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Title: Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace by Edward N. Luttwak ISBN: 0-674-00703-4 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Comment: This is a sprawling, but very important and perceptive analysis. Luttwak's often revised book has several messages. The most topically interesting one was apparently missed by the reviewers, who concentrated on the paradoxical nature of strategic relations.
Luttwak notes that modern industrial societies will not tolerate casualties in war, and that therefore battlefield strategies must focus on winning wars without direct contact with the enemy and without risk of lives. He claims that while the strategic bombing of WW II was a failure, strategic bombing as practised in Iraq in 1991 and in Kossovo was a success. According to Luttwak, the difference is more accurate intelligence and more accurate bombing - not necessarily cruise-missiles.
He points out that with a smaller expenditure of bombs in 1 month in 1991 than the allies had expended in Germany in 1945, the coalition succeeding in totally disrupting Iraq communications and industry.
The outlines of how the next war ought to be fought, and in fact was fought, were clear from Luttwak's presentation. One almost gets the feeling that the war was fought to prove his theory, and it is very likely that changes in US defense policy are being based on lessons drawn from the success of the war, in the light of Luttwak's recommendations.
Luttwak does not take into account that not all enemies are equal. The strategy that worked so well for Iraq might not work for a more organized and determined foe such as North Korea.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best books on strategy
Comment: This book is not for the greenest of novices, and it contains no recipes or easy plans that will make your military or business plans unassailable. Instead, Luttwak presents as a central thesis that all war (and peace) is paradoxical. Paradox arises because the enemy is a living, thinking, acting person, dedicated to fouling your plans and making your goals and tactics irrelevant.
For example, Luttwak states that the Maginot line was one of the most brilliant defenses in history. It truly was impenetrable. So impenetrable, that the Wermacht just went around it! The mistake of the French, therefore, was not constructing the line (as many have argued), but assuming that it would ever be attacked.
The book is now a bit dated, as it uses anti-tank defense in Western Europe as an exercise in the different levels of understanding war, but it remains an excellent treatise on how to think about war. In this way, it is quite similar to Clausewitz's _On War_, a manual for thinking about war, not winning one. Luttwak also pushes Clausewitz's dictum that all levels of war are subject to and determined by the political, or grand strategic level. Contradictions are always resolved in favor of the higher level. Thus, the rifle fits the tactics, which are determined by the operation, which is suited to the theater, which is selected and fought in because of national policy.
Peace begets war, and war begets peace. This book is rather like the yin-yang of combat.
Rating: 5
Summary: Ignore the Detractors, This Book is Brilliant
Comment:
My own discovery of how the threat changes depending on the levels of analysis would not have occurred without this brilliant book by Edward Luttwak. It was his careful and reasoned discussion of how specific capabilities and policies might not make sense at one level of analysis, but do when combined with others, that helped me understand why US (and other) intelligence communities continue to get so much wrong.
First to credit Luttwak: anti-tank weapons make no sense in isolation (tactical level), but if they slow the tank down enough to allow artillery and close air support to have an impact (operational level), they might close gaps and win victories (strategic level). Bottom line: nothing in war can be considered in isolation (including, one might add, the post-war needs that enable an exit strategy).
It was from Luttwak's work that the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today the Marine Corps Intelligence Command) developed the new model for analysis that distinguished between the four levels of analysis (strategic, operational, tactical, and technical), combined that with the three major domains (military, geographic, and civil), and then cross-walked that against every single mission area (infantry, artillery, tanks, aviation, etcetera).
One simple example of the importance of Luttwak's work to intelligence: at the time (1990) the Libyan T-72 tank was considered by the US Intelligence Community to be a very high threat because it was the best tank that money could then buy--but on reflection, we found this was true only at the technical level of optimal lethality. At the tactical level the tank was being stored in the open, poorly maintained by poorly trained crews, parts cannibalization occurring regularly, this dropped the threat to low. At the operational level there were a significant number of the tanks scattered around and available, this raised it to a medium threat at that level. At the strategic level, the tanks could not be sustained in battle for more than two weeks, and dropped again to low.
Edward Luttwak, in company with Colin Gray, Martin van Creveld, Ralph Peters, and Steve Metz, is one of the most brilliant and clear-spoken of the strategists writing in English, and this book will remain--for years to come--a fundamental building block in the learning and maturation of national security strategy.
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Title: Coup D'Etat by Edward Luttwak ISBN: 0674175476 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 1980 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Making of Strategy : Rulers, States, and War by Williamson Murray, Alvin Bernstein, MacGregor Knox ISBN: 0521566274 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire : From the First Century A.D. to the Third by Edward N. Luttwak, J. F. Gilliam ISBN: 0801821584 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 1979 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Modern Strategy by Colin S. Gray ISBN: 0198782519 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (Strategy and History Series) by Colin S. Gray ISBN: 0714651869 Publisher: Frank Cass & Co Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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