William Weed Kaufmann (November 10, 1918 – December 14, 2008) was an American nuclear strategist and adviser to seven defense secretaries, who advocated for a shift from the strategy of

massive retaliation Massive retaliation, also known as a massive response or massive deterrence, is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack. Strategy In the event of a ...

against the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in the event of a nuclear strike.

Early life

Kaufmann was born in Manhattan on November 10, 1918, to Charles and Antoinette Kaufmann. He was the fourth of six children. His father died when Kaufmann was 10 years old. He attended

The Choate School Choate Rosemary Hall (often known as Choate; ) is a private, co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Choate is currently ranked as the second best boarding school and third best private hi ...

Wallingford, Connecticut Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, centrally located between New Haven and Hartford, and Boston and New York City. The population was 44,396 at the 2020 census. The community was named after Wallingford, in En ...

, where his classmates included

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

. He attended

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, earning a bachelor's degree in international studies in 1939.

Career

Kaufmann served in the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. After the war, he returned to Yale and earned a master's degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1948, both in international studies.Hevesi, Dennis
"William Kaufmann, Nuclear Strategist Who Helped Reshape Policy, Dies at 90 "
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', December 21, 2008. Accessed December 22, 2008. He was on the faculty at the

Yale Institute of International Studies The Yale Institute of International Studies was a research institute that was part of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1935 and was led by directors Nicholas J. Spykman and later Frederick S. Dunn, under whom there wa ...

until 1951, when he was part of a group that left and founded

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Center of International Studies The Center of International Studies (CIS) was a research center that was part of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in Princeton, New Jersey. It was founded in 1951 by six scholars who came to Princeto ...

. While at Princeton in the mid-1950s, he wrote "Limited War", a, paper that argued for expansion of the conventional armies of

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

, instead of a reliance on nuclear weapons, to forestall an invasion by the Soviet Union. In 1956, he was hired by the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

. He became a member of the

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

faculty at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1961 and also took a position that same year with the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

, splitting his time between both for several years. Later he split his time between the Harvard Kennedy School and the Brookings Institution. The vision of

counterforce In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or ...

, developed by Kaufmann and others, was that the response to an invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union should be a measured sequence of responses, which would start with targeted attacks of military assets that could escalate to attacks on cities if hostilities were not suspended. The hope was that an all-out nuclear war could be avoided. The counterforce proposal stood in contrast to the

approach advocated by

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

General

Curtis LeMay Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was an American Air Force general who implemented a controversial strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. He later served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air ...

Strategic Air Command Strategic Air Command (SAC) was both a United States Department of Defense Specified Command and a United States Air Force (USAF) Major Command responsible for command and control of the strategic bomber and intercontinental ballistic missile ...

in which the US response to a Soviet invasion, even one without nuclear attacks, would be nuclear weapons on all major military and civilian sites in the Soviet Union and its allies, which could have resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths. Kaufmann was hired by

United States Secretary of Defense The United States secretary of defense (SecDef) is the head of the United States Department of Defense, the executive department of the U.S. Armed Forces, and is a high ranking member of the federal cabinet. DoDD 5100.1: Enclosure 2: a The s ...

Robert McNamara Robert Strange McNamara (; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He remains the Lis ...

after President John F. Kennedy took office, as one of McNamara's Whiz Kids. McNamara included parts of Kaufmann's counterforce proposals into the nuclear strategy that he was developing. A 1986 article in ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...

'' called Kaufmann "the man who may well be the most knowledgeable individual in this country on the defense budgets of the past quarter-century."Bernstein, Adam
"Defense Expert William Kaufmann"
''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', December 17, 2008. Accessed December 22, 2008. In a report written with John D. Steinbruner in 1991 for the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...

, after the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

, Kaufmann opined that the US could meet its post-

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

defense obligations after cutting

military spending A military budget (or military expenditure), also known as a defense budget, is the amount of financial resources dedicated by a state to raising and maintaining an armed forces or other methods essential for defense purposes. Financing milit ...

by a third. The report noted that "the future ability of the United States to maintain the conditions of its security will depend as much on its moral authority, diplomatic skills and economic assets as on its military capabilities." Kaufmann died at 90 years of age on December 14, 2008, in

Woburn, Massachusetts Woburn ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,876 at the 2020 census. Woburn is located north of Boston. Woburn uses Massachusetts' mayor-council form of governme ...

, of complications from

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

Doctoral students

Joshua M. Epstein Joshua Morris Epstein is Professor of Epidemiology at the New York University College of Global Public Health. Formerly Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, with joint appointments in the departments of Applied Mathematic ...

* E. Randolph Jayne II *

Catherine McArdle Kelleher Catherine McArdle Kelleher (January 19, 1939 – February 15, 2023) was an American political scientist involved in national and international security policy. She was Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown Univer ...

* Dana G. Mead * John J. Midgley * Richard Smoke * David N. SchwartzNATO's Nuclear Dilemmas, The Brookings Institution, 1983.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaufmann, William Weed 1918 births 2008 deaths United States Army personnel of World War II MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty People from Manhattan People from Wallingford, Connecticut Princeton University faculty RAND Corporation people Yale University alumni Yale University faculty United States Army Air Forces soldiers Nuclear strategists