James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)

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Recorded05 Jun 2025

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In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life. Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially with his withering criticism of Jimmy Carter during Carter's presidency. While Nitze is perhaps best known for leading the formulation of NSC-68, which Harry Truman signed in 1950, Wilson contends that Nitze's most significant contribution to American peace and security came in the painstaking work done in the 1980s to negotiate successful treaties with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons while simultaneously deflecting skeptics surrounding Ronald Reagan. America's Cold Warrior connects Nitze's career and concerns about strategic vulnerability to the post-9/11 era and the challenges of the 2020s, where the United States finds itself locked in geopolitical competition with the People's Republic of China and Russia. Short Bio: James Graham Wilson is a Supervisory Historian in the Office of the Historian at the Department of State. He has compiled 11 volumes in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, including the sequence of National Security Policy volumes covering 1977–1992. He is the author of America’s Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan (Cornell Press, 2024) and The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Cornell Press, 2014). He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2011, where he studied with Melvyn Leffler. Mentioned: Susan Colbourn, Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (2022). Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969). Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove (2010). Also mentioned: Foreign Relations of the United States Volumes, here. The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, here. Luca Trenta is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Swansea University, in Wales (UK). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

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