Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born 1942) is an American military strategist and historian who has published works on military strategy, history and international relations.
Luttwak was born into a Jewish family in Arad, Romania, raised in Italy and England. He attended the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University, where he received a doctorate. His first academic post, before moving to the United States, was at the University of Bath. He became a professor at Georgetown University in 1975. In 2008, he became 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 United States Department of State, the United States Navy, United States Army, United States Air Force, and several NATO defense ministries. He was a member of the National Security Study Group of the United States Department of Defense, and an associate of the Japanese Finance Ministry's Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy. With three other partners, he established and operated a self-sufficient forest-conservation ranch in the southern Amazon basin.
Luttwak has been a frequent lecturer and consultant, and is known for his unorthodox policy ideas, suggesting for example that major powers' attempts to quell regional wars actually make conflicts more protracted. His book A Practical Handbook has been reprinted numerous times, and translated into 14 languages. His 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 is controversial among professional historians. Luttwak is seen as an outsider and non-specialist in the field. However, his book has raised questions about the Roman army and its defense of the Roman frontier. Luttwak asked "How did the Romans defend the frontier?", a question that he argued had been lost in the professional discourse that focused on demographics, economics and sociology. Although many professional historians reject his views on Roman strategy, his 1976 book has increased interest in the study of the Roman frontiers. Since the 1980s he has published articles on Byzantium and his book, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, was published in late 2009 and received generally positive reviews. (For a summary of his thesis and its criticisms, see Defence-in-depth .)
Luttwak, during his childhood, spent a few years in Italy, traveling between Palermo, in Sicily, and Milan. He speaks Italian and is frequently cited by Italian media on political subjects. He has also co-authored two books in Italian with Susanna Creperio Verratti, (a 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 served 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.
In addition to his persona as a "public intellectual," Luttwak is also an independent intelligence operative who is involved in clandestine activities that include "field operations, extraditions, arrests, interrogations (never, he insists, using physical violence), military consulting and counterterrorism training for different agencies of the U.S., foreign governments and private interests," he told Laura Rozen of the weekly The Forward newspaper. The Operator: The Double Life of a Military Strategist - Forward.com"
In May 2008 the New York Times published an opinion piece by Luttwak in which he argued that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama "was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood" and would be considered an "apostate" by the world's Muslims if he were to become president (see Apostasy in Islam). Luttwak was widely criticized for misrepresenting Islamic law, including by the public editor of the Times, Clark Hoyt.
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.
A Practical Handbook [ London, 1968, 1969], ISBN 0-674-17547-6. New York, 1969, Greenwich, Conn., 1969; Revised Edition: (Cambridge, Mass., 1979),(London, 1979; Sydney, 1979). Foreign-language editions: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (2), German, Greek, Italian (2), Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
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
Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace Rev.Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002), ISBN 978-0674007031.
The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009), ISBN 978-0-674-03519-5.
