Paul Nitze

Paul Henry Nitze was a Wall Street banker who became an important Cold War figure. During the Second World War he founded the School of Advanced International Studies, specifically to train young Americans for service in America's emerging empire. A year after founding SAIS he became vice chairman of the US Strategic Bombing Survey and played an important role in the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1950 Nitze became head of Policy Planning in the State Department and was the principal author of a highly influential secret National Security Council document NSC-68 which pressed for increased arms spending by exaggerating the military threat of the Soviet Union. Nitze later performed the same role through his involvement in Team B (headed by Richard Pipes) and the Committee on the Present Danger, both of which exaggerated the threat of the Soviet Union to encourage US military spending. Nitze was also the most important Washington sponsor of the small group of British intellectuals who founded the Institute for Strategic Studies in the late 1950s