The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History is an historico-philosophical work by Philip Bobbitt

Philip Bobbitt

Philip Chase Bobbitt is an American author, academic, and public servant who has lectured in the United Kingdom. He is best known for work on military strategy and constitutional law and theory, and as the author of Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution , The Shield of Achilles: War,...

. It was first published in 2002 by Alfred Knopf

Alfred A. Knopf

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...

 in the US and Penguin

Penguin Group

The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...

 in the UK.

Theses

Each of the two books that comprise The Shield of Achilles has three parts; each of these is preceded by a thesis.

Book I, Part Two

The interplay between strategic and constitutional innovation changes the constitutional order of the State

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

. The relation between strategy

Strategy

Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...

 and law is such that any fundamental change in the nature of strategy will produce a fundamental change in law, and vice versa. There is no single, linear monocausal relation between the two, but rather a mutually effecting circuit. Thus the French revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 brought about the Napoleonic revolution in tactical and strategic affairs; and the introduction of mobile artillery onto the Italian plane in the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 brought about the first princely states. Epochal wars force the state to innovate—either strategically or constitutionally—and successful innovations by a single state are copied by other, competing states.

Book I, Part Three

The constitutional order of the 21st century, market state will supersede the 20th century nation state as a consequence of the end of the Long War. A constitutional order is distinguished by its unique claim for legitimacy. Give us power, the nation state said, and we will improve your material well-being. But whereas the nation state, with its mass free public education, universal franchise, and social security policies promised to guarantee the welfare of the nation, the market state promises to maximize the opportunity of the people and thus tends to privatize many state activities and to make voting and representative government less influential and more responsive to the market. This does not mean that market states cease to be interested in the well-being of their peoples or that nationalism is any less potent but that the State no longer claims legitimacy on that unique basis.

Book II, Part One

The society of nation states developed a constitution that attempted to treat states as if they were individuals in apolitical society of equal, autonomous, rights-bearing citizens. Whereas Book I focused on the individual state, Book II takes up the society of states. This society, like all groups, has a constitution; its foundations were laid at the end of World War I when nation states destroyed the imperial state nations of the preceding century. Perhaps the most important constitutional idea of this society is the right of self-determination of national peoples.

Book II, Part Two

Much as epochal wars have shaped the constitutional order of individual states, the great peace settlements of these wars have shaped the constitutional order of the society of states. The Treaty of Augsburg, the Peace of Westphalia

Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...

, the Treaty of Utrecht

Treaty of Utrecht

The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...

, the Congress of Vienna

Congress of Vienna

The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...

, the Peace of Versailles, and the Peace of Paris all served to ratify the dominance of a new constitutional order and provide rules for the society of states.

Book II, Part Three

A new society of market states is being born. The challenges facing the society of states today are a direct consequence of the strategic innovations that won the Long War—the development of nuclear weapons, a global system of communications, and the technology of rapid computation. These have undermined the ability of any nation state to govern its economy; to assert its laws in the face of universal norms of human rights; to defend its territory against WMD; to tackle transnational problems like climate change, epidemics and terrorism; to protect the national culture from outside influences. Market states will take up these challenges. Though there are, at present, no market states it is speculated that they will come in at least three fundamentally different forms: mercantile, managerial and entrepreneurial.

The State

The Shield of Achilles put the subject of the State back on the table for constitutional theorists and historians after a long period in which other subjects—rights for example—had eclipsed its centrality. Originally the work, in lengthier versions, was divided into separate books that were intended to stand alone. Book I, State of War, describes a two-way, mutually affecting causal process that mediates between fundamental changes in the constitutional basis of society and deep innovations in its military strategy. To the much debated question whether state formation was caused by the Gunpowder Revolution of the 17th century, by the development of more sophisticated fortresses in the 16th century, or the professionalization of armed forces in the 18th century, Bobbitt answered: all of the above. Rejecting the monolithic idea of the Westphalian nation state, he identified five constitutional orders arising in tandem with strategic and technological innovation: princely states, kingly states, territorial states, state-nations and nation states. Book II, States of Peace, posited that the great peace congresses that sorted out the winners and losers of epochal wars wrote constitutions for the society of states and thus ratified each new constitutional order (Augsburg/princely state; Westphalia/kingly state; Utrecht/territorial state; Vienna/state nation; Versailles/nation state). This book ends with a suite of scenarios looking forward to the future development of societies of market states.

Narrative Organization

The sequence of chapters in both books of The Shield of Achilles follows the sequence of the novel Nostromo by Joseph Conrad---present, past, future. Somewhat more prosaically, this is the order of Statement of Facts, Statement of Law, and Holding in an Anglo-American judicial opinion. The first parts of Book I and Book II deal with 20th century and contemporary events; the second parts of both books then flash back to the emergence of states in the 16th century and take the historical narrative up to the point where the first parts had begun; the third part of each book addresses the future, beginning where the first parts had left off. This methodical if unorthodox sequencing allows the historian to avoid the tempting mechanics of foreshadowing, emphasizing the possibilities of different outcomes at each stage and deepening the understanding of how the past can liberate the present.

Synopsis

A synopsis of The Shield of Achilles was originally hosted on the Global Business Network

Global Business Network

Global Business Network, or GBN, is a strategy consulting firm and member of Monitor Group, that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments use scenario planning to plan for multiple possible futures....

.
Commentary on the book can be accessed at the University of Texas website.

External links

• Interview with Phillip Bobbitt on The Shield of Achilles
• Gopal Balakrishnan (2003-09/10) Algorithms of War. New Left Review
  New Left Review
  New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
  
  23: reviewing Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles.
• Edward Rothstein, Shelf Life: Seeing the New Era Before 9/11. New York Times review of The Shield of Achilles.
• Peter J. Woolley, "Making the World Safe for Personal Choice," The Common Review
  The Common Review
  The Common Review is the quarterly magazine of the Great Books Foundation. The magazine specializes in nonfiction essays and articles "about the books and ideas that matter", as well as reviews of new books, letters, and editorials. The magazine has been twice nominated for the Utne Independent...
  
  , Volume 2, Issue 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 38-45. A review essay of post-Sept. 11th works on conflict, including Bobbitt's Shield of Achilles, and the response of the liberal state, where the market rather than traditional nationalist loyalties increasingly defines the conflict. Also accessible at http://www.thecommonreview.org/fileadmin/template/tcr/pdf/TCR22.pdf