The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War

by Nicholas Thompson

A brilliant and revealing biography of the two most important Americans during the Cold War era—written by the grandson of one of them Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies for winning—and surviving—that harrowing conflict. Both men came to power during World War II, reached their professional peaks during the Cold War’s most frightening moments, and fought epic political battles that spanned decades. Yet despite their very different views, Paul Nitze and George Kennan dined together, attended the weddings of each other’s children, and remained good friends all their lives. In this masterly double biography, Nicholas Thompson brings Nitze and Kennan to vivid life. Nitze—the hawk—was a consummate insider who believed that the best way to avoid a nuclear clash was to prepare to win one. More than any other American, he was responsible for the arms race. Kennan—the dove—was a diplomat turned academic whose famous “X article” persuasively argued that we should contain the Soviet Union while waiting for it to collapse from within. For forty years, he exercised more influence on foreign affairs than any other private citizen. As he weaves a fascinating narrative that follows these two rivals and friends from the beginning of the Cold War to its end, Thompson accomplishes something he tells the story of our nation during the most dangerous half century in history.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, War, Audiobook

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2009

Reviews

[Micah Cummins · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Paul Nitze and George Kennan were the only two people to be deeply involved in American foreign policy from the outset of the Cold War until its end. They had come to prominence in the tumultuous days that followed the Second World War when Germany was divided and the Soviet Union turned from ally into enemy. They immersed themselves in the great questions and events to come: The Marshall Plan, Korea, the ever more dangerous arms race, Vietnam détente, SALT, glasnost. They stepped off stage only when Germany reunited and the Soviet Union dissolved." -Nicholas Thompson, THE HAWK AND THE DOVE: PAUL NITZE, GEORGE KENNAN AND THE HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR page 2-3

Paul Nitze, and George Kennan were almost polar opposites when it came to foreign policy. Kennan pushed for what he coined "containment" in his famous 1940 "X" article, containment being a way to stop the spread of Soviet influence in Europe and the rest of the world and to peacefully dispose of nuclear weapons.

Nitze on the other hand was a voice promoting United States strength when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union. In 1950, during his time in the United States Department's Policy Planning Office, he published a 66 page report titled NSC 68. NSC 68 pushed for raising U.S. military and defense spending, upping support of U.S. allies, increasing the nuclear arsenal, as well as moving forward with the creation of the hydrogen bomb, which was given presidential approval by Harry Truman on January 31, 1950.

During the duration of the Cold War, Paul Nitze and George Kennan carried on an odd kind of friendship. Both being on the opposite sides of most arguments, they had a way of stepping beyond politics to see the genius of the other person. They had a strong mutual respect for each other. Kennan was the thinker, and the dreamer, where as Nitze was a man of action, pushing to get the things started that he wanted to see the most take place. Kennan did also initiate a lot of what he wanted to see change, although he spent an even larger majority of his time in the philosophical realm.

THE HAWK AND THE DOVE is not a biography per-se of these two men. It does, however, spend a few chapters looking back at the childhoods of both Kennan and Nitze, as well as peering in a bit on some of the biggest/most critical moments of their early lives. I have previously read a George Kennan biography, but this is the first I have read on Paul Nitze, and I already feel as though I have a decent grasp on the man and his career. I really enjoyed this book. It is engaging, and thoroughly detailed for its size, the book being a bit shorter, coming in right at 318 pages (before the notes and bibliography.) I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a better understanding of the Cold War, as well as two of its key U.S. policy makers and the decisions that they made. Five stars.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hawk and the Dove was a subject that interested me--the Cold War and George Kennan whom I always liked. I had negative view of Paul Nitze and looked forward to the contrast between him and Kennan.

The book was much more complex than the title would suggest. It's an excellent history. Because Baker is Nitze's grandson, he had access to papers who one else had seen. Some from family sources. Then, at the end of the book, Baker recounts going to visit the school Nitze founded (Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins) on a Saturday. He mentioned Nitze's papers to a janitor and the janitor said "Follow me." He expected to be taken to the 6th floor where the papers were stored, but they got off on the 4th floor where the janitor showed him a store of about 50 old dusty boxes in a closet. They were indeed Nitze papers which evidently no one else but the janitor knew about.

Thompson presents both Nitze and Kennas as extremely complex people who responded differently sometimes and the same sometimes to current issues. Kennan was the intellectual; Nitze, the man of action, both obviously extremely intelligent and totally dedicated to service to their country. They were within a couple of years of each other in age and both lived approximately 100 years, Nitze a bit less and Kennan lived to be 101!

Anyone with interest in the Cold War shouldn't miss this book.

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, let me just say that in my opinion I would not recommend this book to anybody who has very little knowledge of World War 2 or the Cold War. The author, Mr. Thompson, takes it for granted that one would not probably pick up this book unless you did have that knowledge, and he is probably right.

Secondly, for anybody knowledgeable about the Cold War and World War 2 I would definitely recommend this book.

"The Hawk," Mr. Paul Nitz and "The Dove," Mr. George Kennan," both had great influence on Cold War policies, and Mr. Kennan, while working in the U.S. embassy in Moscow right after World War 2 ended, wrote the famous "X article," that in many ways predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the policy of containment that the U.S. would practice throughout the next fifty years. As years progressed, he became very much a dove in the sense that he believed the race for an advantage in nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was very dangerous and could mean the end of civilization. He also at times believed that the U.S. should stop building such weapons, and that eventually the Soviet Union would not think of us as an adversary and so not fear a first strike by the U.S.

Mr. Nitze felt just the opposite, and felt that the U.S. should only negotiate an arms treaty if both sides eliminated nuclear weapons based on their weight, not on their speed and actual damage they could cause. Mr. Nitze was at the negotiation table when the Reagan administration and Mr. Gorbachev signed the first comprehensive treaty on the elimination of many nuclear weapons in Europe and Russia. Mr. Nitze could say that his strong stance, along with many others, eventually caused the collapse of the Soviet Union; and yet it was Mr. Kennan's article "X" that predicted the collapse and laid the groundwork for the policy of containment that was a footprint that the U.S used for over fifty years.

Both Mr. Nitze and Mr. Kennan were born in the early 1900's and died in the early 2000's. Their influence and stamp on U.S. policy is undeniable. Yet, in my opinion, I am thankful that neither had the FINAL WORD on any policies or treaties that the U.S. followed or signed during the Cold War.

[Merilee · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 4.5 stars...

This is a very well-written and interesting joint biography of two of the biggest U.S. players in the Cold War, written by Nitze's grandson (though I could detect no partisanship on his part). These men disagreed on many issues during their long friendship, yet never lost respect for each other. Near the end, Thompson quotes from a speech which Nitze gave at his son's 1953 boarding school commencement, using the image of the tension in a bow or guitar, which could apply as much to the relationship between Kennan and Nitze as to East vs West:

"...the answer is to be found not in the elimination of one of the opposite or in any basic compromise between them but in striving for a harmony in tension between opposites."

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book has the strength of its limitations; it is biography, not history. It presents history as seen and experienced by Kennan and Nitze. It conveys their personalities, roles, judgments and impacts on the complex and world-threatening era we call the Cold War. The author does this with a clear narrative thread and communicates the person without psychodrama and hagiography. Sensibly, this narrative addresses the history as his dualistic pair saw and experienced it. Accordingly, it omits many aspects of the context of that experience. The Cuban Bay of Pigs gets just a paragraph or so. Many background events and leading figures are left out of the story or treated cursorily. Examples are the role of Adeneuer, "Der Alte", in so many ways central to the rehabilitation of German society and economics, the Suez Canal debacle of 1956, the Nuclear Disarmament campaigns that solidified the left across Europe, and the often bizarre policies of Foster Dulles in insisting a nation was either for us or against us and India's role in leading the nonaligned movement.

The book's main purpose is to tell the story of the Cold War by using the interactions and tensions between Nitze and Kennan to bring much of American Cold War policies to life. Much of these discussions are intellectual, but Thompson makes it very readable..George Kennan and Paul Nitze were two of the most emblematic figures of the Cold War. By any measure their contributions to American government were enormous. Kennan is one of the most fascinating personalities from the last half of the 20th century. He is generally considered to have had a deeper understanding of the Soviet Union than any other individual and, as Nicholas Thompson so ably explains, anticipated many of the major developments in the last decades of the past century. He prophesied in the 1940s with uncanny accuracy the eventual fate of the Soviet Union, explaining both how and why the system would eventually implode and collapse. He was one of the major architects of the Marshall Plan, one of the greatest achievements in the history of American foreign policy. And he was the author of the famous Long Telegram, which evinced an understanding of the Soviet Union. His theory of containment dominated nearly all American policy during the Cold War, even if he complained that the ways that "containment" were construed varied from his own understanding. His insight into world affairs was unsurpassed by any other foreign policy expert of the century and he had no rival in articulating his understanding. Kennan was, by any standard, a great writer. At several points in the course of his public career Kennan was able to provide a way of viewing a group of issues so as to alter public comprehension. Yet, Kennan was also something of a crank. Though he was celebrated as a hero by the Left, he held a number of not merely conservative but reactionary view. He was personally extremely conservative, especially on cultural matters. He disliked men with long hair and didn't care for social change. I suspect he hated the Beatles. Many of his beliefs -- such as the desirability of the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain unifying under a capital to be located in Canada -- were downright weird. He was often a crank. He described himself as an 18th century man and certainly he had many of the oddities of a Gibbon (whom he loved) or Samuel Johnson. I find Kennan fascinating for being so brilliant at one moment and so bizarre the next.

Nitze, who is the grandfather of the author of the book (at no point did I sense that Thompson was being kinder to his grandfather or less fair to Kennan than he ought), is a far less interesting character than Kennan. He lacked Kennan's enormous prescience and insight, and while a competent writer was not touched by genius as was Kennan. One is struck, however, by Nitze's drive and dedication and his enormous practical abilities. Nitze's two greatest contributions were on the one hand advocating the huge arms build up that occurred in the fifties and sixties and one the other hand his work on disarmament in the seventies and eighties. I find it fascinating that while Kennan was adored by the Left and Nitze by some on the Right, Kennan held many conservative beliefs and Nitze many liberal ones. The truth is that neither fit comfortably into simple characterizations of conservative or liberal. Frankly, I find both of them more interesting for being less than predictable.

The joint biography does a splendid job of recounting most of the central foreign policy crises that occurred during the period. You get a great sense of the various personalities involved, from James Forrestal to George Marshall to Dean Acheson to Henry Kissinger to George Schulz to all the presidents of those years, as well as the major leaders of other countries, in particular the Soviet Union.

The book also undercuts the current ahistorical claims about the role of Ronald Reagan in ending the Cold War. This is true of any actual historical accounts of the period. Reagan's greatest role in the Cold War was in his considerable accomplishments in arms control. This may, in fact, have been the great achievement of his presidency. The book demonstrated Reagan's extremely superficial understanding of the issues surrounding nuclear weapons (while Nitze liked Reagan, he considered him incompetent on nuclear issues and had nothing but utter disdain for his Star Wars initiative). As Thompson chronicles, the Soviet Union, as Kennan had predicted, was already suffering enormously from the strain of the arms race well before Reagan was president. In 1972 Brezhnev yearned for the completion of the SALT I agreement to help ease the great strain on the Soviet economy created by the arms race. The standard argument by Reagan's fans was that he caused an escalation in the arms race, but in fact the Soviets did not increase military spending during Reagan's presidency. The strain on their economy definitely preceded Reagan. And the reason that Reagan's fans hate Kennan so much is that his work as architect of the strategy for winning the Cold War lessens Reagan's role. Kennan's strategy of containment was embraced by every American president from Truman to Bush 41, with no exceptions, and it had precisely the effect Kennan predicted. He insisted that if we resisted the Soviet Union and limited its spread by his policy of containment (though his understanding was political containment, rather than the military containment that Nitze preferred), it would collapse upon itself, which is precisely what happened. Fans of Reagan, so desperate for political reasons to give him a legacy that he does not deserve (while refusing to grant him the legacy that he does deserve, as someone who worked hard for disarmament, with some success), don't like Kennan because he undercuts the script that they have concocted for him. They are not helped by the fact that virtually no historians outside of the United States (and even then virtually no historians who are not conservative Republicans) view Reagan as having played an especially role in bringing about the end of the Cold War. Unlike George Kennan, whom they do.

Kennan was an odd sort of duck, highly intelligent, lonely, often feeling touchy or spurned or ill-used, who moved from the famous Long Telegram and X article in Foreign Affairs, where he came across as what at that time would have been something of a hawk, to become an advocate of a far more dovish policy towards the Soviets, pushing for a diplomatic engagement rather than a military one. He lived to be 101 years old, long enough to consider his point of view vindicated. Less well known today are his less popular ideas - without question he was something of an authoritarian, feeling democracy as a government model an inefficient way to fight the world struggle; his writings leave a trail of anti-Semitism and racism at times. Kennan increasingly found himself to be out of a government job, though called upon from time to time by various administrations and the press as an expert until his death.

Nitze was different temperamentally as well as politically. Beginning from his experiences in studying the WWII strategic bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany and then Japan, including the results of the US use of nuclear weapons, he become likely the most well-informed (not to say opinionated) government non-scientist official regarding nuclear strategy, policy, and subsequently arms control detail. While generally speaking considered to be an ultra-hawk, there are instances of compromise or reasoned anti-war opinion (particularly regarding Vietnam). His impact on policy from a governmental position was far larger and apparently more influential than that of Kennan; he remained involved in the SALT and START talks right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, by which time he was in his 80s, and when he died at 97, he also could consider himself and his opinions on how to handle the Cold War vindicated.

In all, an excellent work of both biography and Cold War history.

[Jarno Mehtiö · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there was a 2 percent chance of war each year, then there was a better than even chance that war would break out sometime in the next thirty-five years.

Kirja kahdesta merkittävästä kylmän sodan toimija-ajattelia-vaikuttajasta. Toinen oli maalasi isoja visoita, historiallisia tulkintoja ja kirjoitti useita Pulitzerin voittaneita kirjoja. Toinen pilkkoi asioita tehtävälistoiksi, hallitsi kaikki yksityiskohdat ja ryhtyi toimeen. Molemmat olivat varmoja mielipiteistään ja perusteluistaan sekä pitivät muuta mieltä olevia väärässä olevina (mutta eivät antaneet mielipide-erojen, pääasiaksi, koskea henkilökohtaisuuksia.)

George Kennan, kuuluisan pitkän sähkeen laatija ja patoamisopin esittäjä vuonna 1946, oli tämä ajattelija-kirjoittaja. Hänelle patoamisoppi edusti, ainakin myöhemmän tulkintansa mukaan, ennen kaikkea Neuvostoliiton laajentumisen vastustamista kaikkialla, mutta poliittisin keinoin. Kennan ei kannattanut USA:n kategorista puuttumista milloin minkäkin maan asioihin ja oman erinomaisuuden ja vapauden viemistä muualle. Hän ei nähnyt, että tällainen vientiteollisuus voisi oikeasti toimia tai että yksikään maa olisi moraalisesti niin korkealla, että voisi tehtä tällaista. Ajauduttuaan esimiestensä kanssa riitoihin lopullisesti 50-luvulla, hän siirtyi pois ulkoministeriön palkkalistoilta Princetoniin, samaan tutkimuslaitokseen mm. Oppenheimerin ja Einsteinin kanssa. Tämän jälkeen vaikuttamista oli toki vielä eri rooleissa konsultista, avustajasta aina Belgradin suurlähettilääksi, mutta tästä eteenpäin suurin vaikutus oli hänen kirjoillaan, puheillaan ja todistuksillaan.

Nitze puolestaan oli kaksikosta se, joka uskoi USA:n moraaliseen velvollisuuteen puolustaa vapautta kaikkialla. Samalla hän uskoi ainoan keinon puolustaa vapautta olevan vastustaa Neuvostoliittoa kaikkialla, vaikka aseellisesti. Tästä muodostui NSC 68, jokaiselle Aunesluoman kurssit käyneelle tuttu paperi Yhdysvaltojen kylmän sodan aikaisesta doktriinista. Tässä kannatettiin nimenomaan NL:n haastamista ja varustelun voimakasta lisäämistä. Konkreettisena tuloksena paperista vetypommi, X-kertaa 1945 käytettyjä tehokkaampi... Nitzen vaikutus oli Kennania konkreettisempaa, koska hän pysyi mukana eri tehtävissä 1980-luvulle asti. Merkittävin vaikutus varmasti ydinasestrategina ja -neuvottelijana.

Miehet olivat jossain määrin ystäviä, tai kavereita tai ainakin tuttuja. Olivathan he työskennelleet yhdessä 1940-luvulla ja myöhemminkin eri vaiheissa. Heidän näkemykensä Neuvostoliitosta ja Yhdysvalloista sekä sen tehtävistä poikkesivat kuitenkin niin paljon, että heidän avullaan kirja saa avattua mielenkiintoisesti USA:n kylmän sodan politiikkaa suhteessa NL:oon. Jännästi muut maat jäävät taka-alalle.

Kirja ei saa viittä tähteä, koska vaikka se on kirjoitettu erinomaisesti ja antaa hyvän kuvan, mitään kovin uutta se ei mielestäni tarjoa. On myös kyseenalaista, kuinka kattava kuva tämä on USAn ulkopolitiikasta NL:a kohtaan tai kuinka edustavia nämä henkilöt ovat tästä. Samalla jää kaivamatta paljon mielenkiintoista, esim. Nitzen vaikutus rekrytointeihinsa (kuten Wolfowitz, Perle) tai komiteoidensa jäseniin (Reagan 70-luvulla). Kirja ei vaadi mielestäni kummoisiakaan pohjatietoja, kaikki asiat ja henkilöt esitellään. Osa muista henkilöistä on niin mielenkiintoisia, että pitää varmaan etsiä heidänkin elämänkertojaan. "Jos vetäydymme Vietnamista, hyökkäävätkö kommunistit meitä vastaan muualla. - Kyllä - Missä - En osaa sanoa - Eli heidän hyökkäyksensä myöhemmin voi olla vaikeammin torjuttavissa kuin Vietnamissa - Kyllä - Keskustelu taisi olla tässä."

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book, that looks at some key figures of the Cold War, I am skeptical of some of the authors claims, such as Kruschev barely being able to read and unable to write.

[Whiskey Tango · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prologue. Both idiosyncratic and original men; neither really conformed to these labels. They represented two great strains of American thought.

Nitze: the hawk; best way to avoid nuclear clash was to prepare to win one. If you want peace prepare for war. Idealist. Treated wounds as scratches. Diligent insider. Grandfather of author.

Kennan: if you want peace, act peacefully; for every military conflict he argued for forbearance. Realist, objected to arms race, Nato, UN, Korea, Eisenhower, Vietnam, student movement, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. Uncanny ability to predict. Minor slights sent into deep despair. Treated scratches as wounds. Wise outsider.

1. End of WWII. Kennan in Moscow; Nitze assigned to Strategic Bombing Survey; learn from German’s how to better bomb Japan; interviewed Albert Speer; taught him most important lesson: knock out basic infrastructure.

2. Kennan, born 1904, Midwesterner; mother died at birth; sent to a military school where he was beaten. Princeton, married Norwegian woman; married to Annelise 74 years; often sick; disoriented after returning to USA in 1937; felt like a man without a country; disgusted with consumerism and advertising; misanthropic; “The only solution to the problem lies along the road which leads through constitutional change to authoritarian government.”

Nitze; born 1907, Midwesterner, father philogist at Univ Chicago who lived in 10C; Harvard. Conrad was favorite writer; accidentally killed woman in a car accident; married to Phyllis for 55 years.
Joined Dillon Reed firm on Wall Street. James Forestal was mentor; followed into FDR administration;

3. American had stolen fire from the gods. Nitze in Japan to put calipers on destruction and on recovery; Hiroshima: struck by quick reconstruction of railroad and how reinforced concrete survived bombing. Walked in ruins as representative of conqueror; Nagasaki residents who reached shelters survived. Informed his belief that US could withstand a nuclear attack.

4. The Long Telegram. Sought to answer why US unable to find policy toward USSR that worked. Traditional diplomacy ineffective; USSR aggressive expansion whether or not USA played nice or stern. Every action of USSR made perverse sense. USSR feared west as more competent and powerful and organized; men in Kremlin did not believe in Marxism; fig leaf for moral and intellectual responsibility. Stalin ran thuggish police state. USSR pretending to be something else. Marxism a cover. With US there can be no compromise.

Stalin does not receive objective picture of outside world. USA needed to find midpoint b/n war and peace. USA push back wherever possible. USSR did not want war; Nitze worked on USSBS report. But nobody cared. USN and USAF only wanted to use it or discredit it for appropriations, not to learn from it. Taught Nitze not to be in awe of generals. Concluded that Japan would have surrendered even without atomic bomb.

5. Nitze respected Marshall, utterly incorruptible. Indifferent to mass media; totally loyal to coworkers; Marshall advised Nitze to “avoid trivia.” Truman Doctrine: ‘policy of USA to support free people attempting to resist attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.”
Nitze agreed and was proud; Kennan, like Orwell thought language sloppy and dishonest;
Kennan the Prophet; the X article: USSR paranoid view will not change. Needed external menace to keep system from collapse, exposing leaders as frauds. USSR would always double cross America; USA cannot persuade USSR by logic; must have “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. “ We need not defeat USSR just outlast it.” USSR held “seeds of own destruction” “refraining from provoking ‘USSR might be changed overnight from one of strongest to weakest and most pitiable of national societies.” Walter Lippmann : Containment meant letting enemy pick battlefields.” USA must respond on Soviet terms. Inevitably meant overstretch. 1948 new Republican majority did not easily agree to Marshall Plan. Nitze a master of charts.

6. Kennan argues for a full range of responses, all of which were political containment, including black ops. Kennan believed communism came in many different shades of red. GK influence fades. Like Oliver Wendell Holmes, became known for his formidable dissents;

7. GK believed on judging enemy by intentions not his capabilities. PN believed in judging by capabilities not intentions b/c passive regime could be hostile overnight. PN and GK drift apart.
PN knew nuclear damage was finite. If other side knew you would triumph in ultimate battle they would likely accede in skirmishes. Whichever side feared escalation would make most concessions. Differences b/n Oppenheimer and Teller paralleled those b/n PN and GK.

PN writes NSC-68. Stated world faced battle b/n slavery and freedom. Americas survival depended on rapid build up of forces. Most important assertion was that US could afford massive arms buildup. PN was Wall Street numbers man.

8. Korea: PN was hawk re stockpiling of weapons but not when it came to using them.

9. GK writes American Diplomacy in 1952, broadside against moralistic/legalistic approach to foreign policy. US did not understand what motivated other nations and did not use their own points of leverage. Instead of grandstanding, arring and constantly meddling in countries and cultures we did not understand, we should have “an attitude of detachment and soberness and readiness to reserve judgment.” Realism. With rare exceptions we should leave other countries alone. No country could have devise influence on another. PN saw world differently; must organize energies of free world. USA fully capable of changing world for better. Obsessed w/ correlation of forces, a comparison of USSR and USA forces, mathematical notion. PN coach on side line of never ending race exhorting runner to run faster. PN could not get job w/ Eisenhower/Dulles. Eisenhower had pledged to roll USSR back in 52 election. GK becomes friends w/ Stalin’s defecting daughter, Svetlana. Ike frugal w/ defense spending. PN wanted more.

10. Both in wilderness during Ike. Both had farms. PN played tennis and skied. Kissinger like PN thought nuclear war winnable; chaplain aboard pirate ship; GK: writing history: “common refuge of those who find themselves helpless in the face of the present.” Khrushchev denounces Stalin. PN views again in demand after Sputnik.

11. Khrushchev grew up Ukrainian peasant; illiterate; bald and shaped like pear; PN’s flexible response: if someone shouts at you, raise your fists; if antagonist does the same, pull a knife; if he pulls knife, pull a gun. Ideally, you can settle the dispute without any of the weapons actually being used. Nitze damaged himself w/ JFK b/c too hawkish over Cuba and refused to socialize with Kennedy’s.

12. PN to many the “dark overbearing stage of nuclear warfare.” never completely on anyone’s team, he lacked constituency to defend him.

13 PN naval secretary. Told LBJ to get out of Vietnam. Slow-down, disengage, reprioritize. GK
wanted peace and quiet. When he got it he used it to flagellate himself

14. GK and PN reached opposed conclusions through temperament and experience. PN built home telephone sets; GK wrote poetry; PN trusted in numbers and charts; GK believed technology destroyed more than created. PN gained confidence; GK from death of mother, spent life learning doubt; self doubt as well as doubt in wisdom of men making decisions for the world. PN believed government made sound decisions; GK felt government would go astray.

15. Stalin voracious reader; memorized Chekhov and Gogol; read Thackeray, Balzac and Plato Georgian; alcoholic father; wife killed herself in 1932; “She took what was good in him to the grave.”

[Tripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hawk and the Dove is one of the most accessible and enjoyable books about the Cold War to come out in quite awhile. The book's biographical studies of Paul Nitze and George Kennan makes the story engaging and easy to follow. The idea that Nitze was the hawk and Kennan the dove makes stark a more muddled picture, but their relationship nicely highlights philosophical differences in the Cold War. Nitze often pushed the hard line and the militarization of containment, while its author Kennan thought that most military activity was wasteful and unnecessary, although he had a virulent hatred for the Communists.

The book is also concise. The Cold War is a big story, but author Nicholas Thompson (who is related to Nitze) doesn't feel compelled to pad the book with excess background information about the Cold War. He tells what needs to be told and then moves on. Having a background in the subject will help, but it is not necessary. The focus on philosophy also helps.

I really liked the book. There are wonderful anecdotes and it the focus on the perspectives of the two men is illuminating. Although both men are legend in international relations, neither was ever really satisfied in their career, feeling they had been shut out of where they should be. There is sad moment where Nitze thinks he will get a plum spot in the Carter administration only to find himself without any job at all. All in all, a great read. Watch out, though, for the occasional lapse into conspiracy theory. Thompson mentions a number of mysterious deaths that surround the making of foreign policy. It is by no means the focus of the book, or even of a given chapter, but it pops up in odd places.

[Haggai · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hawk and the Dove is about the lives of two very interesting men, George Kennan and Paul Nitze, both of their lives being tied up closely with the history of the Cold War. It is a great example of how smart, sharp and passionate individuals can affect the history of the entire world, as well as a look into how ideological debates, academic thinking and politics all combine to form foreign policy and strategy. Recommended to anyone who wants to see what happened behind the stage of the Cold War, and anyone interested in foreign policy and diplomacy.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure if the subtitle's claiming this is a history of the Cold War. To my mind it's not. It's certainly a narrative of the service of two men influential in how America competed with the Soviet Union in the Cold War years. The material is biographical and heavily anecdotal rather than analytical. And always interesting.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at two of the most important men involved in cold-war decision and opinion making. Though Thompson is Nitze's grandson, he is very even-handed in his presentation of the two friends and rivals.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book about the two men who were instrumental in the development of cold war policy. Interesting.

[RUSA CODES · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the 2010 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...

[David N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the Cold War has been told in many ways and through many lenses. Thompson’s well-written 2009 account takes a unique perspective, recounting the story through the lives of two of its major participants – Paul Nitze and George Kennan. Students of the Cold War will not find much new here, but Thompson’s is a unique and compelling perspective, especially since he is Nitze’s grandson. What legitimizes his approach is that Kennan and Nitze worked closely together for a time at the outset of the Cold War, when Kennan gave the first coherent articulation of the doctrine of Containment, and then famously parted company when it came to the implementation of that doctrine. Their rivalry spanned more than five decades. So did their friendship.

Thompson does a skillful job in weaving together the highlights of each career, as well as providing interesting (and sometimes quite intimate) personal color on each. The highlights of Kennan’s career are well known to students of post-war US foreign policy: his early, lonely years at Princeton; his first obscure years as a diplomat in the Moscow embassy; the war years, during which he was interned by German troops; his return to Moscow after the war, and his instant notoriety when he sent the now famous Long Telegram to Washington, with is analysis of the drivers of Soviet policy; the publication of the Mr. X article in Foreign Affairs, which brought him fame in the world outside diplomatic circles; his work, alongside his deputy Paul Nitze, in the original Policy Planning Staff at State under Secretary Marshall; his subsequent disputes with Marshall’s successor, Dean Acheson; his departure from government and his subsequent career as a diplomatic historian and a public intellectual, during which he famously criticized the military buildup that others justified by reference to his own doctrines of containment, and the many foreign policy adventures of the later Cold War, notably the Vietnam War. He also details some less-well known aspects of Kennan’s life, such as his deep involvement with the setting up of covert intelligence operations at the outset of the Cold War, and his close relationship with Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alleluyeva. I was also surprised to learn that Walter Lipmann’s savage attack against Kennan’s Foreign Affairs article may have been conditioned by Lipmann’s hatred of the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who stole Lipmann’s wife. (They didn’t teach us that in our foreign policy courses at university!)

Paul Nitze, Kennan’s colleague, rival, and friend for more than 50 years, was temperamentally almost the anti-Kennan. The outline of his amazing life and career are not as well known to the general public, but make for fascinating reading. A gregarious, socially gifted undergraduate at Harvard who wrangled an invitation to join the Porcellian Club in spite of the fact that he had none of the social connections required for entry, he gallivanted around Europe and eventually landed a job at the prestigious investment bank Dillon Read, where by his own admission his mistakes were legendary. He married well, though, and made enough money that, once World War II arrived, he could spend the rest of his life in public service without worrying how to finance his elegant and aristocratic lifestyle. (He was one of the founders of the Aspen ski resort.) He was brought into the government by his Dillon Read mentor, James Forrestal, who was to become the first Secretary of Defense after the war, and was almost immediately fired for insubordination. However, in a move that he would repeat throughout his life, he landed on his feet, this time as a staff member of the Strategic Bombing Survey. His drive, energy, hunger for data, and knack for playing bureaucratic politics resulted in him basically driving the survey to completion, in the process becoming a well known figure in the corridors of Congress and developing strong, if controversial, views on the role of strategic bombing and the potential role to be played by nuclear weapons in a strategic bombing campaign.

Brought into the State Department as Kennan’s deputy, he managed to outlast Kennan, and became a close advisor to Acheson. His memo to the President, known universally by its bureaucratic label NSC-68, argued for a massive across-the-board build up US military forces, and was the basis for the development of the US nuclear program, the growth of US conventional forces, the expansion of the US base system throughout the globe, and the creation of our Alliance systems.

Out of government with the election of Eisenhower, Nitze spent the next eight years working in the background of policy debates, developing analyses of the conventional and nuclear balance between east and west, and working closely with nuclear strategists at the RAND Corporation and elsewhere to explore the circumstances in which it might actually make sense to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union, in light of his experience with the Strategic Bombing Survey. Many of these ideas, championed by him and others, were eventually adopted when the Kennedy Administration came into office, under the rubric “flexible response.” Kennedy brought him into his Administration as a lowly Assistant Secretary of Defense, but Nitze eventually found himself promoted to Secretary of the Navy and then Deputy Secretary of Defense. (His rise to the very top of the Pentagon was blocked by Barry Goldwater and other conservative senators, whom he hand angered during his years out of office.)

Under Kennedy he played an active role in the deliberations of the ExComm, the small group of advisors Kennedy brought together to advise on the Cuban Missile Crisis; he was initially in favor of a “surgical strike,” but later supported the idea of a blockade, which of course was eventually successful. He was perhaps more surprisingly an internal skeptic on the Vietnam War – always data-driven, he didn’t shirk from the implications of the analysis he and his team at the Pentagon made – but in what is perhaps the most inexplicable development of Nitze’s career, he supported the option of a major troop deployment to Vietnam in 1965, a buildup which irrevocably committed the US to a ground war in Vietnam. However, his concerns about the war continued. And when McNamara stepped down in 1968, Nitze continued to work under the new Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford; the two of them argued forcefully for an end to our involvement.

A lifelong Democrat, he was sidelined briefly in the first year of the Nixon Administration, but because of his influence within the national security community, he was invited to be the Defense Department member of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) delegation under Gerard Smith. Soon he discovered that Nixon’s NSC advisor Henry Kissinger had created a “back channel” going behind the back of the delegation, and quit in disgust. He became a strong opponent of the approach taken by Smith and by Smith’s successor in SALT II, Paul Warnke; he worried that the greater size of Soviet warheads, not taken into account in either agreement, left the Soviets with a strategic advantage. (Critics of Nitze often claimed that his opposition to SALT II was triggered not only by the technical “flaws” in the treaty but by his dislike for President Carter, who snubbed him by not giving him a position in his Administration.) His lobbying efforts through his policy-advocacy organization, the Committee on the Present Danger, led to a failure of the Senate to ratify SALT II, and led the subsequent Reagan Administration to deride the agreement as “fundamentally flawed.” Indeed, although the US abided by the limits of the agreement, it was never ratified.

In his mid-70s, Nitze was brought back into the Reagan Administration as the chief negotiator for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) talks, beginning in 1982. The issues behind this negotiation are too complex to delve into here, but suffice it to say that when faced with instructions from Washington that led to two sterile sessions of negotiations with the Soviets, Nitze decided to work off the record with his counterpart to break the impasse, the so-called “Walk in the Woods”; when his masters in Washington learned of this, they instructed him to withdraw the solution, but before he could do so, his Soviet counterpart returned with the news that his own masters in Moscow told him to repudiate their solution.

The talks went nowhere for another year, when US missiles were installed in Europe the following year, the Soviets walked out of the talks. It took the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev to get arms talks going again, and in the 1986 summit between Reagan and Gorbachev, Nitze and his colleagues almost hammered out an astonishing agreement to reduce nuclear stockpiles by 50 percent, but the agreement finally foundered on the US insistence on being allowed to continue to do research on strategic defense (so-called “Star Wars”) weapons. But progress was made on INF, and this enabled Nitze to return to Geneva and put the finishing touches on an agreement that eliminated this class of weapons of both sides from Europe. The INF Treaty was signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in late 1987, and with significant help from Nitze lobbying skeptical senators, passed into law.

Now 80 years old, Nitze passed into a belated retirement, working out of the Johns Hopkins School for International and Strategic Studies which he had helped to found during the Eisenhower Administration, and keeping his hand in the national security debates from time to time. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he began to contemplate the elimination of nuclear weapons as a reasonable policy objective, a position which his old colleague Kennan had long before adopted. Logical to the end, Nitze saw the existential threat posed by an expansionist Soviet Union disappear, and he drew what he considered to be the only logical conclusion – get rid of the weapons.

(I am conscious of having spent far more time reviewing Nitze’s career than I have Kennan’s – perhaps because Nitze was a more active participant in US government activities for most of his life, whereas Kennan was, for most of his adult life, a quiet scholar resident at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Studies. )

Much has been made of the rivalry between these two giants of US foreign policy, and it’s easy to see why. There were times when they worked closely together and agreed on what they were doing – the Berlin Airlift, for example, and the Marshall Plan. But for many years after, they disagreed on almost everything. While acknowledging the threat posed by Soviet power, Kennan seemed to prefer responses that focused on political and cultural measures (although Kennan was always a strong supporter of covert operations to nudge the policy of containment along the right path.) He was instinctively wary of involvement in foreign adventures, believing that there were few means at our disposal to make a real difference in the way other governments behaved, and that most of these means were fraught with danger for ourselves. He was in many ways an arch-conservative, and liked to think of himself as an 18th century man. (He was, perhaps, even a bit of an anti-Semite – he certainly was never particularly sensitive to issues of ethnic and racial diversity.) He was a reluctant actor in history, always fretting about how his most eloquent pieces of foreign policy analysis had resulted in an historically unprecedented arms race that might have resulted in the destruction of the globe. And he seemed to be ruled by his heart as well as his head, often wavering on one issue or another, and changing his mind at several times during the course of his life. Throughout his professional life he deplored the tendency of others to engage in bean-counting approaches to measuring the balance of power between the US and the Soviet Union, always relying on a sophisticated assessment of Soviet intentions rather than a technical analysis of their capabilities. Kennan’s did not possess a ruthless logic, nor an ability to synthesize massive amounts of data, nor an ability to get along with people (although throughout his life he had a few very close and dear friends, including most notably his foreign service colleague Charles Bohlen.) It was his pen more than anything else that propelled him into the spotlight in 1946. He was truly a beautiful writer, as anyone who has read him can attest; even today the Long Telegram and the Foreign Affairs article read as masterpieces of the English language even more than they do as classic foreign policy analyses. His work as a diplomatic historian is considered exemplary by trained historians to this day; his books on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty between Germany and Russia in 1917, and on the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, are both considered modern classics. And his memoirs won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Nitze, on the other hand, was a buoyant, optimistic, gregarious man, socially at ease and endlessly curious about the world around him. He was not a great writer, but he was relentlessly logical, and built impervious arguments based on data and hard analysis. The only way to argue with the man was to challenge his basic assumptions; once you accepted his basic assumptions, you had to accept his tough conclusions. He was a master bureaucratic tactician, and was also able to lobby effectively in the corridors of power; that said, he did not suffer fools gladly, and made enemies throughout his lifetime. Sometimes his ego got in his way – Thompson discusses the famous episode in which, during a Senate hearing on the SALT II treaty, he admitted under questioning that he thought he was a better American than Warnke, a remark that cost him a friendship. He was also persistent to the point of irritation, and sometimes a very poor reader of situations, such as his successful antagonizing of President-elect Carter during pre-inauguration briefings on national security. He was not above pettiness, but he was intellectually honest, and admired people who thoughtfully disagreed with him. He did, however, hold some controversial views about the US-Soviet strategic balance, ones with which many in the national security community disagreed. In contrast to Kennan, he was very much a data-driven analyst and a “bean-counter,” and thought very much about the strategic balance in terms of quantifiable metrics. He was, in many ways, the “anti-Kennan.” It is remarkable that the two remained friends throughout their lives, in spite of their deep differences in perspectives. That they were is a tribute, perhaps, to a bygone era, when our foreign policy debates were conducted with a civility that was rarely if ever violated, even when the debates were at their most intense.

As a footnote, I worked closely for a brief time with Nitze on the delegation to the INF talks in Geneva in the spring and summer of 1982. I found Thompson’s portrait of him exquisitely accurate, because of (or in spite of) the fact that Thompson was his grandson. Thompson paints his portrait in full color, warts and all – the Warnke episode is a good example. The little things that Thompson notes ring true; when Nitze was teasing, as he often did, or when he was up to some sort of bureaucratic mischief, he would smile and his tongue would dart out ever so slightly between his lips. When I was on the INF delegation, he would read a plenary statement drafted by a staffer and would shoot it back to the staffer with the only criticism that made sense to him: “Not logical!” And when he liked it, he would praise it by saying “It sings!” While I spent much of my professional life in foreign policy disagreeing with him, particularly about SALT II, working with him on the INF delegation was certainly one of the highlights of my own career.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched and well-written, if disconnected, dual biography of two of the major policy minds of the Cold War.

This is not a history of the Cold War. Instead it's two biographies of two players during that time: Paul Nitze (the hawk) and George Kennan (the dove). So while it cannot be a thorough history of the Cold War, it does do a very good job of getting into the minds of two of the more influential policymakers of the era.

Where the book oversells itself is in its attempt to create conflict between Nitze and Kennan themselves rather than simply their professional positions. Thompson tries to portray their relationship as a sort of John Adams/Thomas Jefferson dynamic as rivals (even nemeses in some sense), but that never really comes across.

They were professional acquaintances on opposite ends of the ideological divide regarding nuclear arms and US involvement. So while their works obviously conflicted with one another, there was never any real CONFLICT between them. Nor was there a great well of friendship that might give more color to that conflict. But because they operated in the same circles for so many years, there naturally developed a professional respect, but anything beyond that rings hollow.

Another interesting aspect of the Kennan sections is his elite aloofness to the country he purportedly was trying to represent. One gets the sense that Kennan did not particularly LIKE the United States--or if he did it was a mystery as to why. He displays such a patrician sense of superiority in all things(including a rather gross strain of anti-Semitism) that the contrarian in me begins to doubt the wisdom of his predictions/pronouncements (and let's be honest, neither Nitze nor Kennan were ever terribly ACCURATE in their predictions/prescriptions).

Call the inertia of influence. They both came up with some truly goofy ideas over the years but because they spent SO LONG in around the foreign policy world, their analyses came to be viewed as authoritative because of their seniority -- despite frequently being just plain wrong. It's the foreign policy version of the appeal to authority logical fallacy.

Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable and informative window into two interesting men with frequently very different ideological positions.

[David Shaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished Nicholas Thompsons, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan and the History of the Cold War.

I often find dual biographies annoying and distracting, and at times that was the case here. Overall however i found this to be an insightful study in the lives of 2 men intricately tied to many of the policies, e.g. containment and decisions of the Cold War.

Both were part of the Policy Planning Staff in Truman's States Department.

Both were Hawks and Doves at different times, but Kennan, ther father of the Long Telegram and Contaibnent, was more the Dove and Nitze the Hawk.

Kennan varied from multiple planning and foreign posts including the Soviet Union, Germany and Yugoslavia and Nitze more in domestic posts in State and Defense including a post as Secretary of the Navy and part if the ABM treaty and SALT talks.

Friends, colleagues, rivals, this book provides a fine biography and history of the times and other players.

A must read for those interested in the political side of the Cold War.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars is a bit generous, more like 4.5. Absolutely fascinating dual biography of two of the most important characters in the Cold War. Bitter foes on policy issues, yet friends and colleagues. Great quotation early on: At Kennan's 80th birthday celebration Nitze said that he and Kennan never had any difference "except over matters of substance." Two very different individuals who agreed on very little, but liked and respected each other. Both were serious, subtle thinkers who thought hard about serious matters in a serious way. So much to admire in each, along with so much to dislike about each. Just reminds you that people, at least intelligent, serious people, are neither all good nor all bad. The book has intermittently clunky writing and less than felicitous explanations of complex disarmament and national security topics, but is unquestionably worth reading. (But if this is the only book you're going to read on post-WWII American diplomatic history, read The Wise Men by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas.)

[Stuart Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicholas Thompson documents the professional and personal lives of George Kennan and Paul Nitze in tandem in a way the compares and contrasts sometimes opposing but also sometimes congruent views during the Cold War Period. Thompson, Nitze's grandson, does an exceptional job at portraying the reverence each of these American foreign policy legends had for one another while also illuminating their harsh disagreements with one another.

"The Hawk and the Dove" is a particularly apt title as it captures Nitze's view that the U.S. was always a step behind if they were not developing their weapons systems as quickly as the Soviets, while Kennan's view came to be that nuclear weapons shouldn't be used altogether.

Myself more aligning with Kennan's more academic, sometimes detached style, than Nitze's hard charging Wall Street manner, it is a compelling read to see how each of these men recognized their own weaknesses and admired strengths in the others manner of thinking.

[Matthew Mashek · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well written and unique in that it is essentially a dual biography. It was interesting to see how these two men fit into, and influenced, history. The reason I have it at 3/5 stars is that they were not very interesting from a biographical perspective. The author does a well rounded job portraying them considering he's the grandson of one of them. He doesn't seem to pull many punches with his grandfather and doesn't overly demonize the other. Might've given it 3.5/5 stars if that were available. Worth the read if you're into the Cold War period or want to become even more depressed with the realization that the people running the country, the so called experts, are really just bureaucrats that are just as inept as everyone else.

[Frankie Gonzales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended by a friend and I put it off for a long time cause I was I didn't initially have an understanding how a story of two people I have never heard of have an impact on my worldview or even my career in the department of defense. I was way wrong. This was a well researched and in depth narrative of two people who significantly impacted national security policy and actions through the beginning to the end of the cold war. So much of the modern department of defense and the foundations it stands on was greatly shaped by Kennan and Nitze as well as even how the west thinks and views nuclear weapons and the Russian nation. Things that we significantly discuss even today. Highly recommend and worth the read and re-read.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hawk and the Dove provides interesting insight into two incredibly influential contributors to U.S. policy and overall thought processes of the Cold War. It jumps around the timeline (difficult to avoid when covering two separate individuals in a biography) making it likely difficult to follow for someone not overly familiar with Cold War history, yet it provides solid overviews of the periods major events which would be ideal for a Cold War novice.

Thompson navigates to difficulty of analyzing his grandfather (Nitze) admirably. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Cold War. It is an enjoyable, informative, and relatively easy read.

[Awais · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rich history of the lives of two titans in American foreign policy during the Cold War, Paul Nitze and George Kennan. Thompson highlights the origins of their strategic thoughts and each man's battles with one another over key moments and crossroads of American grand strategy. Separating and labeling the two, with Kennan being the dove and Nitze the hawk, Thompson expands on this and provides nuance and clarity on their views and actions.
It is an important read and lesson, highlighting their contributions and ability to maintain a friendship and avoid letting their fundamental disagreements spiral out of control.

[Steve Heil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it. As a Cold War / Spy buff who has read quite a bit on the subject, I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about Nitze and Kennan. I remember their names being mentioned in passing from a few other books, but no details. Well worth the read for a cold war historian.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling narrative of the Cold War told through biographic scenes of these two men. Kennan and Nitze were active in our containment policy and nuclear arms discussions. Thompson brings you into State Department policy through his journalistic telling of this history.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

First pass: it was dense and not the type of literature I'm used to reading. But it's a great overview of Cold War history. I picked this book up after seeing Nicholas Thompson (CEO of The Atlantic) on my LinkedIn feed.

[John Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reads like a mystery novel full of suspense. It tells you about two key players in the complicated world of foreign affairs. You learn a lot about a history that we lived through. It brings back to mind events with color and new facts.

[Stan Rea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story about two of the main players in the Cold War. I knew both names before and could even link the one, George Kennan, to a few things (X article, long telegram). However I was unaware how influential both men had been over the over 50 years they were both active.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

The library didn't have the new biography of Nitze so I read this instead. It plays the Cold War hits (berlin airlift, cuban missile crisis, arms race, etc) through the eyes of two long time powerful frenemies. I learned a lot.

[Tiffany]

My takeaway: The people we choose to lead our nation are people. They are often well meaning, but very fallible. We need to choose people who are not just ivy league educated, dynamic personalities, but people who are good, who love God, who know him and follow his laws as closely as they can.