Word: paule
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another Reagan theme -- that the U.S. is losing the arms race with the Soviet Union and that the Kremlin could wage a pre-emptive attack against the U.S. -- is one that Nitze has been sounding for more than 30 years. Much of his life has been a Paul Revere's ride to alert America that the Russians are coming. NSC-68 predicted that by 1954 the Soviets would have enough nuclear- armed bombers to "seriously damage this country" by striking "swiftly and with stealth." These were more than just words to Nitze. At his Maryland farm there is a bomb...
Nitze seemed to take his revenge against his former friends and colleagues who fared better in the new Administration. One was Paul Warnke, who had worked closely with Nitze in the Pentagon during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. When Warnke was nominated to be Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, Nitze savaged him in congressional testimony, impugning his integrity and patriotism. In 1979, as a founder and leading spokesman for the Committee on the Present Danger, Nitze did more than any other single individual to block ratification of the SALT II treaty, although today Nitze says he was merely trying...
...next year he was made chief negotiator for the INF talks, giving him an opportunity to become part of the solution again. A number of proponents of arms control hailed the appointment, including some who had felt the sting of Nitze's denunciatory passion. Predicted Warnke six years ago: "Paul Nitze will force this Administration to make progress in spite of itself...
Some of the more doctrinaire opponents of arms control in the Administration feared that Warnke might be right. Richard Perle, whom Nitze brought to Washington in the late '60s and who served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense until earlier this year, remarked, "Paul is an inveterate problem solver." He did not mean it as a compliment. Nitze, however, took it as one, and he has lived up to Perle's apprehensions...
...desire to cut a deal on SDI, so much so that the President passed him over for the directorship of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency despite a recommendation from George Shultz. Even so, Nitze's principal opponents within the Administration, Weinberger and Perle, have resigned. That leaves Paul Nitze on the inside, and who knows? Perhaps next year there will be one more opportunity to "work the problem" of arms control, one more chance to be part of the spirit of a superpower summit...