Paul Nitze dead at 97

Bath Iron Works launched the U.S.S. Paul Nitze destroyer in April



Nitze's legacy is a handy tool used by Wolfowitz, Bush, and others to support the Terror War and Iraq conquest
Rarely do I recognize deaths here, but this one is special. Few people know it, but Nitze was in the early 1950s a principle architect of the Cold War. Late in his career, he provided intellectual and diplomatic support in US relations with the Soviet Union during the Reagan Administration.

According to an editorial tribute in the Washington Post,

Mr. Nitze may be best known by some for a particularly daring act of diplomacy: the 1982 "walk in the woods" near Geneva with his Soviet counterpart that yielded a concept for defusing a confrontation over intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Although the initiative ultimately didn't succeed, it was typical of Mr. Nitze's innovative and independent thinking, which over the years led him from the Democratic Party to the beginnings of the neo-conservative movement and back again.

The "walk in the woods" may have been Nitze's one popularized chapter. But the Cold-War foundations laid by Nitze in a top-secret memorandum known as NSC-68 altered the course of American history in complex ways almost completely unknown to the public. Here is how current Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz highlighted Nitze's contributions in remarks entitled Paul Nitze's Legacy: For a New World and delivered to an Aspen Institute luncheon in Washington, DC on April 15, 2004.

As every student of security policy must know, NSC-68 which was signed by President Truman in 1950, was Nitze’s strategic blueprint for the Cold War. Although written before North Korea rolled south, it was a document that people quickly took up in the wake of the Korean invasion. It is a document that has been read and reread over the course of 50 years. It is a model of long-term strategic planning. NSC-68 addressed not only importance of a nuclear armed Soviet Union, but also the importance of the ideological orientation of the Soviet Union. Paul recognized the Soviet ideology as an inherent evil. And when combined with a formidable military capability, that ideology became an existential threat.

In its opening analysis, NSC-68 says this, quote: "The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world." As we reflect on these words, it is striking how similar they are to what we face today. Although it is called religious, the fanaticism that we are dealing with has roots that stem much more from the ideological zealotry of the 20th century than from the religious origins on which it claims to draw.

Secular or religious, the adversaries we face today are ultimately animated by their own will to power, not by any altruism. While there are important differences between the challenge of our time and the one that Nitze and these other wise men faced 50 years ago, there are striking similarities in the character of the enemy—a similarity summarized, perhaps, with a single word: evil.

Wolfowitz seemlessly weaves the NSC-68 legacy -- a legacy of relentless dumping of public resources into endless production of weapons of planetary destruction in order to stave off the perceived power of the Soviet state -- into the new world evil of Islamic terrorism conducted at random by mostly invisible stateless actors, also requiring an endless American garrison economy. Wolfowitz must be congratulated for skill in conflating and amplifying the current perceived threats from this ragtag tapestry of disaffected people into a new NSC-68-inspired foundation for permanent war.

Author Larry Everest in a marvelous May 2004 talk spoke of how interpretations of history and US-world relations like the ones Wolfowitz conveys may be turned around 180 degrees. This gives a much different outlook towards the Nitze legacy as appropriated by Wolfowitz with respect to "the fanaticism that we are dealing with".

I'll quote Everest below. I think you'll see in the Bush references the hand of Wolfowitz and his modern interpretation of NSC-68:

When [Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and so on] condemn their adversaries, usually their condemnations apply 1000-fold to themselves....Quoting George Bush's recent speech [Army War College, Carlisle, PA, May 25, 2004]....

Bush said, "Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder". Well, so does the US government.

Bush said, "They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East". Wow, that's precisely the US agenda in the Middle East.

Bush said, "They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized". What's the PATRIOT Act? What's "your with us or against us"?

Bush said, "They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence". Well, who's gotten more military bases across the Middle East [and South Asia] than any other power in the world since September 11?

Bush said, "They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein. They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, pursued with consuming zeal, and without conscience." Who's strategy was "shock and awe"?

Very late in his life, Nitze became something of a gadfly, supporting international institutions and the US role in them, distinct from the contempt of such by the current administration. He would violently disagree with the hegemonic interpretations of American actions suggested by Everest. This was his blind spot, a failure to consider the view of US policy from the perspective of those who suffer its consequences. Rest in peace, Paul Nitze.