Edward Luttwak

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Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born 4 November 1942) is an American author known for his works on grand strategy, military strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations. He is best known for being the author of Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook. His book Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, also published in Chinese, Russian and ten other languages, is widely used at war colleges around the world. His books are currently published in 29 languages besides English.<ref name=meaney>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

Luttwak was born into a Jewish<ref name="MaxRaskin" />Template:Failed verification family in Arad, in Romania that fled Soviet occupation after World War II. He was thereafter raised in Italy and England.<ref name=meaney />

Career

After attending a boarding school in Berkshire, where he joined the British Army cadet corps, Luttwak moved to London at the age of 16 and went to a grammar school. He then studied analytical economics at the London School of Economics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1968, when he was 26 and working in London as a consultant for the oil industry, he published the book Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, a pastiche of a military manual. The book explains in detail how to overthrow the government of a state, looking in particular at coups d'état on the African continent and in the Middle East. The spy fiction author John le Carré praised the book and compared Luttwak to Machiavelli. Luttwak graduated from the London School of Economics in 1969.<ref name=meaney/>

Luttwak was a war volunteer in Israel in 1967 and later worked for the Israel Defense Forces. In 1972 he moved to the United States for graduate studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He graduated with a PhD in International Relations in 1975. The title of his dissertation was Force and Diplomacy in Roman Strategies of Imperial Security.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Earlier, during a two-month visit to Washington, D.C. in 1969, Luttwak and Richard Perle, his former roommate in London, joined a think tank, the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defence Policy, assembled by Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze to lobby Congress for anti-ballistic missile systems.<ref name=meaney/><ref>Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 2004, pp. 31-32. Template:ISBN</ref>

In late 1974 and into 1975 a series of articles was published by neoconservative intellectuals discussing whether the US military should seize the oilfields in Saudi Arabia. In March 1975, Harper's Magazine published an article that Luttwak had written under the pseudonym "Miles Ignotus" with the title "Seizing Arab Oil." Luttwak had previously published the gist of his argument on how to break Arab power under the title "Obsolescent Elites", using his real name, in The Times Literary Supplement. He suggested that U.S. Marines, assisted by the 82nd Airborne Division, should storm the eastern beaches of Saudi Arabia. The article and the author attracted considerable attention, but there is no evidence that the Ford administration ever considered such an intervention. James Akins, then U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, publicly denounced the "invasion scenario" as a product of "sick minds." In 2004 Luttwak told the Wall Street Journal that he had written the article "after discussion with several like-minded consultants and officials in the Pentagon."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1976 Luttwak published The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third, which generated controversy among professional historians who saw Luttwak as an outsider and a non-specialist in the field. However, the book is recognized as seminal because it raised basic questions about the Roman Army and its defense of the Roman frontier. Kimberly Kagan, writing in the Journal of Military History, states "Ancient historians have demonstrated that Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire does not accurately describe Roman grand strategy, and many conclude that there was no Roman imperial grand strategy."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Tanner Greer writes "So conclusively wrong is this book that I do not think it should be included on any syllabus. Since Luttwak published that book in 1976, a dozen studies of Roman frontier deployments, Roman strategic culture, and Roman decision making have been published. All offer a steady refutation of Luttwak’s work. However, not one of those books or articles would have been written without Luttwak’s work. Luttwak was wrong in every particular except the questions he asked—but those questions were good enough to create an entire subfield of research."<ref name="Greer">Template:Cite web</ref>

Later Luttwak started researching the Byzantine empire, beginning with its earliest surviving texts.<ref name=meaney/> According to Harry Sidebottom, the majority of scholars were hostile to Luttwak's enthusiasm for fighting wars on client state territory and the book made uncomfortable reading in some circles in western Europe because in the 1980s Luttwak became a security consultant to U.S. President Ronald Reagan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1987 Luttwak published Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace.<ref name=meaney/> According to Luttwak's publisher, Harvard University Press, the book has been widely acclaimed.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Luttwak became known for his innovative ideas. He suggested, for example, that attempts by major powers to quell regional wars actually make conflicts more protracted.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Luttwak went on to provide consulting services to multinational corporations and government agencies, including various branches of the U.S. government and the U.S. military.<ref>Professional Profile: Edward Luttwak Template:Webarchive. Idcitalia.com. Accessed March 11, 2012.</ref>

Luttwak has served on the editorial boards of Géopolitique (France), the Journal of Strategic Studies, The European Journal of International Affairs, and the Washington Quarterly. He speaks English, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish, in addition to his native Romanian.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1997, with three partners, he purchased 19,000 hectares of land in the Bolivian Amazon, where he set up a cattle ranch.<ref name=meaney/>

Luttwak was a lecturer in economics at the University of Bath from 1964 to 1966.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 2004 Luttwak was awarded an honorary doctorate degree (LLD) from the University of Bath. He has also received honorary degrees from a university in Arad, Romania and another from Timisoara's University as well as the University of Bucharest.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His book The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire was published in late 2009.<ref name=meaney/>

Leon Wieseltier, who got to know Luttwak during the Reagan years, wrote: "Edward was this figure out of a Werner Herzog film. He was not some person who had read a bit of Tacitus and now worked at the Pentagon. He knew all the languages, the geographies, the cultures, the histories. He is the most bizarre humanist I have ever met."<ref name=meaney/> Luttwak has said that he has used Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai to train men to fight in war, including villagers in El Salvador.<ref name="MaxRaskin" />

Edward Luttwak holds an issue of Lotta Comunista, Italian Left Communist monthly.
Edward Luttwak holds an issue of Lotta Comunista, Italian Left Communist monthly.

Predictions

Before the first Persian Gulf War Luttwak incorrectly predicted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would evacuate Kuwait "after a week or two of bombing" [the bombing continued for six weeks without inducing him to do so] and warned that the use of ground forces without heavy preliminary bombing "could make Desert Storm a bloody, grinding combat with thousands of (US) casualties." Writing a month into the bombing, Luttwak still opposed a ground campaign. He forecast that it would lead inevitably to a military occupation of Iraq from which the United States would be unable to disengage without disastrous foreign policy consequences.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In the 1999 book Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy Luttwak predicted that dynamic economic growth would increase ugly social phenomena such as higher crime rates and job insecurity, as anticipated in his London Review of Books article "Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> New York Magazine described Luttwak's article as forecasting the rise of Donald Trump to the American presidency, citing his article's predictions about a political vacuum emerging from the neglect of workers from political party establishments.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2009, Richard Posner analyzed intellectuals with a public profile in the U.S. Posner claimed that Luttwak sees many affinities between the United States and the declining Roman Empire, leading Luttwak to predict a dark age in which the U.S. population will experience decline into third world status. According to Posner, Luttwak retained his economic pessimism when the economy of the United States stood at the turn of the century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Luttwak predicted in a 2016 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration would pursue a foreign policy "unlikely to deviate from standard conservative norms", withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, avoiding involvement in Syria and Libya, eschewing trade wars, and modestly reducing spending — in short, "changes at the margin".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In fact, Trump initiated his first trade war during his first term in office in January 2018, and his second trade war in February 2025.

On grand strategy

Edward Luttwak in 2011

Luttwak has long insisted on the necessity of a grand strategy, but he moved beyond preoccupation with military intervention,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and started to theorize diplomacy and military alliances. His Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (1983) was the first English-language text that recognized the different nationalities that were re-emerging in the USSR and were ignored by both "Kremlinologists" and U.S. intelligence. Luttwak concluded that the Soviet Union relied entirely on military instruments for its grand strategy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Luttwak argued that Carl von Clausewitz's warning against aggressive wars was no longer relevant in the post-World War II era. He reasoned that when confronted with weapons of mass destruction, statecraft needed a grand strategy, that is, "the firm subordination of tactical priorities, material ideals, and warlike instincts to political goals". For Luttwak, grand strategy was no longer a military doctrine, but a political issue, and diplomacy was needed to achieve the security of the state.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Writing in 2007 for the National Review, former George W. Bush's speechwriter David Frum said of Luttwak: "His book on the grand strategy of the Roman Empire was terrific, and his Coup d'État is that astounding thing: a great work of political science that is also a hilarious satire."<ref name=mage>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

Luttwak describes himself as a "fanatical snorkeler" and exercises every day.<ref name="MaxRaskin">Template:Cite web</ref> He lives with his wife in Maryland.<ref name="MaxRaskin" /> He has a son and daughter, as well as three grandchildren.<ref name="SLWP">Template:Cite book</ref> Luttwak does not own a smartphone.<ref name="MaxRaskin" />

Works

Template:Scholia Several of his books as listed below have also been published in other English-language editions in the UK, US, and India, and in foreign languages: Arabic, Bahasa, Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Bahasa Indonesia, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (and Brazilian Portuguese), Romanian, Russian, Spanish (in Spain, Argentina and Venezuela), Swedish, Thai, and Turkish. He has also published other books in Italian and in Japanese only.

Books

In Japanese only:

In Italian only:

As contributor:

  • Vietnam: Four American Perspectives edited by Patrick J. Hearden with The Impact of Vietnam on Strategic Thinking in the United States (Purdue University Press, 1990)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Template:ISBN
  • The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 1991 edited by Grethe B. Peterson with Strategy: A New Era?<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (University of Utah, 1991) Template:ISBN
  • Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present edited by John A. Lynn with Logistics and the Aristocratic Idea of War (Boulder, Westview Press, 1994)
  • Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture edited by Daniel Doherty and Amitai Etzioni with Consuming For Love (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) Template:ISBN

Preface, foreword:

  • The Parameters Of War: Military History from the Journal of the U.S. Army War College edited by Lloyd J. Matthews and Dale E. Brown (Washington, Pergamon-Brassey's, 1987) Template:ISBN
  • Strategic Air Power in Desert Storm by John Andreas Olsen (London, Routledge, 2003) Template:ISBN
  • Free Trade Doesn't Work by Ian Fletcher (U.S. Business & Industry Council, 2010; revised edition in 2011) Template:ISBN
  • La Repubblica dei mandarini. Viaggio nell'Italia della burocrazia, delle tasse e delle leggi inutili (The Republic of mandarins. Travel in the Italy of bureaucracy, taxes and unnecessary laws) by Paolo Bracalini (Padua, Marsilio, 2014) Template:ISBN

Selected book reviews

Luttwak has written book reviews for publications such as The American Spectator, Commentary Magazine, London Review of Books, The New Republic, and The New York Times.

Selected articles

References

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Further reading

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