Paul Nitze Interview (page: 9 / 9) Presidential Medal of Freedom	Print Interview

Another president you worked for briefly was Jimmy Carter.

Paul Nitze: Yes.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The year before Jimmy Carter was nominated, we had a Fourth of July celebration out at my farm. During the course of the shooting fireworks off, we talked politics. My children all said "Pa, your generation ought to move over for the younger generation." I finally said, "I'm sure you are right about that, but whom would you choose?" And they said, "A man by the name of Jimmy Carter, a governor. You ought to look into him." Following my children's advice, I looked into Jimmy Carter, decided I would send him some of the speeches I had recently made, and I'd send him a contribution, which I did. Then I ran into him in Washington at some function that he was at and he knew who I was, had read these speeches and told me that he agreed with them. So of course, I thought he was a marvelous man. So, I contributed more money to his campaign. This was before he'd been nominated. Then some press fellow asked him, "Who is your advisor on defense issues?" and he said, "Well, Paul Nitze." Then he waited for another 20 seconds and said, "...and Paul Warnke." At that time I realized the jig was up. If he couldn't distinguish between my views and those of Paul Warnke, we weren't going to have a happy relationship together. And that's what turned out that his views and my views were not reconcilable. So, I think I was the first person who had been close to him who decided this wasn't for me. I just left him. I left him before he was elected. I left after he was nominated, but before he was elected.

Have you ever had any second thoughts about that, that you might have been able to influence him more?

Paul Nitze: I don't believe so. I couldn't compete with Rosalyn. I think she thought that she and Jimmy Carter had a direct line to getting advice from the Almighty. I believe in the Almighty, but I don't believe that I have a direct line.

Or that anyone else does?

Paul Nitze: Well, I'm not sure that those two do either. But it can lead to extremism and illusion and it is beyond any practical sense. It can take you away from common sense. I believe in common sense as a great corrective.

Tell us about the president who first dealt with Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: Originally, being a Democrat, I was rather suspicious of Reagan. But, I got to know him early before he was nominated. He suggested he wanted to see me. So, I invited him to have dinner at our house in Washington. He came with (Ed) Meese and another close advisor of his. Then it also turned out he also wanted Gene Rostow there, so we were five of us at dinner at my house. He, I found, was really a very natural kind of a person, a likeable kind of a person. He wasn't the demon that I thought he would be. I think he was rather impressed with us, too. So, we got along very well. But then, later I thought some of his advisors were not well grounded in what they were trying to do, particularly some of his economists with his new -- their new -- economics, which did seem to me to be "voodoo economics."

To quote another Republican.

Paul Nitze: Exactly.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When I started to work for him (Reagan), I came to the conclusion this was really a man who deeply felt the things that he believed in and that he really deeply believed in the superiority of a liberal democratic system to a totalitarian system and that this was an unmovable and unshakable belief which he could radiate. After the last summit meeting that we had in Moscow, he then went on to the Pilgrim Society in London and delivered himself a speech about the superiority of the liberal system to the totalitarian system, which was a brilliant job. He had a good speech writer. A fellow by the name of Tony Doyle wrote that for him. But in any case, he delivered it well and all the sentiments were right, and Tony Doyle, sure, had written the speech, but he'd followed the instructions from the President. And he won that intellectual battle, that battle for the mind of the world, as to which system really was the system of the future. That of the liberal democracies or that of the totalitarian Marxist-Leninism, and he won that battle hands down. So, any man who is that effective at winning the major battle, the battle of ideology -- more than ideology. He won that hands down, and therefore I ended up with great admiration for President Reagan.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

Do you think that strength overcame his lack of interest in details, his lack of curiosity about the intricacies of the policies his administration was pursuing?

Paul Nitze: I thought so. (Secretary of State) George Shultz helped him a great deal. Shultz kept him from more errors than he otherwise would have been tempted to make. He couldn't keep him from all, but I think Shultz was a great man, operating under very difficult circumstances.

Is it true that Mr. Shultz was constantly at odds with the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger?

Paul Nitze: Yes, and constantly at odds with others.

It's been said that the Defense Department under Mr. Weinberger was spending money faster than it could keep track of. Was that so?

Paul Nitze: Yes I think it was. I don't think Cap was a very good organizer. His passionate interest was litigation. He loved to sue people. And that isn't the business of the Secretary of Defense, to sue everybody around the world. When Shultz and he were both in the Bechtel company, I heard somebody describe their relationship as being quite poisonous, because Shultz thought the business was the largest construction company in the world, and they were building plants here and dams there, and who knows what, and they had more clients than they knew how to take care of. And here Cap, the lawyer of the group, was suing all their clients. Finally Mr. Bechtel decided that issue. He said, "We are not in business to sue clients, so stop it." The President never had the same authority over him when he was suing everybody from his job as Secretary of Defense, including the Congress.

Some argue that our huge increase in military expenditures in the 1980s was the straw that broke the Soviets' back, but wasn't there also a great cost to the American economy?

Paul Nitze: I think few people recognize it, even if Reagan's requests were less than what Carter had budgeted for that period. Reagan really cut defense expenditures below what Carter had projected.

So you think they would have had to go up regardless of who had been in there?

Paul Nitze: Didn't have to go up. The question is whether it was wise to make them go up. That in turn depends upon how effectively the defense establishment is run. I thought we did about as good a job as you could do during the Robert McNamara administration. We certainly didn't tolerate any waste that we could find, and McNamara was a dog about ferreting out duplication and excess expenditure. He really worked at it tooth and nail. I tried to continue that while I was Deputy Secretary of Defense. I think we did a pretty damn good job. It wasn't perfect by any means. But, I don't think anybody did better later.

Over the years, you've been criticized from every side, some thinking you were too far to the right, others too soft, too liberal. As a hawk at one point, a dove at another. On your wall you have an article about you from the Soviet newspaper Pravda, where they described you as "the darling of the hawks." Are you amused by these interpretations of your views and your actions?

Paul Nitze: Yes, because I have talked to the editors and friends of the editors of Pravda. They described how these things are written. They don't really reflect the serious views of the government. They have quite different purposes. So I can't let myself be bothered by a piece like that in Pravda. There was an even more serious attack upon me in Izvestia, the other leading Soviet paper, which had a great two-inch headline all across the back side, which read, "Criminal Covers His Tracks with Lies". The article describes me and how dreadful I am. They are all lies. I think I have had full treatment by the Soviets, but underneath all that, I have had very close relations with many of these people, closer relations than almost any other American has had, I think.

You have spent so many years trying to anticipate what would happen next. Are we now (1990) at a point where the Cold War is over? Where do we go from here?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: For the last forty years (1950-1990), the backbone of U.S. foreign and defense policy has been containment of the Soviet Union, containment of Soviet expansionism, while building a better world amongst the free nations. And, those two were intimately linked. You had to construct the positive end of our policy was constructing a world order of some kind for those who wanted to participate in it. While doing that, you had to defend it against those who were trying to destroy it, particularly the Communists and their allies. That we have done, and the surprising thing is the persistence with which the American people have backed that policy over 40 years. Nobody thought they could do it and that the American people would have that degree of persistence. Certainly neither George Kennan nor I anticipated that it would take that long. George thought it might take ten to 15 years, I thought it would take one to two generations for containment to bring the Soviets to a realization that they ought to change the focus of what they were about. And, it took twice that long, at least. But, now that they have changed their focus, what does that do? What is the substitute for containment as the backbone of our foreign policy? We should have such a new line of foreign policy. I believe that it ought to be the promotion of both diversity and order. Diversity within an order established by the organs of the UN, the regional organizations. We ought to back them on the order part of it, and we ought to promote greater diversity amongst the various parts that don't threaten the structure as a whole.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

I have been trying to stimulate a debate about this question of what the main line of our policy should be for the future. We started, but then it was overtaken by the attack by Saddam Hussein into Kuwait. So now the question is not what the long-term heart of our policy should be, it is how do we deal with Saddam and the problem in the Persian Gulf. And unless we deal with it well, we are not going to have that kind of future. If we do deal with it well, then we will have that question in the future. But we first have to deal with Iraq and its occupation of Kuwait.

While we are looking at the future, if you were growing up now, as a high school student, perhaps a college student, what would you see on the horizon as the most fascinating issues, the most promising fields, the greatest discoveries to pursue?

Paul Nitze: At the moment I think it is all dominated by the questions in the Persian Gulf. The whole future for everyone will be determined by how that works out. Now you can make the assumption that that will end up favorable for our interests, in which event we will be the sole real superpower. Granted, the Soviets will have long range nuclear capabilities equal or perhaps superior to ours, but that will be the only realm in which they will have superpower capabilities. So the only nation which combines great military potential with economic potential -- granted we are not developing that potential today, but we do have it -- combined with political experience and some sense of world politics, and that is the United States.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Look around the world. Who is going to run the affairs in the Far East if we don't do it or don't participate with others in doing it? It will be Japan and I don't think Japan knows how to do it, won't do it very well and there will be all kinds of trouble unless we participate in bringing some degree -- or maintaining some degree -- of order out there. Look at Europe. Who is apt to run it if we don't participate? It'll be the Germans. The Germans aren't going to do it well by themselves. Neither we or the Russians are not going to permit them to get nuclear weapons of their own unless we are involved in it. The Russians will dominate it just from the fact that they have superior military capability. You can't back out of Europe. Look at the Middle East. What will happen if we don't play some role there? It will be dominated by the radical Muslims. That isn't going to be good for anybody. So we have an inescapable role, I think. It is very hard to see how we're going to get out of that. There are burdens upon us, and now the question is, "How do we handle those burdens intelligently?"

I would say one of the principal things is to get our economic house in order, so people who can contribute to getting our economic house in order should have a very important role. I think the legal profession could help promote a rule of law in the world. What should that rule of law be? What should its parameters be? I think there is an enormous opportunity there. Now with the Soviets in a secondary position, those things can be done when they couldn't be done before. If you look at the arts, communications, there are many opportunities there. Insofar as we are dominant in any one field, it is in the content of communications, creating the news, among other things. So there are lots of fields available for exploitation. Whether or not that is the particular thing one wants to concentrate on, I think does depend upon how the Persian Gulf thing works out.

Communications has changed tremendously. One result of our vast information is that people don't read as they once did.

Paul Nitze: They watch too much!

Have you ever had any doubts about your work? You have been challenged many times, criticized many times. Were there times when you doubted the views that you held so dearly?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: I've often had doubts. Almost all the time. If you are dealing with the important issues, none of them are clear. Why do they hire people in the policy business? Because policy issues wouldn't be policy issues if you could just put them into a computer and get the answer to it. They're policy issues because the odds that one side or the other of a given issue is right are probably in the range of 48 percent to 52 [percent], or something like that. There isn't a clear choice. Then you have got to make up your mind on something that is very complex and decide that the odds are better for this side of the issue than that side, but it's touch and go. It's a hazardous business to deal with policy. That's why you get well treated if you are in the policy business because it is a hazardous game.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Throughout your career, you have had fairly strong and clear views. Sometimes they were embraced, sometimes criticized and you were shown the door.

Paul Nitze: That's right, shown the door time and time again.

But your views haven't changed much through all this.

Paul Nitze: No, they haven't..

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Administrations change, but I don't think my views change that much. People claimed that I was the absolutely fantastic dove and about to sell the United States down the river. A number of people have accused me of having been positively a traitor to the United States for appeasement. At the same time, others have accused me of being the ultimate hard-liner. I don't know. It's just poor little me.

Thank you so much for taking all of this time to talk with us. We certainly appreciate it.

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