The Master of the Game; Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. First Edition. First? Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [1], 416, [10] pages. Footnotes. Notes. Index. Signed on fep. Slight wear and soiling to DJ. Sticker residue on front of DJ. Pencil erasure residue on fep. Corner of some pages crease Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III (born April 25, 1946) is an American foreign policy analyst associated with Yale University and the Brookings Institution, a former journalist associated with Time magazine, and a diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001. In the 1980s, he was Time's principal correspondent on Soviet-American relations, and his work for the magazine was cited in the three Overseas Press Club Awards won by Time in the 1980s. Talbott also wrote several books on disarmament. Talbott was invited into government where he served at first managing the consequences of the Soviet breakup as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State Warren Christopher on the New Independent States. After leaving government, he was for a period Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He is currently the president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. At Brookings, he is responsible for formulating and setting policies, recommending projects, approving publications and selecting staff. He brings to Brookings the experience of his careers spanning journalism, government service and academe, and his expertise in US foreign policy with specialties on Europe, Russia, South Asia and nuclear arms control. An inside account of the long, difficult search for a breakthrough in nuclear arms control, built around the controversial career of leading negotiator Paul Nitze. 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 entered government service during World War II, serving first on the staff of James Forrestal when Forrestal became an administrative assistant to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1942, he became finance director of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, working for Nelson Rockefeller. From 1944 to 1946, Nitze served as director and then as Vice Chairman of the Strategic Bombing Survey for which President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Legion of Merit. One of his early government assignments was to visit Japan in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear attacks and assess the damage. This experience framed many of his later feelings about the power of nuclear weapons and the necessity of arms control. He served in the Truman Administration as Director of Policy Planning for the State Department (1950-1953). He was also the principal author in 1950 of a highly influential but secret National Security Council document, (NSC-68), which provided the strategic outline for increased US expenditures to counter the perceived threat of Soviet armament. In 1956 he attended the Project Nobska anti-submarine warfare conference, where discussion ranged from oceanography to nuclear weapons. 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), as a member of the US delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) (1969-1973), and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs (1973-1976). Paul Nitze was a cofounder of Team B, a 1970s intelligence think tank that challenged the National Intelligence Estimates provided by the CIA. Team B came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed new weapons of mass destruction and had aggressive strategies with regard to a potential nuclear war. Nitze was President Ronald Reagan's chief negotiator of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1981-1984). In 1984, Nitze was named Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control. For more than forty years, Nitze was one of the chief architects of US policy toward the Soviet Union.