William Kaufmann
| William Kaufmann | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 10, 1918 Manhattan, New York |
| Died | December 14, 2008 (aged 90) Woburn, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | U.S. military advisor, professor |
| Known for | Nuclear strategist |
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 against the Soviet Union in the event of a nuclear strike.
Kaufmann was born in Manhattan on November 10, 1918, to Charles and Antoinette Kaufmann. His father died when Kaufmann was 10 years old. He attended The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, where his classmates included John F. Kennedy. He attended Yale University, earning a bachelor's degree in international studies in 1939. Kaufmann served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, he returned to Yale and earned a master's degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1948, both in international studies.
He was on the faculty at the Yale Institute of International Studies until 1951, when he was part of a group that left and founded Princeton University's Center of International Studies. While at Princeton in the mid-1950s, he wrote "Limited War", a paper that argued for expansion of Western European conventional armies instead of a reliance on nuclear weapons to forestall an invasion by the Soviet Union. In 1956, he was hired by the RAND Corporation. He became a member of the political science faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 and also took a position that same year with the United States Department of Defense, splitting his time between both for several years.
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