Paul Nitze

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Paul Nitze

Paul Henry Nitze (born January 16, 1907 in Amherst , Massachusetts , † October 19, 2004 in Georgetown , Washington, DC ) was an American politician. Nitze, whose German ancestors came from the Magdeburg area, was educated at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville , Connecticut , and graduated from Harvard University in 1927. After working in the investment banking business , he joined government services in 1940 and founded the with Christian Herter in 1943 now the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC

Political activity

Nitze was first appointed to a higher post in 1950 when he took over the position of Director of Policy Planning in the State Department . This he remained until 1953. From 1963 to 1967 acted Democrat Nitze as Secretary of the Navy ( Secretary of the Navy ) and subsequent to 1969 as deputy defense minister .

In the decades that followed, he was one of the chief architects of US policy towards the Soviet Union . Nitze was always one of the hawks who advocated a tough position against the East. He did not see so much the danger of short-term military aggression by the Soviet Union, but assumed that Marxism-Leninism contained the goal that the world would be dominated by communist ideology in the longer term. One of the foundations of his actions was the belief that it was wrong to negotiate from a state of weakness. He therefore relied on military strength as the basis for negotiations and saw deterrence as necessary in order to deter the Soviet Union from possible aggression.

In 1975 he founded the "Committee on the Present Danger", whose members made anti-communism socially acceptable and politically effective again after the years of détente . For example, he took a remarkably vehement position against the ratification of the SALT II treaty of 1979. Later he was the chief negotiator of US President Ronald Reagan (Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control) for the intermediate range - Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). It was about the stationing of nuclear medium-range missiles in Europe. During the disarmament talks taking place in Geneva in 1982, the famous “forest walk” by Nitze and the Soviet negotiator Juli Kwizinski took place , during which both of them negotiated extensive disarmament proposals, which were subsequently rejected by both the US and the Soviet governments and thus did not come into play. A few years later, however, Mikhail Gorbachev resumed negotiations and the INF Treaty was successfully concluded in 1987. In 1984 Nitze was appointed special advisor to the President and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on gun control.

Paul Nitze with Secretary of Defense William Cohen (2001)

In 1985 Nitze received the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian honor in the United States. The destroyer " DDG-94 " of the Arleigh Burke class of the US Navy was christened USS Nitze in his honor . The then Defense Secretary William Cohen declared: "To put [Nitze's] name on this ship ... will remind people of Paul's passionate commitments to avoid war by being prepared to fight in it." ("To give (Nitzes) a name to this ship ... will people are reminiscent of (Nitze's) passionate commitment to avoiding war by preparing for battle. ”In 1988 Nitze was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Offices

  • Vice President of the Strategic Bombing Survey , 1944–1946
  • Head of State Department Policy Planning, 1950–1953
  • In 1950 he was the lead author of an influential and (then) top secret National Security Council document, called NSC-68 , which classified Soviet policy as aggressive and expansive and required a corresponding response from the USA.
  • Minister of the Navy, 1963-1967
  • Deputy Minister of Defense , 1967–1969
  • Member of the US delegation to the SALT talks (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), 1969–1973
  • State Secretary of the Ministry of Defense for International Affairs, 1973–1976
  • Special Advisor to the President for Arms Control 1984- (?) (Probably 1988)

Publications

  • with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden: From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir. G. Weidenfeld, New York 1989, ISBN 1-55584-110-4 .
  • Tension between opposites. Reflections on the Practice and Theory of Politics. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1993, ISBN 0-684-19628-X .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fred Kaplan: The man who brought us the Cold War.
  2. ↑ a b Interview ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.achievement.org
  3. ↑ Deutschlandradio Kultur
  4. ↑ Navy names destroyer to honor Paul H. Nitze
personal data
SURNAME Nitze, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nitze, Paul Henry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Amherst , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 2004
Place of death Georgetown , Washington DC