Paul Nitze

Paul Henry Nitze ( born January 16, 1907 in Amherst, Massachusetts, † 19 October 2004 in Georgetown, Washington, DC) was an American disarmament expert. 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. According to activity in the investment banking business increased in 1940 in government services and, together with Christian Herter 1943 today 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 assumed the post of Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. This he remained until 1953. Between 1963 and 1967, the Democrat Nitze served as Secretary of the Navy ( Secretary of the Navy ) and subsequent to 1969 as deputy defense minister.

In the following decades he was one of the chief architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Nitze was always one of the hawks who advocated a tough stance against the East. He did not so much the risk of short-term Soviet military strike, but assumed that Marxism -Leninism bein think the goal is to make longer term dominated by the communist ideology of the world. One of the foundations of his action was of the opinion that it is wrong to negotiate from a state of their own weakness out. He sat thus on military force as the basis for negotiations and saw deterrence as necessary to prevent the Soviet Union from possible aggression.

In 1975 he founded the "Committee on the Present Danger", whose members anti-communism, after the years of détente, again made ​​socially acceptable and politically effective. For example, he represented a remarkably vehement position against the ratification of the SALT II Treaty of 1979. Later he was the chief negotiator of U.S. President Ronald Reagan for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ( INF). That case involved the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. During that time held disarmament talks in Geneva came there in 1982 to the famous " walk in the woods " by Nitze and the Soviet negotiators July Kvitzinski in which negotiated both far-reaching disarmament proposals, however, were subsequently rejected by both the U.S. and the Soviet government and therefore did not come to fruition. A few years later, however, were taken by Mikhail Gorbachev, the negotiations again and could now - 1987 - successfully completed. 1984 Nitze was appointed special advisor to the President and the State Department on arms control.

Nitze, in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the USA. The destroyer " DDG -94 " Arleigh Burke - class of Navy was named in his honor on the name USS Nitze. The then Secretary of Defense William Cohen said: "To put [ Nitze 's ] name on this ship ... will remind people of Paul's passionate commitments to avoid was by being prepared to fight in it. " ( " Giving this ship ( Nitze ) name, ... the people will remember ( Nitze ) passionate commitment for avoiding war through preparedness for battle. " )

Offices

• Vice President of the Strategic Bombing Survey, 1944-1946
• Chief of Policy Planning of the U.S. Department of State, 1950-1953
• In 1950, he was lead author of an influential and (then) top secret National Security Council document called NSC -68, the Soviet policy having regarded as aggressive and expansive and demanded an appropriate response to the United States.
• Secretary of the Navy, 1963-1967
• Deputy Minister of Defence, 1967-1969
• Member of the U.S. delegation to the SALT talks ( Strategic Arms Limitation Talks ), 1969-1973
• Secretary of Defense for International Affairs, 1973-1976
• Special Adviser to the President for Arms Control 1984 - (?) (Probably 1988)