The Double Life of a Military Strategist - Edward Luttwak

[bourbon]

Interesting profile of Edward Luttwak in The Forward by Laura Rozen.

The Operator: The Double Life of a Military Strategist (http://www.forward.com/articles/13515/), By Laura Rozen. The Forward, Jun 05, 2008.


“I am an operator,” Luttwak said.

Indeed he is, one who carries out 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. When we met, in February, the Drug Enforcement Agency was his latest client; Luttwak says he went to Colombia to help arrest and deliver a couple of Mexican drug runners wanted by the DEA.

Luttwak is of course better known as a public intellectual, the author of some 16 books, as well as a forthcoming study on warfare in Byzantium, set to be published next year by Harvard University Press. “We will never be the Roman empire,” Luttwak said, summarizing his thesis. “Bush, the genius, if he’s lucky, will create a situation as in Byzantium, where the different enemies fight each other.” In fact, his two identities have always been intertwined: On a first name basis with the heads of Italian and other foreign government security agencies, Luttwak performs such quasi paramilitary operations — under the vague title of “consultant” — while maintaining a public image as a military historian, thinker and writer, if a frequently (and deliberately) controversial one.

[Stevely]

I thought good operators were supposed to keep their activity on the down low?

[SteveMetz]

I don't know how "good" he is, but Dr. Luttwak is certainly not your normal operator.

[bourbon]

“Operator” is probably used in a different context here. This is more a human interest story than anything else, but I thought it would be of interest to the board. Seems like he could write a heck of an interesting autobiography someday.

[Tom Odom]

“Operator” is probably used in a different context here. This is more a human interest story than anything else, but I thought it would be of interest to the board. Seems like he could write a heck of an interesting autobiography someday.

Perhaps but I would read it as blatant self-promotion through a willing journalist. No one that I knew or know in the agencies the good Dr Luttwak refers to would have anything to do with someone so given to declaring what he is dong. Secondly it is naive to say the least to believe that if you sell yourself as an "operator" you can continue to "operate" on foreign soil in a non-official non-declared status without any consequences.

Remember too the good Dr Luttwak's suggestion that we should use scorched earth tactics as the basis of our operations in Iraq and elsewhere. I thought Dave Kilcullen did a most admirable job of demolishing that argument on here in Edward Luttwak’s “Counterinsurgency Malpractice” (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/04/edward-luttwaks-counterinsurge-1/)

I rather liked the following paragraph from the Kilcullen blog article:


Having knocked the stuffing out of the straw-man, Dr Luttwak suggests an “easy and reliable way of defeating all insurgencies everywhere”: essentially, to “out-terrorize” insurgents through reprisals, mass executions, and collective punishments. He cites German forces in the Second World War, claiming this approach was standard, “and very effective it was too in containing resistance movements with very few troops”. Again, I beg to differ. One German officer on the Eastern Front remarked: “the German Army in Russia was like an elephant attacking a nest of ants. The elephant will kill millions. But in the end the ants will eat him to the bone”. German methods in Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia proved extremely counterproductive. And as Barbara Tuchman argued in The Guns of August, earlier German brutality against civilians in Belgium and France in 1914 helped provoke worldwide revulsion, contributing to eventual American intervention and German defeat in the First World War. (These are historical observations, of course, and do not in any way impugn modern Germany or today's Bundeswehr).

Tom

[slapout9]

Tom, you must not know you are talking about the Mall Ninja's Daddy:D

[Tom Odom]

Tom, you must not know you are talking about the Mall Ninja's Daddy:D

True but I would ask Dr. Luttwak, "Do you like gladiator movies?" A relevant question if he continues to operate, say in Turkey.

[Fuchs]

And as Barbara Tuchman argued in The Guns of August, earlier German brutality against civilians in Belgium and France in 1914 helped provoke worldwide revulsion, contributing to eventual American intervention and German defeat in the First World War. (These are historical observations, of course, and do not in any way impugn modern Germany or today's Bundeswehr).

That was no historical observation.
The "brutality" in Belgium was a British propaganda lie, fed to the Americans to entice them to join the war on their side.

The German soldiers had no anger against Belgians, and none against the French in the beginning of the war. Instead, the atmosphere was very patriotic instead of the bitter hate later on in the war.

The effect was like he wrote, but not the cause.

(Remember Iraqis stealing new-born beds in Kuwait city hospital and throwing the babies away? A similar propaganda lie, created by Kuwaitis.)

[Jedburgh]

That was no historical observation.
The "brutality" in Belgium was a British propaganda lie, fed to the Americans to entice them to join the war on their side.

The German soldiers had no anger against Belgians, and none against the French in the beginning of the war. Instead, the atmosphere was very patriotic instead of the bitter hate later on in the war.

The effect was like he wrote, but not the cause.

(Remember Iraqis stealing new-born beds in Kuwait city hospital and throwing the babies away? A similar propaganda lie, created by Kuwaitis.)
The Bryce Report (http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/brycereport.htm) was similiar to the Iraq story that you mention, in that it deliberately exaggerated - and outright fabricated - certain stories of atrocities in order to gain support for the war effort.

However, German forces did conduct collective reprisals against civilians in Belgium. So, even dismissing the most outrageous claims of German soldiers dismembering children in front of their parents, the acts of collective reprisal against civilians was a war crime at the time, and is rightfully characterized as an atrocity today.

[Fuchs]

Not in 1914 afaik.

The Belgians had some Resistánce during the Great War and that might have caused excessive reactions (surprise!). I'm not well-informed on these details.
But the original 1914 atrocities that were so widely used for anti-German propaganda were in fact British propaganda afaik.

And yes, it's a repeating pattern. Few wars are justified well enough or reasonable enough to motivate troops and civilians well without some lies and exaggerations. Especially cabinet wars against powers that don't really threaten your own country's sovereignty require such extra motivational activity.

[wm]

As I remember, Sulzbach's memoir With the German Guns painted a picture that was quite positive about attitudes displayed toward the Germans who occupied the area in question. He also pointed out that the withdrawing French/British forces may have been responsible for a fair amount of unnecessary "collateral damage." Since Sulzbach later served in WWII with British forces, I think he has a little more objective eye.

[Tom Odom]

Pretty good discussions of this isssue:

Rape of Belgium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium)

German war crimes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_war_crimes)

Dirty hands Atrocities of World War I (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/dirtyhands.html)
Dr Alan McDougall

They support what Jedburg said above regarding the Bryce Report and actual atrocities. That said, this is dicussion though tangential to the topic illustrates how silly Luttwak's proposals are in the 21st Century. Here we are debating whether these actions in WWI took place nearly 100 years after the fact. Assuming they did, they became a major source of propaganda for the British. Pursuing similar strategies and tactics today would be a disaster.

In any case, I offered what Dave Kilcullen had to say regarding Luttwak's offerings on COIN as an illustrative parallel to his offering himself as an "operator".

Tom