… For twenty years Edward Luttwak has been writing about military history and affairs, and he has emerged as one of the nation’s most influential students of how future wars may be fought. To formulate his plans, he makes use of the past as a carpenter makes use of nails: history is not merely a discipline to him, but an indispensable tool. In an interview that is both amusing and unsettling, he makes the case that in the age of nuclear weaponry, those who do not know the past not only are doomed to repeat it, but may well be doomed, period.