through strength and reagan yeah you know that's that's reagan's big idea and i think it's going to become a very important and and we have stoker here today who in his book on grand strategy in the revolutionary war he mentioned that we began the the sort of enduring american tradition of being unprepared for conflicts that eventually came to us. so i just that meeting this to me was one of the reasons why he's so relevant, was, you know, you're talking about somebody who's worldview as wrote often
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here was about preserving strategic superiority and that basically means in the nuclear domain at that time. but the concept, i think, can apply very broadly where if we're talking about the question of preparedness, the question of peace through strength, the question of strategic superiority in a time where you have aggressive adversaries, i think he becomes an even more important guide to the moment we're in today. and then then maybe any at any time than his own time. so but that view, i think, is something that we haven't experienced a long time. the problems of being unprepared were so real for his generation. that's how how it happened. and in some ways, this important work is coming just within the decade of having to experience the outbreak of world war two and all the rest of it. so this idea of winning without war, i think, has even more powerful when you're talking about the generation that was
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forced to fight that because were unprepared. yeah i agree and that to me is like that's the fundamental question of needs is like here's somebody who arrives at this idea of essentially peace through strength because we were for something that came to him in his generation and think that's that's what we should be learning from this and then nsc 68 you know i to read a quote from it, which i just thought was very interesting just to show scope of their thinking, which i think is some, you know strikes me as different from how people do foreign today but the view of history was so sweeping says this within the past 35 years the world has experienced global wars of tremendous violence is within two revolutions. the and chinese of extremes scope and intensity. it has also seen the collapse of five empires, the ottoman, the austro-hungarian, german, italy, the japanese and the drastic
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decline of two major imperial systems, the british and the french. during the of one generation, the international distribution of power has been altered. so then, when he's tasked by the president of the united states to basically, what should we do in response to all that? and he's digging. so deep into the historical context of where are and then they ask events in ways so simple it's about the increase of the us defense budget in order to get to the point where we can be prepared to head off or essentially push the soviet. expansionary possibility away and and that's some ways successful because it lines us up for a long term cold where we don't fight the soviet war that war never takes place. but you know, bottom line, i think there's just a lot in here that makes it very relevant. i just want to, you know, tell us in sort of words about the legacy of this document that's important. so let me if could follow up on
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one of your points there. yes, i i agree with you that in the long term, it is success for and as 68, i think it's important in terms of thinking about knits and thinking about your own careers and, what you want to achieve, to come to grips with the fact that that he not think it was successful at the time and he was quite irked by two bit administration in the last two years of it or. what he thought was not following through on the conventional build in western europe. he thought that was kind of it had been too diverted to it to to the korean to korea and japan and he intended to stay on during the eisenhower administra oration and was originally offered the job of international assistant secretary for national security affairs is essentially the undersecretary for policy now only to have it revoked.
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john foster dulles after a few months and here again so again the legacy nsc 68, i would say in the book is it's you really can't it from the person himself and that is a decision he makes to keep sticking with it. and so then even when he doesn't get this position of the eisenhower administration, he goes back and kind of sets up its sights. and i try to the point of what are the middle chapters that that it's this period that's extremely important in terms of thinking national security as a profession because even though he's on the outside he still is consulted by dulles who didn't like him but there were very few people town who could kind of talk to you you could throw ideas about and retain the clearances. i had a guy who kept clearances and so he's in this weird position of like outwardly criticizing the administrator and very much setting himself
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for a senior role in a next administration. but at the same time, he's still sort of part of machinery. and, you know, dulles still bringing him in and from his perspective. and occasionally there's, i think, some validity. he he he figures out that you can actually accomplish quite a lot in terms of crafting the narrative in terms of kind putting forward and kind of selling the idea of what is the big picture that the should be focusing on. so would say in terms of nsc 68 and what a lot of people working on today, it does matter that that was a close, you know, classified document only available to a few that, you know, it was difficult to pitch ideas. but now it's actually much easier because you can kind of gain constituency. you could write an nsc 60 that gets a much more it's a very wide distribution. i mean, the stuff of classification of of material is
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often irrelevant as it was then irrelevant to now. but to the big you can you can hack away at the big picture and in the in the manner of nsc 68 from from different positions around around. is it accurate he wanted it to be declassified so that it could be shared. is that correct? i, i don't remember that and i don't know why exactly. kissinger in 1975 declassified it. it wasn't it before it came out in the foreign relations, the us series that i work on. it's a kind of an enduring mystery. there was certainly particularly sensitive about it from my read in one of the points in the document itself was that there should be of the american public on the nature, the threat and another account of it, i think another historian writes that it was a document would lend itself to preaching something of that nature basically they wanted the ideas out there they people to understand the threat what to do about it essentially so it wasn't just strategy document
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was that entire push to to deal with the cold war as it was existing and to your point i mean it was a life's work for me instead of just keep on trying to to move america into the position he thought was was required and then else that i thought was was very interesting the book was this idea that we lost strategic superiority that really troubled him because we'd had it really ahead of the cuban missile crisis eventually lost it. but to tell us more about that is with and what that means to have and to lose strategic superior idiom. what that was what that meant to me so. one of the points i try to make in the book is that paul nitze it takes from the end of the cuban missile crisis resolution of the cuban crisis without a nuclear war. let's call success. i think we can agree he takes away from that the notion that the soviets backed down because.
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the united states maintained nuclear and conventional superiority both in the theater and in europe, however fleeting. that was over the following four so saw over the following decade and from his perspective, then secretary of defense robert mcnamara and many of the american people, i would say, have a different on it. is that actually, from their perspective, the two sides had gone to the brink of nuclear war. they had realized what lay the that lay beyond it and they stepped back and they came away thinking, well, we're never to do this again. and it was horrified at that. and they kind of tangible product of it was that robert mcnamara taps the us fleet of 2000 and you know, most, i think americans believe that which was assured destruction means that this is so i'm thinking a it'll
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never happen and. i think that you know from this perspective and quite right an accurate the soviet reaction was much different. there's a really evocative quote that a soviet diplomat says to, i think it was john mccloy, shortly after the end, the crisis saying, well, you'll never do to us again. and that demeaning was that the soviet union will never allow itself to be caught in a situation where it had anything less than same amount of nuclear capabilities as the united states and know the story the decade from that followed is the soviet union catching up and surpassing in some instances soviet nuclear capabilities where it's not so clear where it's becomes interesting from a kind of i know it's something to think about and to write about obviously the consequences are deadly serious, but the the, you
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know was it the correct and what he thought in the 1970s which was he becomes fixated on this idea that the soviets have something called the ss nine or which becomes the f-18s a very large weapon, icbm much, much larger than anything the us that much the only purpose from perspective could be to take out us minuteman land based systems. now if they did that you know they could then kind of give an ultimatum to the us leader. we'll your cities if so long as you don't attack back and the soviet leaders would kind of they would know no american president would actually strike back just because of the nature of the american the american president. they're not going to take that trade deal. they'll accept, you know, surrender. and so what we needed to do with, the structure of our forces, a way that the soviets
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have confidence that they could never get in that situation, because from his perspective, if ever was if there ever were repetition of the cuban missile crisis, it would be the united states that would have to back down from the mid seventies on that. fortunately, we never had that right. we never had another repetition of the cubans of crisis. but that's something i think we to think about going in the 2020s and beyond that we had there's really only one from my perspective, and this is some others may disagree, but i think one nuclear crisis brewing in cuba. and i tried to spell out here. right, right. well, i want to get to audience in just a couple minutes. so i'm going to ask two more questions here. i mean one, just let's talk about knits in canada. mean on one hand, they were very collaborative. i mean, cannon was first director of policy planning at the state department. he has to be his deputy, is that right? and then he was passed over for that. and so writes very respectfully him in his later on recounting of the drafting of nsc 68 and
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all of that. but what was what was there i mean, what did they accomplish? how were they different? in some ways, they're so fundamental, different with real accomplishments being the language, the experience, rather than the sort of hallmarks of a national security professional in washington. imagine that with some, you know, very very useful to have the two of them together. this formative moment and strategy, you know, i think an evocative way of, understanding the differences between these two men. well, first of all, the that cannon kept the dream diary. i mean, who keeps a dream diary. some people do. i guess that pulitzer. but this notion of, you know, does it matter or does it not matter that, you know, russia kind of knew the russian obviously, he knew like he had spent a lot of time with the russian people. he russian literature and from a standpoint he visits russia in
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the 1950s. he stays with ambassador bolton, his family. and you know, he takes away two things. one place is a dump and secondly, he he sees these kind of entryways the closed metro stations and he asks around and somebody, well, that's for the senior leaders. and he takes from that kind of what i have learned all i need to know about russia. i wanted to dump on the soviet union. so i think i endorse this. and secondly, that the soviet leaders are prepared to evacuate in the event of a nuclear war and, you know, so you can say, well, that's on the one hand. and ken on the other hand is like, i write a 500 page book about that russian history. it's good to have both perspectives. but, you know, in the realm, you know, deterring the adversary
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and to figure out how to structure forces to do that and how to explain that the american people, you know, i think that you sort of have to come down on on the one side and you have to evaluate, okay, what are the worst case scenarios? and even if you have even if you've laid out what are worst case scenarios and the worst case scenarios come to pass, that doesn't necessarily negate, you know, the the conclusions you came to. right, that is sort of what i find interesting about this. you in contrast, in today's era, i think there were a lot of people that did not know china and wound up with a policy that no engagement, that was really self-defeating. that's a subject. but, you know, then we really had beginning of our long term strategy was formed by a real soviet geologist, but it was accompanied by a real security professional and imagine that was just they got there and what they wrote was we had to give the president the clearest, almost detail of assessment of
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the threat and then what to do about it and to have that all, just early on in the cold war, as dire as that moment might have been in terms of current events at the time, i think it was very fortunate to have both the knowledge of the country and this focus on, you know, sort of nascent the american national security career come together and do that very successfully. i think we've seen the opposite of that to some extent in our own era. and my follow in question before we go to the audience was just something that comes through here, you know, and answer this how you want because you're at the state department and, you know, this is not the official speaking for the state department. but i mean, this really puts the mute says era it's in kind it puts the us state department right in the absolute center u.s. grand strategy in some ways the most important time and i guess this is sort of before we have the broader, more complex bureaucracy of national security architecture that we have today, but just the ability to get that clear effective planning done
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and to have state be right at the center, you know, to me evokes, like a time where the meaning of diplomacy was even different. i mean, it was about strategy. it was about setting up an approach the entire world that would ultimately be successful in strategic. i just is that just sort of a romantic of distance state as this real mover a prime in this period or how would you look at it? it's a little i think it's a little more complicated. you're right that the nexus of strategic planning is in the office of policy planning. there's this a couple caveats to it, i would say, is that the state department had done a terrible job of planning during world war two and the joint chiefs have done very good job of planning. and that part of the rationale for creating theiss was that he thought that the foreign service office, foreign officers,
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particularly during the interactions with them during world war, let less so in the late forties because he has you know what skews the example here is that that it has the opportunity to to say give me your best. so he brings the kind of five or six what he considers to be the best foreign service opportunities and they come work for me. so he gets the most talented folks but you know writ large he he firmly believed that the way the state department was training its officers in the 1940s, did not prepare them for the challenges of the world. they out to and the original plan precise kind of dot dot dot over time for understandable reasons was that you know private industries electric ibm would send to sites to be trained they're kind of best incoming employees sites we train them into how to be private sector diplomats to the world and in a way that nitze himself had done a little bit in the 1930s but then the hang up
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was that nobody wanted to send their best their best employees, you know, for a year or two to study. they wanted to send them out to the middle east or wherever immediately. so i just your question, it's kind of a mixed kind, a mixed bag about the state department, then, and that's his view on it. i mean now you have effectively a strategic planning cell within the national security council staff for the last years and they do similar work to the limitation of policy planning at the state department. but i think the broader kind of point i would make here that that it's still you have to kind of satisfy 300 or 400 different constituencies, get out a national security strategy. and for nitze, it was just came down to about ten people that you had to get on board. and so, you know, inevitably with so many cooks in the in the room, it's going be very difficult to kind of preserve
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something that's really powerful when. you're down to arguing over every split infinitive or whatever. right. well, in any case, let's go to audience questions. so your hand for them for and please tell us who you are and what your affiliations are. bruce guthrie, retired back in, you know, when 911 happened. we talked about people bringing nuclear bombs in the cities here and blowing them up. and this is time they talked about the army having, which could fire tactical weapons, boats that could shoot torpedoes. and so when his strategy seemed be global nuclear war, did he have any sort of plan against third nation people doing things. these terrorists attacks with nuclear weapons, the the simple answer is, no. another answer is that he very
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much frowned upon us tactical nuclear. he thought they were pointless because. there would be no way to kind of control the escalation. the third thing i would say i think to point is that he makes a decision in the mid 1960s to focus almost exclusively on the kind of the vertical aspect of the nuclear arms race, which is the us and soviet union and this was long before china became whatever. but there were others in the field who focused almost exclusively on the horizontal, that is the nonproliferation side of it, but you know, other nations, the end nation would would achieve nuclear weapons. if i could say one more thing to
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this and i should also mention that that in the book and i kind of start out with with the imagery that on 911, if there was supposed to meet with condoleezza rice at sites to talk, she was giving a speech, going to give a speech about ballistic missile defense. and he was supposed to meet with her right before it. obviously, the event was was postponed. but i think that, you know, there's a there's a convergence that that happens between the horizontal the nuclear. and i remember certainly the days after the years after 911 and the concern about, you know, it would be a dirty bomb in a us city and the fundamental fabric of america sort of collapse after that. but i think the one thing we have to keep mind is that the the soviet nuclear arsenal is ultimately the 30,000 weapons, nuclear weapons in 1991, 92, that they don't get loose.
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and we worry about nuclear now because of the a.q. khan network. and we were talking about nuclear proliferation. but it's to your point, it's it's an example of something where we should kind look back on it and say, well, there actually were palpable and understandable fears and. it's been actually a great success of us policy making. and i think that was part of it that we don't really think about that so much. other questions. that we got to make free us. your name greg brown, and then really, really wanted to know about these experience as a businessman and as a investment banker where that lend to its policy. then what he brought to the world of defense. how did that translate? yeah, this is thank you for asking. i think a really important question.
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so it. netsuite is this was son of an academic and he was slightly in the sense that his father was this great professor of romance languages at the university of chicago, was around all these other nobel prize winners. and this is attitude was they don't achieve there i want be a man of action unlike these people who just talk he he finds that like a few years after college when, he goes to wall street and. he's in awe of clarence dillon, head of the read. and he kind of i think, a several instances i describe in the book he just kind of his view of the world is i would actually operate is that people like clarence dillon they call up world leaders and they say this is what you should. and then when he reads in the newspaper like, this thing has
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happened, just assumed this is how the world works, whether or not that's actually why somebody acted the way they did. but then throughout the course of the thirties, he is placed in kind of a higher level of responsibility being on corporate boards, being oftentimes executives, secretary in the room who have the kind of sum up, okay, what's here is our conclusion wins. and he gains the confidence in arguing with the really self people and you know sometimes just straightforward important people. and so i mean there's a kind of confidence that he thinks on wall street and and is his kind of propensity for taking risks. i mean, the thing that i think jonathan, i both really love about this in the thirties is he gets involved, some of these wild things, like he he tried he and his friends outside their actual jobs started. they tried to sound cynical the quote reader. it's like a like a almost like a
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sodastream. it was going to take on coca-cola. and they also had this like this campaign that they were going to say that coca-cola causes the reality and they were going to like kind of do both and get rich and. the whole thing failed spectacularly. but he did a couple of those things and one of them was like a french vitamin company that he invested on the side. and then it ultimately acquired by revlon and they gobs of money for it. so then how does that effect him as a policymaker? well you know, he has no military background. he's just gets himself in the proximity of people like george marshall and others during the war time exercise, during the wartime years. and he sort of by the end of 43 and 44 in the room arguing with us generals about the nature of us military strategy, he there
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was a point in the book where he goes to the beach and he's he's working on this plan to fundamentally revise the us strategic bombing in japan. it leaves his notes. coney island, which i would not advise you to do today, but i mean, so he kind of built, he builds the confidence that i try to make. the case is, as he said in the book that is based on his experience on wall street and, then it kind of bleeds into his overall framework because when he when he writes the strategic bombing survey for east asia that, you know, we didn't have use the bomb. i agree i'm not the first to come to this colony. robert neuman who said this many years ago that actually what's shading his thought is is more that he come up with a plan to win the war by changing the bombings strategy. he had no knowledge of the atomic and so it's i think was annoyed not to have known about it but his conclusions are
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shaded. you know, i had come up with this plan that was going to win the war without it. but he has to to kind of brief generals and go up against them because of what he learned on wall street. for. other questions, are we going? christopher bright, george washington university. so i think this is a summary and correct me if wrong. so nietzsche proposed against george kennan and nietzsche right tennessee 68 it's never quite to his house faction, but then he spends his rest of life trying to implement it. is. including team 18 be reagan administration support same view of the world and same lessons that he thinks need to be applied. i think so. and i've been asked sort of, did he ever express regret and no, i
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think is the answer. but i also think it's important to kind of include with that answer that he in 1986, 1987. and, you know, i make the case in the book that actually he's nsc 60 is extremely important, but so is his work for george shultz during the second reagan administration or coming up with the framework of what becomes this start? one strategic arms control over arms reduction treaty. and in that i that he comes up with a formula tries to integrate ronald reagan's plans for the strategic defense initiative with a treaty that would kind of reduce or not eliminate soviet ss 18 missiles that had been pumping for so many years. and he believed that point. and to the end of 1988 as he's trying to negotiate treaty.
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he he still believed the united states had not re the strength that he needed. and he also did not believe that gorbachev would do the things that he did that he then did, which was to let this, in your view, eastern europe go. so you. i would say that one lesson to draw especially is you will on current and future policies is that rarely there be a moment of satisfaction that. you can walk away saying, aha, i did it like i've achieved it. you have to kind acclimate yourself to the broader stream of of a sense of tragedy and failure that other us policymakers, other policymakers we now look up, look back on as having created or co-created successful institutions. they themselves went to their later years, you know, not fully confident. before we take one word, i just want to ask you about that mean,
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you know, one of the something that really comes through in the book is that as as our guest just summarized the fact that he dedicates his entire life to this, as you point out very clearly, he never leaves washington i mean, many people did, but he just in it all sorts of variations ends up doing what almost looks like the full jack ryan you know he's part of every single thing and that's just wonderfully admirable but like many figures didn't necessarily see it as successful also didn't as you point out in the book didn't anticipate the end to the cold war in 1989 to 91, just didn't see that coming. but he stays involved in critical security issues up until the end of his life and what would he be doing today mean? would there be a need for a new grand strategy for another nsc 68, or would it be on to some new issue or did he find that thing and keep running with it?
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or was he still thinking about the bigger underlying picture as he at the very start? so by the. 1990s he came to the view that nuclear weapons were no longer longer necessary preserve peace and part of it was that he was quite enamored of us kind of precision guided. as a way to deter adversaries that the soviets, the russians were kind of to bankrupt to sustain their nuclear arsenal and you know, and at that point, it did not seem that beijing was seeking out something of the same order of magnitude. so he becomes fixated on global climate change as. but i think i mean, i think hermann konitz, some of the things he said that to him was the kind of the big security
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issue that lay on the horizon and ahead of his time on that the the thing that i think we have to kind of take with a grain of salt is that that he also signs the letter opposing nato expansion, but then sort of, you know, the world changes as he grows very old and then ultimately dies. so i don't you know, if we looked at 20, 24, what would he what would he be thinking? and i don't think it's necessarily one of the things he was thinking about the mid to late 1990s. i think that, you know, he probably say there is no particular need for a new nsc 68 because you know, you have the original. but he wrote that could just be brought but i definitely think that he would be that's his kind of snarky personality. i mean the fact is, yes, of course he thinks that what we should be thinking about and
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that, you know, some version of this fits the scenario scenario bruce said about, you know, the kind of example of the suitcase nukes. i mean, that was the kind of the equivalent, i would say of them, it's a scenario in the early 2000 that we would be the us is what happened to us would be kind of blackmailed into deterring from doing anything in world and i think now you know it's the one unparalleled complexity of a three way arms competition between china, russia and the united states that i think you would just be seen guiltily focused on because that to him is, you know, is just so infinitely complex, but we could easily get ourselves into position where the united states deters itself from taking allies to uphold its interests and values values. well, thank you and thank you all for being here.
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america's cold warrior paul nitze. from roosevelt to reagan. this it's a just i think, one of the best national security biographies ever read. and just an extraordinary sort of intertwining the life of this fascinating person who's so much more interesting than you might know, from the outside. and then the seminal moment in american strategic history where, you know, the document that many regard as the sort of opening bookend to the long cold war, the genesis of, containment, and ultimately something that even saw essential when he finally put the game to rest in the in the late eighties one of one of the great lives in american national security. and i did want to read one thing just because it's it's so interesting but to give you a sense of of this individual, just to make sure this is conveyed, this is an it's a in during the second world war, he goes on an expedition to brazil and it's and here obtaining the
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right materials could determine the difference between victory and defeat. at the battle of kasserine pass in february 1943, german forces led by erwin rommel intercepted allied radio communication, which relied on only two frequencies because of the scarce scarcity of quotes based oscillator points. so netzer led a team of 40 geology ships to brazil, where they rode around on horseback, searching for a fresh supply of quartz. so to do that kind of work, to get the big picture, right, to be immersed in the details but also for the entire adventure of victory. i think it's it's a fantastically interesting life. and the book is perfect conveying on it. so thank you for being here and i have a reason for having me. of their donuts and always
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