On the Meaning of Victory: Essays on Strategy

This is a collection of essays published over the past six years, mostly in Commentary, by the author of the controversial The Pentagon and the Art of War. Admirers of that hard-hitting ciriticism of the U.S. defense establishment will find this work especially interesting for its broader focus on strategy and military policy in the political context. In the title piece, Luttwak, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues with heavy irony that ""The West has become comfortably habituated to defeat. Victory is viewed with great suspicion, if not outright hostility.'' In ``The East-West Struggle,'' an illuminating overview of military balance in 198385, the ``inability of the greater powers to impose a modicum of order in world affairs'' is discussed. The book also includes thought-provoking reviews of Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, Zbigniew Brzezinski's Power and Principle and Fred Kaplan's The Wizards of Armageddon. (April)