THE MAN WHO WALKED IN THE WOODS Review

• Published in: New York Times
• Main Authors: Kissinger., WALTER ISAACSON, Walter Isaacson, a senior writer at Time, is a co-author of ''The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.'' He is working on a biography of Henry
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 15.10.1989
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: ISAACSON, WALTER; McNamara, Robert S; Nitze, Paul H; Rearden, Steven L; Smith, Ann M; SMITH, ANNE M
• ISSN: 0362-4331

The most interesting revelation here involves the Berlin crisis of 1961, when the Soviet Union threatened to cut off that city's access to the West. Mr. [Paul H. Nitze] represented the Defense Department on an interdepartmental task force dealing with the crisis. The plan they drew up, he says, had as its fourth phase ''the escalating use of nuclear weapons.'' During the 1950's, Mr. Nitze had been an early advocate of preparing for ''limited'' nuclear wars, using tactical nuclear weapons. In this instance, he argued for considering a pre-emptive all-out strategic strike. ''Since demonstrative or tactical use of nuclear weapons would greatly increase the temptation to the Soviets to initiate a strategic strike, it would be best for us, in moving toward the use of nuclear weapons, to consider most seriously the option of an initial strategic strike of our own,'' he writes. ''This, I believed, could assure us victory in at least a military sense in a series of nuclear exchanges.'' Robert S. McNamara, then the Secretary of Defense, says he has no recollection of this discussion. In any event, the Soviet Union decided not to blockade Berlin, and the crisis dissipated. Mr. Nitze's combination of practicality and anti-Communist instincts was put to the test by the Vietnam War. After a 1965 trip to Saigon, he told Mr. McNamara that it would take more than 200,000 American soldiers for the United States to be successful and in the end would not be ''worth the cost.'' Bearing down on Mr. Nitze with ''piercing black eyes,'' Mr. McNamara asked, ''If we withdraw from Vietnam, do you believe the Communists will test us in another location?'' Yes, Mr. Nitze replied. Could he feel confident, Mr. McNamara continued, that stopping them in the next area they probed would be easier? ''No, I can't,'' said Mr. Nitze, and thus he remained a loyal soldier in Washington's war effort, though with continuing qualms. Using a cost-benefit analysis and drawing on the lessons he learned from the World War II bombing survey, he came to oppose the bombing of North Vietnam on practical grounds. In the bloodless, strangely detached tone of his memoirs, he notes that when he was in charge of protecting the Pentagon from a massive antiwar march, ''three of my four children were among the demonstrators - I suspect, more out of curiosity than for protest.''