NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment; With Analyses by Paul H. Nitze

Drew, S. Nelson (Editor), and Nitze, Paul H. (Analyses)

Published by National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC, 1996

About this Item

ix, [3], 137, [3] p. 23 cm. Occasional Footnotes. S. Nelson Drew (1948-1995) was an career Air Force Officer who was killed in a tragic accident while working on the Balkan Peace plan on August 19, 1995. He earned several degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also earned a degree from the University of Virginia. He served as an operational intelligence officer in the United States and overseas until 1980. From then until 1983 and again in 1989, he taught political science at the Air Force Academy. He was named a National Security Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1989, leaving a year later to become United States Assistant for Defense Operations and Policy for NATO in Brussels. He became a professor of national security policy at the National War College in January 1994, and was named in January 1995, to serve as NATO Branch Chief in the Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had achieved the rank of Colonel. He was universally respected for his knowledge, his negotiating skills, his strategic thinking about the future of NATO and Europe after the Cold War. While on their way to Sarajevo to discuss new peace plans in the Balkans, he and two other US diplomats (Joseph Kruzel, and Robert C. Frasure) were killed when a rain-soaked dirt road collapsed beneath the armored personnel carrier in which they were traveling in, sending the vehicle rolling down a 500-meter slope into a ravine. President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously. From Wikipedia: "Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 October 19, 2004) was a high-ranking United States government official who helped shape Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations. Nitze co-founded the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with Christian Herter in 1943. His publications during this period include U.S. Foreign Policy: 1945-1955. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Nitze Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. In 1963, Nitze became the Secretary of the Navy, serving until 1967. Following his term as Secretary of the Navy, he served as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1967 1969). From an on-line posting on Nelson Drew: "He served as an operational intelligence officer until 1980. He became NATO Branch Chief in the Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. " United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC 68, was a top secret U.S. National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It was one of the most important American policy statements of the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC 68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC 68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the rollback of global Communist expansion a high priority and rejected the policies of détente and containment of the Soviet Union. By 1950, U.S. national security policies required reexamination due to a series of events: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was operational, military assistance for European allies had begun, the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb and the communists had solidified their control of China. Similar problems were also plaguing Japan. With these threats to the U.S. and its allies expanding, on 31 January 1950 President Truman directed the Department of State and Department of Defense "to undertake a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans." A State-Defense Policy.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment; With Analyses by Paul H. Nitze
• Publisher: National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC
• Publication Date: 1996
• Binding: Wraps
• Edition: Second printing [stated].
• Seller catalogs:
  • Cold War