The Wit and Wisdom of Edward Luttwak

Now you have a choice: You can have a non-wily head of a department and the collective knowledge and wisdom of the whole department, or else you can have a wily head and zero functioning. And that is how the Russian government is currently working. Putin and Medvedev have very little control of the Russian bureaucracy. When you want to deal with them, and I dealt with them this morning, they act in very uncooperative, cagey, and deceptive ways because they are first of all trying to protect their security and stability and benefits from their boss. They have to deceive you because they are deceiving their boss before he even shows up to work. And they are all running little games. So, that’s the alternative. You can have a wily Putin and a stupid government. Or an intelligent government and an innocent head. There’s always is a trade-off. A Putin cannot be an inspiring leader. […]

Luttwak is interesting because he couples analytical smarts with bluntness and creativity. When someone in public life is less stellar than their position would indicate, Luttwak will say it. He will also tackle problems from unusual starting points, a good strategy for generating bursts of insight. It also generates weird, off-the-wall tangential observations. Small price to pay.

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