Edward Luttwak

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Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born 1942) is an American strategist and historian known for his many publications on military strategy, history and international relations.

Luttwak was born into a Jewish family in Arad, Romania, raised in Italy and England. He later attended the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University, where he received a doctorate. His first academic post was at the University of Bath. As of 2004, he is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C..

He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, the US Department of State, the US Navy, US Army, US Air Force, and several NATO defense ministries. He was a member of the National Security Study Group of the US Department of Defense, and an associate of the Japan Finance Ministry's Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy. With four partners, he established and continues to operate a self-sufficient conservation ranch in the southern amazon basin.

Luttwak is a frequent lecturer and consultant, and has developed a reputation for original policy ideas, suggesting for example that major powers' attempts to quell regional wars actually make conflicts more protracted.^[1] His book Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook is perhaps his best-known work; it has been reprinted numerous times, and translated into 14 languages. His "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace" is widely used as a textbook on the subject.

The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third has stirred a lot of controversy among professional historians. Luttwak is seen as an outsider and non-specialist in the field, but his book has raised a lot of questions and created a whole new wave of scholarship on the Roman army and Barbarians on the frontier. Luttwak asked simply "How did the Romans defend the frontier?", a question that he argued had been lost in the noise of professional discourse of demographics and economics and sociology. Although most professional historians reject his views on Roman "strategy," his 1976 book has been most useful for provoking discussion. In recent years he has published articles on Byzantium and is the author of the forthcoming "Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire".

Luttwak, during his childhood, spent a few years in Italy, between Palermo, in Sicily, and Milan. He speaks Italian and is frequently cited by Italian media on political subjects; he also co-authored two books in Italian (with Susanna Creperio Verratti, political philosopher and journalist): Che cos’è davvero la democrazia ("What Democracy really Is"), 1996 and Il libro delle Libertà ("The Book of Liberties"), 2000.

He serves on the editorial boards of Geopolitique (France), the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Washington Quarterly. He speaks English, French, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish and other languages.

[edit] Books

• A Dictionary of Modern War (London, 1971), ISBN 0-7139-0130-6
• The Strategic Balance, 1972 (New York, 1972), ISBN 0-912050-33-0
• The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore, 1974), ISBN 0-8018-1658-0
• The US - USSR Nuclear Weapons Balance (Beverly Hills, 1974), ISBN 0-8039-0096-1
• The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third (Baltimore, 1976), ISBN 0-8018-2158-4
• Strategic Power: Military Capabilities and Political Utility (California, 1976), ISBN 0-8039-0659-5
• Coup d'etat: A Practical Handbook [1968] (London, 1979), ISBN 0-674-17547-6
• Sea Power in the Mediterranean: Political Utility and Military Constraints (California, 1979), ISBN 0-8191-6010-5
• The Israeli Army (with Dan Horowitz) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983), ISBN 0-06-012723-6
• The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (London, 1983), ISBN 0-312-34260-8
• The Pentagon and the Art of War (New York, 1984), ISBN 0-671-61770-2
• Strategy and History (New Jersey, 1985), ISBN 0-88738-065-4
• Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987), ISBN 0-674-00703-4
• The Endangered American Dream: How to Stop the United States From Being a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy (New York, 1993), ISBN 0-671-86963-9
• Turbo-Capitalism: winners and losers in the global economy (New York, 1999), ISBN 0-06-019330-1

[edit] References

1. ^ Luttwak, Edward (July/August 1999). "Give War a Chance". Foreign Affairs 78 (4): 36-44.

[edit] External links

[1]

• Edward Luttwak, Give War a Chance, Foreign Affairs, July 1999.
• Edward Luttwak, Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement, Foreign Affairs, January 2005.
• Edward Luttwak, The middle of nowhere, Prospect, May 2007.
• Corey Robin, The Ex-Cons: Right-Wing Thinkers Go Left!, an analysis containing several pages on Luttwak's life and thought.fr:Edward Luttwak

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