Q&A: Edward Luttwak

This was a very interesting interview. I only wish it had focused more on the security situation of Israel. There are major negative developments occuring now, the increasing hostility of Turkey, the possibility of a total turn to hostility of Egypt, the acceleration of the Iranian nuclear weapons pursuit, the delegitimization effort that will be the natural by- product of the Palestinians U.N. venture, the failed foreign policy of the Obama Administration and loss of American clout in the world. I would have liked to have heard Luttwak’s suggestions as to what Israeli leaders should be working toward in the months ahead. By the way I do not concur with David Samuels’ dismissal of the Egyptian military as incapable of operation. They are armed with the best American weapons and are a large force. There are also other threats including the missiles of Syria and those of Hezbollah Hamas and especially Iran. The Turks have a huge and competent Army which seems on the surface unlikely to engage in active hostilities against Israel. But who knows? Erdogan is proving all the time how deep his hatred is of Israel.
One more point. Luttwak is good but he has been wrong more than once in the past.

The Egyptian army runs on American parts and supplies. If they wanted to start another stupid war against Israel,they would run out of parts before they got out of the garage.

With Syria devouring itself, Iran is more isolated than before. Hizbollah probably will have an ad on ebay,looking for a new HQ.

Turkey may be a problem, but they are far,far off from hostilities.

I would go love to Lutwack`s ranch with a case of Glenlivet,just to hear this guy hold forth on his huge range of experince.

Fascinating

What an interesting and fascinating article. I would love to have been a fly on the wall. Just reading his answers has made me feel slightly less worried about the future. Or am I being very naive?

It would have been interesting if Prof. Luttwak had been queried about his wildly inaccurate forecast of US casualties prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Love his take on Kissinger who IMHO along with Cheney belongs in the dock for criminal behavior.
What’s the problem with the photo?

A fe months ago, at the behest of a friend, I attended a debate which featured Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria against Niall Ferguson and a Chinese engineering prof whose name escapes me. The motion was whether or not the 21st century belonged to China, with Kissinger and Zakaria speaking against. (A pretty dumb motion, considering we’re barely a decade in.) Kissinger certainly didn’t display any sign of senility.

Interviews like this certainly help us see who the real enemy is.

Good article, noticed a small error:

” He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University”

CSIS is not affiliated with Georgetown University, although many of its scholars teach there. It is a not-for profit think tank – csis.org

Awesome interview. We’re not getting a lot of the picture, but what he fills in about the elisions we don’t see: it paints quite a picture.

The interviewer is unintentionally hilarious! He sounds like me in the early days arguing with a much older, more experienced friend who is the only intelligent Leftie I know. I would ask leading questions and get schooled.

Thanks for publishing this!

Sec’y Clinton is not a fool? Is that right? Is that what the very smart Edward Luttwak said?

Perhaps, she is not a fool but she certainly provides a very convincing imitation. Illustration: Clinton is all about reviving “peace talks” with Abbas. The purpose of these talks is not peace but rather an agreement that would require substantial, concrete, dangerous, and irrevocable Israeli concessions in exchange for gossamer promises of peace, PROMISES ON WHICH ABBAS COULD NOT DELIVER EVEN IF HE WANTED TO (and every peace of available evidence suggests that he does not). It can be safely predicted that when Abbas has wrested all that he can from Israel, he will be “terminated” by the animals that run Gaza, the ultimate beneficiaries of any agreement made by Abbas.

But, because there is no one else around, Abbas has become Clinton’s Great White Hope. Clinton’s belief in Abbas and in the durability of any agreement made by him is pure folly, of the same character and quality as the great power self-deceptions at Munich in 1938 or the Western reliance upon Soviet assurances that resulted in the betrayal of Poland at Tehran and Yalta.

He was famous “long ago” (like in a Beatles song) and then we proposed to attack Iraq and he predicted a massive Stalingrad kind of battle because of all the Iraqi artillery and mines. I remember laying out this position to my French-Canadian lady barber here in Maine. I could tell she didn’t quite get it.
He really was a good analyst at what he would have called a middling operational-strategic sense. No, that framework (tactics-operations-strategy), which he introduced me to, and which my being an NCO in the National Guard (“the general’s slot is already taken,” the intake doctor had warned me) had proven useful, describes his own case. He tries to have strategic ingenuity but there is no such thing. There is tactical ingenuity, operational art, and strategic decisiveness, as he said.
Trying to be strategically ingenuous (that doesn’t quite work, but maybe it does), even ingenious, turns foreign policy into a joke. As of the end of the first section of the interview, he and Samuels are having a good joke in the last row of the high school classroom. Z.O.G., hardy, har, har.

That sounded rude and intemperate, not in keeping with the philosophy of this website? I agree. But worse than that, it doesn’t tell anybody very much. It’s like calling someone an idiot.
I make trouble for people these days, shooting my mouth off. I marvel at my own, what’s the word, temerity? But what’s happened is that I’ve lost my fear of saying the wrong thing–or I’m losing it. I’m recovering the sense of candor I had when I was seven years old.
Suffering, bad luck, something made me put it away and try to game the world, game life. What is a little kid afraid of? Being in charge. What’s a really little kid want to be? In charge. “The noble seek power.”

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I’d love to read a similar interview with someone as insightful and well connected, but who is at the heart of the Arab or Muslim elite.
(Of course, there is no such thing as a single Arab or Muslim elite, but multiple elites, but still.)

Got it. Turkey’s minister can’t be an idiot but W can be.