Conversations With History - Edward N. Luttwak 

BAP brought me here

A prophet in our times, God bless you Luttwak

Great video.

Edward Luttwak will be taking part in Intelligence Squared’s live debate entitled “The Middle East peace process is a charade” in London, Sept 2010. Hear him argue for the motion and ask him questions in person. Go to our website ‘Intelligence Squared’ for info and tickets. This event can be watched live online worldwide.

"He suggests regular forces because he's a regular guy", such an entertaining speaker haha

Luttwak's certainty is remarkable, given the uncertainty of intelligence and conflict. The Iraq surge pushed troops with multiple tours under their belts out of the compounds Luttwak thinks they should shutter in. They had enough experience to understand their environment, which British colonial forces learned because they had to live for 20 years in their outposts, an accretion of local knowledge by ordinary foot soldiers.

To paraphrase Luttwak's point about American intelligence agencies: The agencies perform very poorly. They perform so poorly because they don't hire worldly people who are street smart about foreign cultures. They don't hire such people because it's impossible or overly difficult to complete the exhaustive background checks required for their security clearance. Instead, the agencies hire people who are clean cut, all-American, naive, and ethnocentric because they grew up in Nebraska, went to college in Nebraska, worked in Nebraska, started a family in Nebraska, and currently live in Nebraska.

Luttwak was unmistaken in his theorem of the Middle East. America followed Luttwak's strategy when they killed General Soleimani in Baghdad. Airstrikes are considerably more efficient than invasions. The Middle East holds a negligible strategic value compared to other regions.

Apparently no one remembers. On 9/11, the 19 terrorists who hijacked four airliners, killing 2,000 people, were mostly Saudis who entered the United States directly from Saudi Arabia or via Hamburg, Germany. Specifically, 15 were Saudis, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and one was from Egypt. Why then invade Afghanistan? Why then invade Iraq? I never understood either invasion and maybe the American planners never understood these invasions either.

40,000 GIs have served in South Korea along its DMZ for the last 60 years, enforcing a cease fire against an enemy that never actually threatened the American homeland. This isn't occupation, but speaks volumes about US foreign commitments. Luttwak's view of strategy seems strung out between his youth experiences, as a child under fascism, an adolescent as Romania went communist, a European post-war emigre student, then to the US as a grad student.

excellent and insightful discussion! with great power comes great responsibility ... and a troubling lack of curiosity.... :)

"Over Determined" only a math guy can say that. "Fast food to Italy", he grew up there.

One doesn't have to support the Iraq War to recognize that reality is layered, that people, not just institutions, matter. The British were well on the path to democracy while they ruled India with fewer people than the U.S. had in Iraq. There's no "iron law", Luttwak's ineffective term, to determine conflict and peace. Luttwak's insistence that the US citizenry, and its democratic institutions, will resist foreign occupations, is quite an exaggeration.

@MrCropper Haven't you ever heard of Tesla's technology? There is no need to go back to coal.

@PaulyIzACracker Well, int eh past western nations at least had enough self esteem to assert their own right to exist end defend themselves by any means necessary, you cant say the same thing today.

One of my favorite authors, but I disagree that democracies cannot be ruthless enough to occupy a country or exterminate by brute force. Eg., the Peloponnesian War, Allied fire bombing / use of nukes in Second War, and Sherman's March to the Sea. As always, the way things are, have been, or will be is not to be confused with the way things ought to be.

Instead of admitting his obvious ignorance about Asia, which is not what he studies, he assumes what looks different must be insignificant. Luttwak insists that war is not terrible, and criticizes war scholars for hating the thing they study. His jargon shows he's read Clausewitz, but he doesn't seem to have absorbed it. War is chaotic, and its friction unnerves participants.

No reason to be there at all. Could've been focusing Southward from our own hemisphere.

he can sound selfish or fool, dunno. nevertheless, it's very stimulating to listen to this guy

He is incorrect about power and curiosity re British Empire, as it was probably one of the most autistically curious empires, in terms of ethnographies, geographies, travel diaries the world has ever seen.

IMO, this is ruling class smoke and mirrors.

Fascism, communism, European philosophy, US capitalism. Perhaps that's why he speaks like an absolutist, a fatalist, a logician, and a marketer. Trained in a straight-jacket version of economics, Luttwak seeks equilibrium. When Luttwak speaks of the Arab world, he has a good point - without oil, there's no there there. Unfortunately, the world currently runs on oil. Sure, that's a mistake, but Mr. Luttwak does not walk from the east coast to Berkeley.