The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

kingly state, the territorial state, the state-nation and the contemporary nation-state. Bobbitt is most interest- ed in the ongoing metamorphosis into the state’s next incarnation, which he calls the market-state: one whose bor- ders are not based primarily on terri- torial markers but on a shared history and values, and whose strengths, weaknesses, citizens, and enemies roam across cyberspace. Or, to put it another way: while nation-states derive legitimacy from promising to improve the material welfare of their citizens, specifically by providing security and order, market-states do so by maximizing the opportunity of their people. Similarly, nation-states use force and law to bring about desired results, while market-states use various forms of market relation- ships to do so. Bobbitt argues in his opening sec- tion that this shift is essentially a con- sequence of the “Long War” of 1914- 1990: the epic struggle among fas- cism, communism and parliamen- tarism that began with World War I and ended only with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Bobbitt’s view, such “epochal wars,” encompassing many limited military conflicts and their associated peace treaties, fuel the evolution of individual states and their relationships with others. (The religiously-based Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 is another example of this phenomenon.) The West’s hard-won victory in the Long War has generated a funda- mentally new constitutional and strategic dynamic, the current “soci- ety of states” — what the first President Bush hopefully, if appar- ently prematurely, hailed as “a new world order.” But since the Sept. 11 attacks (which occurred as Bobbitt was finishing the work, as he moving- ly discusses in his final chapter, “Postscript: The Indian Summer”), this structure, in turn, is facing severe challenges of its own from non-state actors (at times supported by individual nations). In perhaps the work’s most stimu- lating section, he discusses three pos- sible scenarios for reorganizing inter- national relations to cope with vari- ous military (both state-based and terrorist) attacks, as well as assorted technological, economic and envi- ronmental developments, during the next half-century. The “Meadow,” essentially an extrapolation of socio- political patterns currently dominant in the U.S., features high levels of individualism around the world at the expense of collective behavior at any level. The “Park,” based on a European alternative, emphasizes regionalism and a striving for balance among the various state actors and goals. Finally, the “Garden” predi- cates successful market-states simply disengaging from international affairs to “tend their own gardens” and focus on renewed internal com- munity. The author freely admits that none of these systems will eliminate war, and all have advantages and dis- advantages. However, his own pref- erence is clearly the “Meadow,” since it is most in harmony with the funda- mental attribute of the market-state: the maximization of opportunities at all levels. As that choice suggests, Bobbitt is a staunch political conservative with a visceral mistrust of any insti- tutions that impede the ability of the U.S. to act as it sees fit, including pre-emptively (judging by several references to the threat posed by regimes such as Iraq). Though not formally affiliated with the current administration, I would not be at all surprised to learn that he is a favorite author of some senior offi- cials in the White House and Pentagon. In particular, I detected strong echoes of Bobbitt’s scathing indictment of the United Nations’ many failures (most memorably dis- cussed in a chapter called “The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia”) in President Bush’s denunciation of the U.N. as irrele- vant and even dangerous. It is to the author’s credit that he makes no bones about his political views, which reflect his belief that states (and individuals) should be free to make their own choices and determine their own destinies — even when cooperation might pro- duce a better result. But I suspect that even those readers who concur with Bobbitt’s periodic attacks on affirmative action and “political cor- rectness” will find such digressions unnecessary at best and annoying at worst. Nevertheless, for sheer force and breadth of argument, I strongly rec- ommend The Shield of Achilles. Timely and perceptive, it will change the way you think about the world at this critical juncture. ■ Steven Alan Honley is the editor of the Journal . M A Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 61 B O O K S Bobbitt insists that states and individuals should be free to make their own choices — even when cooperation might produce a better result.