Edward Luttwak?

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Edward Luttwak?

Postby lightningBugout » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:06 pm

Author of the infamous Obama = apostate editorial in the NYT op-ed last month (maybe April). But, apparently also a private spook: http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2008/06/profile-of-edward-operator-luttwak.html

Does anyone out there know more about him than what is in this article? Based on his connections to GWB and McCain and the correspondence between his most famous work: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FCoup-d%25C3%2589tat-Practical-Edward-Luttwak%2Fdp%2F0674175476&ei=S-NWSNn3NIGasAPLuNj1Ag&usg=AFQjCNGT4j-73tRXHE1IOQ2QZefveVFQmg&sig2=XgzZ1EZctOblK1FaO-2fiw
and our current predicament, he seems to be emerging as a much more important and largely unremarked figure than I realized. a

Any more information about him and his background, connections, etc. (even just leads) would be much appreciated. thanks

ps. this is my first post - not sure about the proper category.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:40 pm

So this is where you started out. I shall have to see what's in my files.

http://www.gwias.com:80/globe/archive/000068.html

...The more it stays the same
Edward Luttwak's Strategy shows the error in trusting engineering over strategic thinking and illuminates the unchanging dynamics of war itself. By Adam Solove


From September 2005

Disclaimer: the Editor and author of this piece has worked briefly with Dr. Luttwak in the past and should not be considered an unbiased reviewer.

Edward Luttwak’s Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace is a theoretical look at the laws of warfare as they apply in all ages, regardless of technological innovations. In contrast to futurists who see a new world of peaceful coexistence thanks to economic integration, or deadly worldwide warfare thanks to new weapons, Luttwak shows how the same rules of strategy have always dominated conflict and will continue to influence future competition.

The book’s premise is that strategy is fundamentally concrete, and cannot be dealt with in abstract terms. The presence of actions and conscious reactions from opposing sides breaks down linear logic and results in paradoxes. Normally, the best road through mountainous terrain is the widest, flattest, and best-maintained one. In battle, though, defenders are also more likely to be deployed along major transportation lines, and it may therefore be preferable to take the more physically arduous but undefended route.

When defense planners and talking-heads think, they often ignore this rather simple, but key, element of strategy. The crucial question to be asked of any new tactic, strategy, or technology is not: “how will this affect battle?” but “how will the enemy react?” New technologies, especially, are vulnerable to enemy counter-measures.

The effectiveness of strategic measures and counter-measures each reaches a culminating point of success, beyond which they are simply not useful. During the Cold War, the introduction of anti-ship missile systems greatly threatened America’s naval power, which centered on small numbers of large aircraft carriers. The threat was quickly reduced by the introduction of large carrier convoys, including destroyers and attack submarines to patrol the waters and air-superiority fighters to defend the air around the convoy. Logically, then, anti-ship missiles would have little success in attacking a modern carrier. Yet their strategic significance is great. By forcing carriers to move with large convoys, they have redirected defense resources from useful attack capabilities to ship defense. The modern carrier group, with dozens of naval vessels and aircraft devoted to its own protection, only carries a small number of useful attack planes. Thus, naval counter-measures against missile attack have passed the culminating point of success: making them any more effective would only take away a far greater portion of the fleet’s useful offensive capacity.

After discussing the conscious use of paradox in strategy, Luttwak moves on to the levels of strategic analysis: the technical, tactical, operational, strategic and grand strategic. An in-depth consideration of the elements on each level, and their interrelation, would be well beyond the length of this review. Ultimate success in battle and diplomacy lies on the grand strategic level: the total well-being of a nation in economic, military and political terms.

Here again, however, the role of paradox is paramount to Luttwak’s analysis. Advances on one level, however large, may ultimately result in grand strategic losses. The paramount example is Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack crippled America’s Pacific fleet, but to no clear end. The Japanese gained a temporary naval advantage, but not one they could press to grand strategic results. Unable to march on Washington, or seriously threaten the American population, Japan’s attack brought it short-lived strength and ultimate defeat.

The book’s greatest virtue is not its theoretical coverage of paradox and levels of analysis in strategy, but the wealth of concrete examples, taken from all periods in Western military history, but especially from more recent times. Luttwak’s look at the competition between Nazi bombers and British air defenses during World War II covers a variety of technical, organizational and strategic actions and reactions, illustrating how the advances can be concretely analyzed Other side discussions, on tank warfare, the effectiveness of aerial bombardment, and the tension between military and scientific interests, are equally interesting.

The book’s lesson—directed at politicians, scholars, students, and pundits who talk about military and defense affairs without understanding them—is simple: strategy has a logic and a nature of its own. Considering concrete policy choices in abstract terms ignores the complexity of strategic competition and risks making significant errors.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:43 pm

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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:45 pm

I'll give you the cached version of this so you can find Luttwak quicker:

http://tinyurl.com/5q74v3
Last edited by chiggerbit on Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:48 pm

http://reachupward.blogspot.com/2007/01 ... ident.html

Monday, January 15, 2007
Success On Accident?
With Americans seeing Iraq as a serious crisis, comes this rather off-the-wall take on American interests in the Middle East by military and international relations expert Edward Luttwak. Luttwak’s view seems rather Machiavellian to me, but he does bring up some interesting points.

Indeed, provoking thought and discussion seems to be Luttwak’s specialty. It appears that he’s often regarded as a sort of respected crackpot. As a consultant, he’s paid for his views, maybe more for encouraging thinking outside of the box than for being right.

Luttwak’s thesis with regard to the current matter of Iraq is that President Bush has unwittingly reformed the entire Middle East, not the way he intended, but nonetheless in a way that is beneficial to American interests. Endless concourses of pols, commentators, and ‘experts’ are blathering nonstop that the U.S. should not be so arrogant as to think that it could ever resolve the deep-seated, centuries-old, tribalistic animosity between the Sunni and the Shia (a la the President’s plan).

But it is precisely this rift, according to Luttwak, that the President has accidentally leveraged to America’s advantage. For years the Sunni-Shia split was held in status quo. That status quo was bad for the U.S. because Arab Sunnis had little compulsion to work with the U.S. We did work with some Shiites in the region, but Iran and Iraq were our sworn enemies.

That all changed when the balance of power changed in Iraq. The majority Shia are in charge while the minority Sunnis that were used to being in charge aren’t any longer. That has upset the balance of power throughout the entire region. Now America has parties from both sides pandering for help against their opponents (even while other parties from both sides actively oppose the U.S.)

Mr. Luttwak sees the day coming quickly when the U.S. can simply sit back and manage the Sunni-Shia conflict in the region with a fraction of the troops we currently have in Iraq. Even if this view is accurate, it leaves me with an unsettled feeling. It seems rather diabolical. What about the quality of life for the people living there? Perhaps Luttwak’s Middle East isn’t any worse than the current situation.

Luttwak concludes on a somewhat more positive note, suggesting that we have finally achieved what we have been trying to accomplish in the Middle East for decades. He says, “What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally. But the result is exactly the same.”

If Luttwak is right — and that’s a huge if — we will eventually have the troop draw downs for which many are clamoring (but not full withdrawal). But we will end up with a better situation than we have ever had in the Middle East. Part of me wants to believe it.
Posted by Reach Upward at 12:38 PM



2 comments:
Democracy Lover said...
I think you hit it on the head when you said Luttwack is regarded as a crackpot. This is a guy who's never met a war he didn't like. Presumably he was never on the business end of the weaponry.

If it "beneficial to American interests" to cause the animosity between Sunni and Shia to bloom into all out war and cause the deaths of thousands of people, then we should be re-examining our conception of American interests instead of trying to find some backhanded way to make our President's blunders look better.

1:52 PM
Reach Upward said...
Like I said, this guy seems to excel at provoking thought (or maybe just at provoking in general) rather than at being right.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:53 pm

http://tinyurl.com/5sugp4

Civil war: the only way to bring peace to Iraq
By Edward Luttwak
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/05/2006



Civil wars can be especially atrocious as neighbours kill each other at close range, but they have a purpose - they can bring lasting peace by destroying the will to fight, and by removing the motives and opportunities for further violence.

England's civil war in the mid-17th century assured the country's political stability under parliament and a limited monarchy throughout the subsequent centuries. But first there had to be a war with many bloody battles and casualties on the side, including the execution of Charles I, who had claimed absolute power by divine right.

The United States had its own civil war two centuries later, which established the rule that states cannot leave the union alone, abolishing slavery in the process. The destruction was vast, and the casualties immense, given the size of the population at that time. But without the decisive victory of the Union, two separate and quarrelsome republics, periodically at war with each other, might still endure.

advertisementNow it is the turn of Iraq, the most haphazard of states, hurriedly created by the British after the First World War with scant regard for its rival nationalities and sects. The Kurds were never at ease under Arab rule - at least some of their tribes were already fighting for independence more than 60 years ago. But it was not until the land expropriations, deportations and massacres of the Saddam years that most of the Kurds united to demand the right to rule themselves. After decades of suffering, it is nearly over: it only remains to be determined if the Kurds will have their own state within a loose Iraqi confederation or outside it, in full independence.

As for the Arabs of Iraq, the Shia majority has always been ruled by Sunnis, first under the Caliphs, then under the Ottoman empire for more than 400 years, and finally under Iraqi kings and dictators. But the sectarian difference was not always so significant. Among the more Westernised and better educated Iraqis, social mingling was normal and inter-marriage not uncommon. It was three relatively recent developments that brought the two communities into conflict.

First, Saddam Hussein's vigorous attempt to modernise Iraq in a secular direction - before he turned to war and rediscovered Islam - infuriated Shia prelates, who protested against village clinics headed by female doctors and other such abominations. That, in turn, triggered brutal repression by the regime, which most of the Shia viewed as yet more Sunni oppression.

Then, the spread of Salafist fundamentalism - they view the Shia as heretics deserving of capital punishment - incited the Sunnis to inter-communal violence.

And finally, while today's theocratic Iran is not necessarily viewed as a model, it demonstrates to the Shia that they need not always be ruled by Sunnis - that they can govern themselves. That in turn provokes the ire of the many Sunni Arabs who believe that Iraq belongs to them regardless of the fact that they constitute just 20 per cent of the country's population (or 25 per cent, if the Kurds, Turkmen and Christians are not included).

The resulting sectarian hatred is now inflicting a heavy toll of casualties by way of shootings, bombings, and the execution of captives. Attempts by US and British forces to stop the killings are feeble and declining: it would take many times as many Coalition troops as remain in Iraq to make any difference. Nor can the factors that are causing the violence be reversed at this point, certainly not by fielding more Iraqi army and police units. Except among the Kurds, they are nothing but Sunni or Shia militias in official uniforms, and they are responsible for some of the worst massacres.

Physical separation is therefore the only way to limit the carnage. That process is now under way. Most Sunnis and Shia already live safely among their own, behind increasingly effective security barriers. Mixed communities are rapidly becoming unmixed, as minorities abandon their homes. In this way, the opportunities for violence decrease. It is an extraordinarily painful and costly way of interrupting the cycle of attacks and reprisals - and especially cruel for mixed marriages and their children - but it is how civil war achieves its purpose of eventually bringing tranquillity and peace.

If the kings of continental Europe, royal cousins to Charles I, had combined forces to save his life, the principle of absolute monarchy, and Britain's peace, they could perhaps have prevented the civil war, but only at the price of perpetuating strife by blocking progress towards stable parliamentary government. If the British and other European great powers had sent expeditionary armies to stop the enormous casualties and vast destruction of the American civil war - as many argued that they should - they could have prevented the eventual emergence of a peacefully united republic and perpetuated North-South hostility.

That is the mistake that the United States and its allies are now making, by interfering with Iraq's civil war. They should disengage their own troops from populated areas as much as possible, give up the intrusive check-points and patrols that are failing to contain the violence anyway, and abandon the futile effort to build up military and police forces that are national only in name.

Some US and allied forces will still be needed in remote desert bases to safeguard Iraq from foreign invasion, with some left to hold the Baghdad "green zone", where all Iraqi politicians can gather safely. But for the rest, strict non-interference should be the rule. The sooner the Kurds, Sunni, Shia, Turkmen and smaller minorities, too, can define their own natural and stable boundaries within which they feel safe, the sooner will the violence come to an end, allowing mutual cooperation to resume, and neighbourly fellow-feeling, too. That is what happened in Lebanon, once outsiders stopped trying to interfere.

Iraq's civil war is no different from England's or America's. It, too, should be allowed to bring peace.

• Edward Luttwak is a senior fellow in the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:55 pm

http://tinyurl.com/5hwov

Article preview: first 500 of 3,559 words total.







Summary: The best strategy for the United States now in Iraq is disengagement. In a reversal of the usual sequence, the U.S. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal, and Washington might actually be able to lay the groundwork for a reasonably stable Iraq. Why? Because geography ensures that all other parties are far more exposed to the dangers of an anarchical Iraq than is the United States itself.

Edward N. Luttwak is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.






Topics:
Middle East
Peace and Conflict
U.S. Policy and Politics
Political Systems


Iraq: Winning the Unwinnable War
By James Dobbins
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005

The Middle East Predicament
By Dennis Ross
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005


WITHDRAW NOW
Given all that has happened in Iraq to date, the best strategy for the United States is disengagement. This would call for the careful planning and scheduling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from much of the country--while making due provisions for sharp punitive strikes against any attempt to harass the withdrawing forces. But it would primarily require an intense diplomatic effort, to prepare and conduct parallel negotiations with several parties inside Iraq and out. All have much to lose or gain depending on exactly how the U.S. withdrawal is carried out, and this would give Washington a great deal of leverage that could be used to advance U.S. interests.

The United States cannot threaten to unleash anarchy in Iraq in order to obtain concessions from others, nor can it make transparently conflicting promises about the country's future to different parties. But once it has declared its firm commitment to withdraw--or perhaps, given the widespread conviction that the United States entered Iraq to exploit its resources, once visible physical preparations for an evacuation have begun--the calculus of other parties will change. In a reversal of the usual sequence, the U.S. hand will be strengthened by withdrawal, and Washington may well be able to lay the groundwork for a reasonably stable Iraq. Nevertheless, if key Iraqi factions or Iraq's neighbors are too shortsighted or blinded by resentment to cooperate in their own best interests, the withdrawal should still proceed, with the United States making such favorable or unfavorable arrangements for each party as will most enhance the future credibility of U.S. diplomacy.

The United States has now abridged its vastly ambitious project of creating a veritable Iraqi democracy to pursue the much more realistic aim of conducting some sort of general election. In the meantime, however, it has persisted in futile combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. A strategy of disengagement would require bold, risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much diplomatic competence in its execution. But it would be soundly based on the most fundamental of realities: geography that alone ensures all other parties are far more exposed to the dangers of an anarchical Iraq than is the United States itself.


SPAIN, NAPLES, AND IRAQ

If Iraq could indeed be transformed into a successful democracy by a more prolonged occupation, as Germany and Japan were after 1945, then of course any disengagement would be a great mistake. In both of those countries, however, by the time U.S. occupation forces arrived the local populations were already thoroughly disenthralled from violent ideologies, and so they eagerly collaborated with their occupiers to construct democratic institutions. Unfortunately, because of the hostile sentiments of the Iraqi population, the relevant precedents for Iraq are far different.

The very word "guerrilla" acquired its present meaning from the ferocious insurgency of the illiterate Spanish poor against their would-be liberators under the leadership of their traditional oppressors. On July 6, 1808, King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in Spain's history offered ...

End of preview: first 500 of 3,559 words total.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:01 pm

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Postby lightningBugout » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:05 pm

make sure to check your PM.

thanks for the articles...
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:08 pm

Old, old article here, re his Coup d'Etat book:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -1,00.html
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:10 pm

http://tinyurl.com/3frjqz

June 15, 1986
HAWK VS. PENTAGON
By GREGG EASTERBROOK; GREGG EASTERBROOK IS A NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT FOR THE ATLANTIC. HIS FIRST NOVEL, ''THIS MAGIC MOMENT,'' WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THE FALL.
ON THE MEANING OF VICTORY Essays on Strategy. By Edward N. Luttwak. 315 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $18.95.

EVEN the finest writer on public policy occasionally sets down words he would dearly love to take back. Assembling a collection of articles, as Edward N. Luttwak does in ''On the Meaning of Victory,'' may indicate the courage to have one's declarations tested by time, or the vanity to think one's every utterance worth preserving, or a little of both. Usually it's a little of both, and this case is no exception.

The author, a military affairs analyst affiliated with Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, has three distinctions. First, Mr. Luttwak is a self-described hawk quite popular in conservative political circles, yet he argues tirelessly that the Pentagon is a bureaucracy run wild: it is out of touch with actual conditions, its weapons are unreliable, its tactics muddled by lowest-common-denominator committee structures, its strategic vision absent altogether. Second, in spite of all this, Mr. Luttwak also serves as a Pentagon consultant.

Third, he is the author of two of the best books of contemporary American public letters - ''The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union,'' an argument that we really should be worried about the Russians; and ''The Pentagon and the Art of War,'' a devastating indictment of the Department of Defense's inability to do anything other than spend money.

Mr. Luttwak's continued presence as a Pentagon consultant - he also has close ties to the Israeli defense establishment - stems partly from his advocacy of ground forces as central to success in war. Air Force aircraft and Navy carriers, with their zillion-dollar gizmos and global sweep, may attract the attention of Congress and the news media; but armies hold territory and determine the outcome of military contests. Since the end of World War II, the United States Army has suffered an inferiority complex both in budget politics and strategic argument. Mr. Luttwak is one of the Army's few intellectual champions. He may, for example, criticize the service's overuse of technology in its M-1 Abrams tank, a sort of land-based B-1 bomber; but the fact that he accords as much significance to infantry and other grunt-level topics as he does to geopolitics warms certain hearts within the Pentagon.

Running through ''On the Meaning of Victory'' is Mr. Luttwak's belief that the United States should comport itself as a traditional great power: either put up or shut up when it comes to use of force. This view is unpopular on the left for obvious reasons, and curiously, often unpopular on the right. Many conservatives pound the table about how it's time to get tough, but suddenly remember they are late for an appointment when specific uses of force are proposed; after being named Secretary of Defense, Caspar W. Weinberger lobbied against American military involvement in Lebanon and elsewhere. This faction fears that military blunders in the field will jeopardize the climate for more defense spending increases. It is a position Mr. Luttwak has no use for, knowing as he does that if the military is blundering now, giving it the means to commit more expensive blunders in the future is no solution.

The author exhibits a near-fixation with exaggerated denunciations of Jimmy Carter, Carter-bashing having been a prerequisite for conservative career advancement in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when these articles were being written. Mr. Carter pursued a ''strategy of weakness.'' O.K., so Jimmy Carter was no Rambo. But he pushed through the cruise missile, the medium-range Pershing II missile, the M-1 tank, the M-2 infantry-fighting vehicle, the F-18 fighter-bomber, the AH-64 attack helicopter and other major programs Ronald Reagan merely inherited; he laid the keels for five of the current seven Trident-class submarines; and asked Congress for 200 MX missiles, where President Reagan settled for 50.

It is a popular refrain among neoconservative and New Right pundits that during the Ford and Carter years 10 countries were swallowed by Communism (South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, South Yemen, Mozambique, Angola, Grenada and Afghanistan), whereas since President Reagan assumed office no country has gone over and one - Grenada - has come back. Yet since this setback for Soviet interests occurred during a period when Russia has become the world's greatest military power -as Mr. Reagan himself has said - it scrambles all claims to a direct relationship between military power and political success.

Thus one would expect a book titled ''On the Meaning of Victory'' to tell readers what victory ''means'' in a decade of Soviet military superiority. But it does not. The ostensible subject of the book is rarely referred to in the text. In one article Mr. Luttwak does reject the view, fashionable in some academic circles, that military might has diminishing returns in the modern world. I tend to think he's right. Yet our superior power during the 1960's did not deter the Russians from invading Czechoslovakia. And if the Russians really are strongest now, it has not helped them market Marxism or prevail in Afghanistan, a country where the obstacles to victory would seem less overwhelming than they were for us in Vietnam. (Afghanistan is adjacent to the Soviet Union, rather than half a world away; the Kremlin has no press corps or Congress to contend with.) SOME articles stand the test of time very well. One calls for a military reform movement several years before this phrase was common. Another makes a persuasive case that management-school theory and systems analysis has corrupted United States military thinking. In addition, the firepower and technical features of a weapon, Mr. Luttwak says, could be measured for display on charts and graphs; subjective issues like strategy, tactics, ethics and leadership defy computerization. Systems analysis leads to weapons such as the F-15 interceptor aircraft, which are ''efficient'' when viewed individually - any one F-15 is better than any one Soviet fighter - but flawed operationally. F-15's are growing so expensive that one of them may end up matched against five Soviet fighters and lose, though two or three reasonably priced American fighters, with features slightly below the level of wonder weapon, might win.

In this regard, it is refreshing to note a military story with a happy ending. The fiscal 1987 Air Force budget includes a major shift from the present version of the F-16 fighter to a lower-tech, lower-cost version that can be acquired in greater numbers. This ranks among the few times in the modern era that the Pentagon has moved to reduce the complexity of a major system. It is just the type of progress military reformers such as Edward N. Luttwak have been advocating, and deserve great credit for helping bring about. SHOULDN'T WEST POINT TEACH WAR? It is precisely in our technological-managerial age that the technological-managerial education given to our young officers has become less and less useful, if not actually counterproductive. Why should four years of electrical engineering or economics prepare a young man to lead others in combat? Why not teach war and tactics instead? . . . In due course, those who remain in the military career can receive all the education they need, but only after they have done their junior duty in the realm of combat.

Once upon a time, when this nation was young and primitive, it made eminent sense to use West Point in order to provide skills that civil society so greatly lacked. And in a nation of pioneer farmers, urban craftsmen, and frontiersmen, it was right to believe that the status of the leader could best be assured by teaching him social graces, bourgeois manners, and book knowledge. But in our suburban society, where half the population receives some kind of higher education, it is the skills and aptitudes of war that are missing and it is those that the academies should provide. - From ''On the Meaning of Victory.''
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:14 pm

Sorry if any of these are repeats. I'm going through my file as fast as I can, not reading as I go.

http://tinyurl.com/4rrvd6

Give War a Chance
Edward N. Luttwak
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 1999

Article preview: first 500 of 2,793 words total.





Summary: Since the establishment of the United Nations, great powers have rarely let small wars burn themselves out. Bosnia and Kosovo are the latest examples of this meddling. Conflicts are interrupted by a steady stream of cease-fires and armistices that only postpone war-induced exhaustion and let belligerents rearm and regroup. Even worse are U.N. refugee-relief operations and NGOs, which keep resentful populations festering in camps and sometimes supply both sides in armed conflicts. This well-intentioned interference only intensifies and prolongs struggles in the long run. The unpleasant truth is that war does have one useful function: it brings peace. Let it.

Edward N. Luttwak is Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.





Topics:
Peace and Conflict


STAY HOME
By Edward N. Luttwak
Foreign Affairs, March/April 2000

A POOR CASE FOR QUITTING
By Chester A. Crocker
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000

Enough is Enough
By Sergio Vieira De Mello
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000

Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism.
Timothy Naftali.. : Basic Books, 2005.

Addressing State Failure
By Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005

Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
Larry Diamond. : Times Books, 2005.

Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco.
David L. Phillips. : Westview Press, 2005.

No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation
Nathan E. Busch. : University Press of Kentucky, 2004.


PREMATURE PEACEMAKING
An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for accommodation to become more attractive than further combat.

Since the establishment of the United Nations and the enshrinement of great-power politics in its Security Council, however, wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease-fires and armistices have frequently been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting. NATO's intervention in the Kosovo crisis follows this pattern.

But a cease-fire tends to arrest war-induced exhaustion and lets belligerents reconstitute and rearm their forces. It intensifies and prolongs the struggle once the cease-fire ends -- and it does usually end. This was true of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, which might have come to closure in a matter of weeks if two cease-fires ordained by the Security Council had not let the combatants recuperate. It has recently been true in the Balkans. Imposed cease-fires frequently interrupted the fighting between Serbs and Croats in Krajina, between the forces of the rump Yugoslav federation and the Croat army, and between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Each time, the opponents used the pause to recruit, train, and equip additional forces for further combat, prolonging the war and widening the scope of its killing and destruction. Imposed armistices, meanwhile -- again, unless followed by negotiated peace accords -- artificially freeze conflict and perpetuate a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace.

The Cold War provided compelling justification for such behavior by the two superpowers, which sometimes collaborated in coercing less-powerful belligerents to avoid being drawn into their conflicts and clashing directly. Although imposed cease-fires ultimately did increase the total quantity of warfare among the lesser powers, and armistices did perpetuate states of war, both outcomes were clearly lesser evils (from a global point of view) than the possibility of nuclear war. But today, neither Americans nor Russians are inclined to intervene competitively in the wars of lesser powers, so the unfortunate consequences of interrupting war persist while no greater danger is averted. It might be best for all parties to let minor wars burn themselves out.

THE PROBLEMS OF PEACEKEEPERS

Today cease-fires and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral agreement -- not to avoid great-power competition but for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous motives, such as television audiences' revulsion at harrowing scenes of war. But this, perversely, can systematically prevent the transformation of war into peace. The ...

End of preview: first 500 of 2,793 words total.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:21 pm

http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/0 ... d-success/

A new statue in Baghdad?Kill IED’s, kill U-boats »Unintended success?
Edward Luttwak:

It was the hugely ambitious project of the Bush administration to transform the entire Middle East by remaking Iraq into an irresistible model of prosperous democracy. Having failed in that worthy purpose, another, more prosaic result has inadvertently been achieved: divide and rule, the classic formula for imperial power on the cheap. The ancient antipathy between Sunni and Shiite has become a dynamic conflict, not just within Iraq but across the Middle East, and key protagonists on each side seek the support of American power…

When the Bush administration came into office, only Egypt and Jordan were functioning allies of the U.S. Iran and Iraq were already declared enemies, Syria was hostile, and even its supposed friends in the Arabian peninsula were so disinclined to help that none did anything to oppose al Qaeda. Some actively helped it, while others knowingly allowed private funds to reach the terrorists whose declared aim was to kill Americans.

The Iraq war has indeed brought into existence a New Middle East, in which Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S. What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally. But the result is exactly the same.

It would have been nice if this actually had been someone’s Plan B.

UPDATE

Spengler more or less sees things the same way as Luttwak, and uses the term “herzlich schlecht” to describe the US’s situation:

I wish there were a way to express in English the words Mephistopheles uses - herzlich schlecht, or “heartily miserable” - to describe the state of men. Herzlich, literally “hearty”, conveys something comfortable and amiable - making “heartily miserable”. The phrase should pass into the political lexicon along with such German expressions as Schadenfreude. It qualifies wonderfully America’s current position in Iraq.

For the past three years I have argued that the inner logic of ethnic decline would shape the United States’ Iraq policy, rather than the messianic social engineering that temporarily turned the Bush administration’s brains into pulled pork. Civil war and partition, de facto or de jure, would turn Iraq’s potential for violence inward. [1] Unpleasant as this might be for Iraq, it would be good for US interests, as I wrote on January 21, 2004: A devilish thought is forming in the back of the American mind: which is better, to have Iraqis shooting at American soldiers, or at each other? During the Cold War, Moscow stood to gain from instability, and Washington sought to stabilize allied regimes (Iran being the exception that proved the rule). Now, with no strategic competitor, America can pick up the pieces at its leisure. As in finance, volatility favors the player with the most options.

Last week was not a good one for America’s detractors. The price of oil fell to US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the world should ask George W Bush is, “If you so dumb, how come you ain’t poor”? The US economy and US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As I wrote last week (Jeb Bush in 2008?, January 3), the whole Iraq debacle might disappear from the public’s radar screen in time for America’s next presidential election.

Not being privy to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy debate, I do not know how Washington will present its intentions. But the facts on the ground speak for themselves. A full-dress civil war in Iraq and an incipient civil war between Fatah and Hamas in Palestine promise a period of bloodshed of indefinite duration - and America’s strategic position will be stronger as a result, provided that it can neutralize Iran.

“herzlich schlecht” — we’ll have to remember that one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 9:39 am and is filed under General, War, Religion, R-tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Postby lightningBugout » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:25 pm

chigger this is great. i am too new to know what the data dump is but this seems to call for it.
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:26 pm

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