Take Me Back to Constantinople

While obviously (I hope) the advice is useful, it would have been useful if the writer could have taken a moment to mention a few specific titles. In my opinion only the realm of political writing has more hacks and revisions.

Mr Luttwak should have gone on to mention that Byzantine 11-th century failure to follow precepts III and IV, with blame often focussed on emperor Romanus IV Diogenes and the battle of Manzikerk (1071), paved the way for Byzantium's collapse under the Seljuk, and eventually Ottoman, Turks.

Alot of this translates as be adept at realpolitik, but also provides interesting military lessons for the wars America is fighting

The Byzantine emperor Justinian (AD 483-565) had far more able servants than Bush ever had but he managed to do the same thing, beggar the empire.

Gibbon said of Justinian, 'Every art was tried to extort from the people the gold and silver which he scattered with a lavish hand from Persia to France ... he lived with the reputation of hidden treasures and bequeathed to his successor the payment of his debts.'

A succession of easy victories over weaker foes and the acquisition of remote and ungovernable lands did not strengthen either the Byzantine empire or the current American one. When the real crisis hit the Byzantine empire, the appearance of the Arabs, they were overextended, their tax base was exhausted and their military degraded.

The later Byzantine empire was forced to follow political strategies because it was too weak to deal with its' neighbours militarily. I think the later Roman empire, particularly after the Diocletian reforms, is a better model. Although Diocletian stabilised the state and reformed the tax base he ultimately led the Empire on the road to disaster. The military swallowed up more and more of the Empire's resources until its' entire raison d'etre became supporting the armed forces. Fair enough they didn't have much choice in the matter, enemies beset them on every side and they had to keep 50% of their forces on permanent alert to protect the east from the Persians.

The US is not in that position. It is not beset by enemies on every side. The ludicrous amount of money spent on the armed forces and the poor value for money that the US gets is going to lead to a situation where there is a massive backlash against military spending and it gets slashed to next to nothing or the US economy is permanently crippled.

However well done for using history to make a point about America's foolish obsession with military solutions to political problems.

As it is, these recommendations are theoretical as Grant suggests. It will hold more of a punch if you make applicable, giving real examples.
Yet still, it was an interesting read. Thank you.

Poli Sci Undergrad
McMaster University.

but the simplest thing is difficult" -- Carl von Clausewitz
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The problem with preaching such broad points is that it ignore the fact that they are fraught with difficulties in real life. They seem to make the implicit assumption that any of these is possible with enough effort, whereas I would argue some of these are impossible to fully achieve due to uncertainty and friction.
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1 :: What happens when you train tirelessly, as America did, to fight a war that never came, in this case a full scale, potentially nuclear war in Europe against Russia. A military establishment that spent decades preparing for such a conflict only to get blindsided by the need to fight numerous small, asymmetrical wars is akin to spending years training to play football only to be placed unexpectedly on a baseball team, some of it transfers, much of it has to be learned.
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3 -4 :: Economy of force and maneuver warfare are both tenets of the modern military already. No general deliberately chooses attrition, it's forced on them by the circumstances and even the masters of maneuver are not immune to this (Napoleon in Russia, the Germans at Stalingrad). Similarly "lightning strikes and offensive raids" are great when there are identifiable targets to strike and raid, the reality with partisan and terrorist groups is anything but.
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5-6 :: Some valid points but really a romanticized picture of power politics that may have applied when news was slow and power was absolute, but in a democracy with 24hr news networks and constant, unhindered access to the internet the notion that the US could play the amoral game on the global stage seems far fetched. As long as politicians curry votes through use of nebulous, values based buzzwords like freedom and democracy that won't be possible.
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7 :: Who do we "whittle down" amongst our enemies? The phrase itself implies a fixed quantity that simply needs to be slowly removed, yet any military actions that go awry could end up creating more animosity, and more enemies so the "whittling" could just increase our problems. Not to mention, how do we identify these people in the first place? It's not feasible to suggest such a strategy in an unconventional war, and avoiding conflict as well as nation building has it's own costs.
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Ultimately not every situation is solvable by clever aphorisms, or brilliant maneuvers. Sometimes, the only way forward is slowly and incrementally, which is almost always frustrating but again, it's not a matter of choice, not every battle can be an Austerlitz, sooner or later you have to suffer the grind.

I feel that Sun Tzu put it best regarding conflict:

"The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death,a road to safety or to ruin. Therefore, it is a subject that must be thoroughly studied."

However, war is now beyond the battlefield. War is now in cyberspace, in our towns, in our homes, and most frightingly in our government. Americans have never been forced to contend with an emeny that has infultrated our lives as we have now. I do agree with Mr Luttwak, but here is my take on some things -

I - Prepare for war but avoid war at all costs.
- The American military machine is not made to train, re-train, and then train again w/o something to train for. The financial and psychological costs to the military do not allow them to be hampsters in a cage running in circles. Therefore constantly training for a war that you are not going to fight in will destroy the mentality of the military.

II - Learn all you can about your enemy
- this is made difficult those who fear the threat of "Big Brother" - you want to be safe yet you dont want to have to make any personal sacrifice. Our enemies are not only on the other side of the planet. Sometimes we have to look within to find the threats outside our boardies.

III - Use minimal forces to achieve the needed outcome.
- I feel that this is very important. If you use a force larger and more powerful then necessary you risk being seen as an aggressor rather then a supporter. Alienating those you are trying to protect.
IV - Do not overstay your welcome
- That is called an imperialist. Imperialists DO NOT WIN in the LONG RUN.
V - Maintain your friendships to maintain the balance of power.
- This outweighs any military battle. If you can talk through a situation you may save thousands of lives and all parties involved can maintain face - vital in the game of power politics.
VI - Ememies can be made allies
- Have you ever thought about the fact that America's closest ally is England. Americans found for our freedom from the oppressive English over 200 years ago - now we are friends. This simply means be mindful of what you say and how you act -
VII - Keep conflict short and to the point. Long battles are what drain a State.
- this is the problem we are having in the middle east to my opinion. We took something that could have and should have been quick and effecctive and now are faced with Vietnam Part II.

When enter the northern crusaders to in Istanbul, East Rome was sacked saw,understood something important Of friendship rather than a barbarian,Make a civilized enemy!

As a long-time aficionado of Byzantine history, it is with great pleasure, and a bit of surprise, to see Dr. Luttwak’s article on Byzantine Grand Strategy in the pages of Foreign Policy Magazine, the renaissance in the study of Byzantine history has now reached its climax!

While I certainly believe that a civilization like Byzantium that had survived for over a thousand years during one of the most tumultuous periods in world history is replete with important lessons (which is one reason I became enthralled with it), I’m not so sure that its military strategy as Dr. Luttwak presents it is necessarily appropriate for the United States.

Clearly, America’s preeminence among world powers today sparked the incessant comparison’s with Rome, who for five centuries was most nearly as dominant in Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Byzantium, by definition, did not have such status. While scholars continue to debate today what constitutes the starting point of the “Byzantine” era in the Eastern Mediterranean, few disagree that the most crucial element in making that determination is the dominant Greek as opposed to Latin influence in the society. That only occurred because of the disastrous collapse the empire suffered during the 7th century AD when first Persians, then Arabs crushed Byzantine armies, conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and north Africa—essentially all Byzantine territory outside of Anatolia, present day Turkey--while laying massive sieges against its capital city, Constantinople. In a mere two generations Constantinople was reduced from its status as the incomparable capitol city of the Mediterranean to a Christian outpost fighting for its survival against the Islamic tidal wave.

It is this catastrophe that underlies so much of Byzantium’s survival strategy. The need to avoid the “decisive battle” was due to the total defeat suffered by the Byzantine army at the battle of Yarmuk River valley in 636 AD the defeat that cost them the entire Eastern Mediterranean as well as the Holy Patriarchal Sees of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria—the shock of which reverberated throughout Byzantine history.

Thus the strategy of guile and deception was born of desperation, from Byzantine weakness, not strength. The vastly shrunken empire simply would not survive another disastrous defeat as it suffered at Yarmuk and had to adjust its strategy to deal with its radically changed circumstances, namely rather than a world power, it was now only a satellite of the mighty Islamic Empire that stretched from Spain to India. Hammered by the Muslim armies to the East and Slavic and Bulgar invasions to the West, Byzantium had to use all means at its disposal to survive.

Yet, how is this a relevant lesson for the United States? The American military has not lost a truly decisive battle/campaign in its history, which is why we are the preeminent military power today. The closest example of a decisive defeat would likely be the rout of the UN forces during the Chinese offensive at the Yalu River in 1950—yet within a few months the situation had stabilized and defeat turned into a stalemate. Indeed, given our overwhelming conventional superiority today American military commanders would crave such a battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Consequently, the Byzantine model would be more instructive for our enemies rather than ourselves.

Yet there are two very important lessons from the Byzantine experience that bear a great deal to America’s current strategic situation. The first is “imperial resurgence,” few empires would have survived the Islamic onslaught as Byzantium did in the 7th century, fewer still would have rose again to take the mantle as the Mediterranean’s most powerful state as it did by year 1000 AD. During the 10th and 11th centuries Byzantine emperors crushed the empires greatest enemies, doubled the size of the empire, retook the holy city of Antioch, and had armies that even reached the outskirts of Jerusalem. These emperors chose to fight the decisive battles that traditional Byzantine strategy rejected, but this time, they emerged victorious.

However, this era of expansion did not last as the emperors of the middle 11th century considered the empire so secure that they drastically cut military spending, devastating military strength. Just two decades later the newly arrived Seljuk Turks would crush the Byzantine Army at Manzikert 1071 and the entire empire would be fighting for its life, yet again. And, once more, the Byzantines reverted to the old methods of guile and deception to see them through for the remaining four centuries of their existence.

Thus the lessons of the Byzantine experience are two-fold; for those predicting American decline, even if true, resurgence is always possible—for those who think that current world situation means we can drastically reduce defense spending, there will always be more enemies like the Seljuk Turks who will arrive when you least expect it.

And, yes, the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by Muslims.

Competition for global power can only bring disaster, when every military explosive detonated or helicopter made airborne adds to the impending climate disaster. Such competition proliferates nuclear weapons, and eventually they will, by accidentally or purposely, kill people and create wastelands. The old ways, whether learned from the Romans or the Byzantines, are no longer available in Realpolitik because the consequences of employing them will destroy the destroyers. The historians and politicians who talk in the old ways may be scholarly, but they are missing the point: disease, famine, droughts, deforestation, radioactive wastelands will affect everyone. Cooperation is the only strategy that will work.

The downfall of Justinian's achievements had more to do with the first irruption of the bubonic plague within a virgin population (i.e. 30%+ mortality rate) than any other cause.