The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

60 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 3 The Age of Market-States The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History Philip Bobbitt, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, $40, hardcover, 919 pages. R EVIEWED BY S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY Ordinarily, given the large num- ber of titles competing for our limit- ed space, the Foreign Service Journal would not review a book a year after its publication (let alone devote the entire book review section to it). But The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History is no ordi- nary book, to put it mildly, either in its content or presentation. Consider its sweeping thesis, as set forth in Bobbitt’s prologue: “We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five cen- turies it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state: only states could muster the huge rev- enues, conscript the vast armies, and equip the divisions required to threaten the survival of other states. Indeed, posing such threats, and meeting them, created the modern state. In such a world, every state knew that its enemy would be drawn from a small class of potential adver- saries. This is no longer true, owing to advances in international telecom- munications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction. The change in statecraft that will accom- pany these developments will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone.” In keeping with the range of ideas encapsulated in that one paragraph — and the book’s title and its sheer bulk — Bobbitt’s intellectual ambi- tion is truly breathtaking. As a histo- rian (he was formerly the Anderson Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Modern History fac- ulty, and later the Marsh Christian Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, London), Bobbitt skillfully leads us through the interplay over the past six centuries among war, diplomacy, and the rise and fall of individual states. Wearing the hat of a policy analyst, Bobbitt also details the relationship between various nations’ foreign rela- tions and domestic politics, as well as other intellectual trends at work in those societies. In so doing, he draws on his experiences (during the Reagan and first Bush administrations) as associate counsel to the president for intelligence and international security, legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra Affair, and the counselor on international law at the Department of State, as well as director of intelligence, senior director for critical infrastructure, and senior director for strategic plan- ning at the National Security Council. Finally, writing as an expert on constitutional and international law (subjects he teaches at the University of Texas), he discusses the legal aspects of statecraft as well as the creation and evolution of interna- tional organizations. Along the way, he also proves himself an entertaining, even witty, biographer, bringing to life such dis- parate figures as Hugo Grotius (the 17th-century Dutch jurist and politi- cian who was an influential figure in early modern international law), Robert Castlereagh (who represent- ed Britain at the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna), and Colonel Edward M. House (President Woodrow Wilson’s closest adviser and a major architect of the Fourteen Points and the League of Nations). The Long War The narrative centers on the vari- ous phases in the evolution of the modern nation: the princely state, the The West’s hard-won victory in the “Long War” has generated a brand-new constitutional and strategic dynamic: the current “society of states.” B OOKS