Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War

In his complementary roles as Cold War crusader and opponent of nuclear arms reductions, Paul Nitze called for a heavily armed postwar U.S. to counteract a purported Soviet drive for global domination. Callahan, managing editor of American Prospect , portrays this adviser to six presidents from FDR to Reagan as a technocrat fixated on the use of military force, a man whose moral righteousness blinded him to the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy. He faults the die-hard anticommunist for using Reagan's high-tech fantasy of a ``Star Wars'' defensive shield in space as a bargaining chip. Interweaving engrossing biography with a behind-the-scenes history of the Cold War, Callahan illuminates how massive military spending has helped reduce the U.S. to the world's largest debtor nation. (Sept.)