NSC-68: The Blueprint for Cold War Rearmament GUEST: Nick Bunker Following the 1949 Soviet atomic test, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson drafted NSC-68, a top-secret strategic document that defined the Cold War struggle. The document portrayed the Soviet threa

NSC-68: The Blueprint for Cold War Rearmament GUEST: Nick Bunker Following the 1949 Soviet atomic test, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson drafted NSC-68, a top-secret strategic document that defined the Cold War struggle. The document portrayed the Soviet threat in the "starkest, grimmest possible terms," identifying 1954 as the "year of maximum danger." To counter Soviet military spending — estimated at 15% of their national output — NSC-68 proposed trebling the U.S. defense budget from $13 billion to $40 billion. Simultaneously, McCarthy targeted Owen Lattimore, an Asia expert, as a "master Soviet agent" to undermine the State Department's policy. While Lattimore was eventually cleared, the political pressure forced the administration into an awkward defensive position. Ultimately, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 "overtook" the measured rollout of NSC-68, leading to the massive military build-up the document envisioned, but in a far more chaotic and urgent manner. (7)