FRANCIS P. SEMPA
When Edward Luttwak speaks, world leaders listen — and now they must consider heeding his advice on Ukraine.
Luttwak has been advising world leaders, including U.S. presidents, since the 1980s. He is the author of seminal books on history and strategy, including The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, and Coup d‘État: A Practical Handbook. Most recently, he has been writing about the Russia–Ukraine war and about China for the online journal UnHerd, and he recently appeared in an hour-long podcast on UnHerd’s website.
Luttwak believes that despite all the talk in Washington and in other Western capitals about “unwavering support” for Ukraine, Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, seek a negotiated settlement with Russia. The much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive has stalled. Russia’s government survived a scare by the Wagner Group, and its troops are fighting better now than in the first year of the war. Historically, “when Russia goes to war they always mess up” at first, Luttwak says, but “as the war goes on Russians fight better,” and that is what is happening now. Top U.S. officials, like CIA Director William J. Burns, recognize this fact and have advised Biden accordingly, which is why Biden poured cold water on the Ukraine-in-NATO suggestion. Putin, Luttwak noted, has also publicly pulled back from the “nuclear threat” in a signal to Ukraine and the U.S. that a negotiated solution is possible. Luttwak also contends that Ukraine’s leaders also know that a negotiated peace is the most realistic scenario for ending the war.
U.S. leaders, according to Luttwak, want a Russia–Ukraine settlement precisely because of the more significant geopolitical threat of China in the western Pacific. This is in line with what former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby has suggested. That threat, Luttwak says, is centered around the person of Xi Jinping, who Luttwak believes is “obsessed” with China’s “rejuvenation” and who thinks China’s “rejuvenation” demands reunification with Taiwan — if necessary, by force. Xi is preparing China for war.
One clue that China is preparing for war, Luttwak contends, is Xi’s recent order to Communist Party officials across the country “to rapidly increase the supply of arable land by any means possible.” Luttwak compares this order to Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward,” which sacrificed tens of millions of Chinese in a futile effort to quickly industrialize China in the late 1950s to early 1960s. China, Luttwak notes, produces enough food to feed its population, but it relies on imports from Argentina, Canada, Brazil, and the United States to feed its cattle, pigs, ducks, and chicken. Xi knows that if China goes to war over Taiwan, those imports “would quickly dry up.”
This means that China is reversing its recent “reforestation efforts” in order to increase the amount of arable land — land that will be needed to produce beans, wheat, soya, and other cereals — in the event of war. And it is doing this by forcible means if necessary — just the way Mao did during the Great Leap Forward. Luttwak notes that during the last few months, Xi has spoken about the need to prepare for “extreme circumstances” and for “worst-case and extreme scenarios,” which Luttwak believes are codewords for preparing for “the danger of war.” Those remarks coincide with Xi’s recent orders to Chinese commanders in the Taiwan Strait theater to increase “training under real combat conditions to raise the capability to fight and win.”
In his interview on the UnHerd website, Luttwak compared Xi to Mussolini, whose bluster and aggression in the 1930s helped bring on World War II. Mussolini saw war as a way to rejuvenate the Italian people. Luttwak believes Xi sees war over Taiwan in similar terms for China. “When somebody keeps talking about war,” Luttwak says, world leaders should take note. Some American leaders understand this, but others do not. Those who understand Xi and the threat China poses to American interests in the western Pacific want the Russia–Ukraine war to end —sooner rather than later — so that U.S. policymakers can focus on the greater threat in the western Pacific.
“We have a dangerous future,” Luttwak says, “because of … Xi Jinping,” whom he describes as a tyrant who is leading the Chinese people — and, perhaps, much of the world — into a potentially catastrophic war. We would be far better off if the Chinese people killed Xi, Luttwak says, but unfortunately tyrannicide is out of fashion.
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