Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War is a biography of Paul Nitze

Paul Nitze

Paul Henry Nitze was a high-ranking United States government official who helped shape Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations.-Early life, education, and family:...

, the Cold War strategist and diplomat. It was published by HarperCollins in 1990 and written by David Callahan

David Callahan

David Callahan is a co-founder of the think tank Demos, a public policy group based in New York City, where he is currently a Senior Fellow. He is also an author, commentator, and lecturer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the books The Cheating Culture and The Moral Center. Callahan is a...

.

Synopsis

Dangerous Capabilities offers a critical account of Nitze's role in debates within the United States government on policy toward the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons, and other national security issues. Nitze held a variety of high-level positions under eight different presidents, including Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Secretary of the Navy, and Deputy Secretary of Defense. He also was a U.S. negotiator on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT...

(SALT) and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) talks.

Callahan faults Nitze for using his influence to accelerate the nuclear arms race

Nuclear arms race

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...

 and worsen relations with the Soviet Union. Callahan is particularly critical of Nitze's role in drafting NSC-68

NSC-68

National Security Council Report 68 was a 58-page formerly-classified report issued by the United States National Security Council on April 14, 1950, during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Written during the formative stage of the Cold War, it was top secret until the 1970s when it was made...

, an influential strategy document that Callahan says offered an inflated view of the Soviet threat unsupported by expert analysis of Soviet intentions. Callahan also faults Nitze for his central role in the 1958 Gaither Committee, which helped fuel erroneous fears of a "missile gap

Missile gap

The missile gap was the term used in the United States for the perceived disparity between the number and power of the weapons in the U.S.S.R. and U.S. ballistic missile arsenals during the Cold War. The gap only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and United...

" that favored the Soviet Union. As well, Callahan provides a critical account of Nitze's role in Team-B

Team B

Team B was a competitive analysis exercise commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s to analyze threats the Soviet Union posed to the security of the United States. Team B, approved by then Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, was composed of "outside experts" who...

, a competitive intelligence analysis to analyze threats posed by the Soviet Union, and his leadership in the Committee on the Present Danger

Committee on the Present Danger

The Committee on the Present Danger is an American foreign policy interest group. Its current stated single goal is "to stiffen American resolve to confront the challenge presented by terrorism and the ideologies that drive it" through "education and advocacy"...

, which warned of a Soviet edge in the Cold War competition.

Callahan offers a more positive account of Nitze's years as an arms control negotiator, where he worked hard to reach agreements with the Soviet Union to regulate and stabilize the nuclear arms race. In addition, Callahan notes Nitze's positive role in enacting the Marshall Plan

Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...

to aid Western Europe after World War II.

Reception

Dangerous Capabilities was published in September 1990 and widely reviewed. Larry Tool, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle said that "Dangerous Capabilities is not only the best book on Nitze, it is also one of the most searching and accessible accounts of American Cold War planning...The strength of Callahan's book is in its critical stance. He gives Nitze his due as a virtuoso bureaucrat, but confronts him at each stage of his career with the hard questions of his numerous critics." Former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb, writing in the Naval War College Review, said "Judged by even the most rigorous standards, Callahan has produced a remarkable book. In Dangerous Capabilities, he has given us a sweeping, authoritative, and readable history of the men, the ideas, and politics which formed American national security policy for the last fifty years." Joseph Nye, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Dangerous Capabilities "An immensely readable account of a critical figure in the history of American foreign policy over the past 40 years."

External links

• Dangerous Capaiblities