My friend and colleague Nicholas Thompson — a senior editor at Wired, a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and the grandson of strategist and Kennan-thorn Paul Nitze — has a terrific new book out about the personal and intellectual rivalry and relationship between Nitze and George Kennan.
The book is titled The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan and the History of the Cold War. It’s a fantastic book to give for the holidays — and runs in the style of Fred Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon that profiled the rivalry between early nuclear strategists Bernard Brodie and Albert Wohlstetter — as well as Strobe Talbott’s arms control era epic Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control which gives a captivating account of the internal battles between Reagan administration officials Richard Burt and Richard Perle (who will be speaking on a panel with me at this American Interest/New America Foundation event tomorrow).
I interview Nick briefly about the book above, but for a longer discussion that was held at the New America Foundation, you can watch this link here.
I will be back to posting more new stuff tomorrow. I have a huge holiday party tonight in my home and have been struggling to get beyond the issues created by two feet of snow and a lot of ice.
Happy holidays to all.
Steve Clemons
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