Indian Foreign Policy

[krishna_krishna]

So much rona-dhona over desh's border with bangla and new developments :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVa47K5roi0

Thousands reasons why it is not kosher to prevent muslims, i guess what they will have to say about mexican border.

[JE Menon]

Tuvaluan,

I'm fairly certain we trawl a lot of stuff that is not directly relevant to us, and so do they... some comparisons some sharing is always useful. We are as anal about sharing as they are, in my understanding of how these things work, so as yet no real concerns as far as I can tell. It is not only the US who shares and is shared with. There are several countries I think. The agreement just institutionalises something that has already existed at various levels, I believe.

No open source that I can quote off the bat.

[Tuvaluan]

The agreement just institutionalises something that has already existed at various levels, I believe.

Thanks, JEM saar. Makes sense if that is all it is.

[JE Menon]

Of course it is always wise to keep a beady eye like you do, boss.

[SSridhar]

India’s APEC membership chances looking bright now: Ex-Australian PM Kevin Rudd - Economic Times

Kevin Rudd, former Australian PM, said that India's membership to the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) - the only missing link in the Modi government's Act East Policy - is looking bright in 2015-16, a development that would ensure the country's access to the global supply chain. Rudd incidentally is a member of the task force that is making a case for India's entry to the club. India's entry into APEC will not only boost its economy and ease its entry into the new markets in the Pacific, it will also be a good news for the region, Rudd told ET in an exclusive interview on Wednesday during his visit to Delhi.

Rudd feels there is a good chance for India to get an entry into APEC this year under the chairmanship of Delhi's good friend Philippines as well as in 2016 under the chairmanship of Peru.

According to the former Australian PM, greater economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region in the aftermath of India's entry would also lead to peace and stability in the area. "Unlike various other regional groupings, APEC is a quiet achiever towards regional integration," said Rudd.

Rudd said that because APEC has now ended its moratorium on new membership and key member economies including the USA, Australia and Japan have officially welcomed India's interest in joining, there is strong case in favour of Delhi. APEC, which also includes Canada, Mexico, Russia and Vietnam, accounts for about 40% of the world's population, 55% of gross domestic product, and 44% of world trade. "India's APEC membership would contribute significantly to new government's Act East agenda and open up strategic opportunity for the growing economy," according to Rudd.

According to a senior Indian government official, APEC is one of the major groupings where "India is conspicuous by its absence", notwithstanding its growing economic prowess. India had sought APEC membership for long but was granted observer status in 2011. Pointing out that Indian economy will be welcomed in the Pacific region, Rudd said it would open up a huge market for India not only with traditional partners but also in Peru, Chile and Mexico. Australia too has encouraged India's growing footprints in the Pacific region, said Rudd.

Earlier in July, Rudd, who also is the president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, and MasterCard president and CEO Ajay Banga (also member of the task force pitching India's candidature) made a strong case for India to be made member of the grouping that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

"India is a rising power, eager for a greater role in Asian and global affairs," they wrote in a joint oped in The Wall Street Journal Asia, saying it was the "right time" for India to join the APEC bloc and become fully integrated into the global economy. "Indian membership in APEC has been in the very slow lane for 20 years through a combination of indifference and inertia in Delhi, Washington and the regional capitals," they said.

Rudd said that he was keen to push India's case in APEC when US President Barack Obama visited India and unveiled a joint vision statement for Asia-Pacific ensuring a larger role for Delhi in the region

[Vipul]

We wonder how we managed in APEC without India for the last 25 years. The time has come to turn this around: Rudd.

One of the challenges for India in acquiring membership of the APEC will be to make sure that we do not have any opposition coming from the United States: Rudd.

[svinayak]

We wonder how we managed in APEC without India for the last 25 years. The time has come to turn this around: Rudd.

One of the challenges for India in acquiring membership of the APEC will be to make sure that we do not have any opposition coming from the United States: Rudd.

News report in 1997 showed that CHina and other partners closed India from APEC.
None of the APEC countries are major trading partners of India accept for China. India should use BRICS forum to enter APEC and change the dynamics of APEC

[Vipul]

How can India use BRICS forum to enter APEC? If China does not want India in APEC, then irrespective of using the BRICS forum it is not going to help our case.
Inspite of the name of the forum it is not economic reasons alone that determines a new member getting into any group, all the APEC countires especially the East Asian and Pacific nations would want India in as a counter balance to China in APEC or any other forum where China is a member. Situation since 1997 has changed a lot and India was not an economic player then or did not have the importance of being a counter weight to china as it is now. So i do not think China alone can deny India's entry into APEC.
Majority (almost all) of the APEC countries take their foreign policy cue from America. It was USA alone who did the heavy lifting to get India the Nuclear deal (even china was forced to change their stance). So getting into APEC will be easier so long as US of A wants India in as a member.

[svinayak]

How can India use BRICS forum to enter APEC? If China does not want India in APEC, then irrespective of using the BRICS forum India it is not going to help. For the moment i dont think China alone can deny India's entry into APEC.
Majority (almost all) of the APEC countries take their foreign policy cue from America. It was USA alone who did the heavy lifting to get India the Nuclear deal (Even china was forced to change their stance). So getting into APEC will be easier so long as US of A wants India in as a member.

If Australia wants India to play a major role in secruity of the seas then it should enable India to have a large trade in trade blocs

If Asean body wants India to be at the head of the table to provide security in the South China sea then Asean should enable trade so that India is the largest Trading partner of Asean block

But they want Indian support for Free.

[Tuvaluan]

Australia has a non-existent navy and they are too cheap to cough up the money (and do not have the human resources) to improve their own Navy, so now they was India to cough up the money and muscle for australia's benefit, while Australia GUBOs to China wholesale (and screws India's business interests, like the recent Adani debacle). Too clever by half, are these ozzies...when conflict arises, India will take all the loses while the australians lose nothing and can continue to do business with China. At the same time, these oiseaules will refuse to cooperate with India in nuclear energy and trade Uranium, because India's getting nukes is a security risk. Really too-clever-by-half.

[SSridhar]

News report in 1997 showed that CHina and other partners closed India from APEC.
None of the APEC countries are major trading partners of India except for China. India should use BRICS forum to enter APEC and change the dynamics of APEC

Support or otherwise for India in global fora such as APEc are not going to come just because of volumes of trade alone. There will be a whole host of other issues that will determine that including but not limited to India's trade &economic potential, political and military clout, its soft-power, its pacifism etc. One cannot redesignate the area as Indo-Pacific but neglect the third largest Asian and fifth largest world economy, India, in the most important regional trade block APEC. That is anchronistic and will have to end soon and that is what Rudd is implying by saying that the major powers of APEC welcome India joining.

Even leaving the others aside and looking only at trade & economy, let us see what the picture is like.

I do not know what you mean by 'not major trading partners' with India. Our trading partnership is heavily skewed in favour of only three partners, Chia, EU & US in that order. Therefore, the strength of existing trade volume alone cannot be depended upon to get us through into APEC. Support for India in APEC should come from most of the APEC countries with which we already have economic & trade arrangements or are negotiating one. I give below a comprehensive list (took some time to do that).

APEC now comprises 21 member economies: Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of South Korea, Chile, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei Darussalam, People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Republic of the Philippines, Russia, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), and the United States.

Regarding the bolded part above. Most of these countries are either already our major trading partners or potentially so. We already have Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPA) or Free Trade Agreements with them. Like for example, Thailand(CECA). Thailand is also part of India's crucial BIMSTEC initiative. With Singapore, we signed CECA way back in 2005. With New Zealand, we have been pursuing a CECA for some time now and it is at an advanced stage. So is the case for a CEPA with Canada or a CECA with Australia. CECA negotiations are on-going with Indonesia as well. India & Japan entered into a CECA in 2011. We already have a CEPA with South Korea. We have a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with Chile for a long time now. We are negotiating an FTA with Taiwan. There is a CECA with Malaysia. We have an FTA with ASEAN and we are part of RCEP which is a trade architecture developing between the ASEAN and its FTA partners.

Our volume of trade with most countries is not insignificant either and are only projected to grow more rapidly now with the policies of Modi. These countries already recognize that too.

(All USD) India-Thailand ~ 10B, India-Singapore 20B, India-Canada 7B, India-Australia 12B, India-Indonesia 18B, India-Japan 20B, India - South Korea 20B, India-Malaysia 15B, India-Vietnam 8 B, India-China 90 B, India-Russia 10B,India-Taiwan 10B, and India-US 68B. (India-EU is 72B)

I do not understand how BRICS can play a role for India entering into APEC where Brazil & South Africa themselves are not in APEC.

[svinayak]

Our volume of trade with most countries is not insignificant either and are only projected to grow more rapidly now with the policies of Modi. These countries already recognize that too.

(All USD) India-Thailand ~ 10B, India-Singapore 20B, India-Canada 7B, India-Australia 12B, India-Indonesia 18B, India-Japan 20B, India - South Korea 20B, India-Malaysia 15B, India-Vietnam 8 B, India-China 90 B, India-Russia 10B,India-Taiwan 10B, and India-US 68B. (India-EU is 72B)
.

For a country of Indian size and pop this trade above is peanuts.

[SSridhar]

For a country of Indian size and pop this trade above is peanuts.

Of course, but if you see only that, you have already missed my central point altogether.
Going by your own argument that India's trade is so poor, why should even other countries consider India for membership?

[SSridhar]

‘Over 50% in Asia-Pacific see India in positive light’ - ToI

[SSridhar]

The new Great Game in Asia - Arun Mohan Sukumar, The Hindu

Two trade agreements, led by the U.S. and China, are only superficially about trade. Given the strategic subtext, India would do well to jostle for space at the table



Two strategic agreements currently being negotiated by the world’s trading giants will likely determine the global balance of economic power for years to come: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The TPP and RCEP are not radically different instruments — they are both free trade agreements (FTAs) designed to lower tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade between countries that conduct the bulk of global commerce.

The TPP negotiations are led by the U.S. and involve 11 other nations that share a Pacific Ocean coastline. Seven of those countries — Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam — are also party to RCEP negotiations. RCEP comprises the ASEAN nations and six others: India, China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to trade in goods and services, both agreements cover the critical area of intellectual property rights. RCEP is the more modest of the two, seeking to implement and build on World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments incrementally.

Committing beyond WTO

TPP seeks to frame a new agenda for global trade, requiring countries to commit beyond their existing multilateral obligations under the WTO as well as the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). TPP negotiations broke down earlier this month, after countries were unable to find common ground over IPR protections the U.S. sought to introduce, especially in cyberspace.

In contrast, RCEP negotiations have seen progress, albeit haltingly. The Press Trust of India reported last week that ministerial delegations from RCEP member countries will meet in Malaysia in August to “finalise modalities”. RCEP is an important agreement for India, as it involves many, if not all, of the country’s major trading partners.

Their basic nature aside, both agreements reflect a competing political dynamic. The Trans-Pacific Partnership has become the centrepiece of U.S.’s Asia policy, with the Barack Obama-led administration investing considerable political and diplomatic capital in it.

Revealingly, Singapore’s Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam, in his visit to the U.S. in June, also agreed that the TPP had little to do with economics and Singapore was pushing it — although it had a free trade agreement with the U.S. — for strategic reasons.

RCEP is not a China-led process, but involves Beijing as a key player. China is acutely conscious of RCEP’s political significance — earlier this year, Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng suggested China will “continue to unswervingly push forward and quicken the pace of China’s free-trade agreement strategy”. If such a comprehensive regional agreement were to be inked ahead of the TPP regime, it would be a shot in the arm for China.

The RCEP story would underline three crucial conclusions: first, that China is willing to engage actors within a pluri-lateral setting, and set aside competing political interests, especially around South China Sea concerns, for overall economic gain. Second, that Beijing leadership is capable of absorbing multilateral instruments into domestic law to secure regional interests even if it goes against established economic policies, especially on IPRs; third, and most important, China is comfortable with conceiving and implementing international norms while it emerges as a hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. These conclusions, if affirmed, would signal a decisive shift in the regional locus of power from the U.S. to China.

What does this political narrative mean for India, with its renewed ambition to ‘Act East’? Regrettably, the discussion around FTAs and mega-regional agreements in India has focused solely on their economic aspects, with scant attention paid to the underlying strategic dimensions. The TPP has invited reflexive criticism for ‘rewriting’ rules of global trade.

As highlighted in the infographic, the RCEP is different, but no smooth ride either. Keen to protect their digital economies, Japan and South Korea have sought strong IPR protection measures. India, meanwhile, has dug its heels in, suggesting it would not budge from the bare minimum that is required for TRIPS compliance. This is a commendable position to take but does not serve any strategic purpose. Indian government is yet to articulate a strategic vision for the Asia-Pacific region that combines economic and political interests.

On the foreign policy front, it has moved closer to the U.S., but wants to remain invested in RCEP. At the same time, it does not want to be seen as being too close to China, whose IPR and cyber policies leave a lot to be desired. If this reflected a “multi-alignment” policy, India’s negotiating line in RCEP would have been calibrated to respond to specific concerns from across the table, but the draft text does not seriously evaluate whether domestic IPR policy can accommodate RCEP provisions.

IPR protection in cyberspace, as highlighted through the infographic, is one of the most important themes — and a major source of disagreement — in both TPP and RCEP. TPP provisions would require a major restructuring of India’s IP enforcement framework, and may not be immediately feasible. But Japan’s prescriptions suggest that it is possible for India to find a middle ground in RCEP. Many of Japan’s concerns relate to legal standards — how Internet applications should be classified, the nature of procedural guidelines on intermediary liability, the scope of technology protection measures, and the range of penalties imposed.

Case-by-case interpretation

These concerns are already accounted for in Indian law. With some creative diplomacy, New Delhi could propose treaty language that resonates strongly with the Indian position. Enforcement of IPR claims is anyway conducted bilaterally, which allows the Indian government to interpret RCEP provisions on a case-to-case basis.

To be sure, Indian negotiators have acknowledged the strategic importance of RCEP. Last year, the Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman rightly suggested RCEP negotiations must move from a “narrow, bilateral benefit” paradigm to a “balanced, regional benefit” model. India’s negotiating position, which currently speaks to no one in particular, must reflect this reality.

Even if India were to successfully navigate its way through RCEP, larger questions remain. By hitching its wagon to RCEP, is India tipping its hat to China’s primacy in the region? Why is India not part of TPP negotiations, even if as an observer? Joining the TPP club may be political anathema, but India’s policymakers would do well to learn from Chile, a TPP negotiator, which has successfully resisted several U.S. changes to the draft treaty text. Chile’s IPR laws in particular are in sharp contrast with the U.S. position, but that has not deterred its leadership from actively pursuing negotiations. After all, if you’re not on the table, then you’re on the menu.

(Arun Mohan Sukumar heads the Cyber Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi)

[panduranghari]

^ IMO its better to have bilateral deals than hitch the wagon to either TPP or RCEP. Both US and China will put their interests first. Bilateral deals work better for us as we are currently not in a position of strength. US and China have their own industries and they need markets. India in any camp will make that camp stronger. Best if we stay out of it or create our own NAM redux.

[A_Gupta]

Not sure where to put this, so foreign policy is it:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/09/02/how ... l-leaders/
"How Asia-Pacific Publics See Each Other and Their National Leaders"

Roughly half of those surveyed have a favorable view of India (median of 51% not including Indians). This includes more than six-in-ten Vietnamese (66%), South Koreans (64%) and Japanese (63%). But only 24% of Chinese and 16% of Pakistanis see India in a positive light. These views of India are generally unchanged from last year. The most upbeat about India are the Vietnamese, but even there only 22% say they feel very favorably toward India. The most intense anti-India views are in Pakistan, not surprisingly given the long, fractious Indo-Pakistani history. In Pakistan, 56% see India very unfavorably. In comparison, 63% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of India.

[Rahul M]

let's not get blinded by US perfidy. our folk would take that into account anyway. real info sharing can happen on topics where mutual interests coincide or at least dont clash.

[A_Gupta]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/27/ten ... relations/
Ten things to read about reputation in international relations

I could give you a definitive answer to all of these questions, but that would be an act of hubris on my part, and I don’t want that rep. Instead, here are ten books/articles to read on reputation and international relations that might confuse you even more provide some enlightenment on the subject:

1) Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532 [1513]). "Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with." And the debate about reputation commences.

2) Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960). If you’re interested in international relations, you should read this book regardless. Schelling devotes a significant portion of his analysis, however, to the utility of "rational irrationality" — i.e., making the other side think you are a maniac. One could argue that the North Koreans have imbibed Schelling in full.

3) Earnest May and Philip Zelikow, ed., The Kennedy Tapes (1962 [2002]) Reading the Excom conversations during the Cuban Missile Crisis is enlightening to see the moments when reputation is discussed — as well as the moments when it simply disappears from the policy debate altogether.

5) Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (1996). Mercer points out the cognitive biases that affect how reputations are constructed. If we think someone is a bad actor and they do a good thing, we ascribe that to environmental pressure. If they do a bad thing, it’s because of their intrinsic preferences. This suggests that it’s very hard for any international actor to alter their reputation in the eyes of their allies or adversaries.

6) George Downs and Michael Jones, "Reputation, Compliance, and International Law." Journal of Legal Studies 31 (January 2002): S95-S114. Do countries have a single reputation that covers all issue areas? Downs and Jones think the answer is no. They argue that the effects of reputation are bounded. When a state defects from an agreement in one area (i.e., the environment) there is little evidence that they jeopardize their reputation in every other area (for example, trade and security).

7) Anne Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy (2005). Sartori argues in this book tha during crises, what matters is not a reputation for resolve, but a reputation for honest diplomacy. This is why goverments tell the truth (but not necessarily the whole truth) most of the time — doing so allows them to maintain reputations for honesty, which in turn enhances their ability to resolve future disputes using diplomacy rather than force. Part of the reason the DPRK acts the way they do, perhaps, is that no one believes what they say any more.

Daryl Press, Calculating Credibility (2005). Press makes a provocative argument in this book — in the heat of a military crisis, reputation does not really matter all that much. It certainly matters less than the military balance of power. This suggests that the Obama administration’s response to North Korea has no bearing on Iran — what matters are the viability of military options in both cases.

9) Mark Crescenzi, "Reputation and International Conflict," American Journal of Political Science 51 (April 2007): 382-396. Crescenzi pushes back a bit on Press’ argument. He argues that past actions to affect others’ perception of reputation — provided that countries in question are similar in their capabilities. So, contra Press, Creszenzi might argue that Iran will pay close attention to how the Obama administration responds to North Korea.

10) Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation. Part of the problem with talking about reputation is its ineffable quality — how do we know it when we see it? Tomz looks at a tangible measure of reputation — the ability of sovereign countries to borrow. He argues for a dynamic theory of reputation, in which actors can update their beliefs over time about whether governments will honor their commitments. The empirical evidence Tomz brings to the table is very impressive.

[ramana]

I think the above post is important to understand.

However the word reputation is misused.

It should be about Trust Assessment.

Trust at the basic level is based on three elements:

- Communications: Trust in "listening to learn", Trust in understanding, Trust in judgment, Are commitments accurate, Are commitments authentic?
- Character: Follow through on commitments, Honest about results, Reward integrity, Address poor performance quickly, accurately and authentically?
- Capability: Are skills and experience trusted?, Trust to involve others appropriately when lacking in capability, Communicate breakdowns in ability to deliver ASAP?

Can have a matrix with Assessments as Strong, Weak or on track.

This gives a netter picture to quantitively assess Trust more than reputation which is only one facet of trust.

[Kakkaji]

Modi Govt makes new ambassador appointments around the world

[Vayutuvan]

let's not get blinded by US perfidy. our folk would take that into account anyway. real info sharing can happen on topics where mutual interests coincide or at least dont clash.

Rahul M babu ji, that is a new one. I have heard of "the perfidious albion" but "the perfidious amru"? If anything massa are as clued in as Alicia Silverstone in clueless

Anyways, I have a few posts for you dear sir, in SF thread.

[JE Menon]

Modi Govt makes new ambassador appointments around the world

Syed Akbarrudin to become Permanent Representative to UN in New York. Fantastic appointment. Those who have watched his press conferences post-Modi election will understand. Absolute no nonsense professional, with emphasis on the no-nonsense part.

[panduranghari]

I think the above post is important to understand.

However the word reputation is misused.

It should be about Trust Assessment.

Trust at the basic level is based on three elements:

- Communications: Trust in "listening to learn", Trust in understanding, Trust in judgment, Are commitments accurate, Are commitments authentic?
- Character: Follow through on commitments, Honest about results, Reward integrity, Address poor performance quickly, accurately and authentically?
- Capability: Are skills and experience trusted?, Trust to involve others appropriately when lacking in capability, Communicate breakdowns in ability to deliver ASAP?

Can have a matrix with Assessments as Strong, Weak or on track.

This gives a netter picture to quantitively assess Trust more than reputation which is only one facet of trust.

At what level does India stand in the aspect of trust? Does it mean diplomacy, which is supposed to be mainly smokes and mirrors, is in essence of being truthful?

[SSridhar]

Modi Govt makes new ambassador appointments around the world

Syed Akbarrudin to become Permanent Representative to UN in New York. Fantastic appointment. Those who have watched his press conferences post-Modi election will understand. Absolute no nonsense professional, with emphasis on the no-nonsense part.

Quite agree. Overall, a lot of thought has also gone into other ambassadorial appointments. Well done FS Jaishankar & Sushma Swaraj.

[chilarai]

He was excellent with regular updates on twitter during evacuation of Indians( in Yemen I think ) as well, where i am sure he was going beyond the call of duty ! Of course his no nonsense style is very impressive.

[A_Gupta]

Any insight into India's stand on the non-militarization of outer space?
The European Union's draft code: http://eeas.europa.eu/non-proliferation ... dex_en.htm

2013: BRICS opposition: http://www.cfr.org/space/code-conduct-o ... ace/p26556

August 2015: http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/archi ... n-new-york
BRICS + non-alignment movement opposition.

[Philip]

The mandarins of the MEA have been mute spectators to the rapidly unfolding events in the ME,Syria,etc.Our pathetic news channels too show us mostly sparring with Pak,verbiosity galore on both sides,verbiage often closer to garbage .Peace with Pak is a pojntless exercise,yet our mandarins keep on regardless as if their attempts will bring them the Nobel gong! One For.Sec. in the past certainly had such ambitions. It would be interesting to list the successes that we've had in recent times.

Mr.Modi has been spot on in his international forays trying to get India back into the global consciousness ,reminding the world of our ancient and hoary history plus the fact that we're the world's largest democracy,a nuclear/mil power to boot. Our past greatness and current capability is however, inversely proportionate to the confidence and vision of our MEA mandarins who pontificate from their ivory towers. Forgetting Pak's perfidy and pathological hatred of India,our other neighbours too like the Maldives and Nepal have often abuse us and sometimes display ingratitude to the extreme. Bharat karnad has just written a book on the siiue,why we will never be a great power.A pity to have missed the function a few days ago. Did anyone attend it? Shiv?

http://bharatkarnad.com/

Belated Invite — Bangalore
Posted on October 8, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Blog-readers in Bangalore are invited to an event at the Lecture Hall, National Institute for Advanced Studies (Indian Institute of Science campus) at 4 PM tomorrow (Friday, Oct 9) hosted jointly by NIAS and the Takshashila Institute. The event will lead off with the JRD Tata Professor at NIAS, Dr. Chandrashekhar and Nitin Pai, heading Takshashila, having a conversation with me on my new book published by Oxford University Press — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’. It will be followed by an interactive session with the audience, which is expected to have many from the DPSUs and serving and retired military community. It should be an interesting session. Those among you in the Bangalore area, do please consider this a personal invite.

Discussion — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’, video
Posted on October 2, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The panel discussion following the formal launch on Sep 24 of my new book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ published by Oxford University Press, involving former minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet and the only genuine intellectual in the Congress Party, Jairam Ramesh, ex-NSA Shivshankar Menon, Rear Admiral KR ‘Raja’Menon (Retd), former head of Net Assessment and Simulation in NSC and ACS (Ops), and Lt Gen SL Narasimhan, Commandant, Army War College, Mhow, is very revealing of where the problems lie. It is an interesting watch! The entire book launch event was videographed, is now uploaded to youtube.com and accessible at:

Great Power: a ‘bridge too far’ for India?
Posted on October 1, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Think of it. India was there when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt. It interacted with the Ancient Mesopotamian empires on the Tigris and the Euphrates. India was the mystery Alexander of Macedon set out to conquer. Indian spices and precious stones, finely woven cottons and silk, and peacocks, were the luxuries and the exotica craved by Imperial Rome in the age of the Caesers. Much of Southeast and offshore Asia had Hindu kingdoms, and absorbed Indic values and culture, even as Tibet, Central Asia, China, and Japan came under the thrall of Buddhism emanating from the subcontinent. The Ramayana lore so forms the cultural core of countries in this “Farther India” that the 800-year old Thai monarchy still has its historic capital of Ayuthhaya, an ancient form of Hinduism is still practised in Bali, Indonesia, and the adventures of the great Monkey King with mythical powers journeying to the “Western Kingdom” – India – remains the stuff of traditional stories dear to the people of China. So, India is and has always been a civilizational presence and cultural magnet. Alas, that is a far cry from being a great power in the modern age.

Except India, its civilizational imprint aside, has all the attributes of a great power. It has prime strategic location enabling domination of the Indian Ocean, supplanting the Atlantic Ocean as the most strategically important waterway. India’s peninsular landmass jutting out into the sea is, as many have noted, like the prow of an immense aircraft carrier, permitting Indian naval assets and land-based air forces to maintain a grip on the oceanic expanse and choke off adversary forces foraying into “the Indian lake” at the Malacca, Lumbok and Sunda Straits in the east and, in the west, the eastern ends of Hormuz and Suez, and prevent a land power such as China from accessing these proximal seas.

India has a burgeoning economy and the largest, most youthful workforce in the 18-35 age-group, promising the manpower to make India both a manufacturing powerhouse — the “workshop” to the world — and the richest, most extensive, consumer market. Further, the country has been a “brain bank” the world has long drawn on – an endless source of talented scientists, engineers and financial managers from institutions, such as IITs, IIMs, and IISC that are now global brands, helping India to emerge as a knowledge power (in information technology, pharmaceuticals, engineering research and development, and “frugal engineering”). India, moreover, is a stable if raucous democracy, and boasts of one of the largest, most apolitical, professional and “live fire”-blooded militaries anywhere. So, why isn’t India a great power yet?

India is bereft of national vision and self-confidence. It has the will to security but not the will to power. This is manifested in the absence of strategy, policies and plans to make India a great power. An over-bureaucratized and fragmented system of government unable to muster policy coherence and coordination hasn’t helped. The resulting incapacity to think and act big has led New Delhi to take the easy way out and emphasize soft power, when historically nations have become great by acquiring self-sufficiency in armaments and using military forces for strategic impact.

But the Indian Army, that during colonial times won an empire for the British and sustained a system of “distant defence,” with its ramparts extending seawards in the arc Simonstown-Hong Kong, and landwards from the Gulf, the Caspian Sea to the Central Asian khanates, has been reduced to border defence becoming in the process as stick-in-the-mud and passive-defensive minded as a strategically clueless government.

The irony is that an impoverished, resource-scarce, India of the 1950s, strode the international stage like a giant – leading the charge against colonialism, racism, and championing “general and complete disarmament”, assuming leadership of the Third World-qua-Nonaligned Movement, and emerging as the balancer between the super power blocs during Cold War. It was also the time Jawaharlal Nehru articulated an “Asian Monroe Doctrine” backed by Indian arms and, by way of classical realpolitik, seeded a nuclear weapons programme and a cutting edge aerospace industry that eventuated in the Marut HF-24, the first supersonic combat aircraft designed and produced outside of Europe and the US.

Just how far India has fallen off the great power map may be gauged by the fact that some 50 years after the Marut took to the skies the country is a conventional military dependency, relying on imported armaments and with its foreign policy hostage to the interests of the vendor states. And, far from imposing its will in Asia, New Delhi has become a pliant and pliable state, accommodating US interests (on nuclear non-proliferation, Iran, Afghanistan) one moment, adjusting to the demands of a belligerent China the next.

Far from earning great power status the old fashioned way by being disruptively proactive and, in Bismarck’s words, by “blood and steel”, the Indian government sees it as an entitlement, as recognition bestowed on the country by friendly big powers. Never mind that such position gained at the sufferance of other countries is reed-thin, as the recent move by a supposedly friendly US to join another friendly state Russia and China in opposing India’s entry into the UN security Council showed. The fact is India, albeit elephant-sized, remains a marginal power with a small footprint and, in real terms, commands little respect in the world. For such a recessive country, great power will always be “a bridge too far.”
—-

[ramana]

Philip, I asked our Delhi members to attend but heard no feedback.

I ask you to x-post above in Evolution of Strategic though thread.

We should discuss this.

[Prem]

India-Africa Summit: In diplomatic coup, NDA gets Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Delhi
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 368238.cms

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi's neighbourhood outreach may be under scrutiny but he continues to spring surprises from lands far and wide. In a huge boost for the 3rd India-Africa Summit Forum, which will be held here later this month, Egypt's powerful and controversial President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has confirmed his attendance for the summit. The confirmation follows a meeting between Modi and Sisi in New York last month which the PM used to reiterate India's invite to the former chief of Egypt's armed forces who captured power in 2013 riding a wave of popular protests against elected President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.With the kind of influence Egypt has not just in northern Africa but also the Arab world, India was keen that the country be represented by none other than Sisi himself. Straddling the Suez Canal, Egypt is also the most populous Arab country. It is significant for India that under Sisi, Egypt's relations with Israel too have improved greatly. Sisi was earlier unsure about coming himself and had agreed to send a representative but seems to have changed his mind after his meeting with Modi. Sisi's presence in India will be remarable also because he will be here days after the end of long overdue parliamentary elections in Egypt on October 23. The Africa Summit will take place October 26-29. Sisi's support to anti-Islamic State coalitions in Syria and Libya have brought him closer to the West despite the fact that, ruling by decree, he has pulverized all opposition to his presidency within the country. Despite his preoccupation with Bihar elections, Modi will find time not just for the summit meet but also bilateral meetings with all heads of state and government who have confirmed their participation. The number of leaders attending is now over 50, the largest number of foreign leaders to assemble on Indian soil after the NAM meet in 1983. India had invited all 54 African countries for the summit. Months before he was ousted in a coup by Sisi, Islamist Morsi too had visited India in 2013. Morsi was keen that India help Egypt become a member of BRICS, saying the grouping could then be known as e-BRICS. Morsi has now been sentenced to death in a move some see as politically motivated.

[JayS]

I have a question. There was a statement by George Fernandez, the then RM, from 2003, that Nehru gifted Coco Island to Burma. I can't find any authentic source for this statement other than this one statement. Is there any other source confirming the same thing??

[ShauryaT]

Raining trouble - Bharat Karnad

Raining trouble

When it rains, it pours has never been truer than it is now for India.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Moscow to prepare the ground for Prime Minister Modi’s state visit in November, got a proper, if cold, reception. Her defining Russia as India’s closest friend did little to temper the message that, according to sources, was conveyed by Kremlin that Delhi’s taking Russia for granted will hereafter come at a cost. Swaraj was told, for instance, that unlike his other tours, the Indian PM while in Russia can expect no frills and hoopla — just business-like meetings shorn of all ceremony. Secondly, that while Moscow was, by and large, attentive in the past to Indian security concerns, it cannot afford India a veto on arms supplies to Pakistan — starting with the sale of attack helicopters and MiG-35 combat aircraft. Thirdly, depending on how things progress or don’t, Russia’s participation in sensitive strategic DRDO and DAE projects will be re-thought, as will the offer on the table for a while of the second Akula-II class SSN, the Iribis, that Moscow had agreed to upgrade to Akula-III standard before leasing it to the Indian Navy.

Given its own leanings, the BJP regime is thoughtlessly pandering to the Indian military’s institutional tilt and desire towards Western armaments and, hence, Western arms suppliers, without calculating the strategic costs to the country of going over so completely to the other side, as it were, simply boggles the mind. If Modi really believes that the US and Western European states will happily insert themselves in technology-transfer and indigenous tech-development role Russia, he has a rethink coming sooner than he believes. In the interim, until that light switches on, an awful lot of goodwill and policy ground for foreign and military policy maneuver will have been lost.

It is providential, in fact, that Pak PM Nawaz Sharif’s trip to Washington has happened at the same time as Swaraj’s to Moscow. It points to precisely the problems India, loosening its to Russia, will face in dealing with a US now confident that Delhi has nowhere else to go.

Consider the ‘2015 Joint Statement By President Barack Obama And Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’ dated Oct 22, 2015 (accessible at
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-of ... ster-nawaz) at the end of Nawaz Sharif’s parleys with Obama in Washington. The US Government has acquiesced in describing Pakistan “as one of the largest Muslim democracies [that is utilizing] its influence in support of peace, security, development, human rights across the world” and the US-Pak relationship as “enduring”, and “bilateral defense cooperation” as “robust”. While recognizing Pakistan’s role, albeit inferentially, in containing terrorism by referring to “Pakistan’s positive efforts to counter improvised explosive devices” — THERE WAS NOT A HINT ANYWHERE OF TERRORIST OUTFITS TARGETING INDIA, SUCH AS LeT LED BY THE ABOMINABLE HAFIZ SAYEED, NURSED BY PAKISTANI AGENCIES AND OPERATING OUT OF PAKISTANI TERRITORY.

In the most telling portion of the Nawaz-Obama. Statement, under the sub-section “Strategic Stability, Nuclear Security, and Nonproliferation”, the two leaders “acknowledged the importance of regional balance and stability in South Asia” and, in an obvious dig against India, talked of the need for “uninterrupted dialogue in support of peaceful resolution of all outstanding disputes.”

Worse still from the Indian national interest perspective, the US kept its options to assist Pakistan militarily and otherwise keep its hand hot in South Asian affairs. In this respect, the Statement, most significantly, recognizes “the importance of regional balance and strategic stability in South Asia”, thereby accepting the point Islamabad has always made that “regional balance” is what leads to “strategic stability” which construction, it turns out equates Pakistan with India, and is a license for America to assist and help Islamabad by whatever means to maintain a “regional balance” in the subcontinent. The transfer of the most advanced Harpoon antiship missiles, fast patrol craft able to launch durable motorized rubber dinghies for sneak attacks of the kind mounted by terrorists on Mumbai 26/11, and six F-16s is the down payment on this US line of advance. Incidentally, this merely amounts to reviving an old US policy but one that’s been kept alive by the Washington thinktanks, such as Henry L. Stimson Center, which has provided one of its senior staffers (Joshua White) to the Obama NSC, whose South Asia head is Peter Lavoy, a known Pakistan sympathizer and one of the Americans who early preached reconciling to a nuclear-armed Pakistan by plying it with American largesse!

Combine this considerable Pakistani political-diplomatic success with India being unmoored from its historical Russian military technology anchor, and what one can see India heading towards a strategic crash-landing. Tighten your seat belts!

[Paul]

Karnad always has a soft corner for the Russians. He was angling for India to buy/lease TU22M3 Backfire Bombers to based in S India in a maritime strike role. But let us not diss the messenger. When Putin was in India last year, he stayed here for barely 24 hrs and left right signing the Kamov 226 Helo agreement. Russian Angst against India has been coming for some time. But other than niche weaponry such as S-400 Missiles, Yassen Class Subs, and Gen 4 aircraft there is not much they can offer us. We can design our own Rajput class destroyers, on our way to design diesel electric submarines, and make our own tanks if the dalals let us do so. Their other major export commodity, Crude Oil and Gas can be purchased at rock bottom prices from GCC next door. What else is there on the table other than Titanium?

If they want to sell MI-35s gunships to Pakistan they are welcome to do it. In any case Russia will never be able to compete with US to provide Military hardware to Pakistan at virtually bargain basement prices. In any case most of damage has already been done by the sale of Military hardware to China. If Pakistan gets SU-35s the WS117 engine will be on the next plane to CHengdu.

All the same, India needs to make sure we get the Yassen class Subs on lease and the Irbis radars for SU30s. Parrikar should use this opportunity to strike out any more purchases of T-90s. I think the agreement for 48 MI-17s will be signed at this time. Not sure what will happen with the Talwar class Frigates.

At the same time, not a step back on the FGFA deal. The Russians have to live up their side of the agreement to share the work 25% for the Indian side.

I expect the French to throw a similar tantrum sooner rather than later

[ramana]

24 Oct is UN day celebrated in India by making high school kids write essays and participate in quizzes.

60 years after UN is now a shadow boxing venue.

Yet MEA wants to waste Indian political capital and keep trying for UNSC seat every year in a Sisyphean effort.

[panduranghari]

It may be a Sisyphean effort. We can't blame MEA babus, as this one was also pushed on by Modi. Somehow he believes domestic wins will give his international success. I hope he stops this and does something else which matters on the international stage.

[Philip]

Sorry R,just saw the post.This is an interesting piece,if true it shows even more confusion in our strategic thinking.We simply do not know how to win friends on our won steam,always looking towards Washington for the nod.

http://bharatkarnad.com/

Going slow on Brahmos to Vietnam?

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The more one hears of things happening in the Modi government the more dispirited one gets. After his meeting with Obama, who frowned upon the destabilizing aspects of India’s Brahmos supersonic cruise missile transfer to Vietnam, the prime minister, per sources has instructed MOD to slow down the process of delivering this indefensible missile to Hanoi. The fact that he didn’t outright cancel the deal is a consolation — however small. Modi’s pandering to the US has been mentioned by me in a recent past, but this is ridiculous. Instead of making life as difficult for China, GOI seems to be easing off on the pressure and that too on Washington’s say-so. The problem here is that Obama and Xi Jinping have for some time now been pussyfooting around the possibility of a two power concert running the world. Instead of doing every thing possible to undermine it — Modi thinks India’s greater good lies in being party to this arrangement. Nothing will more definitely shrink, in a practical sense, India’s strategic space and hinder its great power ambitions than being reduced to a cog in the mighty US-China machine. And yet this is the path Modi seems to have embarked on. This despite the most predictively obvious outcome of a Brahmos-armed Vietnam — of detering the powerful Chinese South Sea Fleet warships from even venturing outside its secure breakwater bases at Sanya on Hainan Island. No better antidote/counter can be conceived for the Chinese dreams of a “string of pearls” in the Indian Ocean basin. Now India stands to have Vietnam’s trust and confidence in Delhi erode. It remains to be seen if Hanoi will respond positively to China’s invitation to ASEAN navies to join PLAN in exercises in the disputed South China Sea waters, as a means of defusing the situation there. If Vietnam does accept Beijing’s gambit, it’ll be the first indication of its making peace with China on Chinese terms — a hideous consequence of India’s lily-livered strategic approach. India’s position is in no way recouped by its agreeing to having Japan join in the annual Malabar naval exercise with the US Navy. Meanwhile, the US is increasing its own political-military leverage in Hanoi by arming Vietnam, even if with less lethal armaments, the aim being to get Vietnam to rely on the US as security anchor while winning brownie points from Beijing for restraining Delhi from helping Vietnamese full-tilt.

[SSridhar]

India will not sell any missile before it joins MTCR. We want to be meticulously squeaky clean even if the missile is below the MTCR thresholds. That's my guess.

[panduranghari]

Indian approach to balancing US and China answered from 37.00 mins.

[SSridhar]

North Korea: An Advance Frontier of India’s “Act East”? - Prashant Kumar Singh, IDSA

[Philip]

Our MEA should examine how this worthy arrives at his strategies.
Indians worship cows because of the way they congregate at the edge of the river in the evening. It is an undeniably mystical thing and it makes sense to worship it.”


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/d ... f-maryland

The long read
The Machiavelli of Maryland
Military strategist, classical scholar, cattle rancher – and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama. Just who is Edward Luttwak? And why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice?
Edward Luttwak earns $1m a year from advising governments and writing books
Edward Luttwak earns $1m a year advising governments and writing books. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/Commissioned for The Guardian

Thomas Meaney

Wednesday 9 December 2015

People contact Edward Luttwak with unusual requests. The prime minister of Kazakhstan wants to find a way to remove ethnic Russians from a city on his northern border; a major Asian government wants a plan to train its new intelligence services; an Italian chemical company wants help settling an asbestos lawsuit with a local commune; a citizens’ group in Tonga wants to scare away Japanese dolphin poachers from its shores; the London Review of Books wants a piece on the Armenian genocide; a woman is having a custody battle over her children in Washington DC – can Luttwak “reason” with her husband? And that is just in the last 12 months.

Luttwak is a self-proclaimed “grand strategist”, who makes a healthy living dispensing his insights around the globe. He believes that the guiding principles of the market are antithetical to what he calls “the logic of strategy”, which usually involves doing the least efficient thing possible in order to gain the upper hand over your enemy by confusing them. If your tank battalion has the choice of a good highway or a bad road, take the bad road, says Luttwak. If you can divide your fighter squadrons onto two aircraft carriers instead of one, then waste the fuel and do it. And if two of your enemies are squaring off in Syria, sit back and toast your good fortune.

Luttwak believes that the logic of strategy contains truths that apply to all times and places. His books and articles have devoted followings among academics, journalists, businessmen, military officers and prime ministers. His 1987 book Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace is a set text at universities and military academies across the world. His official – and unofficial – advisory work for the US government has been praised by generals and secretaries of state. He is a familiar figure at government ministries, in the pages of leading journals and on Italian television.

But his work is not limited to armchair theorising. Readers who have been treated to Luttwak’s counterintuitive provocations on the op-ed page of the New York Times might be surprised to know that he considers writing an extra-curricular activity. For the past 30 years, Luttwak has run his own strategic consultancy – a sort of one-man security firm – that provides bespoke “solutions” to some very intractable problems. In his long career, Luttwak has been asked by the president of Mexico to help eliminate a street gang that was burning tourist buses in the city of Mexicali; the Dalai Lama has consulted him about relations with China, European governments have hired him to root out al-Qaida operatives, and the US army has commissioned him to update its counterinsurgency manual. He earns around $1m a year from his “jobs”. “It’s always important to get paid,” he likes to insist. “It protects you from the liberal problem of good intentions and from being called an intriguer.”

It is tempting to imagine Luttwak as a man exiled to the wrong place and time, whose fate, like a character in Nabokov, has been reduced from old-world brilliance to something less grand in 21st-century America. It is not hard, after all, to picture him conniving at the Congress of Vienna, or plotting murders in the Medici court. He has the air of the seasoned counsellor to the prince who is dispatched to deal with the Mongols and returns alone, on horseback, clutching advantageous terms on parchment.

But only in America was the career of Edward Luttwak possible. The perpetually renewable reservoir of naivety at the highest levels of the US government has been good for business. During the cold war, Luttwak was often identified as a peculiar American species known as the “defence intellectual”. These were academics who served power, who were often impatient with democratic procedure, and who enraptured audiences – from thinktanks to military academies – with their elaborate projector-slide frescoes of nuclear apocalypse.

When he testified before Congress in the 1980s, Luttwak seemed to be the latest heir in the line of saturnine visionaries – from Herman Kahn to Henry Kissinger – who were sure about which way the world was going. “Most defence intellectuals are three-fourths defence and one-fourth intellectual,” said Leon Wieseltier, the Washington fixture and literary impresario, who first met Luttwak during the Reagan years. “But Edward was this figure out of a Werner Herzog film. He was not some person who had read a bit of Tacitus and now worked at the Pentagon. He knew all the languages, the geographies, the cultures, the histories. He is the most bizarre humanist I have ever met.”

Outside of Washington, Luttwak is best known for his writing. His reputation still rests on his 1968 book Coup d’Etat: A Practical Guide, published when Luttwak was 26. It is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of a military manual that he wrote while working as an oil consultant in London. The book explains in clinical detail how to seize power in various types of states. It comes with elaborate charts and a typology of victorious communiques (“the Romantic/Lyrical”, “the Messianic”, “the Unprepared”) drawn from successful African coups.

The book was praised by John le Carré and warmly reviewed by critics on the left and the right. “One suspects that, like Machiavelli himself, he enjoys truth not only because it is true but also because it shocks the naive,” wrote Eric Hobsbawm. But for Luttwak the best notice came in 1972, when General Mohammad Oufkir was assassinated during an attempted coup against King Hassan in Morocco; it was rumoured, to Luttwak’s delight, that a blood-spattered copy of Coup d’Etat was found on the general’s corpse.

Luttwak is less a grand political theorist in the tradition of Machiavelli or Hobbes than a skilled bricoleur of historical strategic insights. But he is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as legendary military strategists. “He’s a hell of a lot smarter than Clausewitz,” says Merrill McPeak, the former chief of staff of the US air force, who sought Luttwak’s advice in 1990 while planning the bombing of Iraq during the first Gulf war. “His main asset is just knowing more than everyone else.” Other acquaintances are more circumspect. “When I think of Ed Luttwak,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to president Jimmy Carter, told me, “I think of a strong intellectual, inclined towards categorical assertions, penetrating in many of their insights, but occasionally undermined by the desire to have a shock effect on listeners. Nonetheless, he’s almost always worth listening to.”

In a world where almost every national government now makes use of “strategic consultants”, Luttwak’s services have only increased in value. The rise of a governing culture that does its best to mimic the “best practices” of the business world has been of great benefit to his business. The peculiar type of counter-intuition he offers seems to have never been more in demand. His provocative public persona only contributes to the sense, among the many world leaders, military commanders and others who purchase his services, that with Luttwak they are not dealing with a business school graduate tapping into a database, but something more deliciously old-fashioned. Luttwak sweats savoir faire. He projects the image of a wise man in intimate contact with a deeper, hidden level of reality. Listening to Luttwak discuss his clients, one has the impression that he is passed around from government to government like some pleasurable, illicit stimulant.

One has the impression that he is passed around from government to government like some pleasurable, illicit stimulant

But what makes Luttwak unusual is the fact that so many powerful people hire him in the first place. What does a 72-year-old Romanian emigre in the Washington suburbs provide that they cannot get elsewhere?

Outside Luttwak’s house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, stands a tall metal statue of the would-be Hitler assassin Claus von Stauffenberg; a large wooden totem of Nietzsche stares out from a bay window. When I visited this spring, a helmeted figure appeared to be assembling something with industrial welding equipment through a basement window. The figure was Luttwak’s elegant wife, Dalya, who greeted me at the door while Luttwak finished shearing the bushes outside. “I do sometimes worry that when I see a car moving slowly outside the house that someone has finally come to finish us off,” she said. Dalya was preparing for a show in New York City, and the floor of her sculpture studio was strewn with tools and the steel rods she shapes into giant insect-like structures.

Luttwak first came to Washington in 1969. After graduating from LSE, he followed his roommate Richard Perle – the neoconservative eminence grise and adviser to Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, known in the press as the “Prince of Darkness” – to work for a cold war thinktank called the Committee to Maintain a Prudence Defense Policy. Chaired by the former US secretary of state Dean Acheson, the committee was dedicated to wrapping rabid strategic proposals in the language of security and necessity. Luttwak now finds Washington to be a “pleasantly innocuous” town, but he hated it when he first arrived: “I remember going to Kissinger’s favourite restaurant, Sans Souci, and eating food that would have been rejected by Italian PoWs.”

Luttwak could never fully bend to the orthodoxies of the Beltway. “He has a way of thinking outside of the box, but it’s so far outside of the box that you have to put a filter on it,” says Paul Wolfowitz, another Iraq war architect who was also a member of Acheson’s committee. “If you had asked Edward if he would have liked to be secretary of state, he would not have said no,” says Perle, “but he didn’t want to rise as a bureaucrat. He wanted access to power without going up ladders.” Luttwak’s relations with both men have cooled in recent decades. “In Washington you are considered frivolous if you write books,” he said. “Wolfowitz and Perle were always supposed to be writing these great works, but they never did. I was considered unserious for knowing things.”

Today, Luttwak’s home office contains the better part of the Loeb classical library on its shelves, interspersed ostentatiously with helmets, pistols and stray pieces of artillery. A certificate congratulating him for his contribution to the design of the Israeli M-47 tank rests above a photo of his daughter, a former Israeli soldier, driving the same tank. Luttwak spends much of his time at the computer. He follows the news closely and interprets it as an ongoing comedy. At the time of my visit, Yemen’s Houthi insurgents had just invaded the port city of Aden. “It’s as if Scottish Highlanders were walking around with guns in Mayfair,” he said.

“You know, I never gave George W Bush enough credit for what he’s done in the Middle East,” Luttwak continued. “I failed to appreciate at the time that he was a strategic genius far beyond Bismarck. He ignited a religious war between Shi’ites and Sunnis that will occupy the region for the next 1,000 years. It was a pure stroke of brilliance!”
Luttwak at home in Maryland in front of some of the books he has written and translated.

Luttwak at home in Maryland in front of some of the books he has written and translated. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino for the Guardian

Luttwak is square-jawed and has a close crew cut of grey hair. He is in remarkably good shape for a man in his 70s, which he attributes to a new sugarless diet. He has a mild, Mitteleuropean accent, which he supplements with a wide repertoire of gestures that call to mind the movements of an embattled crab: the fey flick of the index finger, the four-fingered pinch-of-salt jab, the fist-grenade that periodically explodes at chest level to punctuate a point.

He is the sort of man who is not satisfied with simply making an impression; he wants to mark his listener for life. As we walked through the house, he pulled 15th-century Byzantine-bound manuscripts, which he treats like paperbacks, from the shelves. He started to simmer every time Dalya took the reins of the conversation. “She started out so promisingly,” he said as we reviewed her sculptures. “I met her when she was a 19-year-old Israeli prison guard, and she’s the best driver of a Jeep I know.” Next to the sculptures was a giant welding machine. “It’s illegal to have that in a residential area,” he said.

After we entered his office, Luttwak became momentarily absorbed by a YouTube video of a gaur, the largest bovine on earth. A young Yorkshire filmmaker appeared in the side of the frame. “It’s a wild Indian gaur,” he frantically whispered into the camera, “Every now and then it looks at me … But if I get any closer he might get really annoyed so I’m going to be very careful.”

Luttwak jabbed childishly at the screen, emitting his standard derisive guttural – “Ah! Ah! Ah!” – and pointed to his desktop background, a picture of himself feeding and petting an enormous gaur in the Indian state of Nagaland. “I have an acute interest in bovines,” he said with an impish smile. He went back to typing on his computer, pecking sharply at the keyboard. For a moment, I thought I could see a gun strap through his T-shirt, but it turned out to be the white braces that Luttwak always wears. “I was born without a bottom,” he explained, a bit mournfully.
* * *

“The cow is the most complex machine on Earth,” Luttwak told me when I met him one morning in February, at El Trompillo airport in Santa Cruz, the largest and wealthiest city in Bolivia. “It converts cellulose into bone, meat and hoof. My cows are closer to gazelles. You will see how they leap and jump. We are not like American farmers. We don’t give them drugs and the alfalfa that makes them sick in order to get marbled meat. And we don’t kill them early. Indians worship cows because of the way they congregate at the edge of the river in the evening. It is an undeniably mystical thing and it makes sense to worship it.”

Luttwak first set his sights on Bolivia in 1998, when he convinced three wealthy partners that a recently signed South American free-trade agreement would make Bolivian land on the Brazilian border as valuable as that of its richer neighbour. Together they bought 19,000 hectares in a north-eastern province known as the Beni. Luttwak went on to buy cattle to graze the land. He now owns a herd of 3,000.

An expert who can explain the ballistic capabilities of a Tomahawk missile to a prime minister is one thing; but a man who can also debate bull-rearing methods with a hardened Bolivian cowboys in natural latex ponchos is something else. The combination of scholarly prowess and machismo is a much sought-after alloy in many high offices of the world, where extreme masculinity is still the coin of the realm. (In moments that threaten to be dull, Luttwak makes a habit of looking around for lethal objects. “This chopstick is perfect, for instance,” he told me later at a hotel restaurant. “But you must remember to thrust it deep enough into the eye socket so that it punctures the frontal cortex.”)
Edward Luttwak with Bolivian cowboys dressed in their natural latex ponchos.
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Edward Luttwak with Bolivian cowboys dressed in their natural latex ponchos. Photograph: Thomas Meaney

The Beni is a stubbornly defiant place of dense jungle and lowland plains that make it vulnerable to severe flooding. “You can’t do anything without danger in the Beni,” said Luttwak as we waited to board the hour-long turbo-prop flight north to the regional capital of Trinidad, the first stop on our way to Luttwak’s farm. “The people are the true macho. Not the fake macho of Argentina and Texas. A wife in the Beni thinks nothing of knocking a jaguar out with a frying pan. A man will casually mention that he lost a finger that morning, but no bother.” There are also several thousand Mennonite farmers in the Beni – descendents of German-speaking anabaptists exiled from Russia – whose antiquated farming techniques and pioneer grit Luttwak particularly admires.

In the Beni, politics belongs to the narco traffickers who work the border with Brazil, the new urban business class of the cities, and the cattlemen of the plains. It was one of the most powerful of these cattlemen, Winston Rodriguez Araya, that Luttwak had come to see. The previous year, Don Winston, as Luttwak calls him, lost hundreds of cattle to flooding, and had made arrangements to rent Luttwak’s herd to replenish his own. But a misunderstanding had arisen. Don Winston had delayed returning the animals to Luttwak. Luttwak was coming to get his cows back.

After landing in Trinidad, we drove six hours further north, deeper into the Amazon basin, to San Joaquin, the closest town to Luttwak’s farm. There were matters requiring immediate attention when we arrived. News of the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo had broken when Luttwak landed in Bolivia, and the last TV reports we had seen had included grainy footage of the gunmen. “It was done with AK-47s, which are very hard to get a hold of in Paris,” Luttwak kept insisting during the long drive, though we knew almost nothing about the attacks. “In Poland you can get new AK-47s complete with the little oil canister for $800, but they are nearly impossible to get in Paris. These people have connections.”

Luttwak wanted to write a piece about the future of Muslims in Europe. True to form, he wanted to infuriate liberals with the argument that western leaders, with their “fairytale collegiate view” of Islam, were in fact betraying the hard-working parents from the Middle East and Africa who had immigrated to the US and Europe in order to save their children from Islam. But there was no internet in town. We drove to the local military outpost. Luttwak entered the headquarters of the newly stationed commander and introduced himself. There was no internet. The colonel explained that in the Beni the army mostly concerns itself with protecting people from floods. “The problem is of course predicting when the floods will happen,” he said. “If you had the internet,” replied Luttwak, “that might be less of a problem.”

The soldier at the checkpoint of the camp asked about the white letters on Luttwak’s blue cap. He was wearing a NYPD cap – in “solidarity”, he said, with US police after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. “I would really enjoy wearing this on a stroll through Manhattan,” he told me. “The great stupidity of the Michael Brown trial was that they announced the verdict late at night, which was begging for riots. They should have announced it early the next morning when they could have been more prepared.”

Later that day, after an exchange of greetings and gifts at the home of Luttwak’s trusted friends and business partners Don and Donna Mandy, local ranchers who live in a red adobe Jesuit house off San Joaquin’s main square, Luttwak and I huddled into their bedroom, where the Paris attacks followed reports on local political corruption and the weather as the fourth item on the Bolivian nightly news. Armed with these findings, Luttwak retired to the dining table, and wrote his dispatch in less than two hours. (When we reconnected to the internet three days later, he sent off the article. A few days after that, it appeared on the home page of Le Monde.)

Donna Mandy then prepared a dinner of paku fish and maize cakes, followed by a round of the Bolivian spirit singani, which Luttwak barely touched. Sitting at the table, he examined the medical instructions that came with the growth hormone tablets that Don Mandy’s son, Alex Martinez, had set aside for his two adolescent daughters (they were healthy, but he wanted them to be taller). Stretching out the tiny paper of medical instructions like an accordion, Luttwak quickly reached a verdict. “Alex, you cannot give these drugs to the girls. The chance of cancer is too great. The effects of the growth protein is just too risky.” This was Luttwak’s specialism on display: the sudden flex of expertise, the pinpoint detail lanced across the room.

There is a passage in his 2009 book The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire where Luttwak shows off this skill to the extreme. He digresses for 14 pages about the special weapon used across ancient central Asia called the “composite-reflex bow” – which he believes this weapon unlocks one of the mysteries of Homer’s Odyssey. When Odysseus returns home to Ithaca to kill the suitors who have designs on his wife, he shoots them with a bow that none of them have been able to use out of what would appear to be a lack of strength. But Luttwak identifies it as a composite reflex bow that Odysseus presumably picked up on his foreign travels, and which only he knows how to string properly:

“The Ithaca provincials had tried to string the bow with brute strength, by forcing it to curve enough to receive the string – easy to do if one has at least three hands, two to pull back the limbs into position, one to tie or loop the string on each ear – but impossible to do with only two. Odysseus knew how to string reflex bows such as his own.”

Translate this kind of scholarly detail into other areas – Indian national security, the Argentinian air force, Iraqi ground targets – and you can see the source of appeal in receiving a memo from Luttwak. If Luttwak had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, he would have begun his report with a note on the type of nails that were used. He brings literary flourish to fields that would seem the most resistant to them. The performance is partly contained in the rhetoric: in order to understand the Odyssey, you cannot go to museums, or consult academic commentaries, or trust your own judgment – instead you must go to Luttwak.

If Luttwak had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, he would have noted the type of nails that were used

Luttwak’s idiosyncratic historical work often commands respect from academic experts. “Edward broke open a new academic field about the Roman frontier,” the eminent classicist GW Bowersock told me, referring to Luttwak’s book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which began life as his Johns Hopkins political science dissertation. “What makes him a great scholar is that his practical work and his scholarship constantly nourish each other.” Bowersock is right, but there is an additional element. If there is one thing that separates Luttwak from other writers on strategy it is not only his ability to move between typically disconnected realms, but also his way of flattering the customer: he can make a head of state feel like an intellectual, the academic feel like a man of action, and the Bolivian rancher that they are in the presence of a man with terrifyingly powerful connections.

Luttwak has written 14 other books, ranging from studies of American capitalism to the Israeli Army. Kazakhstan: An Alphabetic Guide – drawn from the notes for a recent consultancy project for the country – will appear as soon as it is cleared by Kazakhstani censors. Another study, tentatively entitled The Marriage of Genghis Khan and Anna Karenina – about the way vast distances have determined Russian forms of rule – is currently under way. Luttwak is perhaps even better known for his journalistic insurgencies. For Prospect magazine, he once argued that the Middle East had no strategic importance and its “backward societies” should be ignored; in the New York Times, he advised savouring the onset of war in Syria, since America’s sworn enemies were fighting each other.
Edward Luttwak with some of the 3,000 cattle he owns in Bolivia.
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Luttwak with some of the 3,000 cattle he owns in Bolivia. Photograph: Thomas Meaney

The morning after our dinner at Don and Donna Mandy’s, we drove out to Luttwak’s farm for a cattle roundup. Into two giant troughs, we dumped bags of salt that summoned the herd. “These are Indian cattle – the Portuguese brought them here from Goa,” said Luttwak, as the cows approached. “They are not stupid. They instinctively sense that eventually we want to kill them.” Dozens of cattle were now in a circle around Luttwak. He was elated. He massaged their heads, he whispered to them, but just as quickly he seemed to grow bored with them, as if disappointed that they had nothing to say.
* * *

Luttwak’s earliest memory is of being carried, aged three, on the shoulders of a Red Army soldier who was billeted at his parents’ villa in the region of Romania known as the Banat, where his father was a prominent merchant. Though the Banat was close to the epicentre of the second world war, it was never directly occupied by the Germans. Luttwak grew up speaking Romanian, Vlach and French, but his mother tongue, as was common among the Jewish population of the region, was German. He remembers his parents as courageous: “They were the sort of people who, if they saw water they liked, dove in without checking the depth.”

Yet it was the Russians, not the Germans, who posed the greater threat to the Luttwaks as the war came to a close. As a businessman with capital, Luttwak’s father stood to lose everything. The family shipped itself south in Luttwak & Co box cars and boarded one of the last ferries to Sicily, where Luttwak’s father entered the orange export business, and successfully warded off the local mafia.

After Sicily, the Luttwaks moved to Milan, where Edward was miserable and got into fights at school. The good life on the Mediterranean had come to an end, done in by grimly efficient capitalists of the north. “There was nowhere to play. The parks were a disgrace. I lost all my friends from Palermo. I found myself amid a bunch of very bourgeois kids,” Luttwak told me. His parents decided to send him away to a Jewish boarding school, Carmel College, in Oxfordshire. (Luttwak got into fights at Carmel too, “but the English had a different attitude toward fighting; they not only tolerated it, but respected you if you held your own.”)

In 1957, at the age of 15, he quit school, temporarily cut off contacts with his parents, and moved to London, where he worked in a teashop in Piccadilly and enlisted in the Honourable Artillery Company, a territorial regiment quartered in London. Luttwak claims to have first seen military action in 1958, as 16-year-old in the jungles of North Borneo, where a small British force was sent in a clandestine operation to prop up the native Dayaks against Chinese communists. But then, according to Luttwak, the world would be a very different place without him: he claims a significant hand in a large proportion of the most momentous events of the postwar era: from the decision to throw molotov cocktails at Soviet tanks in the Prague Spring, to Iran’s 1981 release of American hostages, to the existence of the Toyota Prius.

Luttwak’s talent for mythomania relies on his sensual appetite for detail, but it also gestures towards something beyond it. He tirelessly buffs the edges of his own legend; he is competitively interesting. When confronted by anyone who threatens to second-guess him, Luttwak responds either by burying them in a welter of technical detail, or crushing them with timeless, prophetic generalities. The result is that he is nearly invincible in conversation. Everything he has ever read or heard is ready for rapid deployment.

Luttwak’s antagonisms, charms, and provocations are also a way for him to ward off his greatest fear: boredom. During the eight days I spent with him, in moments where nothing was happening, or when the focus of a conversation momentarily deserted him, Luttwak appeared almost in pain. But his war on boredom is more than a personal crusade. His mortal enemies are those who wish to rationalise the world, who want to make militaries and states and intelligence agencies run like businesses. This puts him at odds with many of the American conservatives who have, over the years, been his chief patrons in the form of thinktanks and military contractors. “I believe that one ought to have only as much market efficiency as one needs,” Luttwak once said. “Because everything that we value in human life is within the realm of inefficiency – love, family, attachment, community, culture, old habits, comfortable old shoes.”
The Luttwak family in Palermo when Edward was a small child
The Luttwak family in Palermo when Edward was a small child Photograph: Edward Luttwak

For Luttwak, capitalism is synonymous with boring adulthood: ledgers, marginal returns and the expectation that the world will fundamentally remain the same. As a strategist, Luttwak sees the presumption of predictability as a damning vulnerability. As a historian of the ancient world, he is too alive to the prospect of civilisational ruin to put any faith in the idea that capitalism contains its own solution. Now that he is rich, making money for Luttwak has become a kind of pastime, and raising cattle is his attempt to make it in the least dreary, most archaic way possible. More and more it seemed we had come to the Amazon to provide Luttwak with another chance to “raise a thirst”, and it was understood that I was there to experience an endangered sanctuary based on values such as honour and daring, in which Luttwak prowled around as a Homeric hero. “Take as many pictures as possible,” he repeatedly told me. “Note everything down.”

* * *

On our third day in the Amazon, we drove out to check on the cattle that Luttwak had lent to Don Winston. There were traces of Don Winston’s empire – dairies, cattle, tenant farms – along the road for miles before we arrived at the ranch. “The man has more land than Belgium,” Luttwak said. His elaborate descriptions of Don Winston’s past exploits as a local kingpin had the effect, presumably intended, of making me slightly wary of meeting him.

Cowboys were rounding up the herd as we pulled up to the estate. Outside a white McMansion in a field of bright green, encircled by corrals, Don Winston ambled into vision: black slab of hair flattened back, obligatory moustache, shirt unbuttoned almost all the way in the Beni style, revealing a generous triangle of cured flesh.

Luttwak’s negotiations with Don Winston started around a small kitchen table with Nescafes and farm milk. They sat at opposite ends of the room, surrounded by members of Don Winston’s household. Crossbeams of sweat rapidly appeared on everyone’s backs. Their opening statements were stage-whispered through cupped hands, as if they were loudly passing on secret information.

“Eduardo we would like a bit more time for the cattle.”

“I want them today.”

“We lost many in flooding and the cold chills last year, and we can give you calves right now.”

“Not the pregnant cows?”

“We would like to amend the contract again,” said Don Winston’s son, Pito.

Luttwak made an elaborate grimace of disappointment and stood up and left the room, apparently to take a self-guided tour of the house. Together we walked to the veranda through Don Winston’s bedroom. Luttwak took a picture off the wall. It was an old photo of Don Winston riding a horse, and below it were a series of exclamations: Courage! Honour! Perseverance!

“Don Winston, this is a wonderful picture of you riding!”

“Thank you, Eduardo!”

“Don Winston, I will be forced to steal your wife if you don’t return my cattle by tomorrow!”, Luttwak said with theatrical menace.

“We will try, Eduardo,” said Don Winston, with theatrical penitence.

It was hard to tell how much of this performance was for my benefit, why Luttwak badly needed the cows now, and what the effect of walking around Don Winston’s house had been. But something had registered. It was agreed that the cattle would be returned in a week. We moved back to the veranda in less tense spirits.

We had reached the denouement. Luttwak mock-threatened to steal Don Winston’s wife once more. We exited the room. Outside the house, Luttwak pointed out a Mitsubishi Triton pick-up truck parked outside, which he cited as evidence of the company’s fresh gains in Bolivia. A brief discussion about the merits of the Triton followed. Everyone started petting the truck. Luttwak said he would inform the board of Toyota about this unexpected threat to their business in South America.

“I don’t particularly like serving states,” Luttwak told me over dinner in the main square of Trinidad two days later. “I prefer peoples and clans to states. But after 9/11, I wanted to do something again for America.” That opportunity did not arise. Instead, Luttwak continued, “I got a call from Nicolo Pollari” – the former head of Italy’s military intelligence agency. “He said, ‘Edward, I know what we’re doing – but I want you to do what we’re not doing.” According to Luttwak, the Swiss government had helped fund an Italian security operation to keep eAal-Qaida operatives from entering western Europe. And the Italians wanted Luttwak’s help.

Luttwak told me that he began by identifying the main entry points for al-Qaida members coming to Europe. In each of these locations, he put into action a carefully tailored plan. To deal with the operatives coming into Sicily by boat, Luttwak conducted town-hall-style meetings in cinemas near the harbours. Accompanied by his closest friend from childhood, the politician Calogero Mannino, Luttwak arranged a series of meetings with boat skippers, in which he explained they would not get into any kind of trouble – neither with the mafia nor the government – for following his instructions. “I told the ship captains that they would have to turn everyone in [who seemed suspicious]. I said, ‘You’ll know who they are because they will be young men, they won’t have trouble paying, and they’ll be less flea-bitten than the others.’” As part of his work for the Italians, Luttwak also claims to have conducted operations in Trieste and the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. In the Italian port city of Bari, Luttwak says his work included helping the police fight off the local mafia, who were helping Albanian smugglers deliver rafts that included al-Qaida operatives onto the country’s shores.

Luttwak enlisted another old friend, a scholar of Arabic at the Catholic University in Milan, to conduct the interrogations of the captured suspects. “She could tell the accents of the men, search out the obvious lies, and determine their true origins,” he said. “No one was tortured,” Luttwak reassured me several times. “Instead we gave them speeches: ‘We’re going to take you out of solitary and put you in the main prison. You know Italian prisoners were very moved by September 11. Some of them cried while watching the towers go down. So they’re going to rape you several times before they kill you.’” Luttwak claims his intelligence operation was spectacularly successful. “The Italians are frivolous about many things,” he told me, “but not about counter-terrorism.”

* * *

A couple of days later, we began the long return journey. The flight back to Santa Cruz was rocky. “The problem is that the pilots don’t use radios with each other so you never quite know when you’re going to get crashed into by another plane,” said Luttwak, with his impish smile. On the flight he carefully paged through two back issues of the Times Literary Supplement, which he carries with him everywhere (he finds the London Review of Books is “too bulky”). “Why is Warnie Lewis ‘the much maligned brother of CS Lewis?’” he asked me in the middle of some turbulence. “Why ‘much-maligned’?”

From Santa Cruz, Luttwak was flying to Zurich, where he has a regular job advising the local police and a firm he did not want to make public. In the passport line, I found him standing with a Swiss man employed in the fast-food business. “This man works in an industry that has yet to have its Nuremberg trials,” Luttwak declared. The Swiss man smiled weakly. “He’s a chicken nugget consultant! If there’s one point on which I agree with the leftist weaklings, it’s 1) that McDonald’s must go and 2) that American citizens should be forced en masse to take a course in phenomenology, so that they can develop the proper philosophical disposition necessary for understanding the incarnate evil of the chicken nugget.” The Swiss man was flustered, trying to calculate to what degree he had just been insulted.

This man works in an industry that has yet to have its Nuremberg trials. He’s a chicken nugget consultant!
Edward Luttwak

“Most people live such pointless lives,” said Luttwak as we walked toward his gate. “Not desperate lives – they have cable television – but pointless. For politicians, it’s not pointless, but it always ends in disappointment and bitterness. But meaningful? Their lives are not as meaningful as the Mennonites. The Mennonites are free in the Hegelian sense – they are self-consciously free. And they have unintentionally revealed the ongoing fraud of American agriculture. They don’t destroy the land, they don’t drug animals to death – they make vast profits using 18th-century technology. Personally, I cannot live that life, but I want it to flourish. I relate with Ulysses because I demand an interesting life. I demand it.” And with that, Luttwak boarded his flight.
* * *

In April, two months after his trips to Bolivia and Switzerland and a stopover in Asia to help design a new intelligence agency for an Asian country that he insisted I refer to only as “the Asian country” whenever we were in public, Luttwak drove to New York to help prepare for his wife’s art opening at a gallery in Chelsea. Don Winston still owed him eight mules, and Luttwak was in negotiations with a Mennonite colony in the Beni to sell a large chunk of his land. I met him at a small television studio on West 30th Street, where he was appearing on the popular Italian political talk show Servizio Pubblico. Luttwak sat in a black room at a small table in a dark grey suit, as a young woman applied makeup and a technician wired him up.

The segment was devoted to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Four days earlier, another migrant boat had sunk off the coast of Libya, killing roughly 800 asylum seekers. The commentators on the show spoke about how it was a terrible tragedy and how Italy needed to do more. Luttwak’s eyebrows raised in a mute appeal for mercy from this do-gooding nonsense. “This is what makes Italian leftists so vulnerable,” he said to the room in New York between live segments. “English or French leftists would come on with coherent arguments and rebuttals prepared. But in Italy everyone just wants to be considered buonista – morally pure – so they’re just easy to quash. I’ve said before that the Italians must destroy the boats before people board them on the Libya coast. You attach limpet mines to the hulls. The Renzi government is taking up my idea.”

Afterwards, as we walked to Dalya’s opening, I asked Luttwak once more why he was interested in strategy. “You seemed bored in there,” I said. “Isn’t it tiring to spend your day turning conventions on their head?”

“No,” said Luttwak, “strategy is about looking for turning points. Politics is too predictable. Look at Hillary. She is an empty carapace with ambition rattling inside. You can predict everything she does. Strategy is about being unpredictable.”

“But doesn’t that unpredictability become predictable?” I asked. “What happens when every army in the world abides by strategic logic?”

“But they never will,” said Luttwak, “because most people cannot master their emotions. Above all, strategy is about mastering your emotions.” And the emotions of others, he might have added. For all of this commitment to the concrete, Luttwak sells something extremely abstract: a form of self-realisation that gives his clients the fleeting sense that they, and the agencies under their command, have achieved mastery not only of their emotions, but of the vicissitudes of their historical moment. Like psychoanalysts who identify meaningful patterns in their patients’ idle chatter, Luttwak sees glaring chances for strategic mastery in the dullest bureaucratic reports and inventories.

In my time with Luttwak, it became clear that he didn’t simply embody his own ideas, he overfilled them; his provocations and factual barrages were the spider’s web he wrapped around his helpless listeners. But even his exaggerations – the “categorical assertions” that ruffle the likes of Brzezinski and Wolfowitz – contained something beyond strategic value: they advanced the sense that Luttwak was more daring than they were; that others have traded excitement for power, that they have traded the machete for the desk, whereas Luttwak has kept hold of both in a world that would not seem to tolerate such people, much less make them rich.

We were nearly at the gallery. Luttwak stopped to tie the laces of his black sneakers on a fire hydrant. “If I were starting out again now I would be a biologist,” he said. “I would be a student of bacteria. Every second there is an Iliad unfolding in our intestines. The variables are infinite compared to strategy or politics.”

When we reached the gallery, Dalya and Luttwak embraced. The room filled with more than 60 people. Family and friends and some art dealers arrived. Luttwak walked in circles around the room, providing a running commentary on the assembled guests. “This man’s father was a graduate of the gulag and taught me everything about forgery,” said Luttwak of one. “But he never came to anything.”

Stories and lore flowed electrically around Luttwak, but for the moment he was resisting the current. He was on good behaviour. Tonight was about his wife. An old Israeli friend sidled up to him. “How are you holding up, Edward?”

“I’ll be fine until peace breaks out.”