Product Description

If you want peace, prepare for war. A build-up of offensive weapons can be purely defensive. The worst road may be the best route to battle. Strategy is made of such seemingly self-contradictory propositions, Edward Luttwak shows - they exemplify the paradoxical logic that pervades the entire realm of conflict. In this revised and expanded work, Luttwak unveils the peculiar logic of strategy level by level, from grand strategy down to combat tactics. Having participated in its planning, Luttwak examines the role of air power in the 1991 Gulf War, then detects the emergence of "post-heroic" war in Kosovo in 1999 - an American war in which not a single American soldier was killed. In the tradition of Carl von Clausewitz, "Strategy" goes beyond paradox to expose the dynamics of reversal at work in the crucible of conflict. As victory is turned into defeat by over-extension, as war brings peace by exhaustion, ordinary linear logic is overthrown. Citing examples from ancient Rome to our own days, from Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor down to minor combat affrays, from the strategy of peace to the latest operational methods of war, this book reveals the ultimate logic of military failure and success, of war and peace.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #361226 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Edward Luttwak, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Air Force. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and other journals, he is the author of several books, including Coup D'Etat (Harvard).

Customer Reviews

Dazzling display of dialectics
In this dazzling book, Luttwak presents ‘the dynamic, paradoxical process of strategy’. He studies the logic of strategy, its five levels (technical, tactical, operational, theatre and grand), and its two dimensions, the vertical, where the levels interact, and the horizontal, where the conflict of wills unfolds within each level.
He presents activity’s typical sequence: action, culminating point of success, decline and reversal. He approvingly notes that in World War Two, the Soviet Union followed each of its successful advances with a deliberate pause, to avoid overshooting the turning point.
Luttwak explores the paradox of deterrence, that the utility of the most lethal weapons ever devised lies in their non-use; that governments threaten Armageddon to prevent it, so the Soviet bomb, then the Chinese bomb, stopped the USA from starting World War Three.
Nuclear bombs secure the safety of the states possessing them: Israel’s 200 nuclear bombs make absurd Sharon’s claim that Israel can only survive if he attacks the Palestinians. Notably though, incremental political change can outmanoeuvre and negate even ‘the excessive weapon’: the US government could not use it against Korea or Vietnam, and Sharon cannot use it to destroy the Palestinians.
Luttwak shows that ‘peacekeeping’ interventions - so beloved by the moralists whom we allow to run Britain’s affairs - don’t work; instead they extend wars by preventing their resolution: for example, United Nations relief efforts sustained Pol Pot for years, and Non-Governmental Organisations’ relief efforts sustained the Hutus’ genocidal leaders.
In a brilliant new section, Luttwak examines the Gulf War. Only 10% of US bombs were guided (30% of the unguided were cluster bombs). But over half of the guided bombs landed within three feet of their targets - key weapons, bridges, aircraft shelters, command posts, radar equipment, telecommunications. Yet the bombing did not destroy the morale either of soldiers or civilians; it was damaging, not decisive.
Finally, air war cannot deliver what ground war has not won: Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, Serb forces from Kosovo, the Taliban from Kabul, but in each case the targeted governments survived physically. Again, the wars were suspended, not ended.