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Edward Luttwak

Distinguished Adjunct Fellow


Dr. Edward N. Luttwak is a Distinguished Adjunct Fellow at The Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition.

Previously, Luttwak has served on U.S. presidential transition teams, testified before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and has advised the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Security Council, the White House Chief of Staff, and several allied governments, including Japan.

Luttwak is the author of several books, including Coup d’état: A Practical Handbook (Penguin, 1968), which derived from his work as a London-based oil consultant; The Israeli Army, with Dan Horowitz (Allen Lane, 1975); The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), which derived from his Ph. D. dissertation; The Pentagon and The Art Of War: The Question Of Military Reform (Simon & Schuster, 1985), which was a cited source of the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act; Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), which is widely assigned in professional military education programs; Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (HarperCollins, 1999), which introduced the concept of geo-economics, the logic of war in the grammar of commerce; The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); and, most recently, The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), which derived from a study for the U.S. Government. His books have been published in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese Lisbon, Portuguese São Paulo, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.

Luttwak was born in Arad, Romania and raised in Italy and England. He is an alumnus of London School of Economics (B.S.) and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D.). From 1967-1972, he was a volunteer and then military contractor for the Israel Defense Forces. In 1975, he was retained as a strategic consultant to the immediate Office of the Secretary of Defense under James R. Schlesinger. Luttwak was made a U.S. citizen by Act of Congress, H.R. 2550, 95th Congress, January 26, 1977.

Luttwak established and supervises a conservation ranch in the Bolivian Amazon. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.


Work

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The New Yorker

The New Yorker | “I don’t share the fear of some Europeans that the United States is out to abandon them, but if that fear leads them to finally take defense more seriously, then maybe it’s not a bad thing. I’ve yet to see anything else that works.”........

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

The Marathon Initiative | The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan.........

CSDS Brussels: Roundtable

Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy | Dr. Mitchell spoke at the Brussels School of Governance about how great powers use diplomacy throughout history in a talk titled "Skillful Statecraft Across the Ages."....

Wess Mitchell Interviewed on WBUR

WBUR | "It's startling the change in public outlook in these countries," Wess Mitchell, former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, says. "And the calculation is that if they don't come into NATO, they're worried that they could be a tempting target."..........

Wess Mitchell Interviewed in Echo24

Echo24 | nder Donald Trump, Wess Mitchell was the top official in Europe at the State Department. Today, he works in a think-tank that profiles itself on the turn to Asia. But now war has broken out in Europe in the terrain he knows........

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The Economist

The Economist | "But such bilateral deals are bad news for nato," says Wess Mitchell, an American former state department official who co-chaired a reflection group for the alliance last year. The new pact “will be viewed in nato and especially by eastern members of the alliance as implicitly undermining Article Five,” he says.......

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Bloomberg

Bloomberg Quint | “For all of Biden’s rhetoric about not being Trump, once he gets into office the reality is we have to make decisions that our allies may not like, and that doesn’t go away just because he shows up and proclaims this nirvana moment,”......

Wess Mitchell quoted in The Economist

The Economist | “We urgently need European nato to be able to handle more of the conventional deterrence burden in Europe,” says Wess Mitchell, a former American official who co-chaired a reflection group for Mr Stoltenberg last year, “so that in the event of a major crisis the United States can focus on China without calling into question the stability of the European theatre.”.......

Panel: Wilson Center – Wess Mitchell

Wilson Center | Former German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell in conversation with Dan Hamilton about their independent Reflection Group report "NATO 2030: United for a New Era."...

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal | “China has become plank number one for the U.S. in our diplomatic conversations with Europeans,” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Wess Mitchell, who stepped down last year. “Our best ally in the effort to make China an issue is China’s own behavior.”...

Wess Mitchell Quoted in Washington Post

Washington Post | “Most Europeans know that beneath the headlines of European euphoria on Biden, the U.S. and Europe still have significant differences of interest that cannot be waved away,” said A. Wess Mitchell, a former assistant secretary of state for European Affairs. He cited long-standing U.S. opposition to a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, the U.S. push for Europeans to spend more on defense and an uneven playing field in trade....

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The New York Times

New York Times | “We intend to be candid about the challenges to NATO, with a tone of well-grounded optimism,’’ Mr. Mitchell said. The main message, he said, is that “NATO has to adapt itself for an era of strategic rivalry with Russia and China, for the return of a geopolitical competition that has a military dimension but also a political one.’’.....

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