Summary
An Iranian empire trying to reassert lost glory, an Islamic jihad and tribal animosities in the Balkans; life is not easy for a superpower. This could describe American strategic challenges today, but these are the same types of threats faced by an earlier superpower in Edward N. Luttwak's new book, "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire." For a millennium after the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern half lived on with its capital in Constantinople. Mr. Luttwak describes how Byzantium managed to survive its Western sister so long, and our contemporary strategists should take note.
Mr. Luttwak takes up where he left off three decades ago when he wrote "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire." That book was daring in its revisionism at the time, and people still love or hate it depending on their disposition toward the author. In those ensuing decades, Mr. Luttwak has matured as a writer and a historian. This book is good history as well as being an insightful commentary on strategy. Mr. Luttwak still has some interesting historical interpretations, but he has written good history.See the full content of this document
Extract
What the Byzantines Can Teach Us
The Eastern Roman Empire has received a bad rap since Edward Gibbon largely dismissed it as an effeminate and unworthy successor to the Western Roman Empire, whose demise he described while ...
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