Edward Luttwak
Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born
1942) is an
economist and
historian known for his many publications on
military strategy and
international relations.
Luttwak was born in
Arad,
Romania, and 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 Fellow 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, and the U.S.
Department of State. He is a member of the
National Security Study Group of the U.S.
Department of Defense, and an associate of the Japan Finance Ministry's Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
Luttwak is a frequent lecturer and
consultant, and has developed a reputation for offbeat proposals intended to provoke thought, for instance suggesting that major powers' attempts to quell regional wars actually make the wars more intense. His book
Coup d'etat: A Practical Handbook is perhaps his best-known work; it has been reprinted numerous times, and translated into 14 languages.
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 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.
Luttwak, during his childhood, spent many years in
Italy, between
Palermo, in
Sicily, and
Milan, as a
refugee. He speaks Italian well and is also a renowned political analyst and historian in that country; he also wrote two books in Italian (co-authored 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,
Italian, and
Spanish.
*
A Dictionary of Modern War (London 1971), ISBN 0713901306
*
The Strategic Balance, 1972 (1972), ISBN 0912050330
*
The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore, 1974), ISBN 0801816580
*
The US - USSR Nuclear Weapons Balance (Beverly Hills, 1974), ISBN 0803900961
*
The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third (USA, 1976), ISBN 0801821584
*
Strategic Power: Military Capabilities and Political Utility (California, 1976), ISBN 0803906595
*
Coup d'etat: A Practical Handbook (London 1979), ISBN 0674175476
*
Sea Power in the Mediterranean: Political Utility and Military Constraints (California 1979), ISBN 0819160105
*
The Israeli Army (with
Dan Horowitz) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983), ISBN 0060127236
*
The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (London, 1983), ISBN 0312342608
*
The Pentagon and the Art of War (New York, 1984), ISBN 0671617702
*
Strategy and History (New Jersey, 1985), ISBN 0887380654
*
Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987), ISBN 0674007034
*
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 0671869639
*
Turbo-Capitalism: winners and losers in the global economy (
HarperCollins, 1999), ISBN 0060193301
*Luttwak's page at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) [
1]
*Edward Luttwak.
Give War a Chance,
Foreign Affairs, July 1999.
*Edward Luttwak.
Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement (PDF-100KB),
Foreign Affairs, January 2005.
